Asthma Healing

The maker of a new, long-acting asthma drug has issued a warning after doctors reported that the death of some asthma sufferers might be attributable to their improper use of it.

Abbott Laboratories received approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel to sell a new class of asthma drug.

Copley Pharmaceutical Inc. has agreed to settle a shareholder lawsuit stemming from its recall of an asthma drug that may have caused numerous deaths and injuries.

BOLTS of thunder and lightning struck. Wind gusts scattered grass pollen over a wide area. Many people immediately began wheezing and having difficulty breathing from asthmatic attacks. Emergency rooms were swamped with 10 times the usual number of asthmatics. For nearly half the victims, it was the first asthmatic attack in their lives. Thirty hours later, it had turned into the largest epidemic of asthma following a thunderstorm.

SOME women with asthma find that they seem more likely to have attacks around the time that their menstrual periods begin. But even though the possibility of such a link was first reported in a medical journal in 1931, it has never been proved or studied extensively.

THE inhalers that are an essential part of daily life for many of the 24 million Americans with asthma and other respiratory diseases are due for a major overhaul, raising concerns among some patients and doctors about whether the medications they depend on will continue to be available.

Few pregnant women escape the well-meaning chums who insist they can tell a baby's sex from various telltale signs -- like the height of the mother's belly or the foods she craves.

In a powerful demonstration of how intimately mind and body are linked, researchers have shown that writing about traumatic experiences measurably improves the health of some patients suffering from chronic asthma or rheumatoid arthritis.

The Food and Drug Administration approved a new inhaled drug today for treating influenza, overriding a panel of independent scientific advisers who recommended five months ago that the drug be kept off pharmacy shelves because it is only marginally effective and may be dangerous for asthma patients.

More than 500,000 emergency injection kits for treating severe allergic reactions and asthma attacks are being recalled in the United States and Canada.

The Schering-Plough Corporation is recalling five batches of Vanceril, an inhaled prescription medication for asthma, because some of the canisters may not contain active drug.

Scientists may be no closer to explaining why the incidence of asthma has been escalating in the United States, but a new study confirms that a number of common indoor materials may be making the situation worse.

The biochemistry of breathing deeply, the one thing an asthmatic cannot do in the midst of the attack, may hold a key to helping doctors treat people who have asthma.

Genentech Inc. and Novartis A.G. have partly suspended clinical trials of what is considered a highly promising drug for asthma and allergies after extremely high doses of the drug or of a related molecule caused low blood platelet counts and some deaths in monkeys.

Merck & Company has expanded its relationship with the New York office of DDB Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, by naming the agency to handle its Singulair anti-asthma drug, which had been handled by the New York office of FCB Worldwide, part of True North Communications. Spending was estimated at $40 million.

Schering-Plough has repeatedly failed to meet government manufacturing standards in making many of its prescription drugs including Claritin, its popular allergy medication, and Proventil, an asthma inhaler, according to federal and company documents that were disclosed yesterday.

The Immunex Corporation said yesterday that clinical trials of treatments for chronic heart failure and asthma had failed, dealing a double blow to the company's effort to expand its product line beyond its treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.

A bill gaining support in the Legislature would require that data from emergency rooms be collected and analyzed to help tackle the growth in asthma. The measure, passed by the Senate Health Committee yesterday and by the Assembly on Monday, would expand the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System to include the asthma reports. The data could help determine how temperature, humidity, pollutants, stress and other factors cause asthma attacks. (AP)

A healthy volunteer died recently after inhaling a drug in a federally financed asthma study conducted by Johns Hopkins University, officials said yesterday. The volunteer's hospitalization after inhaling the drug led the institution to suspend the research.