Asthma Healing

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.

Federal health officials said yesterday that they would investigate the death of a healthy volunteer in an asthma experiment at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Differences in the care given to black and white asthma patients may help explain why blacks suffer more severe symptoms and generally fare worse with the disease, researchers reported yesterday.

In the nebulous language of eulogy, Ellen Roche, a bright, healthy, 24-year-old volunteer in an asthma study at Johns Hopkins University, died for the sake of science. In clinical terms, Ms. Roche died because a chemical she inhaled in the study led to the progressive failure of her lungs and kidneys.

The German drug maker Altana said an asthma and bronchitis medicine had performed well in tests and would move into the final stage of testing, setting off a sharp rally in the company's stock price.

A report on the death of a healthy volunteer in an asthma study at Johns Hopkins University found that the university's research review board was inadequate to handle its thousands of studies and that some researchers had adversarial relationships with federal regulators.

Inhaled steroids used to treat asthma have led to bone loss at the hip in premenopausal women, researchers have found.

MOLD can cause health problems that range from itching eyes, sneezing and coughing to serious allergic reactions, asthma attacks and even permanent lung damage. And what many people do not know is that mold could be growing in their homes right now.

Some art provokes strong reactions across the centuries -- especially if it was made with eggs.

Combining a ''supercleaning'' technique developed for lead abatement with periodic pest control can sharply reduce the cockroach allergens that have been linked to high rates of asthma in urban areas, according to a new study.

A study being released today has found that about half of a group of people with chronic asthma also suffered from low-level lung infections, and that antibiotic treatment improved their breathing.

A $100 million project to develop a new kind of map of the human genome was announced today by an international consortium. Its goal is to hasten discovery of the variant genes thought to underlie common human diseases like diabetes, asthma and cancer.

GlaxoSmithKline said yesterday that Serevent, one of its popular asthma drugs, might pose a risk of death and serious asthma-related illness in some patients.

The truth about cats and dogs is that dogs seem to be worse, at least for people with asthma.

Two studies have found that mite-proof bed coverings, at least by themselves, fail to relieve asthma and allergies, a perplexing discovery that challenges the frequent advice of doctors.

People with asthma that gets worse at night might do well to avoid using melatonin as a sleep aid, according to a study issued yesterday.

Despite a government recommendation that people with asthma receive annual flu vaccinations, only about a third do so, a new study reports.