Faculty Bibliography

A sound public health plan is in place nationally to combat further spread of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, which caused an outbreak of encephalitis in New York City last year, federal health officials said here today. ''We may see some cases here and there this year,'' but no one knows when and where the West Nile virus will strike, said Dr. Stephen Ostroff, who is coordinating the West Nile effort for the Department of Health and Human Services. When the West Nile virus was first detected in the New York City outbreak last fall, ''there were a variety of federal agencies that were very concerned about bioterrorism, and some conducted investigations at that time,'' said Dr. Ostroff, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta

The drug is Plavix, which helps prevent blood clots. Three million people have taken Plavix, which is also known as clopidogrel, since Bristol-Myers Squibb first marketed it two years ago. Doctors have been prescribing Plavix in the belief that it is safer than a pharmacologically related drug, ticlopidine or Ticlid. Ticlid can reduce the number of infection-fighting white blood cells to dangerously low levels in about 1 percent of users and apparently produces TTP in about 1 of every 1,600 to 5,000 patients. Now a team led by Dr. Charles L. Bennett of the Veterans Administration Healthcare System in Chicago has linked Plavix to 13 cases of TTP. Eleven of the cases are scheduled to be reported in the June 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Two probable cases were identified after the report was submitted, said a co-author, Dr. Charles J. Davidson of Northwestern University

By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official said at the first national conference for health professionals about the medical uses of marijuana. The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England, is ''trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated product'' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, said Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director. Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them

By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official told the first national conference for health professionals about the medical uses of marijuana. The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England, is 'trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated product' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director, said. Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them

The scientists will be testing a highly controversial and seemingly far-fetched theory that holds that an oral polio vaccine, used in vaccine trials in what was the Belgian Congo in the 1950s, might have been made with chimpanzee tissue that might have been contaminated with an ancestor of the AIDS virus. The Wistar Institute, a research center in Philadelphia, made the vaccine and has kept a few drops of material used in its preparation frozen since 1957. After the AIDS and polio vaccine theory was first raised in 1992, Wistar appointed an independent committee of scientists to look into the questions. The committee recommended testing the vaccine. But Wistar never carried out the tests, it said, because of a lack of scientific interest. By early next month, the material will be carried by hand to the participating laboratories. There, scientists will begin a number of tests aimed at detecting any AIDS-related virus and determining which kind of animal tissue was used to make the vaccine. The focus is on tissue from chimpanzees because they carry a simian virus that is believed to be the ancestor of HIV-1, the virus responsible for the overwhelming majority of AIDS cases in the world

Bacteria beneath the long fingernails of nurses have been linked to the deaths of babies in an intensive care unit in a hospital in Oklahoma City, federal and Oklahoma health officials said yesterday. Epidemiologists who investigated the outbreak of bacterial infection at Children's Hospital found that about half of the 16 deaths from Jan. 1, 1997, to March 12, 1998, were apparently due to contamination from the long fingernails. No deaths from the bacteria have been reported since the hospital imposed measures like requiring that nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit have short nails, Dr. William R. Jarvis, head of the hospital infections program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview

In their first comprehensive interviews on the topic, Bill Bradley and his three cardiologists said the former senator was in excellent physical condition and his bouts of irregular heartbeat were not a serious hazard to his health, or to his ability to serve as president, despite their recent increased frequency. Bradley and the doctors, who have treated him since 1998, confirmed that he suffers from a condition known as atrial fibrillation. It is the most common heart-rhythm disorder that doctors treat, affecting an estimated 2.2 million Americans in one form or another. Many of these people work full schedules, and some even run marathons

In their first comprehensive interviews on the topic, Bill Bradley and his three cardiologists said the former senator was in excellent physical condition and his bouts of irregular heartbeat were not a serious hazard to his health, or to his ability to serve as president, despite their recent increased frequency. Bradley and the doctors, who have treated him since 1998, confirmed that he suffers from a condition known as atrial fibrillation. It is the most common heart-rhythm disorder that doctors treat, affecting an estimated 2.2 million Americans in one form or another. Many of these people work full schedules, and some even run marathons. Dr. John F. Eisold, the attending physician to Congress and the person who first diagnosed Bradley's irregular heartbeat in 1996, did not consent to an interview. But he gave Bradley his own Senate medical records, and Bradley turned them over to [Robert H.] Heissenbuttel, who then discussed them

In their first comprehensive interviews on the topic, Bill Bradley and his three cardiologists said the former senator was in excellent physical condition and his bouts of irregular heartbeat were not a serious hazard to his health, or to his ability to serve as president, despite their recent increased frequency. Bradley and the doctors, who have treated him since 1998, confirmed that he suffers from a condition known as atrial fibrillation. It is the most common heart-rhythm disorder that doctors treat, affecting an estimated 2.2 million Americans in one form or another. Many of these people work full schedules, and some even run marathons. Dr. John Eisold, the attending physician to the Congress and the person who first diagnosed Bradley's irregular heartbeat in 1996, did not consent to an interview. But he gave Bradley his Senate medical records, and Bradley turned them over to [Robert H.] Heissenbuttel, who then discussed them

''I have not thought of that,'' Mr. [Bill Bradley] said. He added that ''the 25th Amendment sounds a reasonable way to go,'' but that this was ''a decision that I can make down the road a little bit.'' Mr. Bradley's irregular heartbeat is technically known as lone paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. ''Lone'' means the irregular heartbeat is not caused by an underlying heart condition. ''Paroxysm'' refers to the bursts of irregular beats that come on unpredictably for unknown reasons and disappear just as mysteriously. Over time, the paroxysms sometimes become permanent. Mr. Bradley has never had a heart attack. ''I just got my heartbeat way too high and passed out,'' Mr. Bradley said. ''The last thing I remember is I looked at my watch and it said 2:12. The next thing I remember was waking up on the floor'' and wondering, ''Why did this happen?''