Faculty Bibliography

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. Nifedipine is one of 10 drugs called calcium channel blockers that are taken to control blood pressure and relieve pains from angina

Federal health officials warned Thursday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used ''with great caution, if at all,'' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer and as Adalat by Bayer. As a class, the drugs are the most widely prescribed in the United States, with 87.3 million prescriptions written last year for an estimated six million people. More than two million of the prescriptions were for the short-acting form of nifedipine

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute warned on Aug 31, 1995 that nifedipine, a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease, should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The study is being published in the medical journal Circulation on Sep 1

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used \'with great caution, if at all,\' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. Calcium channel blockers help relax arteries by selectively preventing movement of calcium ions across cell membranes of heart muscles and blood vessels without changing the amount of calcium in the blood

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. The heart institute, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., stopped short of extending the warning to all calcium channel blockers

Federal health officials said Thursday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans is unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applies to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. As a class, the drugs are the most widely prescribed in the United States, with 87.3 million prescriptions written last year for an estimated 6 million people. More than 2 million of the prescriptions were for the short-acting form of nifedipine

Smokers in their 30s and 40s suffer five times as many heart attacks as nonsmokers in the same age group, researchers from Britain are reporting in what they say is the largest study of heart attack survivors. The risk of heart attacks for young adult smokers is about double what had previously been believed, said the researchers from Oxford University, who conducted the study in Britain. 'When cigarette smokers have a heart attack in their 30s and 40s, there is an 80 percent chance that tobacco caused it,' said Dr. Rory Collins, a co-author of the report, in Saturday's issue of The British Medical Journal

Smokers in their 30s and 40s suffer five times as many heart attacks as nonsmokers in the same age group, researchers from Britain are reporting in what they say is the largest study of heart attack survivors. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University, is reported in the Aug 19, 1995 issue of The British Medical Journal

Then in July, only five weeks after the transplant, the cancer was found to have spread to both of his lungs. By Aug. 7, less than a month after the first spread appeared, the cancer had metastasized to his abdomen. Mantle's death came a little more than two months after he received a new liver. 'I don't know that we have ever seen one that moved this fast,' Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, the liver transplant pioneer at the University of Pittsburgh, said in an interview yesterday. 'The only thing I can think of that would make this cancer go as fast as it did is invasion into the bloodstream because it would be unlikely to spread as fast through the lymph system or by direct extension. Surprising though it may be, it looks like the only rational explanation.' No one knows when Mantle's cancer began. And no one can be sure that it would not have spread as fast without the transplant surgery. But cancer experts said they presumed that the drugs used to suppress Mantle's immune system to prevent rejection of the organ contributed to the tumor's rapid spread by knocking out his defenses against the cancer

Tests showed weeks ago that the liver cancer from which Mickey Mantle died Sunday was an aggressive type. But the extraordinary speed with which the cancer riddled his body despite chemotherapy was surprising, particularly to doctors at Baylor Transplant Institute in Dallas where the Yankees great received a liver transplant June 8. Doctors and the family had been encouraged by the technical success of the surgery. Mantle began chemotherapy for the cancer, a tumor that had started in the liver and is known as a hepatoma. But examination of the liver that was removed showed the cancer had already spread to his bile ducts. Such spread does not necessarily predict the virulence with which the cancer attacked Mantle