Faculty Bibliography

A potentially devastating complication of the treatment is bleeding, and TPA and Eminase caused a small but statistically significant greater number of strokes from bleeding into the brain than streptokinase. The frequency of strokes from bleeding into the brain was 3 per 1,000 patients treated with streptokinase and 6 per 1,000 with Eminase and 7 per 1,000 with TPA. Though the risk of excess strokes seems small, the difference was more marked than expected, and would translate into about 800 strokes among the 200,000 US heart-attack patients who receive TPA each year, said Dr. Richard Peto, an Oxford author

A pigment in red blood cells, heme, slows the growth of the AIDS virus in the test tube and strengthens the action of AZT, the chief drug against the disease, researchers reported

The FDA has approved the first US tests of a purified blood product from cattle. If successful, the test could lead to safer and cheaper blood transfusions

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first U.S. tests in human beings of a purified blood product from cattle. If successful, the experiments could lead to safer and cheaper blood transfusions for accident victims, war casualties and hospital patients. The initial studies are aimed solely at determining the safety of using the cattle hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells, officials of the agency and the product's manufacturer, Biopure Corp. of Boston, said yesterday. Biopure makes the purified cattle hemoglobin under the trade name Hemopure. The experiments are expected to begin in about two weeks with the injection of small amounts of purified cattle hemoglobin and to continue in about 25 volunteers for several months under the supervision of Upjohn Co., which signed a marketing agreement with Biopure in December. The results will be used to determine whether to progress to injections of larger amounts. If no significant adverse reactions occur, the trials will then be expanded to determine the effectiveness of the product. ADVANTAGES The blood substitute would be free of the AIDS virus and many microbes that cannot be eliminated at present from human blood. Testing and observation of herds of cattle presumably would minimize the transfer of bovine microbes, Biopure officials said. About 12 million pints of blood are used in transfusions every year in the United States

The meeting was called after an investigation by epidemiologists at the centers found it likely that a Florida dentist had transmitted the AIDS virus to three of his patients. The dentist, Dr. David J. Acer of Stuart, has since died of AIDS. His are the only known incidents of possible transmission from a health care worker to a patient among the more than 160,000 AIDS cases reported since the disease was discovered in 1981. Concern on Restrictions Dr. Julie Gerberding, a physician at the San Francisco General Hospital who represented the Infectious Disease Society of America, said her group encouraged individual health care workers who perceive themselves to be at risk of infection with the virus to get tested. But she said that her society did not recommend routine or mandatory testing of health care personnel for the presence of infections like AIDS that can be transmitted through contaminated blood. 'Room for Further Improvement' Dr. James Curran, an AIDS expert at the centers, said that improvement in infection control in the last decade was one of the rare bright spots in the AIDS epidemic. But, Dr. Curran said, 'There is room for further improvement.'

In a surprising finding, scientists from Columbia University in New York recently reported that tiny amounts of lead began to migrate within a few minutes after wine was poured into many lead crystal decanters and wine glasses

Wine and alcohol can leach lead from crystal in amounts that increase with time, raising questions about possible health hazards from long-term storage in decanters

Dr. [David G. Bailey] and colleagues then asked volunteers to take felodopine, an experimental drug used to treat high blood pressure, with grapefruit juice and alcohol. Others took it with only grapefruit juice. Then they were tested to measure the felodipine in their blood. As expected, felodipine lowered the blood pressure. Then the researchers wondered whether grapefruit juice had somehow interfered with their laboratory testing system. Again they drank grapefruit juice. 'There was nothing wrong there,' Dr. Bailey said. 'Bingo,' he said. 'We knew right then it was the grapefruit juice because my levels of felodipine were five times higher when I took it with grapefruit juice than when I took it with water.'

Federal health experts estimated that as few as 13 or as many as 128 Americans have been infected with the AIDS virus either by their dentists or surgeons

Doctors must be more vigilant in recognizing and treating asthma, an increasingly fatal disease in the US, federal health officials said