Faculty Bibliography

China is negotiating to buy its own supply of Tamiflu, a senior Chinese health official said in an interview. Taiwan has already bought a large stockpile of Tamiflu, and is seeking to buy more and to set up its own production facilities. In Japan, the Health Ministry is also trying to arrange for domestic production of Tamiflu, which is now made at a single factory in Europe by the drug company Roche Holding. Tamiflu, an antiviral, is only effective if given in the first two days after the onset of infection. Since many people with little more than the sniffles would take Tamiflu before it became clear they did not actually have bird flu, the amount of Tamiflu needed in a health emergency could be enormous, said Roy Anderson, an epidemiologist at the University of London. Tamiflu is a fairly new drug, still under patent and very costly. Its typical retail cost in the United States is $68 for a 10- capsule treatment to be taken over five days. 'If Tamiflu is to be used in a pandemic situation, it will have to be stockpiled,' a Roche official said, warning that, 'it takes time to produce mass quantities.'

When the SARS epidemic ended last July, experts were concerned that it would come back from wherever it hid in nature. But officials of the World Health Organization were just as worried about a new epidemic emerging from a SARS sample that escaped from one of the many laboratories working with it. The outbreak began March 25 after a graduate student became infected in China's main SARS laboratory in Beijing. Her case led to two more waves of transmission involving seven people including her mother, who died before her illness was recognized as SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, on April 22. One problem is what happens when you have BL3 and BL4 laboratories in old buildings in developing countries, he went on, adding: What struck me as quite bizarre is, here is a student working in a laboratory that handles SARS, and when she gets a respiratory disease and pneumonia, it takes three weeks before they even tested for SARS. That is a long period of time. In that period, for example, she could have infected fellow passengers on trains

Even before China, Thailand and Vietnam reported new outbreaks in chickens in the last few days, governments in bigger and more affluent countries were preparing for a possible pandemic among humans. The United States and European nations are trying to buy stockpiles of Tamiflu, the only drug believed to be effective for people infected with the A(H5N1) strain of bird flu, and they are racing to develop an effective vaccine

As polio cases surge in Nigeria and the virus spreads to other countries, West and Central Africa are on the brink of the largest polio epidemic in recent years, alarmed officials of the World Health Organization and UNICEF said yesterday. Allegations about impurities in the vaccine have caused alarm and confusion among many people in Nigeria and elsewhere. Tests of the vaccine have refuted such claims, said Dr. David L. Heymann, the director of the World Health Organization's polio eradication program. The vaccine purchased by UNICEF meets the organization's standards and has been used safely to eliminate the disease in many other countries. In addition to Sudan, the virus has spread from Nigeria to the following nine countries since last August: Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo

Cipla, an Indian company that has been in the forefront of getting generic drugs approved for use in poor countries, made the two generic drugs, lamivudine, which is also known as 3TC, and zidovudine, which is also known as AZT. The problem was detected during an inspection of an independent laboratory that Cipla had hired to conduct bioequivalence studies among volunteers whose blood had been tested after they took the generic drugs. The tests were devised to determine whether the concentration of the generic drug in the blood was the same as in its patented counterpart. Dr. [Lembit Rago] did not provide the name of the company that did the testing. Cipla's chairman, Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, said the problem was due to inadequate record keeping in the testing laboratory in Bombay. Dr. Hamied, reached by telephone in London, said that Cipla's lamivudine has been tested for bioequivalency in a laboratory in the United States and approved by the Food and Drug Administration and that he would submit that data to the health agency

In 1980, despite his mother's history of senility, it was only a hypothetical possibility that Reagan would develop Alzheimer's. The disease's hereditary pattern was, and is, not precisely known. As it turned out, the disease is believed to have afflicted Reagan's brother, Neil, too. Whether their mother's dementia was from strokes or Alzheimer's, or both, is not known. No one can be absolutely certain when Reagan's Alzheimer's began. Then, as now, blood and other practical laboratory tests did not exist to detect the initial stages of Alzheimer's, which takes years to damage the brain, or to distinguish it from other forms of dementia. Lacking a test, Alzheimer's is estimated to account for half of all dementia cases. Strokes and other diseases cause the remainder. Doctors did not start giving Reagan psychological tests that can point to Alzheimer's until after he was thrown from a horse in Mexico in 1989, and suffered a subdural hematoma that was removed surgically. Initial tests did not show evidence of Alzheimer's, but subsequent ones, performed around 1993, did, his doctors have said

Cipla, an Indian company that has been in the forefront of getting generic drugs approved for use in poor countries, made the two generic drugs, lamivudine, which is also known as 3TC, and zidovudine, which is also known as AZT. The action followed the Bush administration's recent announcement of a significant shift in its AIDS policy to allow the purchase of cheaper generic drugs for Africa and the Caribbean. Cipla said the situation was 'on the mend' and that it expected its drugs to be back on the list within weeks. Reached by telephone in London, [Yusuf Hamied] said that lamivudine had been tested for bioequivalency in a laboratory in the United States and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and that he would submit that data to the WHO. He said that the testing had been done for the U.S. drug agency because Cipla hoped to sell generic lamivudine when the U.S. patent expired in 2006

As polio cases surge in Nigeria and the virus spreads to other countries, western and central Africa are on the brink of the largest polio epidemic in recent years, officials of the World Health Organization and Unicef said Tuesday. Equally alarming, health officials said, is that the surge in polio cases in Nigeria and its spread to other countries is occurring during a season when transmission of the polio virus is usually at its lowest. That signals the potential for a large epidemic as polio enters the season when transmission is highest, they said. Tests of the vaccine have refuted such claims, said Dr. David Heymann, director of the World Health Organization's polio eradication program. The vaccine as purchased by Unicef meets the health organization's standards and has been used safely to eliminate the disease from many other countries

As polio cases surge in Nigeria and the virus spreads to other countries, West and Central Africa are on the brink of the largest polio epidemic in recent years, alarmed officials of the World Health Organization and Unicef said. That signals the potential for a large epidemic as polio enters the season when transmission is highest, the officials say. The polio virus spreads through feces, and contamination occurs more often when sewage backs up during the rainy season in Africa and Asia. Allegations about impurities in the vaccine have caused alarm and confusion among many people in Nigeria and elsewhere. Tests of the vaccine have refuted such claims, said Dr. David Heymann, the director of the World Health Organization's polio eradication program. The vaccine purchased by Unicef meets the organization's standards and has been used safely to eliminate the disease from many countries

In 1980, despite his mother's history of senility, it was only a hypothetical possibility that Mr. Reagan would develop Alzheimer's. The disease's hereditary pattern was, and is, not precisely known. As it turned out, the disease is believed to have afflicted Mr. Reagan's brother, Neil, too. Whether their mother's dementia was from strokes or Alzheimer's, or both, is not known. No one can be absolutely certain when Mr. Reagan's Alzheimer's began. Then, as now, blood and other practical laboratory tests did not exist to detect the initial stages of Alzheimer's, which takes years to damage the brain, or to distinguish it from other forms of dementia. Lacking a test, Alzheimer's is estimated to account for half of all dementia cases. Strokes and other diseases cause the remainder. Doctors did not start giving Mr. Reagan psychological tests that can point to Alzheimer's until after he was thrown from a horse in Mexico in 1989, and suffered a subdural hematoma that was removed surgically. Initial tests did not show evidence of Alzheimer's, but subsequent ones, performed around 1993, did, his doctors have said