Word: fda
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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FASTPACK As if undergoing treatment for prostate cancer weren't bad enough, men usually have to wait up to a week for results of tests to determine whether or not their tumor has returned. In June the FDA approved FastPack, an automated blood analyzer designed by Qualigen of Carlsbad, Calif., that measures in as little as 15 minutes the level of prostate-specific antigen found in a blood sample. The FDA concluded, however, that there weren't enough data to approve FastPack as a screening tool for the general population...
...year study showed that the amphetamine-like stimulant phenyl-propanolamine (PPA), despite decades of use as a decongestant and a weight-loss drug, increases the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, especially in young women. The FDA subsequently deemed it unsafe and asked manufacturers to pull medications containing PPA off pharmacy shelves. PPA has been on the market since the mid-1930s, and consumers take 6 billion doses of it annually, in such products as Alka-Seltzer, Robitussin, Dexatrim and Tavist-D. Though PPA is widely used in many popular cold and diet pills, medications with the safer alternative pseudoephedrine are easy...
...long time coming, but finally, 12 years after its debut in France, RU-486 (mifepristone) was approved by the FDA, and the controversial "abortion pill" hit American shores. Did it change our world? Not yet. Abortion foes are campaigning against physicians who prescribe it, and even some doctors point out that an RU-486-induced abortion is expensive (the pills alone cost $240) and not as effective as the surgical procedure. Still, expect the drug to have a growing, if gradual, impact...
...make matters worse, antimicrobials have been introduced into hand creams, household cleansers, livestock feed. Not long ago, the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine announced plans to withdraw approval of the use of fluoroquinolones in poultry feed. Of particular concern was campylobacter, a common cause of diarrheal disease. And the Minnesota department of public health made headlines when it surveyed poultry on sale in the state's supermarkets and found 88% of the samples were contaminated by campylobacter, 20% of which were fluoroquinolone resistant...
Nature is not the only lode that drug developers are mining. Linezolid, the novel antibiotic just approved by the FDA, is totally synthetic, and that is a great advantage, believes Pharmacia Corp.'s Dr. Gary Tarpley, who led the team effort that produced the drug. "Because this compound has never been seen by bacteria," he says, "it is extremely unlikely that there is any pre-existing resistance out there." Like tetracycline, linezolid blocks protein synthesis, but it does so much earlier in the cellular cycle. No other antibiotic operates in this fashion, yet another reason to expect resistance to develop...