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Oct 2, 2008
Government disease trackers alarmed by the rise of "superbugs" resistant to antibiotics are urging consumers to stop using the drugs to treat ailments (read: viruses) that won't respond to them.
A new print, radio and TV campaign by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) highlights the difference between bacterial infections, such as strep throat, and viruses like the common cold and flu. It reminds us that antibiotics are not only impotent against viruses, but that overuse of them has led to antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
"Antibiotic overuse is a serious problem and a threat to everyone's health," Lauri Hicks, medical director of CDC's Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work program, says in a press release. The CDC estimates that tens of millions of antibiotic RXs are written annually in the U.S. for maladies that they cannot treat.
Sep 13, 2008 | 2
A Japanese scientist who discovered an obscure cholesterol-fighting fungus will be awarded "America's Nobel" for his contribution to today's blockbuster statin drugs.
Akira Endo, 74, will receive the Lasker Award and its $300,000 prize on Sept. 25 in New York. Some 75 Lasker awardees have gone on to win Nobels.
In 1973, after sifting through 6,000 fungi, Endo hit upon a purified form of Penicillium citrinum as a fungus that blocked reductase, an enzyme that produces cholesterol. Endo and a colleague started giving it to animals and humans, ultimately finding that it reduced LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, by 27 percent, according to a press release. Drug giants including Merck (which in the 1970s had an agreement with Sankyo, the Japanese company Endo was working for), Pfizer and others went on to produce statins, which are now the world's second-most commonly prescribed medicines after cancer drugs, according to IMS Health. Pfizer's Lipitor is the top-selling statin in the U.S., with sales last year of $13.5 billion; statins overall were a $33.7 billion industry in 2007, IMS says.
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