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Dan Rockwell
Joined: 10 Dec 2001
Posts: 1988
Location: Stamford, CT, USA |
FDA OKs West Nile Treatment Trial
 Wed Aug 21, 2002 7:11 pm
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Today: August 21, 2002 at 10:30:24 PDT
FDA OKs West Nile Treatment Trial
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON- The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first national trial of a drug to treat West Nile virus, which is quickly spreading west and has infected more than 250 people in a dozen states.
The agency cleared the way Monday for James Rahal of the New York Hospital Queens to see whether interferon can lessen the symptoms and duration of the illness in infected patients. Transmitted to humans by mosquito bites,
West Nile virus can cause fever, body aches, brain swelling, coma, paralysis or death. Rahal said the trial studies 40 hospitalized people, aged 50 and over, chosen at random.
Younger patients would be enrolled only if they are diagnosed with encephalitis, or swelling of the brain. Outpatients are not eligible.
In a randomized and controlled trial, half the patients will receive the drug and the other half will receive basic care without it.
Patients must agree in advance to allow that decision to be made for them. Sold by Schering-Plough as Intron A, the drug is a hepatitis treatment which has been shown by lab tests to be effective against West Nile virus.
West Nile first appeared in the United States in 1999, when seven people infected with it in New York died. Nationwide, the CDC has reported 12 U.S. deaths this year from West Nile, eight of them in Louisiana.
As of Tuesday, 253 human cases of the virus had been reported to the CDC this year in 11 states and the District of Columbia. It first appeared this year on the East Coast, but quickly spread west.
This week, officials in Missouri, Kentucky and Texas said they were investigating three deaths suspected of being caused by the virus. Rahal used Intron A in Monroe, La., during last year's St. Louis encephalitis outbreak, which killed four people and hospitalized 62 more.
St. Louis and West Nile viruses are closely related. Dr. Lowery Thompson, a neurologist at Glenwood Regional Medical Center in Monroe, knew Rahal had used the drug during the 1999 West Nile outbreak in New York, and asked him to help with his patients.
After that, every patient diagnosed with encephalitis was given the choice of using the drug or not taking it.
Rahal said last year that he hadn't been able to get enough patients in New York, and said the Monroe outbreak was the first real test.
Because Rahal was trying to get the work published, neither he nor the doctors in Northeast Louisiana would give any details about his results.
"All we can say is that it's safe and potentially effective - potentially," Rahal said then.
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On the Net: Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov
Food and Drug
Administration: http://www.fda.gov --
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/thrive/2002/aug/21/082102322.html |
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KrissaTMC2
Joined: 05 Feb 2002
Posts: 472
Location: Greenwich, CT, USA |
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Wed Sep 25, 2002 12:20 am
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W. Nile Vaccine May Come in 3 Years
West Nile Vaccine Could Be Available in Three Years, Federal Scientists Tell Congress
The Associated Press
W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 24 — Small studies of a possible vaccine against West Nile virus could begin within months and a vaccine for the people most at risk of dying from the virus could be available in three years, federal scientists told Congress Tuesday.
The experimental vaccine is built on the long-used vaccine against yellow fever, a cousin of the West Nile virus. Thus scientists are hopeful it will prove safe to use, as well as provide protection for the elderly, who are at highest risk for getting encephalitis if they become infected with the West Nile virus.
West Nile virus first appeared in the United States in 1999 but caused an epidemic this year. So far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted more than 1,900 infections and 94 deaths.
But only one out of every 150 to 200 people who are infected actually become seriously ill. Most have either mild flu-like symptoms or no symptoms at all.
That has actually complicated scientists' ability to tell if West Nile can be transmitted through the blood supply. A recent infection in a woman who received blood from a West Nile infected donor suggests that can happen, but the risk is believed low. Still, the Food and Drug Administration is pushing blood banks to develop tests that would detect the virus in donated blood.
Studies in animals suggest that immunity to other similar viruses, such as yellow fever and dengue fever, also provides protection against West Nile virus, said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Health. Based on that knowledge, scientists have put genes from West Nile virus into the structure of the yellow fever vaccine. The small biotechnology company Acambis plans to begin small safety testing of this new vaccine shortly, Fauci told a Senate hearing Tuesday.
Meanwhile, people's best defense is to wear mosquito repellent containing the chemical DEET and to eliminate all standing water around their homes, which is where mosquitoes breed.
"Most mosquitoes transmitting this virus live in the suburban back yard, " said CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding.
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20020924_1152.html
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