Health Highlights: June 4, 2008
June 5 -- Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:
FDA Data Notes Possible Link Between Suicidal Behavior and Epilepsy Drugs: Report
A group of 11 popular epilepsy drugs may be linked to suicidal behavior among users, according to an unpublished analysis from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cited by a Wall Street Journal reporter in the newspaper's online "Health Blog."
Clinical data that may spur the FDA to add warnings to the medicines' labels were summarized last week to scientists meeting in Phoenix and New York City, reporter Alicia Mundy wrote in Wednesday's blog entry.
Attendees at the New York City meeting told Mundy that the FDA appeared ready to lump the drugs together as a "class," she wrote.
Mundy's entry mentioned the Pfizer drugs Lyrica and Neurontin (now generically called gabapentin), Johnson & Johnson's Topamax, Abbott Labs' Depakote, and UBC's Keppra.
The reporter cited an email from an unspecified FDA spokeswoman, who said the agency "is working on finding the most appropriate ways to convey to the public the risks of suicidality that were seen in trials."
Experts advising the FDA on the drugs are set to meet early next month, Mundy wrote.
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Cigarette Decline Outpaces Marijuana Drop Among Teens
Cigarette use among high school students fell markedly in 2007 to 20 percent from 23 percent two years earlier, a new federal report shows. But marijuana use among these teens over the same span dropped only slightly, to 19.7 percent in 2007 from 20.2 percent in 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance report.
"Efforts to curb cigarette sales to teens have been wildly successful, and it's past time that we applied those lessons to marijuana," Aaron Houston, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) in Washington, D.C., said in a prepared statement.
A second analysis released this week, the 2007 Annual Synar Report on tobacco sales to youth, showed a decline in illegal tobacco sales to underage kids for the 10th straight year, the MPP statement said. In 2007, 10.5 percent of retailers violated laws against tobacco sales to minors, compared to 40.1 percent in 1997, the report found.
