Nation in brief: FDA investigates allergy medicine

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it is investigating a possible link between Merck’s best-selling Singulair and suicide.

FDA said it is reviewing a handful of reports involving mood changes, suicidal behavior and suicide in patients who have taken the popular allergy and asthma drug.

With sales of $4.3 billion last year, Singulair is used by millions of patients in the U.S, according to Merck. First approved in 1998, it’s part of a class of asthma and allergy drugs that includes AstraZeneca PLC’s Accolate and Critical Therapeutics Inc.’s Zyflo.

Merck officials stressed that the FDA’s inquiry is based on reports, not clinical studies – which are the standard tool for evaluating drug safety. The company said none of the 11,000 patients enrolled in 40 Singulair trials has committed suicide.

Santa Ana, Calif.

Teenager gets 3 years in prison

A Washington state teenager has been sentenced to three years in a California prison for tricking 911 dispatchers into sending a SWAT team to the Orange County home of a randomly selected family.

Randal T. Ellis, 19, of Mukilteo, was sentenced Thursday in Superior Court after pleading guilty to felonies including false imprisonment by violence and falsely reporting a crime. He also was ordered to pay $14,765 in restitution, nearly all of it to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Ellis was arrested last year after hacking into a telephone network and impersonating a caller from a Lake Forest home, saying that he had murdered someone in the house and was threatening to shoot others. The technique in which a prank call is made to 911 dispatchers is known among hackers as “SWATting.”

San Francisco

UC names Yudof new president

The University of California on Thursday named University of Texas Chancellor Mark Yudof as the next president of the 10-campus UC system, one of the world’s largest public university networks.

Yudof, 63, will be the first president in two decades from outside California to lead the UC system, which has more than 220,000 students and 170,000 faculty and staff members.

A University of Pennsylvania-trained lawyer and expert in free speech, education and constitutional law, Yudof spent five years as president of the University of Minnesota before assuming the chancellorship in Texas in 2002.

He will receive $925,000 in annual compensation, making him by far California’s highest-paid state employee.