Briefly

Drug OK’d that fights bone marrow disease

Washington The government has approved sale of the first drug to treat a bone marrow disease that can lead to leukemia.

Called Vidaza, the injection treats the rare but dangerous myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS.

The bone marrow produces blood cells. MDS is a precancerous condition in which DNA damage inside bone marrow stem cells blocks their function and results in not enough normal blood cells being produced.

The new drug is thought to bring some patients into remission by correcting the DNA damage so proper blood-cell production can resume, said Dr. Ann Farrell of the FDA.

Sale of antidepressant Serzone to end in U.S.

Washington The maker of Serzone will pull the controversial antidepressant off the U.S. market next month, blaming a decline in sales rather than concern about a risk of liver failure.

The end to U.S. sales comes after Serzone was pulled off the market in many other countries, and as maker Bristol-Myers Squibb was under mounting pressure from lawsuits. Serzone has been linked to dozens of cases of liver failure and injury, including at least 20 deaths.

A Bristol-Myers spokesman confirmed the decision Wednesday, a day after the company notified wholesalers that distribution would end June 14.

The end to sales “is long overdue,” said Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the consumer group Public Citizen. “None of the other antidepressants causes liver damage like this.”

Wolfe last spring sued the Food and Drug Administration seeking to force a ban on Serzone. That suit will proceed in an effort to also end sales of generic versions of Serzone, called nefazodone, Wolfe said.

An Alabama attorney said he would ask the company and the FDA to recall Serzone, saying that patients shouldn’t continue to buy and use the pills between now and June 14.

Smallpox fear tests bioterrorism plans

Washington Physicians at a Kentucky hospital imposed a temporary quarantine Tuesday based on fears that a patient suffering from a fever and rash might be carrying the deadly smallpox virus.

The incident at Marymount Medical Center in London, Ky., was a false alarm – most likely chickenpox, said the state health commissioner, Rice Leach. But it provided a real-life test of the bioterrorism preparations his state and the nation have been conducting since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Hospital staff became alarmed when a truck driver traveling on Interstate 75 came to the emergency room at 4 p.m. Tuesday with symptoms resembling smallpox. They put the man in isolation, closed the hospital’s doors, and contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Leach said.

Smallpox was eradicated in the late 1970s, but security experts fear terrorists may have acquired stocks of the virus and could use it as a biological weapon.