Prescription Drugs

President Bush called on Congress on Saturday to pass legislation restricting online sales of powerfully addictive prescription drugs, citing a growing number of overdoses. Bush referred to San Diego teenager Ryan Haight as he unveiled the 2008 national drug control strategy in his weekly radio address. Haight overdosed on painkillers he bought over the Internet, prompting Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to introduce the bill that Bush championed Saturday.

Drug makers increased their wholesale prices last year by an average of 7.4% for brand-name medicines most commonly prescribed to the elderly, according to the advocacy group AARP. The increase was about 2.5 times the overall rate of inflation, continuing a long trend. All but four of the 220 brand-name prescriptions in the study had price increases during 2007.

Roche Holding and GlaxoSmithKline said Tuesday that they had added new labels to their prescription flu medicines that contain reports of abnormal psychiatric behavior in some patients. A warning about cases of delirium and unusual behavior had been listed previously on Roche's drug, Tamiflu. That language was strengthened to say some cases were fatal.

In his weekend radio address, President Bush warned of rogue pharmacists making potentially dangerous prescription drugs readily available online. "The Internet has brought about tremendous benefits for those who cannot easily get to a pharmacy in person," Bush said. "However, it has also created an opportunity for unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists to profit from addiction." That's undoubtedly true, as are most observations that the Internet has become a hotbed of fraud and flimflammery.

The Metropolitan Water District confirmed Sunday that tests conducted in 2006 turned up trace amounts of nine pharmaceuticals in untreated water at the agency's George Jensen Treatment Plant in Granada Hills. But only two drugs were detected in treated water leaving the plant, officials said. The test results were first reported in an Associated Press investigation being published this week about pharmaceuticals in water supplies nationwide. The water district did not make the test results public at the time or inform its board members because they were part of a larger study by a national group, said Mic Stewart, MWD water quality manager.

In the contentious debate over insuring Americans' health, the value of generic prescription drugs is a rare point of consensus. Patients, physicians, employers, politicians -- all hail generics as powerful treatment for a swelling healthcare tab. On average, these copycat medicines cost less than a third of the brand-name drugs they mimic. In turn, the competition they provide drives down the cost of those first-to-market drugs.

In carrying out its mission to ensure that generic drugs are "the same medicine" with "the same results" as the pioneer drugs they follow, the Food and Drug Administration rigidly applies a standard of what is called "bioequivalence." Measured in laboratories and in simple, small-scale human trials, a generic must deliver the same active ingredient to the bloodstream of patients in virtually the same amount at virtually the same rate as the pioneer drug.

Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc. has bet it can develop a drug from the same family as the notorious diet pill combination fen-phen -- and the gamble may be paying off. Arena, with a market value of just $465 million, is convinced it can make its obesity drug work without causing the heart damage associated with fen-phen. And on Monday, San Diego-based Arena said an interim safety review of a trial of the drug, lorcaserin hydrochloride, showed that it caused no heart safety problems after 12 months.

A first-in-the-nation plan to keep counterfeit prescription drugs from reaching consumers was put on hold again Tuesday by the state Board of Pharmacy at a meeting in San Diego. It was the second two-year delay for the start of a statewide electronic pedigree drug-tracking program first approved by the Legislature and governor in 2004. It would require factory-to-patient tracking of individual units of pills and other medications.

Two of the world's bestselling drugs to lower cholesterol may have no benefit, researchers reported Sunday in a development that could significantly alter how patients are treated for heart disease. Based on the news, a top medical journal encouraged doctors to stop routinely prescribing them. Vytorin and a related drug, Zetia, did not reduce fatty plaque in arteries any more than a cheaper generic, researchers said at a major cardiology conference in Chicago.