Ribavirin Drug

Schering-Plough Corp. and Enzon Inc. have won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to sell Peg-Intron, a hepatitis C drug that analysts say could have more than $2 billion in annual sales. The injectable drug is a once-weekly version of Schering-Plough's Intron A, the world's top-selling hepatitis medication, and is considered by analysts to be key to increased sales for Schering-Plough over the next five years.

ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Thursday that its deal with industry giant Schering-Plough for the international marketing of ICN's prized antiviral drug, ribavirin, has cleared an antitrust hurdle. The Federal Trade Commission has given ICN approval to proceed with the marketing arrangement. Schering-Plough will direct clinical efforts to prove that ICN's drug, named Virazole, works with the New Jersey company's interferon drug to treat the highly contagious liver ailment hepatitis C.

A group of ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. shareholders filed a class-action suit Thursday against the Costa Mesa company, claiming ICN and its Viratek Inc. subsidiary wrongly "hyped" the value of its experimental antiviral drug, Ribavirin. The company's actions caused shareholders to lose millions of dollars while ICN officers made millions on insider trading, according to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

ICN Pharmaceutical Inc.'s prize drug ribavirin works better with a new Roche Holding product in treating hepatitis C than it does with its current drug combination to treat the liver disease, according to a university research report released Tuesday. Patients responded to the once-a-week combination of Roche's Pegasys and ribavirin 56% of the time, compared with a response rate of 45% for Rebetron, a Schering-Plough Inc.

Costa Mesa-based ICN Pharmaceuticals lost a bid in Sacramento County Court on Thursday to prevent the state from issuing a "Hazard Alert" to California hospitals about the health threat that ICN's controversial drug ribavirin may pose for pregnant women.

A drug used to treat severe lung infections in young children has sparked a controversy within the medical community, because of concerns that it may harm the health-care workers who administer it. The drug is aerosol ribavirin, and some occupational-health experts say that breathing its mist may lead to birth defects in the workers' offspring.

An experimental AIDS drug has shown early promise in delaying the onset of the deadly disease in some people who are infected with the AIDS virus but have not yet developed severe symptoms, a California pharmaceutical company announced Friday. Because AIDS is invariably fatal once it develops, the test data is potentially significant for the estimated 1 million to 2 million Americans infected with the AIDS virus and millions of other AIDS virus carriers throughout the world.

An outbreak of a flu-like respiratory virus that is especially dangerous for infants is rapidly spreading in Orange County and has left four babies in intensive care on respirators, health officials said Friday.

Viratek announced Friday it has temporarily withdrawn its application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell its antiviral drug ribavirin to people who test positive for the AIDS virus but don't yet have any symptoms of the disease. The Costa Mesa-based pharmaceutical company said it acted because it and the FDA needed more time to review additional information from ongoing studies.

Responding to a national sense of urgency to find treatments to save the lives of AIDS victims, the Food and Drug Administration has speeded up the process it uses to determine whether a new drug is safe and effective enough to be sold in the United States.