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Health Care Industry Increases Lobbying Spending
Drug companies "boosted their lobbying in Washington during the three months (that) ended June 30 amid a flurry of congressional action on health care," while overall, "Washington"s lobbying business continued to slump as the economy pinched budgets at some big companies and trade associations," The Wall Street Journal reports. "Drug manufacturers increased lobbying spending 13% to $68 million in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the data ò€¦ Overall, the health-care sector reported a 5% increase in lobbying expenditures to $133 million, making it the single largest spender on lobbying of the 10 major industry sectors tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics. Health-insurance companies increased lobbying activity by 11% to $7.8 million, according to the data" (Mullins and Farnam, 8/3).
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British Global Health Advocate Says He Was Denied Entrance Into U.S. Because Of HIV Status
Paul Thorn - project director of the Tuberculosis Survival Project, who was scheduled to speak at the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle on Wednesday - has called on the Obama administration to change the policy banning people who are HIV-positive from entering the U.S., the Seattle Times" blog, the "Business of Giving," reports. Thorn said he was denied a U.S. visa because he is HIV-positive and issued an apology to summit attendees for his absence, which stated, "The U.S. government actively discriminates against people" who are HIV-positive adding that if U.S. officials want to demonstrate leadership on HIV/AIDS and global health by hosting such conferences, "then they need to accept that non-U.S. citizens with HIV are going to need to be there and participate." One of the key topics for the conference is HIV and tuberculosis coinfection (Heim, "Business of Giving"/Seattle Times, 6/17).
News of the day
Second U.S. Independent Laboratory Confirms That Oculus Innovative Sciences' Microcyn(R) Technology Effective At Inactivating H1N1 Swine Flu
Oculus Innovative Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:OCLS), a healthcare company that develops, manufactures and markets a family of products based upon the Microcyn® Technology platform, which includes new formulations intended to reduce the use of antibiotics by preventing or treating infections including those caused by bacteria and viruses, has confirmed the effectiveness of Microcyn® Technology at inactivating the H1NI Swine Influenza A. In a virucidal time-kill suspension test conducted by an independent laboratory, BioScience Laboratories, Inc., the specific Microcyn Technology formulation reduced infectivity of the swine flu virus by 4.00log10 (99.99%) reduction after just 30-seconds exposure. BioScience Laboratories, working in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, received formal approval to acquire, house and evaluate the specific swine influenza virus in April 2009.
Diagnostics

Surgery Remains An Option For Advanced Lung Cancer

In recent years, oncologists have debated whether patients with a certain type of advanced lung cancer would benefit from surgery. Now a major study published in the journal The Lancet has found that surgery after standard chemotherapy and radiation can be an option for patients. Surgery significantly prolongs survival without progression of the lung cancer, but does not dramatically improve overall survival compared to a control group treated with conventional chemotherapy and radiation alone. The patients who did appear to have a major benefit from surgery were those in whom a section of the lung (lobe) was removed, rather than the entire lung, lead author Dr. Kathy Albain and colleagues reported. Albain is a lung and breast cancer specialist at Loyola University Health System"s Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center. "This the first study conducted in this group of patients where the only difference in the two groups of patients was the use of surgery," Albain said. In an accompanying editorial, German researcher Dr. Wilfried Eberhardt and colleagues wrote that as a result of the new study, "We now have clear arguments in favor of surgery in well-selected patient subsets." The study included patients with non-small cell cancer, which accounts for about 80 percent of all lung cancers. Patients had stage 3 cancer, in which the cancer had spread to lymph nodes in the center of the chest. This type of stage 3 cancer accounts for about 30 percent of all non-small cell lung cancer cases. Patients were treated at multiple academic and community hospitals in the United States and Canada. One group of 202 patients was randomly assigned to receive surgery plus chemotherapy and radiation, while a second group of 194 patients received just chemotherapy and radiation. Median overall survival was similar between the two groups: 23.6 months in the surgery group and 22.2 months in the non-surgery group. After five years, 37 patients in the surgical group and 24 patients in the non-surgery group were still alive. The median length of time it took before the cancer began to progress again after treatment was 12.8 months in the surgery group and 10.5 months in the non-surgery group. "Another important finding of our study is that both groups of patients lived longer than previously reporter for this stage of the disease," Albain said. "This highlights the importance of multidisciplinary evaluation and treatment -- which all patients deserve." Albain is a professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Loyola University Health System


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