Disease

Plavix, the brand name for the blood-thinning drug taken by millions of people with heart disease to avoid heart attacks and strokes, will soon be on pharmacy shelves in generic form. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave approval to the generic versions this week. Plavix, whose generic name is clopidogrel, was made and marketed through a partnership of Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb. It had U.S. sales of about $6.7 billion for the 12 months ending March 31, 2012, according to IMS Health.

The federal government Friday called for all baby boomers to be tested for hepatitis C, which kills more Americans each year than AIDS and is the leading reason for liver transplants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the recommendation to find hundreds of thousands of people who don't realize that they have the infection, which greatly increases their chances of developing cirrhosis and liver cancer. The hepatitis C virus is transmitted by blood, usually through intravenous drug use or transfusions.

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

Donna Summer's family says the singer died of lung cancer even though she wasn't a smoker. TMZ says the diva believed she contracted the disease by breathing in toxic air after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. Summer, who died Thursday at 63 in Naples, Fla., lived near ground zero. Summer's family rep, Brian Edwards, also said on Friday that the singer's funeral would be private and declined to disclose a time or place for the event. J-Lo: I'm undecided Jennifer Lopez denies she's already quit American Idol.

He looked a little pale at times during his recent crusade in Philadelphia, and moved a bit slower than his old animated self, but there was nothing to suggest that the Rev. Billy Graham has Parkinson's disease. But the news was confirmed yesterday by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Organization in Minneapolis after a story appeared in yesterday's Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. Ken Garfield, the newspaper's religion writer, said he recently received a tip that Graham had the disease, and had told several organizers of the Philadelphia crusade on June 20. One was Common Pleas Court Judge Nelson Diaz, who did not return calls from the Daily News, but did speak with the Observer.

The Palmyra High School Panthers played the Phillies' wives at Legion Field in a benefit softball game for the ALS Association. It was the second year for the event; last year, $6,000 was raised to help fight Lou Gehrig's disease. A three-kilometer walk was held before the game Saturday.

I was amazed to read the Dec. 30 Letter to the Editor from the president of Horizon House, a respected rehabilitation program for the seriously mentally ill, denying that serious mental illnesses (e.g., schizophrenia, manic depressive psychosis) are brain diseases. In the last decade research evidence has become overwhelming that these are indeed brain diseases, just as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are brain diseases. That is the real tragedy of the homeless and street-people - that approximately one-third of them have diseases that are, in the majority of cases, treatable.

DOES GEORGE Bush intend to expand the American empire to the moon and Mars? How can he propose spending hundreds of billions of dollars on these escapist fantasies when so many of us in both this country and the world are suffering and in need, much because of his politics? Only someone with mad politician's disease could be in such denial of reality, such inhumane blankness to people's hurting, such misunderstanding of real progress and such insensitivity to the common values of all the world's great religions and superior philosophies!

Amyloidosis is an extremely rare blood disorder that produces an excess of proteins that build up in the body's tissues and vital organs. There are several forms of the disease. Some are so devastating that they kill patients in less than two years. In others, patients can live for years without symptoms. One of the world's leading amyloidosis experts, Merrill Benson, professor of medicine and medical genetics at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, said yesterday that Gov. Casey appeared to have a mild form.

Five men who lived near contaminated land on the old Valley Forge Army Hospital property off Charlestown Road have developed Hodgkin's disease within the last 15 years, the Schuylkill Township Board of Supervisors was told last week. Three of the men, accompanied by family members, asked the supervisors Wednesday night to prod federal, state and/or county authorities to investigate a possible connection between their lymphatic cancer and toxic metals found on the land. The Phoenixville Area School District, which leases a 35-acre piece of the property on Township Line Road near Coldstream Road from the federal government, announced it had discovered abnormally high levels of lead, zinc and silver on a depressed 6-by-20-foot section in January.

Question: My triglyceride level was 419 and my doctor recommended that I take the drug Tricor to lower it. Since I feel fine, do I need to take it? Why is an elevated triglyceride level bad? What raises the triglycerides? Answer: Triglycerides are a part of the total cholesterol in your blood. For years, we weren't quite sure whether or not treating triglycerides made a difference in preventing heart disease. High levels over 400 usually got treated, while numbers between 200 and 400 were treated at the doctor's discretion.

Please floss and brush, by all means. It's still good for your teeth and gums. But don't imagine that you're going to ward off heart disease in the process. That's the message of a new "scientific statement" from an expert committee of the American Heart Association, which analyzed more than 500 papers and articles on the topic. The idea that periodontal disease might impair the cardiovascular system dates back more than a century, according to the statement, published in the journal Circulation, and the hypothesis had a resurgence beginning about 20 years ago. Indeed, people with bad gums are more likely to have strokes, heart attacks, and hardening of the arteries.

The Inquirer is presenting one profile a day of participants in the May 6 Blue Cross Broad Street Run. See full coverage at www.philly.com/broadstreetrun . When Tim and Susan Burke were dating, 20 years ago, they did a 182-mile bike ride sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. "That was a great opportunity to get to know each other," said Tim, 44, of Clarks Summit, Pa., "but who knew way back then that less than 10 years later, I'd be diagnosed with MS. We joke now that we should have done a ‘Powerball' bike ride.

WASHINGTON - Be happy - it seems to be good for your heart. Scientists have long known that Type A personalities and people who are chronically angry, anxious, or depressed have a higher risk of heart attacks. Now a Harvard review of the flip side of that psychology concludes that being upbeat and optimistic just might help protect against heart disease. Rather than focusing only on how to lessen heart risks, "it might also be useful to focus on how we might bolster the positive side of things," said lead researcher Julia Boehm of the Harvard School of Public Health.

MORGANTOWN, W. Va. - Proposed changes to U.S. Department of Labor rules would make it easier for coal miners and their families to obtain black-lung benefits, while a West Virginia congressman aims to reduce the amount of paperwork they have to fill out in the first place. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - dubbed "Obamacare" by critics - requires the Office of Workers' Compensation Program to reinstate two provisions of the Black Lung Benefits Act that were eliminated in 1981.

In the summer of 1793, people in Philadelphia began dying of a mysterious disease, later identified as yellow fever. By the end of the year, the illness had killed one in 10 Philadelphians, yet the devastation also strengthened the city. Determined to prevent future outbreaks, leaders created the Water Works, revived public parks and improved hospital care. Former mayoral candidate Sam Katz and his son Philip tell this tragic, gruesome, yet inspiring story in the latest installment of their 12-part video documentary on this city's history titled, Philadelphia: The Great Experiment.

Revelry and the celebration of all things Irish were front and center at Saturday's St. Patrick's Day Parade in Bucks County, but this year's party also had a more serious purpose. The parade's theme, "Remembering Our History, Protect Our Future," was chosen as a way to raise awareness about Tay-Sachs disease, a deadly condition that progressively destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Irish Americans are at an increased risk of carrying the trait that can cause the disease.

Fred Pirkle's inventive mind was still cranking out ideas for new creations even as the rest of his body had virtually shut down due to a fast-moving form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more familiarly known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Lately, those efforts were focused on ways to help those like him whose motion was limited by disease or stroke. On Friday, March 9, three weeks after Mr. Pirkle turned 66, the founder of Therm-Omega-Tech Inc., a manufacturer of temperature-control valves in Warminster, died at his home in the township.

WASHINGTON - Deaths from liver-destroying hepatitis C are on the rise, and new data show that baby boomers are most at risk. Federal health officials are considering whether anyone born between 1945 and 1965 should get a one-time blood test to check if their livers harbor this ticking time bomb. Two-thirds of people with hepatitis C are in this age group, most unaware they have a festering virus that takes a few decades to do its damage. The issue has taken new urgency since two drugs hit the market last summer that promise to cure many more people than ever was possible.

Neglected tropical diseases - from sleeping sickness to river blindness - got unaccustomed attention Monday when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a global group of drug firms and government agencies announced a new partnership to knock out 17 diseases that harm 1.4 billion people in developing countries. The hope is to eliminate five neglected diseases and control five more by 2020, and then figure out the other seven, all from the list of neglected diseases kept by the World Health Organization, a partner in Monday's announcement.