A-Z Guide to the Year in Medicine

(3 of 20)

-- B --
BIDIL It was the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration that comes with a race-specific label: FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS ONLY. When researchers first tested BiDil as a treatment for congestive heart failure, its makers found it had little benefit over a placebo. But in a subset of subjects, who were of African-American descent, the drug, taken along with other medications, reduced deaths from the condition 43% and lowered the number of hospital admissions almost 40%. Researchers say it won't be the last ethnically driven drug on pharmacy shelves; as the genetic basis of diseases becomes clearer, more therapies based at least in part on race-dependent gene variants will appear.

BLACK-BOX WARNINGS For a pharmaceutical, it's the equivalent of a SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK sign, and this year the Food and Drug Administration issued a couple of big ones. One was for Strattera, a commonly prescribed treatment for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. It earned a boxed warning after reports linking the drug to suicidal thoughts in children and teenagers. The other drug to earn an alert was the popular painkiller Celebrex, part of the class of so-called COX-2 inhibitors that came under scrutiny last year for their heart-related side effects. Its label now warns doctors and patients of the risk of heart attack and stroke. Expect to see more of those warnings as drugs become more sophisticated and start to target the basic biological mechanisms behind disease.