Health Highlights: Feb. 1, 2005

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

New Medicare Drug Benefit Will Cover Viagra

Viagra and other drugs to treat sexual problems will be covered by Medicare''s new prescription drug benefit that takes effect next year, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) officials announced Tuesday.

Prescriptions for Viagra will be strictly controlled and will only be prescribed when medically necessary and in limited quantities, the Associated Press reported.

"The law says if it''s an (Food and Drug Administration) approved drug and is medically necessary, it has to be covered," Gary Karr, spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the AP.

Medicare''s new prescription drug benefit takes effect Jan. 1, 2005. It''s expected to cost more than $500 billion over a decade.

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Respiratory Problems More Common Among Minorities: Report

Minorities in the United States suffer a disproportionately wide range of respiratory ailments such as asthma, occupational lung disease, childhood infections, and lung cancer, says a new American Lung Association report released Tuesday.

The report found that blacks are three times more likely to die from asthma than whites and that black children have triple the risk of developing sleep apnea compared to other children, USA Today reported.

Blacks also have among the highest rates of a dangerous lung inflammation called sarcoidosis.

The report also said that Hispanics in the United States are more than twice as likely as whites or blacks to live in areas with high levels of airborne particulate matter, a factor that increases the risk of early death.

And rates of sudden infant death syndrome among American Indian children are twice that of other U.S. children - something that could be linked to smoking during pregnancy, the report says..

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First Cambodian Bird Flu Victim Confirmed

A 25-year-old woman who died in southern Vietnam is the first known Cambodian victim of bird flu.

The woman was admitted to a Vietnamese hospital on January 28 and died two days later of respiratory failure. Tests revealed she had the H5N1 bird flu virus, Agence France-Presse reported.

The woman''s younger brother died 10 days earlier in Cambodia''s Kampot province. It''s reported that he had symptoms similar to those of his sister. They lived in an area of Cambodia were many chickens have been infected with bird flu.

Other members of the family are suffering from respiratory problems and high fever, AFP reported.

Cambodia has not reported any outbreaks of bird flu virus so far this year and has never reported any bird flu virus infections in humans.

The bird flu virus has killed 13 people in Vietnam since the end of December and 33 since the end of 2003. Twelve people in Thailand have died from the virus.

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NIH Bans Consulting by Federal Scientists

The U.S. National Institutes of Health has banned private consulting arrangements between its scientists and pharmaceutical and biotech firms.

The ban, announced Tuesday, follows revelations that some government scientists had arranged for lucrative consulting contracts with the companies -- arrangements that often overlapped with their government work, the The New York Times reported Tuesday.

NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni said in an interview last year that 369 such arrangements had been concluded from 1999 to 2004. But Zerhouni said more than 80 percent of these scientists received $5,000 or less from outside consulting. The Institute has a total of more than 6,000 scientists.

A series of articles in the Los Angeles Times last year revealed a number of potential conflicts of interest between some scientists'' public and private work, The New York Times recounted. This and Congressional hearings into the issue forced Zerhouni to reverse his prior position and propose a ban on outside consulting.

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FDA Recalls Unapproved Catheter Syringes

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a nationwide alert against the use of preloaded syringes used to flush intravenous catheters, saying the devices haven''t been properly approved and could be contaminated.

The catheter flushes were made by IV Flush LLC and distributed by Pinnacle Medical Supply. They contain either heparin or sodium chloride. The FDA says it''s investigating cases of blood infections with P seudomonas fluorescens bacteria that may have been caused by the heparin flushes.

The recalled syringes can be identified by the syringe label, which reads in part: "IV Flush Dallas, TX."

For more information, contact Pinnacle at 1-972-463-7389, or the FDA''s MedWatch office at 1-800-FDA-1088.