Health Highlights: Jan. 15, 2006

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

Flu Shows Resistance to 2 Antiviral Drugs: CDC

The U.S. government is asking doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight flu because of concerns about drug resistance, officials said Saturday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the recommendation applies to the drugs rimantadine and amantadine for the 2006 flu season. Results of recent lab tests showed that the predominant strain this season -- the H3N2 flu strain -- was resistant to the drugs, the Associated Press reported.

"Clinicians should not use rimantadine and amantadine ... because the drugs will not be effective," said CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding. The two drugs have been used for years to combat type-A influenza.

The CDC tested 120 influenza A virus samples from the H3N2 strain and found 91 percent were resistant to the two drugs. Two years ago, less than 2 percent of the samples were resistant, the new service said.

Gerberding said health officials weren''t sure how the resistance occurred. It may have resulted from a mutation in the H3N2 strain, or could have come from overuse of the drugs abroad, where some countries permit their use without a prescription, the AP said.

Dr. William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University is an infectious-disease expert who said flu has now joined other diseases, such as tuberculosis and HIV, that recently have become resistant to front-line medications.

But Schaffner said doctors still have other weapons to fight the flu. One is the antiviral Tamiflu. Another is the drug Relenza, the AP said.

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Israel''s Sharon Undergoes Tracheotomy

Doctors performed a tracheotomy Sunday on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to help wean him off a respirator that has helped him to breathe since suffering a massive stroke Jan. 4, CBS News reported.

But, Sharon''s doctors are increasingly concerned about his failure to regain consciousness after he was taken off sedation on Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

Sharon, 77, was still comatose and in critical but stable condition Sunday, 11 days after he suffered the stroke. He shows no signs of waking up from an induced coma, although a test has revealed activity on both sides of his brain, Hadassah Hospital officials said.

Experts said activity in both sides of the brain didn''t indicate anything about the extent of the brain damage Sharon may have suffered as a result of his devastating stroke, the AP reported.

There''s no firm timeline for when Sharon should open his eyes. "This is something that differs from one patient to another," hospital spokesman Ron Krumer told the AP.

Sharon was put in an induced coma following the stroke.

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Medicare Head Admits to Problems With Drug-Benefit Program

The head of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acknowledges that tens of thousands of poor, elderly Americans may have had trouble getting their medicine during the first two weeks of the government''s new prescription-drug benefit. And about 20 states have been forced to take action to help them, the Associated Press reported.

The problems will be fixed, Mark McClellan, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, pledged in an interview with the Associated Press.

In some cases, databases are failing to show that people have enrolled in a plan. When their names do show up, many people are being told they need to pay hundreds of dollars before they can get their drugs; instead, they should owe only nominal amounts, the AP said.

"I''m working with the states, with the plans, with all of our partners to make sure people get the prescriptions they need," McClellan told the news service Friday.

Under the program, about 42 million disabled and older people are eligible to enroll in private plans that will subsidize their prescription-drug costs. Millions of prescriptions have been filled without trouble, McClellan said, but there''s increasing concern that some of the poorest beneficiaries can''t get their medicine, the AP said.

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Cancer Researcher Admits He Faked Study Results

A Norwegian cancer researcher has admitted fabricating data for a paper published in the renowned British medical journal The Lancet, officials in Norway announced.

The researcher, Dr. Jon Sudbo, who works as a doctor and researcher at the Norwegian Radium Hospital, used faked patient data for a study on oral cancer that was published in October in the journal, a hospital spokeswoman said, according to ABC News.

The study contended that long-term use of certain drugs reduced the risk of oral cancer, and referred to results found in patients in two national databases.

The Norwegian daily Dagbladet said 250 of Sudbo''s sample of 908 people in the study all shared the same birthday. Sudbo, who has not commented publicly on the hospital''s charges and could not be reached for comment on Sunday, admitted falsifying the data for the article, the hospital spokeswoman said, ABC News reported.

The research hospital will also examine previous articles by Sudbo, including two in the New England Journal of Medicine, the network reported.

This is the second time in recent weeks that headline-making research has proven to be fraudulent. Last week, the journal Science announced it was retracting two papers by South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk, who acknowledged false data that claimed to show he created stem cells from the world''s first cloned human embryos. But he insisted that junior researchers were really to blame for the fake findings.

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Dogs May Have Ability to Sniff Out Cancer: Study

Man''s best friend may have the remarkable ability to tell if someone has cancer just by sniffing the person''s breath, a new study suggests.

With just a few weeks of training, ordinary household dogs learned to distinguish whether breath samples came from people with lung or breast cancer, or from healthy individuals, National Geographic News reported.

"Our study provides compelling evidence that cancers hidden beneath the skin can be detected simply by [dogs] examining the odors of a person''s breath," said research leader Michael McCulloch, of the Pine Street Foundation, a cancer research organization in San Anselmo, Calif.

The study results are to appear in the March issue of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies.

Early detection of cancers greatly improves a patient''s chances of survival, and some researchers believe dogs can help in early screening. Previous studies have confirmed the ability of trained dogs to detect skin-cancer melanomas by sniffing skin lesions, National Geographic News said.

Last Updated: Jan. 15, 2006