Nearly one in three adults in the United States has high blood pressure, also called hypertension. High blood pressure is dangerous because it increases the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, death.

"High blood pressure is often called the 'silent killer' because it usually has no symptoms until it causes damage to the body," says Douglas Throckmorton, M.D., Deputy Director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Many studies have shown that lowering the blood pressure with drugs decreases that damage.

A Lifelong Condition
Blood is carried from the heart to all parts of the body in vessels called arteries. Blood pressure is the force of the blood pushing forward through the body and against the walls of the arteries. The higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk of stroke, heart attack, heart failure, kidney failure, and death.

Blood pressure is made up of two numbers:

The "top" number is the systolic blood pressure—the pressure while the heart is pumping blood out.
The "bottom" number is the diastolic blood pressure—the pressure while the heart is filling up with blood, getting ready to pump again.
It was once believed that only diastolic pressure (the "bottom" number) was important, but this is not true. Elevated systolic pressure alone, particularly common in older people, is just as dangerous as elevations of both systolic and diastolic pressure.

Blood pressure is elevated for two main reasons:

too high blood volume
too narrow blood vessels due to a substance our kidneys make called angiotensin.
Most of the time, the cause of a person's high blood pressure is unknown. Once it develops, high blood pressure usually lasts the rest of the person's life. But it is treatable.

Some people can lower blood pressure by losing weight, limiting salt intake, and exercising, but for most people, these steps are not enough. Most people need medication for blood pressure control, and will probably need it all their lives.

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Types of Medications
FDA has approved many medications to treat high blood pressure, including - See Medications for High Blood Pressure for the full article with a list of types of medications.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert today on the safe and correct use of Tussionex Pennkinetic Extended-Release Suspension in response to numerous reports of adverse events--including death--associated with the misuse and inappropriate use of this potent cough medication.

Tussionex is a prescription cough medicine containing hydrocodone, a narcotic ingredient, and the antihistamine chlorpheniramine. The product is approved for use in adults and children over the age of six years old, and should be given no more frequently than every 12 hours (“extended-release”).

“There is a real and serious risk for overdosing if this medication is not used according to the labeling,” said Curtis Rosebraugh, M.D., M.P.H., acting director of the FDA's Office of Drug Evaluation II. “Today’s action is an example of the FDA working with drug manufacturers throughout a product’s lifecycle to keep health care professionals and patients informed of new safety data.”

Adverse event reports associated with Tussionex have included life-threatening side effects and deaths in patients, including children. These reports reveal physicians and other health professionals are sometimes prescribing, and patients are sometimes taking, more than the recommended dose or taking the medication more frequently than every 12 hours. The reports also show that Tussionex is sometimes prescribed or given to children less than 6 years old, for whom this medication is not approved.

Highlights of the FDA’s recommendations to health care professionals include:

Tussionex should not be used (is contraindicated) in patients less than 6 years old. FDA has received reports of death in children less than 6 years of age who have been prescribed Tussionex.

Consult the prescribing information to determine the correct dose and dosing frequency of Tussionex. Tussionex is an extended-release formulation that should not be prescribed at an interval less than 12 hours.

Discuss with the patient the amount of and frequency of Tussionex to be given. Instruct patients not to take, and parents not to administer Tussionex more frequently than every 12 hours. - See FDA Issues Alert on Tussionex, a Long-Acting Prescription Cough Medicine for the full report.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a new medical adhesive (a fibrin sealant) called Artiss for use in attaching skin grafts onto burn patients.

Fibrin sealants are tissue adhesives that contain the proteins fibrinogen and thrombin, which are essential in the clotting of blood. Artiss (Fibrin Sealant, VH S/D 4) differs from other fibrin sealants in that it contains a lower concentration of thrombin. This lower concentration allows surgeons more time to position skin grafts over burns before the graft begins to adhere to the skin. Artiss also contains aprotinin, a synthetic protein that delays the break down of blood clots.

"The approval of Artiss can help surgeons using a fibrin sealant to fine tune graft placement on burn sites," said Jesse L. Goodman M.D., M.P.H., director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. "The approval also provides an additional choice for health care professionals in providing burn treatment."

The fibrinogen and thrombin proteins in Artiss are derived from human plasma, collected from FDA-licensed plasma centers. Both proteins undergo purification and virus inactivation treatments to reduce the risk of blood-transmissible infections.

During a multicenter clinical trial, investigators evaluated Artiss for its ability to attach skin grafts on two wound sites for 138 patients. At one test site, the skin graft was fixed with Artiss; at the other test site, the graft was fixed with surgical staples. The results showed that Artiss was, within a statistical error, as good as staples to attain complete wound closure.

Frequent adverse events, seen in both treatment groups, included bleeding and fluid collection in the tissues, both of which are common during skin grafting procedures. Artiss is manufactured by Baxter Healthcare Corporation, Deerfield, Ill. - Source FDA Approves New Medical Adhesive to Treat Burn Patients.

An estimated 5.2 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, and it could steal the minds of one out of eight baby boomers, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Alzheimer's Association.

The report found there were 411,000 new cases of Alzheimer's in 2000, a number expected to grow to 454,000 new cases a year by 2010. By 2050, 959,000 people will be diagnosed with the disease every year, the report predicts.

The report, available on the Internet here, says that 14 percent of all people age 71 and over have dementia.

That includes 16 percent of women and 11 percent of men in that age group.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia, accounting for 60 to 80 percent of cases. - See More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer's: report for the full report.

U.S. health regulators said on Wednesday they have identified a contaminant found in batches of Baxter International Inc's blood-thinner heparin that were linked to serious reactions and deaths.

Food and Drug Administration officials said they are trying to determine whether the chemical -- over-sulfated chondroitin sulfate -- was purposely or inadvertently added during manufacturing in China.

"We don't know whether the contaminant was introduced intentionally or by accident," said Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Chondroitin sulfate is widely sold as a dietary supplement to treat joint pain. The over-sulfated version is not known to occur naturally and therefore likely was chemically modified, Woodcock told reporters on a conference call.

It is still unclear whether the contaminant is the cause of up to 19 deaths and hundreds of serious breathing problems and other reactions reported to the FDA, she said.

The substance mimics the blood-thinning actions of heparin but is not FDA-approved for use in medicines, Woodcock said. In some batches, the contaminant accounted for between 2 percent and 50 percent of the samples, she said. - See FDA pinpoints contaminant in Baxter's heparin for the full report.

A new study found that women who are overweight or obese tend to have more aggressive breast cancers and lower survival rates. The researchers suggest that a person's Body Mass Index (BMI, the ratio of a person's weight to the square of their height) may be an effective tool in the prognosis of certain types of breast cancer.

The study is to be published in the 15th March issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research and is the work of Dr Massimo Cristofanilli, associate professor of medicine at the Department of Breast Medical Oncology based at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA, and colleagues.

In the retrospective study of over 600 women, the researchers found that high BMI women with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) and inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) had a worse prognosis than women with the same cancers whose BMI was in the healthy range.

"The more obese a patient is, the more aggressive the disease," said Cristofanilli.

"We are learning that the fat tissue may increase inflammation that leads to more aggressive disease," he added. - See Being Overweight Or Obese Linked To More Aggressive Breast Cancer for the full report.

Taking the breast cancer pill Femara can significantly reduce the chances that a woman's cancer will return, even long after she has stopped taking the estrogen blocker tamoxifen, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They said post-menopausal women who took the Novartis AG drug Femara anywhere from one to seven years after finishing a five-year regimen of tamoxifen reduced the risk the cancer would come back by 63 percent.

"What our results have shown for the first time in breast cancer treatment history is that taking an anti-estrogen anywhere along that line appears to have a dramatic reduction in the risk of recurrence," said Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital, whose study appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The drug, known generically as letrozole, cut the risk of cancer spreading to other areas of the body by 61 percent, and cut the risk that a tumor would develop in the unaffected breast by more than 80 percent.

Letrozole belongs to a new class of breast cancer drugs known as aromatase inhibitors, which block the production of estrogen that can lead to cancer. It is recommended for use in women past menopause. - See Femara cuts cancer recurrence even if started late for the full report.

If both your parents have Alzheimer's disease, you probably are more much likely than other people to get it, researchers said on Monday.

Their study focused on 111 families in which both parents were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia among the elderly, and assessed the risk for developing it among the offspring.

The parents had 297 children who lived into adulthood. Of the 98 men and women who were at least 70 years old, 41 of them -- about 42 percent -- developed Alzheimer's disease, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found.

"That's greater than you would expect in the general population in that age group," Dr. Thomas Bird, one of the researchers, said in a telephone interview.

In the general population, risk for the disease begins to rise at about age 65, with the number of people developing the disease doubling every five years beyond that, experts say.

But about two-thirds of the adult offspring in the study still had not reached age 70. Counting all 297 of these adult offspring regardless of age, 23 percent already had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, with the disease diagnosed on average at age 66, the researchers found.

Bird said that compares to the roughly one in 10 chance that the average person will develop the disease. - See If both parents have Alzheimer's, your risk soars for the full report.

New guidelines for colorectal cancer screening have been released. The first joint consensus recommendations of its kind have been accepted by several medical organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology, and the U.S. Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer, which includes members from the American College of Gastroenterology, American Gastroenterological Association, and American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.

The new guidelines are based on the most recent scientific evidence and expert opinion. Particularly important is the introduction of two new tests for early detection of precancerous and cancerous lesions in the colon. Stool DNA (sDNA) and CT colonography (CTC), also referred to as virtual colonoscopy. The new recommendations also stress the importance of screening for precancerous polyps.

Tests for detection of adenomatous polyps and cancer - New Screening Guidelines for Colorectal Cancer for the full report.

Influenza viruses coat themselves in fatty material that hardens and protects them in colder temperatures -- a finding that could explain why winter is the flu season, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

This butter-like coating melts in the respiratory tract, allowing the virus to infect cells, the team at the National Institutes of Health found.

"Like an M&M in your mouth, the protective covering melts when it enters the respiratory tract," said Joshua Zimmerberg of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), who led the study.

The NICHD is one of the National Institutes of Health.

"It's only in this liquid phase that the virus is capable of entering a cell to infect it."

Experts have long pondered why flu and other respiratory viruses spread more in winter. No one explanation, such as people staying indoors more, or the destructive effect of the sun's radiation in summer, has fully explained it. - See U.S. study shows why winter is flu season for the complete report.