Health

New study shows help for lung cancer

Surprising U.S. experts, a Japanese study has found a drug combination rejected as a cancer treatment in the United States can add years to the lives of people with early lung cancer.

Lung cancer is one of the most common and lethal types of cancer, killing 85 percent of its sufferers. Only one other drug, cisplatin, has been shown to improve survival in early stages, and it adds only months.

"This is a big surprise to American oncologists," said Dr. Herman Kattlove of Los Angeles, medical editor for the American Cancer Society.

The two-drug combination, called uracil-tegafur, or UFT, is a pill, rather than something which must be dripped into a vein, and it has few side effects, Dr. Yukito Ichinose and others at hospitals around Japan reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

However, UFT apparently would be useful for only a small percentage of the 174,000 people diagnosed with lung cancer each year in the United States - as few as 10,000, by some estimates. It works only against adenomas, also called non-small-cell cancers, and only among patients with small tumors that have not spread out of the lung.

The researchers looked at 979 such patients. All had surgery to remove the tumor. Half - 482 - also got the pills, which were taken twice a day for two years.

After five years, there was no difference among the 412 patients with the smallest tumors, those less than eight-tenths of an inch across. But patients with larger tumors were more likely to live longer with the drug.

PARKINSON'S: The Food and Drug Administration has approved a new drug to treat Parkinson's patients who develop periods of immobility.

The problem, called hypomobility or "off-periods," affects about 10 percent of people with Parkinson's disease, the agency said Wednesday.

The drug, apomorphine, to be sold under the name Apokyn, was given priority as an orphan drug. It is the first drug to treat these episodes, which affect about 112,000 people, the agency said.

STENTS: Doctors might soon get a new way to clear blocked neck arteries: a stent that comes with a tiny filter to catch clots stirred up by the procedure before they float to the brain.

At issue is a way to prevent pending strokes by treating blockages in the carotid artery, the main blood vessel leading to the brain.

Wednesday, the FDA's scientific advisers cautiously recommended approval of Cordis' Precise stent-plus-Angioguard system. But they stressed that it should be used only in high-risk patients. Cordis' tiny filter goes with its stent and catches any stirred-up debris - in hopes of lowering the risk of an angioplasty-triggered stroke. Doctors would put the net-like filter in first, do the angioplasty, insert the stent and then drag out the filter.

The FDA isn't bound by its advisers' recommendations but usually follows them.

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