only for the needy: A heart drug could soon become the world's first medicine to be used for a specific ethnic group. The drug, manufactured by US-based pharmaceutical company NitroMed, was abandoned in the 1980s after unimpressive results of a trial. But the findings hinted at differences between white and black patients' responses. Therefore, in 2001, NitroMed decided to carry out further clinical tests involving only African Americans. The company recently announced that the trials, in over 1,000 heart patients, show that the drug is very effective when used on top of the normal therapy.
us asbestos menace: Deaths due to asbestos exposure have surged in the US. As per the latest estimates of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of Americans who died of asbestosis, a disease caused by inhalation of asbestos particles, jumped to 1,493 in 2000 from 77 in 1968. Officials of CDC have warned that the death toll would continue to rise.
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