Patients affected by Baxter Healthcare's tainted heparin caught a win after a Cook County judge awarded $625,000 to the estate of 63-year-old Chicagoan Steven Johansen, who died due to adverse events linked with the contamination. The case was the first of hundreds of lawsuits alleging that Baxter distributed contaminated heparin drug vials.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled in Eli Lilly's favor, vacating a temporary restraining order and denying a request by Amylin Pharmaceuticals for a preliminary injunction that sought to impose restrictions on the Lilly Diabetes sales force and other relief.

The FDA has announced safety label changes for the cholesterol-lowering medication simvastatin because the highest approved dose (80 mg) has been associated with an elevated risk of muscle injury or myopathy, particularly during the first 12 months of use.

More than 50 percent of patients administered statins show a decline in adherence within the first year due to side effects or costs. However, research published June 1 in the American Journal of Cardiology found that adhering to statin therapy was connected to decreased healthcare costs and cardiovascular disease-related hospitalizations.

Months after data from the PARTNER A trial were presented at ACC.11 showed that transcatheter aortic-valve implantation (TAVI) could be an alternative to standard aortic valve replacement techniques, an editorial published online June 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine questioned whether the technique is all that promising due to its association with serious vascular and technical complications.

While it comes as no surprise that hospital outcomes have improved over the last decade due to innovations in technologies and performance-based initiatives, outcomes across U.S. hospitals still vary. A study focused on high-risk surgeries, such as cardiovascular (CV) surgery, found that hospitals still need work and should be better focused on quality-care initiatives to further improve patient survival, according to research published June 1 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The FDA may think that is has silenced the ongoing debate surrounding angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) and their potential to cause cancer after a review found no association between cancer and the popular drug class; however, others say the jury is still out due to the type of analysis that the agency conducted.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee are asking the FDA to delineate the steps taken to keep the citizen petition process transparent after it found that Sanofi-Aventis may have hidden financial relationships with societies and individuals that may have helped the company lobby against approving generic drugs that offer competition to the drug makers enoxaparin (Lovenox).