News Briefs: Week of August 10-14

This roundup includes the following news briefs:

A study recently published in the Journal of Public Health reports that efforts to remove terms such as low tar, light, ultra light and mild from cigarette packaging may be insufficient to significantly reduce false consumer perceptions about the risks of different brands.

The study, which included more than 600 adults in Ontario, Canada, found that words, such as "smooth"; color descriptors, such as "silver"; and tar numbers incorporated into brand names, such as Marlboro One, led consumers to erroneously believe that certain cigarette brands were less harmful than others.

The NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, or NHLBI, has halted a clinical trial of a drug treatment for pulmonary hypertension in adults with sickle cell disease because of safety concerns.

Researchers found that 38 percent of participants taking sildenafil, which is marketed as Revatio, had serious adverse effects compared to 8 percent of participants in a placebo group. The most common problem was sickle cell pain crises, which resulted in hospitalization.

NHLBI director Elizabeth Nabel, M.D., said in a news release that patients with sickle cell disease who are taking sildenafil for pulmonary hypertension should talk with their physician about the risks and benefits of the medication and what actions they should consider.

Nabel said complications experienced during the trial were specific to sickle cell disease, and findings of the study should not be applied to other groups of patients with pulmonary hypertension where the drug has been found to be safe and effective.

The Senate has unanimously confirmed Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., as the next director of the NIH.

Collins, a geneticist and physician, ran the agency's National Human Genome Research Institute for 15 years before stepping down last August. He is noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project.