Clot-busting drug doesn't cut death rates

Clot-busting drugdoesn't cut death rates
CHICAGO -- A promising anti-clotting drug does not improve hospitalized heart attack patients' chances of surviving a year when it is added to the standard treatment, a study found.
The disappointing results came in a follow-up international study of 16,588 patients who received intravenous doses of a standard clot-busting medicine with or without the newer drug, abciximab, or ReoPro.
ReoPro, known as a "super aspirin," helps keep blood particles called platelets from sticking together and forming a clot that can cause a heart attack. The older drug, reteplase, attacks different substances in blood clots.
ReoPro's primary use is for patients undergoing angioplasty, a technique that opens clogged blood vessels. In a study reported last year and funded by ReoPro's U.S. marketers Centocor and Eli Lilly, researchers tried using it in a different way, combining it with a reduced dose of reteplase in patients who had just suffered a heart attack. The combination treatment lowered patients' 30-day risk of a repeat heart attack by 30 percent.
But in the follow-up study, the death rates after a year were identical -- nearly 700 patients in both groups died, or about 8 percent in each.
The findings were published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Twin teen girls chargedin N.J. bank robbery
BARNEGAT, N.J. -- When two teenage girls walked into the Sun National Bank and announced a stickup, branch manager Linda Williams thought it was a prank.
They were 5-feet-2 inches tall, one in a black knit ski mask, the other with a nylon stocking over her face. One carried what looked like a silver handgun.
It was almost noon, two days before Halloween.
"What is this, a joke?" Williams said.
"No, we ain't [expletive] joking," one of them replied. "Give us your money." Williams handed a black plastic trash bag to the teller.
The teller stuffed $3,500 in cash into the bag and the girls ran out, jumping into a getaway car driven by their mother, authorities said.
"A teenage 'Thelma & amp; Louise,"' said police Detective Michael Duffy, shaking his head.
Two twin 14-year-old girls and their mother, Kathleen Wortman Jones, 34, of Barnegat, were charged in the robbery along with a 16-year-old stepsister and Jones' husband.
Police said they stole because they were facing foreclosure on their rundown ranch house and needed the money to pay the mortgage.
Described by police as polite and respectful, the twins were being held Tuesday in a juvenile shelter.
Sharon's Likud partytakes lead in polls
JERUSALEM -- Benjamin Netanyahu was approved as Israel's foreign minister today, bringing him into the Cabinet of the man he seeks to succeed as prime minister, Ariel Sharon. Opinion polls gave Sharon the edge in their rivalry.
Polls also suggested Sharon's right-wing Likud party would make strong gains over the moderate Labor Party in the January election that Sharon called a day earlier, sending Israel into a turbulent campaign.
Before the general vote, both parties will hold primaries to choose a leader and candidate for prime minister.
In Likud, Sharon leads the former premier Netanyahu by 44 percent to 38 percent, according to a poll by the Dahaf institute published in the Yediot Ahronot daily. The survey had a margin of error of 4.2 percentage points.
Despite the rivalry, Netanyahu agreed to Sharon's request to serve as foreign minister in the caretaker government, and the appointment was approved by parliament today, in a 61-31 vote, with five abstentions.
Fearful of U.S. attack
SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korean officials say they fear a U.S. attack and that they support a 1994 nuclear pact with Washington that they described as "hanging by a thread," a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea said today after a visit to the North.
Donald Gregg, who arrived in Seoul on Tuesday from the North, held nearly 10 hours of talks with top officials in the communist country, whose recently disclosed nuclear weapons program has raised tension with the United States.
Gregg, who traveled as a private citizen to Pyongyang at the invitation of the North Koreans, said he detected a possible softening of the North Korean position on how to resolve the nuclear dispute.
In their conversations, the North Koreans said Washington should take the first step to resolve the impasse, but later said simultaneous actions could be taken, said Gregg, who was accompanied by Don Oberdorfer, a Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University.
Associated Press