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Rep. Wolf Says Entitlement Programs Could Affect U.S. Bond Rating
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) on Friday in a letter to President Obama said that the U.S. could lose its triple-A bond rating if Congress does not act quickly to overhaul U.S. entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and reduce federal debt, the AP/Detroit News reports.Several lawmakers in Congress over the past two years have introduced bills to create a bipartisan task force to address the growing costs and potential insolvency of entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid. Wolf is a co-author of one such bill (HR 1557). A federal report issued earlier this month found that the trust fund Medicare uses to pay for beneficiaries" hospital care will be insolvent by 2017, two years earlier than previously predicted.According to the legislation, the task force would be responsible for developing a "grand bargain" package of recommendations to Congress on tax increases and benefits related to the entitlement programs. However, the task force has been opposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), several top congressional committee leaders and White House aides who said that other priorities, such as a health care system overhaul, need to be addressed first.Wolf said, "The fact that the leadership has been opposed to it has been a problem," adding, "There"s an economic tsunami off the coast and it"s ready to wipe us out." David Walker, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said that currently the potential for the task force is not good but that it should improve as the economy recovers and Congress can offer more attention to the plan (Raum, AP/Detroit News, 5/24). Opinion Pieces
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New Jersey Senate Passes Bill Requiring Pharmacists To Tell Consumers If Generic Drugs Can Replace Brand-Name Prescriptions
The New Jersey Senate on Thursday unanimously passed legislation (A 2030) that would require pharmacists to inform consumers when they have substituted generic drugs for brand-name prescriptions, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. The General Assembly approved the legislation in February and it now moves to Gov. Jon Corzine (D).If Corzine signs the bill, the law would take effect within 180 days, making New Jersey the first state in the U.S. to have such a requirement. State Sen. Christopher Bateman (R) said, "We"re hoping that other states will follow our lead" (Megerian, Newark Star-Ledger, 5/22).
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Discovery Of Ebola In Pigs Raises Concerns
Scientists studying a strain of Ebola virus found in domestic pigs in the Philippines last year suggest that although the particular strain is not one
Cardiovascular

MicroPhage Demonstrates Rapid Diagnostic Platform Feasibility In Skin And Soft Tissue Infections

In a presentation at the current General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) being held in Philadelphia, PA, a simple and inexpensive developmental diagnostic assay produced by MicroPhage, Inc., http://www.microphage.com, was shown to be highly accurate for rapid identification of serious staph bacterial infections from skin and soft tissue infections. Thirty three samples from a wide array of body sites were collected from the St. Mary-Corwin Hospital in Pueblo Colorado. Of the 33, 8 were determined to have Staphylococcus aureus infections by traditional microbiology methods. Seven of these samples were rapidly detected by the prototype rapid assay by MicroPhage, days before these full results were available. "We were really excited by these early results," said Drew Smith, Ph.D., MicroPhage Director of Research and Development. "We essentially took a prototype in development for our screening test and applied it to these samples. It demonstrates to us that the platform can easily be adapted to other samples types, which is very encouraging." The results are so compelling that he concludes that a 5 hour result time is likely for this simple to use test. By contrast, today"s physicians do not have any antibiotic testing information when they prescribe these drugs for suspected infections like these in their patients. Doing so has been shown to increase antibiotic resistance and make treating these infections more and more difficult. The typical turn-around for such a diagnosis is often more than 48 hours. MicroPhage is the first company to present findings that an easy-to-use platform, similar to that of a pregnancy test, could hold the answer, through rapid, accurate tests that could help alleviate the need for antibiotics, or help guide the use of more appropriate antibiotics in hospitals and other clinical settings. The company plans further development of the test through 2009 and will enter it into FDA clinical trials in early 2010. It is planned that the product will be formatted like its blood culture test, and provide antibiotic susceptibility and resistance results to determine if the S. aureus present is methicillin-resistant (MRSA) or sensitive (MSSA), further directing appropriate therapy. The product is planned to reach the US market later next year. A Simple and Natural Identification Technology The MicroPhage system has two incubation tubes for incubating blood culture specimens. After five hours, the incubated samples are added to two dipstick-like detectors. One detector shows if the sample is infected with staff bacteria and the other indicates antibiotic susceptibility of the bacterial strain. MicroPhage has adapted a natural biologic process, called bacteriophage amplification technology, for identifying staph infections as its primary products. "Phages" are viruses that multiply aggressively when exposed to the target bacteria. In the identification process, reaction of the bacteriophage proteins on the test strip indicates the sample is positive for staph bacteria. For susceptibility analysis, the organism in the sample is challenged with an antibiotic. Because phages depend on host bacteria for growth, any compound that kills or inhibits the target bacterium will also prevent phage amplification. Only resistant strains allow amplification of phage and yield a positive signal on the detector strip. MicroPhage


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