Vioxx, heavily marketed as an arthritis drug, was pulled from the market last week after its maker announced that a study showed it doubled the risk of heart problems. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said similar prescription drugs were safe.

On Wednesday, the European Medicines Agency in London announced it would review drugs similar to Vioxx. And researchers writing in the New England Journal of Medicine voiced their concerns as well with such drugs as Pfizer's popular Celebrex.

As CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Kaledin reports, the study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine is now questioning the safety of other drugs in the same class...drugs known as COX 2 inhibitors..Dr. Garret FitzGerald has been studying - http://browse.deviantart.com/?q=studying the drugs for 5 years.

"There have been suggestions in the past that indeed there are possibilities of cardiovascular problems with other members of this class,'' he told Kaledin.

The medical journal published two reports on the issue Wednesday on the Internet, ahead of their planned publication, because of their public health importance.

Studies done five years ago when Celebrex and Merck & Co.'s Vioxx were approved suggest that the same mechanism that inhibits inflammation and makes the drugs easier on the stomach than traditional painkillers also blocks a substance that prevents heart problems, FitzGerald, a University of Pennsylvania cardiologist who led the studies, which were designed by him but funded by the drug companies.

"I believe this is a class effect," meaning that the problem also applies to Celebrex and Pfizer's newer, similar drug, Bextra, which remain on the market.

He called on the FDA to change its advice to patients and doctors to reflect the new safety concerns. In a separate report also released by the medical journal, Dr. Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic chastises the FDA for not requiring Merck to do studies investigating heart problems with Vioxx when hints of them first appeared years ago.

Pfizer's medical director, Dr. Gail Cawkwell, insisted that its drugs are safe.

"The data for Celebrex is robust and 삼척출장마사지 - https://www.anmastar.com/%ec%82%bc%ec%b2%99%ec%b6%9c%ec%9e%a5%ec%83%b5%c... exceeds, in the length of patients in studies and in the size of studies, the data Vioxx has," she said.

She called FitzGerald's contention "an interesting theory," but said, "there is no evidence" of increased risk of heart problems among the 75 million Americans who have taken Celebrex. Long-term studies are not yet available on Bextra, which was approved in 2001.

FDA officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

When Merck voluntarily withdrew Vioxx, FDA officials said heart problems were unique to that drug and that the mechanism underlying them wasn't known.

But FitzGerald and colleagues published two studies in 1999 and another in 2001 suggesting that by selectively blocking one of the two substances called prostaglandins that lead to inflammation, these so-called cox-2 inhibitors were sparing the stomach at the expense of the heart.

"There's a good prostaglandin and a bad prostaglandin as far as the heart is concerned," he explained.

Suppressing both, as older painkillers like aspirin and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS do, helps the heart. But shutting down just the "good" one raises the risk of high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries and clotting, he reports.

The studies will be published in the Oct. 21 print edition of the medical journal.

Illness from food-borne disease, which can lead to death, affects every country of the world, said the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, which are hosting the world's largest meeting of health, agriculture and trade regulators to tackle the problem.

"Food safety regulators of the world need to intensify their collaboration," the agencies said in a joint statement about the three-day meeting starting Tuesday in Bangkok.

"There are just too many threats to the safety of the world's food supply, from the farmer's field to the consumer's table," said Hartwig de Haen, assistant director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Some 300 experts from more than 100 nations will discuss how to strengthen food-control systems to protect consumers while minimizing costs to farmers, food processors and 구미출장마사지 - https://www.anmaweb.com/%ea%b5%ac%eb%af%b8%ec%98%a4%ed%94%bc%ea%b1%b8%e2... retailers, the agencies said.

The agencies said the global incidence of food-borne diseases, which include cholera, typhoid, food poisoning, hepatitis A and dysentery, is difficult to estimate, but that many people fall ill and die as a result of eating unsafe food.

"In industrialized countries, 30 percent of the people are affected by food-borne diseases annually, and the problem is likely to be even more widespread in developing countries," the agencies said.

In 2000, WHO said, 2.1 million people died from diarrheal diseases spread mainly by contaminated food and water. Most of the victims were children in the less developed countries - http://www.wonderhowto.com/search/developed%20countries/ .

But in the United States, 76 million cases of food-borne diseases resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths are estimated to occur each year, WHO said.

It said threats to food, including improper handling and storage, can originate where crops are grown or animals are raised all the way up the chain to where and how it is prepared and cooked.

"While large food-borne outbreaks often receive the most public attention, the majority of the food-borne disease burden is linked to the many single cases occurring in all countries of the world," the statement said.

By Alexander G. Higgins