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Biotech / Medical : Pharma News Only (pfe,mrk,wla, sgp, ahp, bmy, lly) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Anthony Wong who wrote (703)	8/27/1998 1:37:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1722

Monsanto Unit's Drug May Help Prevent Heart Attacks, Study Says Bloomberg News August 26, 1998, 11:37 a.m. ET Monsanto Unit's Drug May Help Prevent Heart Attacks, Study Says Vienna, Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) - A heart medicine made by a unit of Monsanto Co., Rhone-Poulenc SA and BASF AG subsidiary Knoll Pharmaceuticals may combat the heart's tendency to speed up in the morning, suspected to be the reason more heart attacks occur early in the day, a study said. Taking verapamil, a controlled-release drug, at bedtime is as effective in controlling angina, or chest pain, as the commonly used combination of amlodipine and atenolol, or amlodipine alone, according to findings presented at the 20th European Society of Cardiology conference in Vienna. William H. Frishman, chairman of the Department of Medicine at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York, presented the research. Verapamil has been a standard treatment for years in the acute phase of heart attacks. The findings presented by Frishman could lead to the drug being used for a second application. That could benefit Knoll, which markets the product under the name Securon, France's Rhone-Poulenc, which calls it Univer, and Searle, a unit of Monsanto, where it is known as COER-24. Compared to amlodipine alone, Searle's COER-24 reduces the duration of inadequate blood flow to the heart, Frishman said. Doctors have long realized that heart attacks occur more often in the morning and now are connecting this fact to a natural biological rhythm that causes the heart rate to peak in the early morning hours. COER-24 significantly reduces the heart rate, especially in the early morning, according to findings presented by Domenic Sica, chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Hypertension at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia. By contrast, another commonly used drug used to treat chest pain and hypertension, nifedipine, increases the morning heart rate, Sica said. --Phyllis Carter in Vienna through the London newsroom, (44 171)