The results of the study showed that the effect of Lilly’s drug, dulaglutide, on systolic blood pressure was comparable to that of a placebo.

Makers of type 2 diabetes pills are required by the U.S. health regulator to prove that the drugs do not increase the risk of heart attacks or other heart problems.

However, it is not routinely used in elective NHS operations like hip replacements.

Now doctors at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have conducted a review of 129 clinical trials, comparing patients undergoing a wide range of planned operations who received the drug, to those who did not.

They found it reduced the chance of a patient needing a blood transfusion by about a third. They estimated that if all such NHS patients were offered it, more than 100,000 could avoiding have a transfusion every year.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff reviewed the drug, tafamidis, ahead of an advisory panel of outside experts, which will vote on whether to recommend it for approval on Thursday. The FDA will make a final decision later, taking into account the panel’s recommendation.

The companies said Tuesday they studied the drug, Nexavar, in patients with advanced relapsed or refractory non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer whose disease had progressed after previous treatments. The international study involving more than 700 patients compared the performance of Nexavar, or sorafenib, tablets to a placebo.

Researchers did see an improvement in a secondary goal of progression-free survival, the companies said. That measures the time from the start of treatment until a patient’s cancer begins advancing again or the patient dies.

Peregrine tested two doses of its drug, bavituximab, along with standard chemotherapy treatment as a second-line treatment in 112 non small-cell lung cancer patients.

These results come two months after data from another study showed that bavituximab did not fare significantly better than a placebo when used as a first-line treatment for non small-cell lung cancer.

Some U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff members raised doubts about how well the drug worked, given the high number of people who dropped out of studies on the pill. But the FDA’s clinical reviewer recommended approval.

The staff appeared united in the view that the data did not prove Xarelto reduced the risk of death in patients with acute coronary syndrome, which analysts had seen as the drug’s most important advantage for treating this heart condition.

Based on these results, the team has received Orphan Drug Status for the drug, known as auranofin, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and has applied for approval to start clinical trials to treat both amebiasis and the parasite Giardia in humans.

The findings, which showed that auranofin inhibited growth of the parasite Entamoeba histolytica in lab tests as well as two rodent models of the disease, highlight the importance of screening existing drugs for new purposes, especially for neglected diseases, the researchers said. Findings will be reported in the June 2012 issue of Nature Medicine and were selected for advance online publication on the Nature web site, at http://www.nature.com.

The combination of an off-patent drug and decades of clinical safety data offers the possibility of providing a lower-cost solution worldwide with fewer side effects or risks of bacterial resistance than the current therapy, according to co-senior author James McKerrow, MD, PhD, a professor of pathology in the UCSF Sandler Center for Drug Discovery.

The research was presented at the Heart Failure Congress 2012, 19-22 May, in Belgrade, Serbia. The Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology.

Cancer is the leading cause of death late after heart transplantation. Skin cancer is particularly common, but solid organ cancers including colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and lymphoma also occur. The increased rate of cancer in heart transplant recipients may be related to the immune suppression of the patient.

Statins are immunomodulatory drugs and may benefit patients beyond their lipid lowering effects. The current study (abstract P306) investigated the impact of statin therapy on the occurrence of cancer and death from all causes in heart transplantation recipients.

Discussions have intensified in recent days, according to industry sources, and manufacturers are looking closely at the experience of Argentina’s collapse in 2002, when some firms agreed to continue to supply medicines without payment for a period of time.

Executives at leading drug companies - particularly those with European headquarters - are under pressure to avert a health catastrophe, which could occur if Greek imports are halted by a massive devaluation of newly issued drachma.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was aware of the study, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, comparing Zithromax to Bayer’s Cipro and Johnson & Johnson’s Levaquin.

Pfizer’s antibiotic showed a slightly higher rate of death due to heart complications.