Health Highlights: Nov. 2, 2009

• Second Successful Trial for Lupus Drug
• UN Targets Pneumonia Deaths
• Domestic Pig's Genome Decoded
• Obama Ends Ban on People With HIV/AIDS Entering U.S.

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Second Successful Trial for Lupus Drug

An experimental lupus drug called Benlysta (belimumab) was effective in its second large clinical trial, and drug makers Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline will seek European and U.S. approval of the drug in the first half of 2010.

If approved, Benlysta would be the first new treatment for lupus in more than 40 years, The New York Times reported.

Benlysta succeeded in its first clinical trial in July. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said a second successful trial was needed in order to win approval for the drug. While the second trial was successful, the results weren't as good as in the first trial.

"The lupus community has waited for decades for one positive phase three trial of an investigative drug developed for lupus. Now we have two," Dr. Joan T. Merrill, a lupus expert at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and investigator in the trial, said in a news release issued by Human Genome Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline, The Times reported.

-----

UN Targets Pneumonia Deaths

About $39 billion is needed over the next six years in order to greatly reduce pneumonia deaths among children, United Nations officials said Monday, the first World Pneumonia Day.

Pneumonia kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. UNICEF and the World Health Organization released a plan to save more than 5 million children from dying of pneumonia by 2015, the Associated Press reported.

Pneumonia accounts for about 20 percent of all child deaths worldwide every year, while AIDS causes about 2 percent of child deaths.

The new program features strategies ranging from vaccination to economic development efforts. There's a strong link between malnutrition and poverty and pneumonia deaths.

"This is very simply the biggest killer people never hear about," Orin Levine, a public health expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, who has advised WHO and UNICEF, told the AP. But Levine added that "this is a big problem that can be solved."

-----

Domestic Pig's Genome Decoded

Scientists who decoded the DNA of the domestic pig say their achievement may help efforts to develop a new swine flu vaccine for pigs and also may prove useful in developing a variety of treatments for pigs and humans.

People and pigs are similar in size and makeup, and pigs are used in many kinds of human research, ranging from skin disorders and obesity to heart disease, the Associated Press reported.

"The pig is the ideal animal to look at lifestyle and health issues in the United States," said team leader Larry Schook, a professor of biomedical science at the University of Illinois in Champaign.

The research was presented Monday at a meeting at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England, which was one of the groups involved in the international effort to document the genome of a red-haired Duroc pig, one of five major breeds used in pork production worldwide, the AP reported.

-----

Obama Ends Ban on People With HIV/AIDS Entering U.S.

President Barack Obama on Friday ended a 22-year-old policy barring people with HIV/AIDS from entering the United States.

Calling the original decision one "rooted in fear rather than fact," Obama said the ban's removal is "a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment, it's a step that will keep families together, it's a step that will save lives," the Associated Press reported.

The United States was the first country to initiate such a measure, and today only 12 nations have such laws in place. "If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it," the president said.