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Approved Drugs Database

If you've ever wondered just what drug products FDA has approved, you can see them all in an exhaustive database available on the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Website. An electronic version of FDA's "Orange Book," the database allows users to search drug products by active ingredient, proprietary name, applicant holder, and applicant number. Included are prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, biological products, and discontinued products. To check out the Orange Book, go to www.fda.gov/cder/ob/. For 1998 drug approvals, see www.fda.gov/cder/approval/index.htm.

'Everything' Added to Your Food

What do allspice, fish oil, and blackberry extract have in common? They are three of the more than 3,000 food additives listed in a new FDA on-line database called "Everything Added to Food in the United States." Maintained by FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the database includes administrative, chemical and toxicological information on 2,000 of the additives. Substances listed are either approved as food additives or classified "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). Some ingredients not in the database may be lawfully added to foods because these received GRAS classification independently from FDA. To get a taste of the kinds of things added to your food, visit www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/eafus.html.

Reporting Vaccine Problems

Though they protect people from dangerous illnesses, vaccines, like drugs, can cause side effects, some of which may be serious. To keep track of these "adverse events," FDA, along with the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, operates the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

About 85 percent of reported vaccine adverse events concern fairly minor reactions, such as swelling or mild fever. But 15 percent of reports are related to seizures, high fevers, life-threatening illnesses, even death. Reports of serious events are of greatest concern to FDA and receive the most scrutiny.

If you or your child experiences an adverse event, FDA wants to know about it. You can find out how to file a VAERS report by going to www.fda.gov/cber/vaers.html. FDA encourages patients, parents and guardians to seek the help of a health-care professional in reporting to VAERS.

Life Donations

At any given time, nearly 60,000 Americans are on waiting lists for organ transplants. About 10 people a day on the lists die because not enough organs are available. At www.organdonor.org, you can find information on how to donate organs and tissue, who is eligible to donate, what your family should know, and which organs and kinds of tissue can be donated. You also can read about Nicholas Green, a 7-year-old boy whose donated organs helped seven people in Italy, and sign up for the Organ and Tissue Donation Initiative.

Hot Lines to Health

Many organizations offer consumers toll-free hot lines for getting information about health-related matters such as cancer, heart disease, aging, substance abuse, AIDS, and stress. Now you can find hundreds of these phone numbers easily on-line in the National Library of Medicine's "Health Hotlines" database. Organizations represented include federal, state and local governments, as well as professional societies, support groups, and voluntary associations. The database also includes information on services of the organizations and publications available in Spanish. Go to http://sis.nlm.nih.gov/hotlines/.

FDA Consumer magazine (September-October 1998)

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