Second US institute investigates use of drug in asthma trial

Inhaled hexamethonium, the drug implicated in the recent death of Ellen Roche, a previously healthy 24 year old woman who volunteered in an asthma study at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland (BMJ 2001;322:1565), may have made subjects ill in experiments 23 years ago. Researchers at the University of California in San Francisco are re-examining data from a 1978 study on …