Orshe

Lipitor goes generic tomorrow, and we know you have a lot of questions about how that will affect your prescription.

The WSJ answers some of them in a story today. (And we answered a couple yesterday.)

Many readers wanted to know whether they’d get the name-brand or the generic version (atorvastatin calcium) when next they filled a prescription. The short answer: you won’t know until you get to the pharmacy.

Trial Disappointment: A trial conducted in Africa of a microbicide gel containing the anti-HIV drug tenofovir has ended because the gel didn’t protect women from contracting the virus, the New York Times reports. Part of the study — which also looked at whether two different pills protected against the virus — is continuing and data have not yet been released, making it difficult to figure out why, exactly, the gel didn’t appear to work, the paper says.

Avastin Arguments: At an FDA appeals hearing tomorrow and Wednesday, Roche’s Genentech unit will argue that the conditional approval for its drug Avastin to be used against breast cancer shouldn’t be pulled, despite evidence showing it doesn’t help patients live any longer and carries the risk of serious side effects, the WSJ reports. FDA head Margaret Hamburg will ultimately make the decision about the drug, which is already approved for use in other cancers.

Drug Vote: An FDA advisory panel voted not to recommend approval of Novartis’s Ilaris for gout pain, though it did say the drug is effective, the WSJ reports. Safety concerns, specifically the risk of serious infections, gave committee members pause, but several said it might be possible for the drug to be approved with restrictions, the paper says. The FDA often but not always follows the advice of its outside panels.

Heart Risk?: The FDA says that people who already have cardiovascular disease may see their chances of a heart attack rise if they take Pfizer’s Chantix smoking-cessation drug, the WSJ reports. The agency based its warning on a trial of 700 heart-disease patients, and says it will update the product’s label and medication guide. Pfizer notes there are big heart benefits to be gained by quitting smoking.

First it was imported cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, then sprouts, then something-but-we-don’t-know-what.

But according to German authorities, vegetable sprouts grown at a farm in the Lower Saxony region of the country are indeed the source of the E. coli outbreak that has killed 30 people, the WSJ reports. Lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes have been exonerated.

What does it take to get an obesity drug approved by the FDA?

In the case of Orexigen’s Contrave, a lot. Namely, a trial of between 60,000 and 100,000 patients showing that the drug — rejected by the FDA in February — doesn’t raise the risk of heart attack or stroke, the company says.

As Dow Jones Newswires reports, Orexigen has suspended its U.S. development of Contrave, saying that a trial of that scale is neither feasible nor necessary.