WASHINGTON - Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) last week asked Department of Defense (DoD) Secretary Robert Gates for the numbers of U.S. war troops deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq taking antidepressants.

The Maryland lawmaker said he was concerned about the volume of antidepressant use among active-duty soldiers and the record-high suicide rates.

Cardin noted that 16 active-duty U.S. Army soldiers killed themselves in October alone, bringing this year's total number of suicides among those deployed for war to 134.

At that rate, he said, 2009 could eclipse last year's total of 140 - the highest annual number of suicides in U.S. Army history, and the first time the rate of active-duty suicides exceeded that of the U.S. population's rate.

"It is imperative that we determine if DoD is prescribing antidepressants to its service members appropriately," Cardin wrote in a Nov. 10 letter to Gates. "My concern is not the long-term efficacy of these drugs, but the sheer volume and manner in which these drugs are being administered to our troops overseas."

Cardin asked Gates to compile and provide the senator a report identifying the estimated number and percentage of troops since June 2005 prescribed antidepressants while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The government must ensure that those serving in the military "are not being exposed to what may potentially endanger them when they seek the medical and mental health care they need," he said.

Cardin said he was aware that electronic data were "readily available" to gather the antidepressant-use figures and could be retrieved without compromising soldiers' privacy or violating the protections of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

The senator gave no deadline for delivery of the report, but asked Gates for a timeline of when DoD could provide it.

H1N1 Hits 22 Million Americans

As many as 22 million people in the U.S. have been sickened with the 2009 H1N1 swine-origin influenza A virus, with 3,900 Americans dying, including 540 children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week.

Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said the death rate from the H1N1 flu in the U.S. actually could be as high as 6,100, with hospitalizations as high as 153,000, about 36,000 of whom are children.

As of Thursday, 41.6 million doses of the H1N1 flu vaccine were available to states for distribution, which Schuchat said was "more than we had before but not as much as we hoped to have by today.

"It's an imperfect process, both producing vaccine and then projecting how many doses you'll have at any one point," she told reporters.

The FDA last week approved London-based GlaxoSmithKline plc's unadjuvanted H1N1 vaccine, which came nearly two months after the other four U.S. licensed flu vaccine makers gained approval of their products. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 16, 2009.)

GSK said the government has placed an order for 7.6 million doses of the firm's vaccine, which would contribute to the 250 million doses secured by the U.S.

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee is meeting Wednesday to review postmarketing surveillance reports of the H1N1 vaccine.

Health officials reported that at least six people vaccinated with the vaccine have been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder in which the body's immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. The condition has long been linked to vaccines, most notably the product used during the 1976 swine flu outbreak.

HIV Treatment Study Aims to End AIDS

The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases is expected to launch a study next month to determine whether aggressive treatment with HIV therapies could eliminate the spread of the infections, according to news reports.

The agency has yet to reveal the details about the study, which will be conducted in Washington in conjunction with that city's health department, but officials said it is intended to show that the spread of HIV could be slowed or possibly eliminated by bringing viral loads down to the point at which a person's disease is too diminished to infect anyone.

The White House is expected to reveal the details of the study on or near Dec. 1 - World AIDS Day.

NIH Website to Match Volunteers with Trials

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) last week unveiled a new website to provide patients and healthy volunteers interested in participating in clinical trials the ability to be matched with studies.

Participant recruitment continues to be a significant barrier to the completion of research studies nationwide, said Barbara Alving, director of the NIH's National Center for Research Resources.

About 85 percent of trials fail to finish on time due to low patient participation, with 30 percent of study sites failing to enroll even a single patient, according to NIH.

The new website, ResearchMatch.org - the first disease-neutral volunteer recruitment registry - aims to combat that problem, officials said.