Department of Health and Human Services 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

This notice announces an administrative hearing to be held on February 10, 2011, at the CMS San Francisco Regional Office, 90 7th Street, 5-300 (5W), San Francisco, California 94103 to reconsider CMS' decision to disapprove California SPAs 08-009A; 08- 009B1; 08-009B2; 08-009D; and 08-019.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is withdrawing approval of a new drug application (NDA) for MERIDIA (sibutramine hydrochloride (HCl)) oral capsules held by Abbott Laboratories, Inc. (Abbott), 100 Abbott Park Rd., Abbott Park, IL 60064. Abbott has voluntarily requested that approval of this application be withdrawn, thereby waiving its opportunity for a hearing.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing a tentative schedule of forthcoming meetings of its public advisory committees for 2011. During 1991, at the request of the Commissioner of Food and Drugs (the Commissioner), the Institute of Medicine (the IOM) conducted a study of the use of FDA's advisory committees. In its final report, one of the IOM's recommendations was for the Agency to publish an annual tentative schedule of its meetings in the Federal Register. This publication implements the IOM's recommendation.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seeking comment on whether to amend the regulations governing good laboratory practices (GLPs). The Agency decided that to require a GLP quality system for all facilities/laboratories, as well as to more completely address nonclinical studies as they are presently conducted, the Agency would need to modify the existing regulations.

In accordance with section 10(a)(2) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463), notice is hereby given of the following meeting of the Negotiated Rulemaking Committee on Designation of Medically Underserved Populations and Health Professional Shortage Areas.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing that a proposed collection of information has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is proposing to amend its regulations regarding compounds of carcinogenic concern used in food-producing animals. Specifically, the Agency is clarifying the definition of ``So'' and revising the definition of ``Sm'' so that it conforms to the clarified definition of So. Other clarifying and conforming changes are also being made.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has determined the regulatory review period for LIVALO and is publishing this notice of that determination as required by law. FDA has made the determination because of the submission of an application to the Director of Patents and Trademarks, Department of Commerce, for the extension of a patent which claims that human drug product.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is issuing an order under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the FD&C Act) debarring Ehigiator O. Akhigbe, MD for 25 years from providing services in any capacity to a person that has an approved or pending drug product application. We base this order on a finding that Dr. Akhigbe was convicted of 17 felonies for conduct involving fraud, false statement and falsification or destruction of records. Dr. Akhigbe was given notice of the proposed debarment and an opportunity to request a hearing within the timeframe prescribed by regulation. Dr. Akhigbe failed to respond. Dr. Akhigbe's failure to respond constitutes a waiver of his right to a hearing concerning this action.

In compliance with Section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 concerning opportunity for public comment on proposed collections of information, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will publish periodic summaries of proposed projects to be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. Proposed Collection: Title: Study of Substance Abuse doc.com Module Project. Type of Information Collection Request: NEW. Need and Use of Information Collection: This is a request for a two-year generic clearance to a conduct research study to assess the efficacy of a specific interactive web-based teaching module in the field of professional education of healthcare providers. This online module was developed as a work product by the same team of investigators from Drexel University College of Medicine (DUCOM) and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (Penn Med) under a contract as part of NIDA's Center of Excellence (CoE) for Physician Information. This project will assess efficacy of the NIDA CoE online teaching module with educational interventions in enhancing: (1) The knowledge of healthcare professionals about substance use disorders; (2) attitudes of healthcare professionals toward patients with these disorders and (3) communication skills in providing assessment and referral to treatment for patients who abuse substances. The overall goal of this project is to assess the efficacy of an educational intervention, which should result in an increase in the involvement of primary care providers in the screening, managing and, when appropriate, referring patients with substance use disorders. This effort is made according to Executive Order 12862, which directs Federal agencies that provide significant services directly to the public to survey customers to determine the kind and quality of services they want and their level of satisfaction with existing services. The project will utilize a randomized cluster controlled trial design that compares the group that receives educational exposure to the set of new educational interventions (NIDA online teaching module plus educational adjuncts) to a control group that receives exposure to the standard medical school or residency educational curriculum related to substance use disorders. The project will use a repeated measures approach to assess the educational intervention's efficacy (i.e., individuals will take surveys before and after exposure to the intervention or to the control curriculum). The outcomes of the study will be based on changes in knowledge, attitudes and indirect measures of communication skills before and after the intervention, compared to the changes in these parameters in the control group. Frequency of Response: This project will be conducted annually or biennially. Affected Public: Individuals and businesses. Type of Respondents: medical students and resident physicians. The annual reporting burden is calculated as follows: Estimated Total Annual Number of Respondents: 708; Estimated Number of Responses per Respondent: 4 for medical students; 2 for resident physicians; Average Burden Hours per Response: 0.17. Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours Requested: 377; There are no Capital Costs to report. There are no Operating or Maintenance Costs to report. The estimated annualized burden is summarized below.

Under the provisions of Section 3507(a)(1)(D) of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a request to review and approve the information collection listed below. This proposed information collection was previously published in the Federal Register on September 28, 2010, Volume 75, No. 187, pages 59724-59725 and allowed 60 days for public comment. The purpose of this notice is to allow an additional 30 days for public comment. The National Institutes of Health may not conduct or sponsor, and the respondent is not required to respond to, an information collection that has been extended, revised, or implemented on or after October 1, 1995, unless it displays a current valid OMB control number. Proposed Collection: Title: Transfusion-transmitted retrovirus and hepatitis virus rates and risk factors: Improving the safety of the U.S. blood supply through hemovigilance. Type of Information Collection Request: NEW. Need and Use of Information Collection: Information on current risk factors in blood donors as assessed using analytical study designs is largely unavailable in the U.S. Studies of risk factor profiles among HIV-infected donors were funded by the CDC for approximately 10 years after implementation of serologic screening in the mid-1980s, whereas studies of HTLV- and HCV-seropositive (and indeterminate) donors, funded by NIH, were conducted in the early 1990s, but unfortunately, none of these studies is ongoing. Infection trend analyses have been conducted by the American Red Cross (ARC). The findings show continued HIV risk with the prevalence of HIV in first time donors hovering around 10 per 100,000 donations in each of the last 10 years and the incidence in repeat donors increasing from 1.49 per 100,000 person-years in 1999-2000 to 2.16 per 100,000 persons-years in 2007-2008. While the prevalence of HCV in first time donors decreased over this time interval from 345 to 163 per 100,000 donations, the incidence in repeat donors did not decrease and evidence of incident infection in first time donors increased. Moreover specific age, gender and race/ethnicity groups were over-represented. Significantly increased incidence of both HIV and HCV were observed in 2007/2008 compared to 2005/2006. Similar analyses for HBV have shown an incidence in all donors of 3.4 per 100,000 person-years which is lower than earlier estimates, but remains higher than for HIV and HCV. This project represents a collaborative pilot research study that will include a comprehensive interview study of viral infection positive blood donors at the American Red Cross (ARC), Blood Systems Inc. (BSI) and New York Blood Center (NYBC) in order to identify the current predominant risk factors for virus positive donations and will also establish a donor biovigilance capacity that currently does not exist in the U.S. At this time it is not easy to integrate risk factor data and disease marker surveillance information within or across different blood collection organizations because common interview procedures and laboratory confirmation procedures are not being used and so we cannot easily tabulate and analyze behavioral risks or viral infections in U.S. blood donors. This creates the potential for gaps in our understanding of absolute incidence and prevalence as well as risks that could lead to transfusion-transmitted disease. Combined data are critical for appropriate national surveillance efforts. For example, this information could be used to target educational interventions to reduce donations from persons with high risk behaviors. This is particularly important in the case of behaviors associated with incident (recently acquired) infections because these donations have the greatest potential transmission risk because they could be missed during routine testing. As part of the project a comprehensive research-quality biovigilance database will be created that integrates existing operational information on blood donors, disease marker testing and blood components collected by participating organizations into a research database. The combined database will capture infectious disease and risk factor information on nearly 60% of all blood donors and donations in the country. Following successful completion of the risk factor interviews and research database development, the biovigilance network pilot can be expanded to include additional blood centers and/or re-focused on other safety threats as warranted, such as XMRV. This pilot biovigilance network will thereby establish a standardized process for integration of information across blood collection organizations. The Specific Aims are to: (1) Define consensus infectious disease testing classification algorithms for HIV, HCV, HBV, and HTLV that can be used to consistently classify donation testing results across blood collection organizations in the U.S. This will allow for better estimates of infection disease marker prevalence and incidence in the U.S. (2) Determine current behavioral risk factors associated with prevalent and incident (when possible) HIV, HCV, HBV and HTLV infections in blood donors, including parenteral and sexual risks, across the participating blood collection organizations using a case- control study design. (3) Determine nationally-representative infectious disease marker prevalence and incidence for HIV, HCV, HBV, and HTLV overall and by demographic characteristics of donors. This will be accomplished by forming research databases from operational data at BSI and NYBC into formats that can be combined with the ARC research database. (4) Analyze integrated risk factor and infectious marker testing data together because when taken together these may show that blood centers are not achieving the same degree of success in educational efforts to prevent donation by donors with risk behaviors across all demographic groups. Frequency of Response: Once. Affected Public: Individuals. Type of Respondents: Adult blood donors. The annual reporting burden is as follows: Estimated Number of Respondents:4150; Estimated Number of Responses per Respondent: 1; Average Burden of Hours per Response: 0.58 and Estimated Total Annual Burden Hours Requested: 2407. The annualized cost to respondents is estimated at: $43,326 (based on $18 per hour). There are no Capital Costs to report. There are no Operating or Maintenance Costs to report.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing an opportunity for public comment on the proposed collection of certain information by the Agency. Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (the PRA), Federal Agencies are required to publish notice in the Federal Register concerning each proposed collection of information, including each proposed extension of an existing collection of information, and to allow 60 days for public comment in response to the notice. This notice solicits comments on requirements governing applications for FDA approval to market a new drug.