China says Baxter holding up heparin investigation

-Reuters

05/06/2008 - Chinese officials said on Tuesday a Chinese-made blood thinner was not to blame for fatalities linked to the product, and accused U.S. drugmaker Baxter International Inc of obstructing the investigation into the cause of the problem.

Baxter has recalled batches of the drug heparin that were found to be tainted with a similar but cheaper chemical that U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials say may have killed some 81 patients and caused allergic reactions in others.

But China says the chemical, hypersulfated chondroitin sulfate, is not to blame.

"Apart from the U.S. and Germany, more than 10 other countries using heparin products containing the 'heparin-like substance' have not reported adverse reactions," China's State Food and Drug Administration said in a statement.

Reactions had also occurred in some batches of heparin products that did not contain the substance, it said.

But Jin Shaohong, of China's National Institute for the Control of Pharmaceutical and Biological Products, did not address the issue of how the chemical came to be present in the batches of heparin when he gave a news conference on Tuesday.

Heparin is used in kidney dialysis and various procedures to prevent blood clots and is made from pig intestines often collected from small, often unregulated farms in China.

Baxter's heparin recall was the latest in a string of problems with Chinese-made products that have highlighted oversight gaps and corruption in China's food and drug regulators. It has also caused worries in the United States over how its drugmakers oversee foreign manufacturing sites.

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