Yes, we are keeping odd hours. Having been under the weather these past few days, our schedule became a bit erratic. And we apologize. We try to maintain a sense of regularity around here. Now, though, we find ourselves wide awake. So, we thought we would offer a few items you might have missed earlier…

If you happen to be a white guy, you’re more likely to receive an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that black men were only 73 percent as likely as white men with a comparable level of disease to get ICDs; white women were only 62 percent as likely, and black women were only 56 percent as likely to get the devices implanted. But as GoozNews points out, an accompanying editorial had a sobering analysis - after controlling for comorbidities, Medicare beneficiaries who received ICDs for primary prevention had no benefit for reducing mortality. “In other words, the bad news may not be for women and minorities, but for white men who are undergoing a procedure that, for primary prevention, has not been shown to extend lives.”

Patients given drug-coated stents were less likely to die or need repeat procedures than those with older, bare-metal devices, which is good news for Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. The study analyzed the records of more than 7,000 people treated in Canada, after European investigators last year found the devices could trigger blood clots and boost death rates up to 30 percent, which hurt sales. The study, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (subscription required) concluded the stents were effective without causing a significantly increased rate of death or myocardial infarction.

Roche and Trimeris are withdrawing a supplemental FDA application to market a needle-free injection device for use with their Fuzeon AIDS drug. The Biojector 2000 is already cleared to deliver injections of liquid medicine under the skin and into muscle. Fuzeon was approved in 2003 and can be used with other meds to treat HIV patients whose previous meds failed to halt the virus. “While the device has shown potential benefit for some patients, we don’t believe it’s the ideal alternative delivery option for all treatment-experienced patients,” Michelle Zupancic, a Roche vp says in a statement.