Man jailed for fake Viagra sales
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The general manager of a Shanghai chemical company was jailed for two years on Thursday for selling fake tablets of the male impotence drug Viagra on the Internet, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
UK Alzheimer’s drug fight goes before appeal court
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A test case legal battle over funding for Alzheimer’s drugs in Britain went before the Court of Appeal on Monday, pitching Japan’s Eisai Co Ltd against the healthcare cost effectiveness watchdog NICE.
Eisai and its marketing partner Pfizer Inc are contesting curbs imposed by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) on the use of Alzheimer’s drugs within the state-run National Health Service.
Celebrex-Lipitor combo may halt prostate cancer
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Researchers at Rutgers’ Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy have shown that administering a combination of the widely used drugs Celebrex (celecoxib, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) and Lipitor (atorvastatin, a cholesterol lowering drug) stops the transition of early prostate cancer to its more aggressive and potentially fatal stage.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States, with more than a quarter-million new cases appearing each year, according to the American Cancer Society. The findings are being presented by Rutgers Professor Xi Zheng at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in San Diego, April 14th.
In the early stage of the disease, when it is typically diagnosed, prostate cancer cells depend on androgen hormones, such as testosterone, to grow. Treatment at this stage involves either decreasing the production of the hormone or blocking its actions on the cancer cells.
Brain study may lead to improved epilepsy treatments
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Using a rodent model of epilepsy, researchers found one of the body’s own neurotransmitters released during seizures, glutamate, turns on a signaling pathway in the brain that increases production of a protein that could reduce medication entry into the brain. Researchers say this may explain why approximately 30 percent of patients with epilepsy do not respond to antiepileptic medications. The study, conducted by researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and Medical School, in collaboration with Heidrun Potschka’s laboratory at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany, is available online and will appear in the May 2008, issue of Molecular Pharmacology.
“Our work identifies the mechanism by which seizures increase production of a drug transport protein in the blood brain barrier, known as P-glycoprotein, and suggests new therapeutic targets that could reduce resistance,” said David Miller, Ph.D., a principal investigator in the NIEHS Laboratory of Pharmacology and co-author on the paper.
The blood-brain barrier (BBB), which resides in brain capillaries, is a limiting factor in treatment of many central nervous system disorders. It is altered in epilepsy so that it no longer permits free passage of administered antiepileptic drugs into the brain. Miller explained that P-glycoprotein forms a functional barrier in the BBB that protects the brain by limiting access of foreign chemicals.
Whites fare worst with Alzheimer’s disease
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Whites with Alzheimer’s disease have shorter survival than their African American and Latino counterparts, according to data obtained from more than 30 US Alzheimer’s Disease Centers.
“Reasons for this difference may be due to management, genetic or cultural factors,” lead investigator Dr. Kala M. Mehta from the University of California, San Francisco, told Reuters Health.
Mehta and colleagues estimated the survival rates of nonwhite versus white patients with Alzheimer’s disease in a study involving more than 30,000 subjects with probable or possible Alzheimer’s disease. The report appears in the medical journal Neurology.
Smoking, drinking imperil lymphoma survival
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Smoking and moderate-to-high alcohol consumption negatively affect the survival of people with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, dubbed NHL, a European study shows.
“Tobacco and alcohol habits are risk factors for a wide range of diseases,” Dr. Renato Talamini said in an interview with Reuters Health. “NHL patients who smoked tobacco and/or drank alcoholic beverages could be more vulnerable to the complications and side effects of cancer treatments,” he noted.
“Moreover,” continued Talamini, who led the study, “concomitant diseases due to tobacco and alcohol consumption may increase the probability of treatment toxicity, and thus, may represent an obstacle to adequate chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.”
Program helped doctors identify OxyContin abusers
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Careful monitoring of patients taking powerful but addictive pain relievers like OxyContin helped doctors identify abusers and steer them toward treatment, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The key was having a standardized program applied to all patients who were getting the drugs for conditions other than cancer.
“Physicians are not very good at predicting which patients will have problems. They want to trust the patient, and unfortunately, trust does not work well in this type of treatment,” said Dr. Jennifer Meddings of the University of Michigan, who presented her findings at a meeting of the Society for General Internal Medicine in Pittsburgh.
Older Australians at risk of sun-related skin cancer death
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A new Western Australian study has revealed the mortality from non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), commonly considered less dangerous than melanoma, is affecting older Australians at a worrying rate.
Researchers at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) found West Australians above the age of 69, especially men, accounted for 70 percent of deaths from non-melanoma skin cancer in WA, and most primary cancers occured in areas of high sun exposure.
The study has prompted health experts to urge older people to stay vigilant about sun protection and get regular skin checks.
Mayo-led study finds smoking related to subset of colorectal cancers
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Smoking puts older women at significant risk for loss of DNA repair proteins that are critical for defending against development of some colorectal cancers, according to research from a team led by Mayo Clinic scientists.
In a study being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the researchers found that women who smoked were at increased risk for developing colorectal tumors that lacked some or all of four proteins, known as DNA mismatch repair (MMR) proteins. These proteins keep cells lining the colon and rectum healthy because they recognize and repair genetic damage as well as mistakes that occur during cell division.
Researchers believe that, in this study population, few if any of the four proteins were absent because of an inherited genetic alteration. “We think that smoking induces a condition within intestinal cells that does not allow MMR genes to express their associated proteins, and this loss leads to formation of tumors in some women,” says the study’s lead author, Mayo gastroenterologist Paul Limburg, M.D.
Exercise may lead to faster prostate tumor growth
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Prostate tumors grew more quickly in mice who exercised than in those who did not, leading to speculation that exercise may increase blood flow to tumors, according to a new study by researchers in the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center (DCCC) and the Duke Prostate Center.
“Our study showed that exercise led to significantly greater tumor growth than a more sedentary lifestyle did, in this mouse model,” said Lee Jones, Ph.D., a researcher in the DCCC and senior investigator on this study. “Our thought is that we may, in the future, be able to use this finding to design better drug delivery models to more effectively treat prostate cancer patients, and those with other types of cancer as well.”
The findings were presented in a poster session at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting on April 13 in San Diego, Calif. The study was funded by the United States Department of Defense, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the American Urological Association Foundation, Rising Star in Urology Award, given to Stephen Freedland, one of the study’s investigators.
Bitter melon has potent anti-diabetes effects
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Substances isolated from bitter melon, a plant eaten and used medicinally in much of Asia, could provide the basis of new drugs for treating diabetes and obesity, an international team of researchers reports.
Also known as balsam pear, the vegetable has been shown to reduce blood sugar in animal and human studies, Dr. Mon-Jia Tan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai and colleagues note in the journal Chemistry & Biology.
Alternatives are needed to existing drugs for diabetes, they add, due to their side effects and limited action.
Soy compound linked to lower breast cancer risk
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Women with high blood levels of an estrogen-like compound found in soy seem to have a lower risk of developing breast cancer, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that among more than 24,000 middle-aged and older Japanese women, those with the highest levels of the compound, called genistein, were only one-third as likely as other women to develop breast cancer over 10 years.
Genistein is one of the major isoflavones, plant compounds found in soybeans, chick peas and other legumes that are structurally similar to the hormone estrogen, and are believed to bind to estrogen receptors on body cells.
Traditional acupuncture may ease migraines
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Acupuncture, as practiced in traditional Chinese medicine, may offer some relief from migraine pain, a new study suggests.
Italian researchers found that regular treatments with “true” acupuncture helped improve symptoms in 32 patients whose migraines had been resistant to standard preventive medication.
Moreover, the therapy worked better than two forms of “sham” acupuncture used for comparison, the researchers report in the medical journal Headache.
Heart ills not to blame for women’s poor sex life
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A woman’s satisfaction with her sex life appears to have very little to do with the health of her heart and circulation, according to a new analysis of data from the Women’s Health Initiative.
“In women this particular aspect of sexual function, which is decreased sexual satisfaction, did not predict cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Jennifer S. McCall-Hosenfeld, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
In men, erectile dysfunction is a red flag for undiagnosed heart disease, McCall-Hosenfeld of Boston University Medical Center and her colleagues note in the American Journal of Medicine. Given that the same mechanism regulates pelvic blood flow in both men and women, they write, it is conceivable that sexual problems in women could also be a marker for poor heart health.
Yoga helps older women balance, stand taller
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Elderly women showed measurable improvements in their walking speed and balance after a nine-week yoga program—and they gained a centimeter in height, on average, Philadelphia researchers report.
“The only explanation may be that they are standing more upright, not so much crouching,” study chief Dr. Jinsup Song of Temple University told Reuters Health. Song presented the findings April 4 at the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society’s Annual Meeting.
While past studies have investigated yoga for helping improve balance in elderly women, Song noted, they have typically used a relatively demanding form of the practice. In the current study, he and his colleague Marian Garfinkel, a certified yoga instructor, worked with B.K.S. Iyengar, the originator of Iyengar Yoga, to develop a program specifically designed for older people. “The poses were very basic—how to stand upward, how to bend forward, sideways,” said Song, who admitted he found some of the poses challenging himself.
