Key to blood-brain barrier opens way for treating Alzheimer’s and stroke
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While the blood-brain barrier (BBB) protects the brain from harmful chemicals occurring naturally in the blood, it also obstructs the transport of drugs to the brain. In an article in Nature scientists at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet now present a potential solution to the problem. The key to the BBB is a cell-type in the blood vessel walls called pericytes, and the researchers hope that their findings will one day contribute to new therapies for diseases like Alzheimer’s and stroke.
“Our new results show that the blood-brain barrier is regulated by pericytes, and can be opened in a way that allows the passage of molecules of different sizes while keeping the brain’s basic functions operating properly,” says Christer Betsholtz, professor of vascular biology at the Department of Medical Biochemistry, who has led the study.
The blood-brain barrier is a term denoting the separation of blood from tissue by blood vessels that are extremely tight? Impermeable?. In other organs, the capillary walls let certain substances carried by the blood, such as the plasma proteins albumin and immunoglobulin, out into the surrounding tissue. In the brain, however, this pathway is closed off. This is essential for many reasons, one being that the plasma proteins are harmful to nerve cells.
Study warns that over-the-counter weight-reducing products can cause harm and may even kill
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The desire for a quick-fix for obesity fuels a lucrative market in so-called natural remedies. But a study of medical records in Hong Kong revealed 66 cases where people were suspected to have been poisoned by a “natural” slimming therapy. In eight cases the people became severely ill, and in one case the person died. The study is published today in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.
The researchers looked at the ingredients in the 81 slimming products that these people had taken. They found 12 different agents that fell into five categories: undeclared weight-loss drugs; drug analogues (unlicensed chemical derivatives of licensed drugs); banned drugs; drugs used for an inappropriate indication; and thyroid hormones.
“People like the idea of using a natural remedy because they think that if it is natural, it will be safe. There are two problems here. Firstly not all natural agents are harmless, and secondly the remedies also contain potentially harmful manufactured drugs,” says Dr Magdalene Tang, who works at the Toxicology Reference Laboratory at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong.
Online health services need tighter rules: report
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Online health information and disease-risk tests can mislead, confuse and create needless anxiety, and governments should do more ensure the people who use them know what they are buying, UK experts said on Tuesday.
A report by a British medical ethics group said private DNA tests may be “medically or therapeutically meaningless” and could give false results or information that is “unclear, unreliable or inaccurate.”
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics called on the government to set up an accreditation scheme for providers of online health records, and for DNA testing and body scanning services to be better regulated to help protect consumers.
Life and death in the age of the bionic heart
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In September 2007, Verna Schrombeck gathered three of her six children - those who could bear it - to discuss her funeral arrangements. She had been given just months to live and was about to undergo a last-ditch, cutting-edge heart surgery. There was no guarantee she would return home.
Had she organized things well enough, she wondered, so that her eldest son, who was in charge of the estate, would not be burdened? Had she taught her handicapped son, an adult, enough life skills to take care of himself? She asked that the Ave Maria be played at her funeral.
A week later, Verna’s sister drove her 8 hours from Lowell, Indiana to Rochester, Minnesota, to the Mayo Clinic, one of the country’s best hospitals for heart surgery. Her daughter flew in from Kansas. By the time Verna arrived at the hospital she could barely walk to the admissions desk. “I leaned over the railing, gasping for breath,” she said. “I told my daughter, ‘you have to get me a wheelchair.’”
New osteoporosis guidelines: Osteoporosis Canada
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Comprehensive new guidelines from the Osteoporosis Canada aimed at preventing fragility fractures in women and men over the age of 50 are published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100771.pdf.
“Fragility fractures, the consequence of osteoporosis, are responsible for excess mortality, morbidity, chronic pain, institutionalization and economic costs,” writes Dr. Alexandra Papaioannou, McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences with coauthors. “They represent 80% of all fractures in menopausal women over age 50 and those with hip or vertebral fractures have substantially increased risk of death post-fracture.”
Fewer than 20% of women and 10% of men with fragility fractures receive interventions to prevent future fractures, writes co-author Dr. Bill Leslie, University of Manitoba.
Michael Douglas near end of throat cancer treatment
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Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas has almost completed a grueling eight weeks of chemotherapy and radiation to treat advanced throat cancer, his publicist said.
Douglas, 66, has one more treatment left this week and then “no further treatments are scheduled,” publicist Allen Burry told People magazine.
“He’s really happy about it ending,” Burry added.
Erlotinib improves progression-free survival as first-line therapy in advanced lung cancer
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For patients with advanced lung cancer whose tumors carry EGFR activating mutations, first-line treatment with erlotinib nearly tripled progression-free survival compared to a standard chemotherapy combination, show results from the first prospective Phase-III study to report findings in this setting.
The new results from the OPTIMAL trial were reported at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy.
“Erlotinib is very effective and well tolerated in advanced NSCLC patients who harbor EGFR activating mutations. It is 2 to 3 times more effective than doublet chemotherapy,” said study leader Professor Caicun Zhou of Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Tongji University, China.
How Republicans could block healthcare reform
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Republicans could keep their promises to stop healthcare reform even if they cannot repeal it, simply by blocking legislation needed to pay for it, one expert argued on Wednesday.
Control of one house of Congress could give the Republicans power to cripple the law, creating “zombie legislation,” healthcare expert Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution wrote in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Healthcare reform is President Barack Obama’s signature policy.
Americans’ life expectancy continues to fall behind other countries’
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The United States continues to lag behind other nations when it comes to gains in life expectancy, and commonly cited causes for our poor performance—obesity, smoking, traffic fatalities, and homicide—are not to blame, according to a Commonwealth Fund-supported study published today as a Health Affairs Web First. The study, by Peter Muennig and Sherry Glied at Columbia University, looked at health spending; behavioral risk factors like obesity and smoking; and 15-year survival rates for men and women ages 45 and 65 in the U.S. and 12 other nations (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom).
While the U.S. has achieved gains in 15-year survival rates decade by decade between 1975 and 2005, the researchers discovered that other countries have experienced even greater gains, leading the U.S. to slip in country ranking, even as per capita health care spending in the U.S. increased at more than twice the rate of the comparison countries. Fifteen-year survival rates for men and women ages 45 and 65 in the US have fallen relative to the other 12 countries over the past 30 years. Forty-five year old U.S. white women fared the worst—by 2005 their 15-year survival rates were lower than that of all the other countries. Moreover, the survival rates of this group in 2005 had not even surpassed the 1975 15-year survival rates for Swiss, Swedish, Dutch or Japanese women. The U.S. ranking for 15-year life expectancy for 45-year-old men also declined, falling from 3rd in 1975 to 12th in 2005, according to the study, “What Changes in Survival Rates Tell Us About U.S. Health Care.”
When the researchers compared risk factors among the 13 countries, they found very little difference in smoking habits between the U.S. and the comparison countries—in fact, the U.S. had faster declines in smoking between 1975 and 2005 than almost all of the other countries.
First Clinical Trial of Gene Therapy for Muscular Dystrophy Lends Insight Into the Disease
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A clinical trial designed to replace the genetic defect causing the most common form of muscular dystrophy has uncovered an unexpected aspect of the disease. The trial, based on therapy designed by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, showed that some patients mount an immune response to the dystrophin protein even before they have received the gene therapy.
The puzzling results, which came from trials at Columbus Children’s Hospital in Ohio, suggest that the immune systems of a number of patients—once thought to be completely devoid of the dystrophin protein—are actually primed by the prior existence of tiny amounts of this important component of muscle.
Published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study demonstrates how such careful and critical observation in early clinical trials of new therapies can yield new insights into the causes of even the “simplest” single gene disorders.
UC San Diego Helps Soaring Number of Community Members Suffering from Hunger
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As a result of the difficult economic climate, hunger is at an all time high in San Diego. At the University of California, San Diego, students, staff and faculty are doing their part to help feed the community by participating in the Colleges Rock Hunger contest Oct. 6 – 22, hosted by the San Diego Food Bank. The nonprofit agency handed out 15.3 million pounds of food this past fiscal year, a 56 percent increase from the 9.1 million pounds two years earlier. According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, today over five million Californians are hungry or live in fear of hunger.
Approximately 74,000 college students from UC San Diego, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM), San Diego State University (SDSU) and the University of San Diego (USD) are competing in the contest to meet the huge increase in demand for food from community members affected by layoffs, bankruptcies and other economic woes. Their combined donations will be the first official contribution to the 2010 San Diego Food Bank Holiday Food Drive. This is the third year that the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego has sponsored the drive.
This is a great opportunity for UC San Diego to showcase our dedication to service,” said Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. “Washington Monthly ranks UC San Diego the number one university in the nation based on UC San Diego’s positive impact on our country.
400 Nigerian children dead from lead poisoning-MSF
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Some 400 children in northern Nigeria have died since March from lead poisoning linked to illegal mining by residents for gold, and thousands more remain at risk, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The Dutch arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) reported the new toll, up from 160 deaths last June, and is treating a further 500 children in its four clinics, a U.N. spokeswoman said. Most victims are under age five.
“The lead pollution and intoxication crisis in Zamfara state is far from over,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Gorging study shows with fat, location matters
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Researchers who persuaded slender volunteers to gorge themselves on sweets to gain weight said on Monday they have overturned the common wisdom that adults cannot grow new fat cells.
As they gained weight, the volunteers added new fat cells on their thighs, while fat cells on their bellies expanded, Michael Jensen of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues found.
“It sort of inverts the old dogma that we don’t make new fat cells when we are adults,” Jensen said in a telephone interview.
Games-First case of dengue reported in athletes village
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The first case of dengue fever in the athletes village has added to the woes of Delhi officials already facing criticism for shoddy preparations ahead of the biggest ever Commonwealth Games.
Ruptu Gogoi, a member of the Indian lawn bowling team contracted the mosquito-borne viral disease and has been admitted to hospital.
More than a 1,000 cases, including three deaths, have been reported in the city since June and organisers have tried a number of methods, including ‘mosquito fish’, to stop the spread of the disease before the Games open later on Sunday.
US CEOs wary of health costs, end of Bush tax cuts
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U.S. chief executives are becoming more confident about the economy, though many worry high employee health care costs and the possible end of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans could hurt businesses.
Vistage International, an organization for chief executives, said on Monday its confidence index edged up to 95.1 in the third quarter from 94.4 in the prior three months. The index is 12 percent above its year-earlier level of 84.9.
The survey, which was conducted between Sept. 14-24 and covered about 1,800 CEOs of small-to-medium sized companies, found that 92 percent of the respondents expected health costs to rise as companies implement the healthcare reform plan, designed to provide insurance to 32 million Americans who don’t have coverage.
