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| Don't Overlook Copper In Heart-Healthy Diet |
Most everyone knows that a diet composed of fruits, vegetables, whole grain foods, low-fat dairy products, fish, poultry and lean meats is important for having a healthy heart. The importance of regular physical activity, about 30 minutes of moderate activity most days of the week, also is recognized as part of a healthy heart lifestyle.
Although many people modify their lifestyles to include both a healthy diet and physical activity, heart disease remains the No. 1 killer of Americans and burdens this country with an economic toll amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars every year.
It has been recognized for a long time that diets that are deficient in copper produce heart enlargement and other forms of heart disease in laboratory animals. However, copper often is overlooked as an important nutrient when considering diets that promote cardiovascular health in humans.
In a study conducted more than years ago, several of the two dozen people who ate a diet supplying 1 milligram of copper per day experienced irregular heartbeats. That's more than the current Recommended Dietary Allowance for copper, which is 0.9 milligrams for adults who are older than 19 years. Agricultural Research Service findings provide science-based data to experts who establish and update the RDAs.
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| Bilberry Extract - Can It Help Prevent Certain Cancers? |
Cancer researchers are investigating whether extracts of bilberries can aid cancer prevention.
A Leicester cancer research project, which receives funding from Hope Against Cancer (formerly The Hope Foundation,) is investigating whether an extract from bilberries can prevent or delay the onset of certain cancers.
Professor Andy Gescher, of the University of Leicester, is leading an investigation to carry out clinical trials with the commercially produced substance Mirtoselect (extracted from bilberries), with the cooperation of patients about to undergo surgery for colorectal and liver cancer.
Among his research team are two Allison Wilson Fellows whose work is funded by Hope Against Cancer, Ms Sarah Thomasset and Mr Giuseppe Garcea.
The research project, which takes place in the University of Leicester's Department of Cancer Studies and Molecular Medicine and at the Leicester General Hospital, has already established that in a laboratory model Mirtoselect decreases the development of colorectal cancer.
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| New Pain Killer Allows Other Touch Sensations Through |
Scientists have combined a normally inactive lidocaine derivative with capsaicin, the 'heat'-generating ingredient in chili peppers, to produce pain-specific local anesthesia. When injected into rats, this combination completely blocked pain without interfering with either motor function or sensitivity to non-painful stimuli. The finding suggests an improved way to treat pain from childbirth and surgical procedures. It may also lead to new treatments to help the millions of Americans who suffer from chronic pain.
The study used a combination of capsaicin -- the substance that makes chili peppers hot -- and a drug called QX-314. This combination exploits a characteristic unique to pain-sensing neurons, also called nociceptors, in order to block their activity without impairing signals from other cells. In contrast, most pain relievers used for surgical procedures block activity in all types of neurons. This can cause numbness, paralysis and other nervous system disturbances.
"The Holy Grail in pain science is to eliminate pathologic pain without impairing thinking, alertness, coordination, or other vital functions of the nervous system. This finding shows that a specific combination of two molecules can block only pain-related neurons. It holds the promise of major future breakthroughs for the millions of persons who suffer with disabling pain," says Story C. Landis, Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the NIH, which funds the investigators' research along with the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). NINDS and NIDCR are co-chairs of the NIH Pain Consortium. The study appears in the October 4, 2007, issue of Nature.
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| Daisies Lead Scientists Down Path to New Leukemia Drug |
A new, easily ingested form of a compound that has already shown it can attack the roots of leukemia in laboratory studies is moving into human clinical trials, according to a new article by University of Rochester investigators in the journal, Blood.
The Rochester team has been leading the investigation of this promising therapy on the deadly blood cancer for nearly five years. And to bring it from a laboratory concept to patient studies in that time is very fast progress in the drug development world, said Craig T. Jordan, Ph.D., senior author of the Blood article and director of Translational Research for Hematologic Malignancies at the James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Clinical trials are expected to begin in England by the end of 2007. Investigators expect to initially enroll about a dozen adult volunteers who've been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or other types of blood or lymph cancers, Jordan said.
Under development is dimethylamino-parthenolide (DMAPT), a form of parthenolide (PTL) that is derived from a daisy-like plant known as feverfew or bachelor's button. DMAPT is a water-soluble agent that scientists believe will selectively target leukemia at the stem-cell level, where the malignancy is born. This is significant because standard chemotherapy does not strike deep enough to kill cancer at the roots, thus resulting in relapses. Even the most progressive new therapies, such as Gleevec, are effective only to a degree because they do not reach the root of the cancer.
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Plants Can Be Used to Study How and Why People Respond Differently to Drugs
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While prescription medications work successfully to cure an ailment in some people, in others the same dose of the same drug can cause an adverse reaction or no response at all.
According to a research team led by Sean Cutler, an assistant professor of plant cell biology at UC Riverside, such variation in drug responses can be analyzed by studying much simpler organisms - like plants.
"The genetics behind variable drug responses is not peculiar to humans but exists also in other branches on the tree of life," Cutler said. "We can harness simple organisms to understand more about the genetics and biochemistry of variable drug responses, which could help uncover new factors that contribute to variable drug responses in humans."
Study results appear in the Sept. 23 online publication of Nature Chemical Biology.
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| Stem Cells in Adult Testes Provide Alternative to Embryonic Stem Cells for Organ Regeneration |
Easily accessed and plentiful, adult stem cells found in a male patient's testicles might someday be used to create a wide range of tissue types to help him fight disease-getting around the need for more controversial embryonic stem cells.
That's the promise of a breakthrough study in mice led by a team from the Ansary Stem Cell Center for Regenerative Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, who report their findings in the September 20 issue of Nature.
Using spermatogonial progenitor stem cells (SPCs) obtained from the mouse's testes, the researchers were able to redirect the cells' development in the lab to form so-called "multi-potent adult spermatogonial-derived stem cells" (MASCs).
It was these cells that went on to develop into working blood vessel (endothelial) cells and tissue, as well as cardiac cells, brain cells and a host of other cell types.
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Depressed Adolescents Respond Best to Combination Treatment of Psychotherapy Combined with Antidepressant Medication
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A combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant medication appears to be the most effective treatment for adolescents with major depressive disorder - more than medication alone or psychotherapy alone, according to results from a major clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The study was published in the October 2007 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The long-term results of the Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study (TADS) found that when adolescents received fluoxetine (Prozac) alone or in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) over the course of 36 weeks, they recovered faster than those who were receiving CBT alone.
However, taking fluoxetine alone appeared to pose some safety concerns for the teens. During treatment, those taking fluoxetine alone had higher rates of suicidal thinking (15 percent) than those in combination treatment (8 percent) and those in CBT alone (6 percent), particularly in the early stages of treatment. This suggests that while treatment with fluoxetine may speed recovery, adding CBT provides additional safeguards for those vulnerable to suicide, according to the researchers.
"Depression in teens is a serious illness that can and should be treated aggressively," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "TADS provides compelling evidence for families and clinicians that the most effective way to treat depression in teens is with a two-pronged approach. It reassures us that antidepressant medication combined with psychotherapy is an effective and safe way to help teens recover from this disabling illness."
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Believe it or not
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Woman gives birth to own grandchildren.....
A 51-year-old surrogate mother for her daughter has given birth to her own twin grandchildren in northeastern Brazil, the delivery hospital said.
Rosinete Palmeira Serrao, a government health worker, gave birth to twin boys by Caesarean section on Thursday at the Santa Joana Hospital in the city of Recife, the hospital said in a statement on its Web site.
Hospital officials were not available for comment on Sunday, but press reports said the grandmother and twins were discharged on Saturday in excellent health. The Caesarean section was performed about two weeks ahead of time because Serrao was having trouble sleeping, the statement said.
Serrao decided to serve as a surrogate mother after four years of failed attempts at pregnancy by her 27-year-old daughter, Claudia Michelle de Brito.
Brazilian law stipulates that only close relatives can serve as surrogate mothers. De Brito is an only child and none of her cousins volunteered, so Serrao agreed to receive four embryos from her daughter. |
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News From MedWatch |
| Keep up-to-date on all of the recent
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Recently Approved Drugs/Indications |
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FDA Recalls and Safety Alerts in the Past 60 Days: |
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Drug Shortages: |
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