Edmund's Newsletter February 19, 2008 Issue: #8 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue Experimental HIV Vaccine Gets a Boost From '70s-Era Discovery Metabolic Syndrome Linked to Cold Tolerance Changing The Way Antibiotics Are Prescribed May Be Key To Controlling Epidemics Experimental MS Drug Shows Promise, Offers New Window On Disease Cholesterol Drug Strips Staph of Virulence Schizophrenia Drug's Dosage Drives Success Chemotherapy After Breast Cancer Surgery Effective for Older Women, Too Quick Links Edmund's Blog Edmund's Newsletter Edmund's Web Page Past Issues SPECIAL THANKS TO Michael R. Cohen President The Institute for Safe Medication Practices and Dr. Stephen Barrett Quackwatch Some links in Edmund's Newsletter will point to a page that requires registration.  In all cases the most you will have to do is fill out a simple form to enroll as a member.  In no case will I point you to a site that requires payment to view the page. PRAY FOR PEACE © 2001,2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Join Our List Experimental HIV Vaccine Gets a Boost From '70s-Era Discovery Although science is known for being a forward-looking field, researchers have found that they can often benefit from a glance over their shoulders. By combining an experimental AIDS vaccine with a long-neglected molecule called poly-IC, Rockefeller University scientists discovered that they were able to significantly improve its effectiveness. Their new, bolstered vaccine not only stimulated the production of HIV-attacking immune cells in mice, but also allowed the rodents to maintain immunity over a significantly longer period of time. The immunity-directing dendritic cell has long been viewed as a potent resource for vaccine researchers: If they can direct a piece of a pathogen directly to the cell, it should be able to instruct other immune cells to react to the invader. Prior work by Ralph Steinman, Henry G. Kunkel Professor and head of the Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology, and others has shown that this is a particularly promising direction for vaccine exploration. He and his colleagues have created dendritic cell vaccines that work by carrying an HIV protein straight to specific receptors on the cell. But while this prompts adaptive immunity - the kind that shifts in reaction to a specific threat - it doesn't trigger the innate, nonspecific immunity the body uses to attack generalized microorganismal threats. For a vaccine to have a shot at preventing AIDS, it must do both. So Steinman, research associate Christine Trumpfheller, and their colleagues went looking for something they could use to amplify their vaccine and elicit an innate immune reaction from the body's T cells. Decades ago, poly-IC had been found to induce a potent immune-simulating chemical called interferon, leading researchers to believe it might work as a stand-alone therapy for infections and cancer. As a primary therapy, it never lived up to its potential and quickly fell out of view. As an adjuvant, however, Steinman hoped it might fulfill some of that forgotten promise. Read more..... Metabolic Syndrome Linked to Cold Tolerance Researchers from the University of Chicago have discovered that many of the genetic variations that have enabled human populations to tolerate colder climates may also affect their susceptibility to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of related abnormalities such as obesity, elevated cholesterol levels, heart disease, and diabetes. More than 100 years ago, scientists noted that humans inhabiting colder regions were bulkier and had relatively shorter arms and legs. In the 1950s, researchers found correlations between colder climates and increased body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat, based on height and weight. Now, in a study published in the February issue of the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, scientists have found a strong correlation between climate and several of the genetic variations that appear to influence the risk of metabolic syndrome, consistent with the idea that these variants played a crucial role in adaptations to the cold. The researchers report that some genes associated with cold tolerance have a protective effect against the disease, while others increase disease risk. Read more..... Changing The Way Antibiotics Are Prescribed May Be Key To Controlling Epidemics When you check into a hospital, the odds are one in ten that you will become infected with a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria as a result of your stay. That is because the problem of drug-resistance has become endemic in today's hospitals despite the best efforts of the medical profession. In the United States alone this currently causes about 100,000 deaths per year. Now, a sophisticated new mathematical model has identified what may be the key to getting this growing health problem under control: Changing the way that antibiotics are prescribed and administered. "We have developed the mathematical model in order to identify the key factors that contribute to this problem and to estimate the effectiveness of different types of preventative measures in typical hospital settings," said Vanderbilt mathematician Glenn F. Webb, who described the results at a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 17 in Boston. "According to our analysis, the most effective way to combat this growing problem is to minimize the use of antibiotics," he said. "It is no secret that antibiotics are overused in hospitals. How to optimize its administration is a difficult issue. But the excessive use of antibiotics, which may benefit individual patients, is creating a serious problem for the general patient community." Read more..... Experimental MS Drug Shows Promise, Offers New Window On Disease A drug therapy currently used to treat non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis had a significant effect in treating the most common form of multiple sclerosis in a small, short-term clinical trial. Because the drug targets the immune system's B-cells, rather than the immune system's traditionally targeted T-cells -- long considered the primary culprit -- the finding provides a new insight into the cause of the disease, the researchers say. The study, reported in the Feb. 14, 2008 issue of the "New England Journal of Medicine," showed that the drug, rituximab, dramatically reduced the number of inflammatory lesions that form along nerve fibers in patients' brains -- the hallmark of the disease. It also significantly decreased the clinical symptom of the disease: sporadic, temporary disruptions in certain neurological functions, such as mobility in a limb or vision in an eye. The study of the drug, which is administered by infusion, was a 48 week, phase II trial. Read more..... Cholesterol Drug Strips Staph of Virulence An international team of researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has blocked staph infections in mice using a drug previously tested in clinical trials as a cholesterol-lowering agent. The novel approach, described in the February 14 online edition of Science, could offer a new direction for therapies against a bacterium that's becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. "By following their scientific instinct about a basic biological process, the researchers made a surprising discovery with important clinical implications," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "Although the results are still very preliminary, they offer a promising new lead for developing drugs to treat a very timely and medically important health concern." This work was supported by three NIH components: the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. A pigment similar to the one that gives carrots their color turns Staphylococcus aureus ("staph") golden. In the bacterium, this pigment acts as an antioxidant to block the reactive oxygen molecules the immune system uses to kill bacteria.   Researchers had speculated that blocking pigment formation in staph could restore the immune system's ability to thwart infection. While perusing a magazine on microbial research, Eric Oldfield, Ph.D., of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign read how in 2005 University of California, San Diego researchers knocked out a gene in staph's pigment-making pathway to create colorless-and less pathogenic-bacteria.  Read more..... Schizophrenia Drug's Dosage Drives Success The Vanderbilt physician who in the late 1980s established the antipsychotic drug clozapine as the gold standard for treating patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia has improved on his own research. Herbert Meltzer, M.D., director of the Schizophrenia Program in the Department of Psychiatry, and colleagues have shown that the success of clozapine in treating this population was not due to the unique pharmacologic features of the drug itself, but the fact that it was used at higher doses than what is used to treat patients with schizophrenia who respond well to antipsychotic drugs. Clozapine is rarely used for the 70 percent of patients whose psychotic symptoms respond well to a wide array of other antipsychotic drugs. The study, published in the Jan. 23 issue of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and funded by Eli Lilly, included 40 men and women, ages 18 to 58, diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, which many think is part of the same spectrum of illness. Patients were recruited from three U.S. outpatient community mental health treatment facilities, including Nashville's Centerstone Mental Health Center. The results showed that the drug olanzapine, whose pharmacology is considered closer to clozapine than that of any other drug available, when used at a higher dose than the established norm, is as effective as clozapine in improving psychopathology and cognition in treatment-resistant patients. The study showed that treatment-resistant patients taking higher doses respond more slowly than average patients taking conventional doses. In fact, both need to be given for six months before a good treatment response occurs, compared to six weeks for the average patient at the lower dose range.  Read more..... Chemotherapy After Breast Cancer Surgery Effective for Older Women, Too It's clear that chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery increases survival rates. But many older women aren't being offered this potentially lifesaving treatment. But, age shouldn't be a deciding factor -- an older woman's general health appears to be a better predictor of positive results after chemotherapy, according to a study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Age alone should not be a contraindication to the use of optimal chemotherapy regimens in older women who are in good general health," the study authors said. About half of all breast cancers in the United States occur in women older than 65. Past studies have shown that chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery increases the odds of disease-free survival in women between the ages of 50 and 69. But little information has been available for treating women over 70, the study authors said. Read more..... Believe it or not Anti-impotence pill could boost high flying pilots A drug used to treat impotence could help Israeli fighter pilots operate at high altitude, the Israeli military's official magazine reported in its latest issue.     It said a retired general plans to present to the air force the results of a study he conducted on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania where he found that tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis tablets, improved breathing in a thin atmosphere. "The study's findings justify the continuation of tests with drugs of this type in low oxygen environments," an unnamed air force officer told Bamahaneh, the military's weekly magazine. An army spokeswoman said that there were no plans to use any such drug and a statement said the phenomenon of chronic oxygen starvation experienced by mountaineers and the immediate oxygen starvation which pilots suffer at high altitude are different. "(Because of the different circumstances) there is no significance for medical treatment of any drug for pilots in the Israel Air Force ... and it has no intention of using any form of drug," the statement read. News From MedWatch Keep up-to-date on all of the recent MedWatch reports that gives you timely safety information on the drugs and other medical products regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by  CLICKING HERE   Recently Approved Drugs/Indications Keep up-to-date on all of the recently approved drugs and/or approved new indications on already FDA approved drugs by CLICKING HERE   FDA Recalls and Safety Alerts in the Past 60 Days: To see a list of all FDA Recalls and product safety alerts for the last 60 days CLICK HERE   Drug Shortages: As many of you are aware, many drugs in the US are either unavailable or in short supply.  To view a list of these drugs CLICK HERE   Recommend Edmund's Newsletter Edmund's Newsletter is published for only one reason and that is expand our knowledge base, join people together with like minds and to disseminate valuable information. If you feel this newsletter is of worth, please pass it along to your friends and colleagues. 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