Edmund's Newsletter April 8, 2008 Issue: #15 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue Folate Scores Another Win in Animal Studies: Brief , High Doses of Vitamin B Blunt Damage From Heart Attacks Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Announces Positive Early Results For New Drug A Tonne of Bitter Melon Produces Ssweet Results for Diabetes FDA Approves New Vaccine to Prevent Gastroenteritis Caused by Rotavirus Scientists Find Host of Antibiotic-Eating Germs Mayo Clinic Identifies Infection Risks for Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease Synthetic Molecules May Be Less Eexpensive Alternative to Therapeutic Antibodies Believe It Or Not News From MedWatch Recently Approved Drugs/Indications FDA Recalls and Safety Alerts in the Past 60 Days Drug Shortages 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 Folate Scores Another Win in Animal Studies: Brief , High Doses of Vitamin B Blunt Damage From Heart Attacks Long known for its role in preventing anemia in expectant mothers and spinal birth defects in newborns, the B vitamin folate, found in leafy green vegetables, beans and nuts has now been shown to blunt the damaging effects of heart attack when given in short-term, high doses to test animals. In a new study, an international team of heart experts at  Johns Hopkins and elsewhere report that rats fed 10 milligrams daily of folate, also known as folic acid or vitamin B9, for a week prior to heart attack had smaller infarcts than rats who took no supplements.  On average, researchers say, the amount of muscle tissue exposed to damage and scarred by the arterial blockage was shrunk to less than a tenth. The team's findings, set for publication in the April 8 edition of the journal Circulation, come just weeks after other international studies in humans suggested that low-dose folic acid supplements may prevent dementia in the elderly and premature births. "We want to emphasize that it is premature for people to begin taking high doses of folic acid," says senior study investigator David Kass, M.D., a professor at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Heart Institute. Read more..... Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Announces Positive Early Results For New Drug The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has built a dynamic "pipeline" for the development of more new potential CF therapies than ever before. To treat a complex disease like cystic fibrosis (CF), therapies must target problems in the airways and the digestive system. In the CF pipeline, there are also promising new therapies designed to rectify the cause of CF-a faulty gene and/or its faulty protein product. Below is a "snapshot" of those potential CF therapies that are currently in development as of January 2008. Read more..... A Tonne of Bitter Melon Produces Ssweet Results for Diabetes   Bitter melonScientists have uncovered the therapeutic properties of bitter melon, a vegetable and traditional Chinese medicine, that make it a powerful treatment for Type 2 diabetes. Teams from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica pulped roughly a tonne of fresh bitter melon and extracted four very promising bioactive components. These four compounds all appear to activate the enzyme AMPK, a protein well known for regulating fuel metabolism and enabling glucose uptake. The results are published online today in the international journal Chemistry & Biology. "We can now understand at a molecular level why bitter melon works as a treatment for diabetes," said Professor David James, Director of the Diabetes and Obesity Program at Garvan. "By isolating the compounds we believe to be therapeutic, we can investigate how they work together in our cells." People with Type 2 diabetes have an impaired ability to convert the sugar in their blood into energy in their muscles. This is partly because they don't produce enough insulin, and partly because their fat and muscle cells don't use insulin effectively, a phenomenon known as 'insulin resistance'. Read more..... FDA Approves New Vaccine to Prevent Gastroenteritis Caused by Rotavirus   The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced the approval of Rotarix, the second oral U.S. licensed vaccine for the prevention of rotavirus, an infection that causes gastroenteritis (vomiting and diarrhea) in infants and children. Rotarix is a liquid and given in a two-dose series to infants from 6 to 24 weeks of age. Although the disease is usually self-limiting, rotavirus causes about 2.7 million cases of gastroenteritis in U.S. children each year-about 55,000 to 70,000 of those require hospitalization; and between 20 and 60 deaths are attributed to it. Without vaccination, nearly every child in the United States would likely be infected at least once with rotavirus by age 5. There are many different strains of rotavirus. The vaccine protects against rotavirus gastroenteritis caused by the G1, G3, G4, and G9 strains. "This vaccine provides another option to combat and reduce a potentially severe illness that affects so many children," said Jesse L. Goodman, M.D., M.P.H., director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Read more..... Scientists Find Host of Antibiotic-Eating Germs Several strains of bacteria in the soil can make a meal of the world's most potent antibiotics, researchers said on Thursday, in a startling finding that illustrates the extent to which these germ-fighting drugs are losing the war against superbugs. A study of soil microbes taken from 11 sites uncovered bacteria that could withstand antibiotics 50 times stronger than the standard for bacterial resistance. "It certainly was very surprising to us," said George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, whose research appears in the journal Science. "Many bacteria in many different soil isolates can not only tolerate antibiotics, they can actually live on them as their sole source of nutrition," Church said in an audio interview on the journal's Web site. Other researchers have found antibiotic-eating strains of bacteria, but Church's study is among the most systematic. It offers more clues about why bacteria quickly develop resistance to antibiotics, and why drug companies must constantly develop new antibiotics to defeat them. Read more..... Mayo Clinic Identifies Infection Risks for Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease A new Mayo Clinic study finds that patients who are 50 or older and take multiple immunosuppressive medications for inflammatory bowel disease have a higher risk for developing infections. The study is published in this month's issue of Gastroenterology. More than 1 million Americans are believed to have ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease. These conditions inflame the lining of the digestive tract and cause severe bouts of watery diarrhea and abdominal pain. The cause of these conditions is not known, but the most common theory is that the immune system of patients with inflammatory bowel disease reacts abnormally to bacteria in the gut. "Patients with inflammatory bowel disease are often treated with a combination of immunosuppressive medications to help relieve symptoms," says Edward Loftus, M.D. a Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist and an author of this study. "Since these medications compromise immune reactions in the body, patients can develop what are called opportunistic infections, or infections from common organisms that would not affect individuals with healthy immune systems." Read more..... Synthetic Molecules May Be Less Eexpensive Alternative to Therapeutic Antibodies Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have developed a simple and inexpensive method to screen small synthetic molecules and pull out a handful that might treat cancer and other diseases less expensively than current methods. In one screen of more than 300,000 such molecules, called peptoids, the new technique quickly singled out five promising candidates that mimicked an antibody already on the market for treating cancer. One of the compounds blocked the growth of human tumors in a mouse model. Antibodies are molecules produced by the body to help ward off infection. Natural and manmade antibodies work by latching onto very specific targets such as receptors on the surface of cells. Dr. Thomas Kodadek, chief of translational research, led researchers who have developed a simple and inexpensive method to screen small synthetic molecules and pull out a handful that might treat cancer and other diseases.       "Many new drugs being made today are antibodies, but they are extremely expensive to make. Financially, the U.S. health care system is going to have a difficult time accommodating the next 500 drugs being antibodies," said Dr. Thomas Kodadek, chief of translational research at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study, which appears online and in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Read more..... Believe it or not N.J. boy, 5, saves choking grandmother A 5-year-old Atlantic City boy saved his grandmother from choking, using a trick he learned in school. The Press of Atlantic City reported that Shirldine Stewart, 56, was watching television and eating Jell-O when her grandson A'Zir Spence came downstairs to ask her a question.   When she turned to look at him a piece of food got lodged in her throat. After she couldn't remove the food herself, her grandson asked her whether she was choking. Then the boy suggested she raise her hands over her head. When she did, the food popped out. The boy says he learned the trick at school. His grandmother calls him her little hero. 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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