Edmund's Newsletter July 29, 2008 Issue: #31 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue Drugs Add 13 Years To Average Life Of HIV Patient UC Santa Barbara Chemist Goes Nano with CoQ10 Study Shows Why Cigarette Smoke Makes Flu, Other Viral Infections Worse Cranberry Juice Creates Energy Barrier that Prevents Bacteria from Adhering to Cells - Explains How Cranberry Juice Can Prevent Urinary Tract Infections 'Statins' Linked To Improved Survival In Kidney Transplant Recipients Cancer Drug Delivery Research At Case Western Reserve University Speeds Time From Two days To Two Hours Plants Make Vaccine For Treating Type Of Cancer In Stanford Study 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 Drugs Add 13 Years To Average Life Of HIV Patient Cocktails of HIV drugs help patients live an average of 13 years longer -- if they are lucky enough to get them, researchers reported on Thursday. A person who started taking the drugs at age 20 could, on average, expect to live another 43 years, the researchers report in the Lancet medical journal. They looked at several studies of patients living in the United States, Canada and several European countries who received drug combinations known as highly active antiretroviral therapy or HAART. Robert Hogg of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada and colleagues looked at 43,000 patients in 14 different studies. "Between 1996-99 and 2003-05, there was a gain in life expectancy for those at age 20 years of about 13 years; similar gains in life expectancy in those aged 35 years were also seen," they wrote. Read more..... UC Santa Barbara Chemist Goes Nano with CoQ10 If Bruce Lipshutz has his way, you may soon be buying bottles of water brimming with the life-sustaining coenzyme CoQ10 at your local Costco. Lipshutz, a professor of chemistry at UC Santa Barbara, is the principal author of an upcoming review, "Transition Metal Catalyzed Cross-Couplings Going Green: in Water at Room Temperature," which will be published in Aldrichimica Acta in September. In it, Lipshutz and post-doctoral researcher Subir Ghorai discuss how recent advances in chemistry can be used to solubilize otherwise naturally insoluble compounds like CoQ10 into water. Never heard of CoQ10? Lipshutz says you're not alone. "If you don't know anything about it," Lipshutz said during a recent interview, "that's not surprising to me. Much of the public hasn't heard of it." But he's on a mission to correct what he views as a major oversight. "In a sense, I'm just a messenger. People need to not only know about CoQ10, they need to take it." Read more..... Study Shows Why Cigarette Smoke Makes Flu, Other Viral Infections Worse A new study by researchers at Yale School of Medicine could explain why the cold and flu virus symptoms that are often mild and transient in non-smokers can seriously sicken smokers. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the study also identified the mechanism by which viruses and cigarette smoke interact to increase lung inflammation and damage. Until recently, scientists haven't been able to explain why smokers have more exaggerated responses to viral infections. Smokers have been more likely than non-smokers to die during previous influenza epidemics and are more prone to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Furthermore, children who are exposed to second-hand smoke have more severe responses when infected with respiratory synctial virus. The prevailing view has been that cigarette smoke decreases anti-viral responses. But the Yale researchers-lead author Jack A. Elias, M.D., the Waldermar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine and chair of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and first author Min-Jong Kang, M.D., associate research scientist-found the opposite to be true. Read more..... Cranberry Juice Creates Energy Barrier that Prevents Bacteria from Adhering to Cells - Explains How Cranberry Juice Can Prevent Urinary Tract Infections For generations, people have consumed cranberry juice, convinced of its power to ward off urinary tract infections, though the exact mechanism of its action has not been well understood. A new study by researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) reveals that the juice changes the thermodynamic properties of bacteria in the urinary tract, creating an energy barrier that prevents the microorganisms from getting close enough to latch onto cells and initiate an infection. The study, published in the journal Colloids and Surfaces: B, was conducted by Terri Camesano, associate professor of chemical engineering at WPI, and a team of graduate students, including PhD candidate Yatao Liu. They exposed two varieties of E. coli bacteria, one with hair-like projections known as fimbriae and one without, to different concentrations of cranberry juice. Fimbriae are present on a number of virulent bacteria, including those that cause urinary tract infections, and are believed to be used by bacteria to form strong bonds with cells. For the fimbriaed bacteria, they found that even at low concentrations, cranberry juice altered two properties that serve as indicators of the ability of bacteria to attach to cells. The first factor is called Gibbs free energy of attachment, which is a measure of the amount of energy that must be expended before a bacterium can attach to a cell. Without cranberry juice, this value was a negative number, indicating that energy would be released and attachment was highly likely. With cranberry juice the number was positive and it grew steadily as the concentration of juice increased, making attachment to urinary tract cells increasingly unlikely. Read more..... 'Statins' Linked To Improved Survival In Kidney Transplant Recipients For patients receiving kidney transplants, treatment with cholesterol-lowering "statin" drugs may lead to longer survival. "Statin therapy is well established for the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease in the general population, but its effectiveness in patients with kidney disease is unclear," comments Dr. Rainer Oberbauer of the Medical University of Vienna, one of the study authors. "We showed that statin therapy was indeed associated with a lower risk of death in renal transplant recipients." The study included data on 2,041 patients receiving their first kidney transplant between 1990 and 2003. At the time of transplantation, about 15 percent of the patients were taking statin drugs to reduce their cholesterol levels. Patient survival and survival of the transplanted kidney were compared for patients who were and were not taking statins. Overall, survival was somewhat better for patients on statin treatment. At 12 years' follow-up, 73 percent of statin-treated patients were alive, compared to 64 percent of patients not taking statins. Read more..... Cancer Drug Delivery Research At Case Western Reserve University Speeds Time From Two days To Two Hours Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a technique that has the potential to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to diseased areas within hours, as opposed to the two days it currently takes for existing delivery systems. Using laboratory mice, drug delivery time from injection to the cancer cells was reduced from two days to mere hours. Using this as a model for potential human use, cancer patients may someday soon receive the benefits of cancer-fighting drugs within hours of injection. Findings are discussed in a paper, co-authored by Clemens Burda, associate professor of chemistry and director of the Center for Chemical Dynamics and Nanomaterials Research at Case Western Reserve University and graduate student Yu Cheng, appearing in the current edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society . The system uses gold nanoparticle vectors to deliver photodynamic therapy (PDT) drugs through the bloodstream to cancerous sites. Read more..... Plants Make Vaccine For Treating Type Of Cancer In Stanford Study Plants could act as safe, speedy factories for growing antibodies for personalized treatments against a common form of cancer, according to new findings from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The findings came in the first human tests of an injectable vaccine grown in tobacco plants. The treatments, which would vaccinate cancer patients against their malignant cells, could lead to earlier personalized therapy to tackle follicular B-cell lymphoma, an immune-system malignancy diagnosed in about 16,000 people each year. Doctors regard follicular B-cell lymphoma as a chronic, incurable disease. The standard treatment, chemotherapy, has such severe side effects that patients often opt for watchful waiting in the early stages of illness. However, plant-grown vaccines, which lack side effects, could allow earlier, more aggressive management of the cancer. "This would be a way to treat cancer without side effects," said Ronald Levy, MD, professor of oncology and the Robert K. and Helen K. Summy Professor in the School of Medicine, who is the study's senior author. "The idea is to marshal the body's own immune system to fight cancer." Read more..... Believe it or not R.I. police say man had 0.491 blood alcohol level State police say they arrested a man early Tuesday whose blood alcohol level was 0.491 percent - the highest ever recorded in Rhode Island for someone who wasn't dead.   Stanley Kobierowski was taken to a hospital, put in the detoxification unit and sedated, said Maj. Steven O'Donnell. He was arraigned Tuesday on charges of driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest, and he was released after promising to appear Friday at a court hearing. "The person's lucky they survived," O'Donnell said. "There's no doubt he would have gotten killed or killed someone if he had continued on the route he was taking." A phone listing for Kobierowski could not be found, and he did not have a lawyer in court Tuesday. Kobierowski, 34, of North Providence, was arrested after he drove into a highway message board on Interstate 95 in Providence, O'Donnell said. After police arrived, Kobierowski had trouble getting out of the car, then grabbed it and refused to move, forcing troopers to carry him to the breakdown lane before taking him back to their barracks, O'Donnell said. A breath test showed blood alcohol readings of 0.489 percent, followed by 0.491, O'Donnell said, the highest readings state officials could remember for someone who didn't end up dead. The legal limit in Rhode Island is 0.08. A level of 0.30 is classified as stupor, 0.4 is comatose and 0.5 is considered fatal, according to the health department. 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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