Edmund's Newsletter September 2, 2008 Issue: #36 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue Thank You New Blood Pressure Medication Has Fewer Side Effects Landmark Study Opens Door To New Cancer, Aging Treatments "Good" Fat May Be New Wweapon In Obesity Fight 'Superbug' Breast Infections Controllable In Nursing Mothers Eating Extra Veggies No Aid Against Cancer Return Sex Differences Seen In Response To Common Antidepressant Flu Shot Does Not Reduce Risk of Death 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 THANK YOU I just wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you that donated to the American Heart Association. Your donations will help fight our nation's No. 1 and No. 3 killers-heart disease and stroke. Your donations will help make a difference.  Thank you for your support. New Blood Pressure Medication Has Fewer Side Effects Dr. Salim Yusuf, a professor of the Michael G. DeGroote School of MedicineA major Canadian-led global study has found that a new blood pressure medication is effective in reducing cardiovascular death, with fewer side effects than the current standard of care. The study found a new drug telmisartan is as effective as the popular drug ramipril in reducing cardiovascular death in high risk patients and it has fewer side effects. Dr. Salim Yusuf, director of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences and principal investigator of the study, presented the results of ONTARGET today at the American College of Cardiology conference.  The paper has also been published on-line by the New England Journal of Medicine. Previous studies such as the Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation Trial (HOPE) demonstrated that angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors such as ramipril reduce cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, strokes and heart failure in high risk individuals. However, a significant proportion (about 20 percent) of patients are unable to tolerate an ACE-inhibitor due side effects such as coughing, hypotension or swelling. Read more..... Landmark Study Opens Door To New Cancer, Aging Treatments Researchers at The Wistar Institute have deciphered the structure of the active region of telomerase, an enzyme that plays a major role in the development of nearly all human cancers. The landmark achievement opens the door to the creation of new, broadly effective cancer drugs, as well as anti-aging therapies. Researchers have attempted for more than a decade to find drugs that shut down telomerase-widely considered the No. 1 target for the development of new cancer treatments-but have been hampered in large part by a lack of knowledge of the enzyme's structure. The findings, published online August 31 in Nature, should help researchers in their efforts to design effective telomerase inhibitors, says Emmanuel Skordalakes, Ph.D., assistant professor in Wistar's Gene Expression and Regulation Program, who led the study. "Telomerase is an ideal target for chemotherapy because it is active in almost all human tumors, but inactive in most normal cells," Skordalakes says. "That means a drug that deactivates telomerase would likely work against all cancers, with few side effects." Read more...... "Good" Fat May Be New Weapon In Obesity Fight A new understanding of the origins of brown fat cells -- the "good" kind of fat that burns energy and keeps us warm -- may lead to new treatments for obesity, two research teams reported on Wednesday. Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston said they used a single molecular switch to turn immature muscle cells into brown fat cells in the lab, suggesting that brown fat may be more akin to muscle cells than conventional white fat cells. A second team from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, found a protein important for bone growth helped promote the development of brown fat tissue in mice. Both teams, reporting in the journal Nature, said their new findings lend understanding about the origins of brown fat, which releases energy, in contrast to conventional white fat, which stores energy. A person who is obese has large stores of white fat, and researchers think if they can coax the body into making more calorie-burning brown fat, this might help people obese people lose weight. Read more...... 'Superbug' Breast Infections Controllable In Nursing Mothers Many nursing mothers who have been hospitalized for breast abscesses are afflicted with the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, but according to new research by UT Southwestern Medical Center physicians, conservative treatment can deal with the problem. The study focused on hospitalized women with mastitis, and showed that MRSA was much more likely to be found in those who had both mastitis (an inflammation of the milk glands) and abscesses (pockets of infection). "The take-home message is that a patient with mastitis does not necessarily need an antibiotic against MRSA," said Dr. George Wendel, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and senior author of the study, which appears in the September issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. "She will improve with a less specific antibiotic as long as she also empties her breasts, either through feeding or pumping, and if there's an abscess, gets it treated." The study also showed that if a nursing mother has an abscess, she does not immediately need antibiotics against MRSA, but can be switched to them if tests reveal she has MRSA. Read more..... Eating Extra Veggies No Aid Against Cancer Return Eating double the amount of veggies and fruits recommended by general dietary guidelines doesn't reduce the chance of breast cancer recurrence among women whose cancers were treated at an early stage of the disease, says a researcher at the School of Medicine. "For breast cancer survivors who are meeting the '5-a-day' dietary goals set by the National Cancer Institute, there is no benefit to further increasing their vegetable and fiber intake in terms of preventing breast cancer recurrence," said Marcia Stefanick, PhD, professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center and the senior author of a study that was published in the July 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The multicenter study documents the effect of diet on nearly 3,100 women previously treated for early-stage breast cancer. Half were randomly assigned to follow the guidelines from the NCI and the U.S. Department of Agriculture that promote eating five servings of fruits and vegetables daily. The other half were asked to eat almost double that amount and reduce their fat intake. After following the women for an average of 7.3 years, the researchers found that the breast cancer recurrence and mortality rates were nearly identical for both groups of women. "I was really surprised and, frankly, a little disappointed by the results," Stefanick said. "We expected the two-fold increase in vegetables and fruits, plus the increased fiber and reduced fat, to make a difference in the recurrence rates." Read more...... Sex Differences Seen In Response To Common Antidepressant Women are 33 percent more likely than men to experience full remission with citalopram (Celexa), suggesting a biological basis for difference in response Sex differences seen in response to common antidepressant Women with depression may be much more likely than men to get relief from a commonly used, inexpensive antidepressant drug, a new national study finds. But many members of both sexes may find that it helps ease their depression symptoms. The persistence of a gender difference in response to the drug - even after the researchers accounted for many complicating factors - suggests that there's a real biological difference in the way the medication affects women compared with men. The reasons for that difference are still unclear, but further studies are now examining hormonal variations that may play a role. The study involved citalopram, a commonly used antidepressant that is available both as a generic drug and under the brand name Celexa. Read more..... Flu Shot Does Not Reduce Risk of Death The widely-held perception that the influenza vaccination reduces overall mortality risk in the elderly does not withstand careful scrutiny, according to researchers in Alberta. The vaccine does confer protection against specific strains of influenza, but its overall benefit appears to have been exaggerated by a number of observational studies that found a very large reduction in all-cause mortality among elderly patients who had been vaccinated. The results will appear in the first issue for September of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a publication of the American Thoracic Society. The study included more than 700 matched elderly subjects, half of whom had taken the vaccine and half of whom had not. After controlling for a wealth of variables that were largely not considered or simply not available in previous studies that reported the mortality benefit, the researchers concluded that any such benefit "if present at all, was very small and statistically non-significant and may simply be a healthy-user artifact that they were unable to identify." "While such a reduction in all-cause mortality would have been impressive, these mortality benefits are likely implausible. Previous studies were likely measuring a benefit not directly attributable to the vaccine itself, but something specific to the individuals who were vaccinated-a healthy-user benefit or frailty bias," said Dean T. Eurich,Ph.D. clinical epidemiologist and assistant professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. "Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even while vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65 percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or all-cause mortality. Further, only about 10 percent of winter-time deaths in the United States are attributable to influenza, thus to suggest that the vaccine can reduce 50 percent of deaths from all causes is implausible in our opinion." Read more..... Believe it or not Dead man's visit to doctor scuttles insurance scam As a dead man, Ahmad Akhtary shouldn't have needed a doctor's appointment.   Akhtary's checkup, six months after he allegedly died in Afghanistan, scuttled his ex-wife's attempt to collect 300,000 pounds (US$550,000) on a life insurance policy. At a court hearing last week in Gloucester, a judge sentenced 34-year-old Akhtary to 60 hours of community service and his former wife, Anne Akhtary, to 40 hours of community service but suspended prison sentences of nine months each. Anne Akhtary, 43, admitted trying to claim the payout from the Norwich Union insurance company by using a forged death certificate from Afghanistan claiming that her husband had died of brain trauma in an accident. Within weeks, however, Norwich Union investigators were tipped off about the doctor's appointment. "They were told that Mr. Akhtary's GP had seen him at his practice and he had attended hospital so it was not the most sophisticated way of going about making a false claim," said prosecutor James Cranfield. Akhtary had continued to live openly in Gloucester after his supposed death, working and paying taxes, Cranfield said. Passing sentence on Friday, Judge Mark Horton said fake insurance claims were serious but that the couple had been less than sophisticated in their attempt and that no money had been lost. 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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