Edmund's Newsletter October 7, 2008 Issue: #41 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue Parents Still Fear Autism Could Be Linked To Vaccines, Poll Shows Vitamin C Supplements may Reduce Benefit from Wide Range of Anticancer Drugs HIV Drug Maraviroc Effective for Drug-Resistant Patients Danish Study Provides New Information On Hormone Replacement Therapy and the Risk of Heart Attacks Asian-White Couples Face Distinct Pregnancy Risks Form of Crohn's Disease Traced to Disabled Gut Cells Tobacco-Movie Industry Financial Ties Traced to Hollywood's Eearly Years 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 Parents Still Fear Autism Could Be Linked To Vaccines, Poll Shows The first national survey of attitudes toward autism reveals that a small but significant percentage of people still believe the disease is caused by childhood vaccines. The survey of 1000 randomly selected adults was conducted for the Florida Institute of Technology. Nearly one in four (24 percent) said that because vaccines may cause autism it was safer not to have children vaccinated at all. Another 19 percent were not sure. This at a time when the Centers for Disease Control reports that autism affects one in 150 children born in the United States. Scientists say there is no evidence linking vaccines and autism, but the lingering fear is leading to fewer parents having their children vaccinated and a growing number of measles infections. The New York Times reported in August that measles cases in the first seven months of 2008 grew at the fastest rate in more than a decade and cases in Britain, Switzerland, Israel and Italy are said to be soaring. The public's concern over vaccines stems from a controversial 1998 British study linking autism and the MMR vaccine, which at the time contained the mercury-based preservative thimerosal. The study was later retracted by most of its authors and thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines in 2001, but responses to the just-completed survey show the public is still confused. Read more..... Vitamin C Supplements may Reduce Benefit from Wide Range of Anticancer Drugs In pre-clinical studies, vitamin C appears to substantially reduce the effectiveness of anticancer drugs, say researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. These new findings, published in the October 1 issue of Cancer Research, a publication of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR), came from studying laboratory cancer cells and mice, but the study's authors say the same mechanism may affect patient outcomes, although they add this premise needs to be tested. "The use of vitamin C supplements could have the potential to reduce the ability of patients to respond to therapy," said Heaney, an Associate Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Use of vitamin C during cancer treatment has been controversial. Some studies have suggested that because vitamin C is an antioxidant it might be beneficial to cancer patients. But some classes of chemotherapy drugs produce "oxygen free radicals," unpaired oxygen molecules that can fatally react with other molecules in a cell, forcing cell death. In this theory, vitamin C could sop up the radicals, keeping the cancer cell alive despite chemotherapy treatment. Read more..... HIV Drug Maraviroc Effective for Drug-Resistant Patients As many as one quarter of HIV patients have drug resistance, limiting their treatment options and raising their risk for AIDS and death. Now, maraviroc, the first of a new class of HIV drugs called CCR5 receptor antagonists, has been shown to be effective over 48 weeks for drug-resistant patients with R5 HIV-1, a variation of the virus found in more than half of HIV-infected patients. Results of the two Phase 3 multicenter MOTIVATE (Maraviroc Plus Optimized Therapy in Viremic Antiretroviral Treatment Experienced Patients) studies led by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center's Dr. Roy Gulick and published in the October 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) find that the drug, taken with an optimized standard HIV drug regimen, resulted in significantly greater suppression of the virus at 48 weeks, with concurrent increases in immune system T-cell counts, when compared with placebo. Rates of side effects were not different between the maraviroc and placebo groups. Preliminary results of these studies led to FDA approval of maraviroc in August 2007. Because it is from a new class of HIV medications known as HIV entry inhibitors, people living with HIV generally will not have resistance to maraviroc because they have not been exposed to any drugs from the class previously. Unlike earlier HIV drugs that target the virus, maraviroc acts on the human T-cell, binding to it in such a way that prevents HIV from binding and subsequently infecting the T-cell. Read more..... Danish Study Provides New Information On Hormone Replacement Therapy and the Risk of Heart Attacks It's not what you take but the way that you take it that can produce different results in women who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to new research on the association between HRT and heart attacks, published online in Europe's leading cardiology journal, the European Heart Journal. The study is the largest to look at the effects of HRT since the Women's Health Initiative trial was stopped early after finding that HRT increased the risk of women developing a range of conditions including breast cancer and thromboembolism. The research is an observational study of 698,098 healthy Danish women, aged 51-69, who were followed between 1995-2001. It has found that overall there was no increased risk of heart attacks in current users of HRT compared to women who had never taken it. However, it did find that in younger women (aged 51-54) who were taking HRT during the period of the study, their risk of heart attacks was about a quarter (24%) more than in women who had never taken HRT. In addition, in younger women there was an increasing risk with longer duration of HRT, which was not seen in the older age groups. Read more..... Asian-White Couples Face Distinct Pregnancy Rrisks Pregnant women who are part of an Asian-white couple face an increased risk of gestational diabetes as compared with couples in which both partners are white, according to a new study from Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The researchers also found that Asian women whose partners are white are more likely than white women with Asian or white partners to have a caesarean delivery, as part of a broad analysis of perinatal outcomes among Asian, white and Asian-white couples. The study is published in the October issue of American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The findings, the authors say, could benefit clinicians working with an increasingly diverse patient population. "There's great heterogeneity in our country; there are people of many different races and backgrounds," said co-author Yasser El-Sayed, MD, a Packard Children's Hospital obstetrician and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the medical school. "Gaining better insight into the risks facing specific populations provides for better counseling and better prenatal care." Read more...... Form of Crohn's Disease Traced to Disabled Gut Cells Scientists report online this week in Nature that they have linked the health of specialized gut immune cells to a gene associated with Crohn's disease, an often debilitating and increasingly prevalent inflammatory bowel disorder. The link to immune cells intrigued researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis because they and others believe Crohn's disease is caused by misdirected immune responses in the intestine that damage gut tissue. In addition, cells in the mouse model scientists used for the study had altered genetic activity that could lead to increased production of certain hormones. Those same hormones are elevated in some Crohn's patients. "We now have a significant new piece of the puzzle that is Crohn's disease, but not the solution just yet," says senior author Herbert W. "Skip" Virgin, M.D., Ph.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor and head of the Department of Pathology and Immunology. "As many as 30 different areas in human DNA have potential links to Crohn's disease, and to develop new treatments it's going to be essential to find out how each of them, as well as environmental factors, contribute to the disorder." Crohn's disease is one of the most common inherited bowel disorders. In 2002, epidemiologists estimated that it affected 400,000 to 600,000 patients in North America. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, vomiting and weight loss. The condition can lead to partial or full intestinal blockages, which can require surgical treatment. Read more..... Tobacco-Movie Industry Financial Ties Traced to Hollywood's Eearly Years Remember the glamour days of smoking when such stars as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall puffed their way into Hollywood legend? When images of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, cigarette in hand, symbolized virility? And Joan Crawford lighting a cigarette was the epitome of elegance? Today's movie industry still draws on those images to justify smoking in movies - even as public health experts call for smoking to be eliminated from youth-rated films. Last month the National Cancer Institute concluded that on-screen smoking causes youth to start smoking "We're told smoking is part of Hollywood's history and a necessary artistic device," said Stanton Glantz, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco and an author of a new study that "debunks the myth" that smoking in movies purely reflected American tastes at the time. "Our work further strengthens the case for getting smoking out of youth-rated films by rating new smoking movies 'R.'" Glantz and Robert Jackler, MD, professor and chair of otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, along with other researchers, used once-secret tobacco industry documents to trace Hollywood-tobacco marketing deals to the early days of movie making, including Al Jolson in the silent film era. The study titled, "Big Tobacco in Hollywood, 1927-1951," published Sept. 24 online in the journal Tobacco Control. Read more...... Believe it or not Faithful see Virgin Mary image in hospital window Hundreds of people are being drawn to a Catholic hospital in Springfield by what they say looks like an image of the Virgin Mary in a window. Sister Kathleen Sullivan, senior vice president at Mercy Medical Center, said the image in a vacant, second-story office was first noticed Tuesday morning. As many as 300 people, some weeping, gathered outside the building to take photographs, pray, and say the rosary. Sullivan said while the cause of the image was not immediately clear, she was humbled by the show of faith. A spokesman for the Springfield Diocese said it could take the church years to investigate. Deirdre Gogel, who came to see the image, called it comforting at a time of turmoil for the nation. 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