Edmund's Newsletter October 21, 2008 Issue: #43 Volume 8 Join Our List In This Issue FDA Creates Web Page with Drug Safety Information for Patients, Health Care Professionals Chicken Soup May Help Fight High Blood Pressure Researchers at Case Western Reserve University Find that Age-Related Macular Degeneration Slowed by Drug "Candidate" Keeping Herpes Infection in Check Importance of Sex-Specific Testing Shown in Anxiety Study Lack of Vitamin D Linked to Parkinson's Disease Early Exposure To Drugs, Alcohol Creates Lifetime Of Health Risk 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 FDA Creates Web Page with Drug Safety Information for Patients, Health Care Professionals Consumers and health care professionals can now go to a single page on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Web site to find a wide variety of safety information about prescription drugs. The Web page, http://www.fda.gov/cder/drugSafety.htm, provides links to information in these categories: --- Drug labeling, including patient labeling --- A searchable database of postmarket drug studies --- Clinicaltrials.gov --- Drug-specific safety information --- Quarterly reports on certain drugs --- Warning Letters --- Regulations and guidance documents; --- Consumer information about using medications safely --- Instructions how to report problems to the FDA --- Consumer articles on drug safety Read more.....   Chicken Soup May Help Fight High Blood Pressure Chicken soup, that popular home remedy for the common cold sometimes known as "Grandma's Penicillin," may have a new role alongside medication and other medical measures in fighting high blood pressure, scientists in Japan are reporting. Ai Saiga and colleagues cite previous studies indicating that chicken breast contains collagen proteins with effects similar to ACE inhibitors, mainstay medications for treating high blood pressure. But chicken breast contains such small amounts of the proteins that it could not be used to develop food and medical products for high blood pressure. Chicken legs and feet, often discarded as waste products in the U.S. but key soup ingredients elsewhere, appear to be a better source. In the new study, Saiga and colleagues extracted collagen from chicken legs and tested its ability to act as an ACE inhibitor in the laboratory studies. They identified four different proteins in the collagen mixture with high ACE-inhibitory activity. Given to rats used to model human high blood pressure, the proteins produced a significant and prolonged decrease in blood pressure, the researchers say. Read more..... Researchers at Case Western Reserve University Find that Age-Related Macular Degeneration Slowed by Drug "Candidate" Research results from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine show that the progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is markedly slowed in new laboratory-engineered mice when they received treatments of retinylamine, a trial drug that has been tested in a medical school lab. AMD is a leading cause of vision loss in Americans 60 years of age and older. The findings from the National Eye Institute-funded research are reported in the prestigious Journal of Biological Chemistry. Led by postdoctoral researcher Akiko Maeda, an investigator in the lab of one of her co-authors, Krzysztof Palczewski, the findings provide evidence for biochemical change in the retina that resemble AMD. Palczewski is chair and the John H. Hord Professor of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine. While the drug itself was developed in Palczewski's former lab at the University of Washington, it was brought to Case Western Reserve when he and his team of researchers, including Maeda, arrived here in 2005. Palczewski says AMD currently isn't usually treated until toward the end of the disease. However, with the discovery in his lab by Maeda and her research team, retinylamine can potentially prevent the rapid degeneration of the eye, slowing the rate of progression of AMD. Read more..... Keeping Herpes Infection in Check Herpes simplex virus type I can cause bouts of cold sores, blindness and potentially lethal encephalitis when it reawakens from a quiescent state in the nerve cells it infects. To prevent these consequences, the stealthy virus is kept under constant guard by the immune system, say University of Pittsburgh scientists. Their research challenges the once common notion that latent HSV-1 in sensory neurons is invisible to the immune system. Actually, immune cells keep the infection under close surveillance, actively holding HSV-1 in check without destroying the neurons harboring it, said Robert L. Hendricks, Ph.D., Joseph F. Novak professor and vice-chair for research in the Department of Ophthalmology and professor in the Departments of Immunology and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Sensory neurons may not regenerate, so an immune system attack that destroys them could do more harm than good. In a paper published in the October 10 issue of Science, teams led by Dr. Hendricks and Paul R. Kinchington, Ph.D., also a professor in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology, show one way this balancing act is carried out. Read more..... Importance of Sex-Specific Testing Shown in Anxiety Study An Australian study has flagged an important truth for the medical research community. Like their human counterparts, male and female mice are not only different, their respective genetic responses can often be the reverse of what you'd expect from pharmacological results. This has important ramifications for laboratory and clinical testing. Dr Tim Karl, behavioural neuroscientist at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, found the opposite of what he expected in female mice when he investigated the anxiety behaviours of males and females in specific mouse models. His results were reported recently in the European Journal of Neuroscience. "There's a neurotransmitter in the brain known as NPY, and we know that it buffers behavioural consequences of stress, lowering anxiety levels," explained Karl. "Pharmacological tests show that when you introduce NPY to an animal in a stressful situation, its stress levels decrease." Read more..... Lack of Vitamin D Linked to Parkinson's Disease A majority of Parkinson's disease patients had insufficient levels of vitamin D in a new study from Emory University School of Medicine. The fraction of Parkinson's patients with vitamin D insufficiency, 55 percent, was significantly more than patients with Alzheimer's disease (41 percent) or healthy elderly people (36 percent). The results are published in the October issue of Archives of Neurology. The finding adds to evidence that low vitamin D is associated with Parkinson's, says first author Marian Evatt, MD, assistant professor of neurology at Emory. Evatt is assistant director of the Movement Disorders Program at Wesley Woods Hospital. The senior author is endocrinologist Vin Tangpricha, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Emory and director of the Endocrine Clinical Research Unit. Read more..... Early Exposure To Drugs, Alcohol Creates Lifetime Of Health Risk People who began drinking and using marijuana regularly prior to their 15th birthday face a higher risk of early pregnancy, as well as a pattern of school failure, substance dependence, sexually-transmitted disease and criminal convictions that lasts into their 30s. A study published online by the journal Psychological Science has been able to sort out for the first time the difficult question of whether it's bad kids who do drugs, or doing drugs that makes kids bad. The answer is both, said Duke University psychologist Avshalom Caspi, who co-authored the report with his wife and colleague Terrie Moffitt. They are part of a team of researchers from the U.S., Britain and New Zealand that analyzed data tracking the health of nearly 1,000 New Zealand residents from birth through age 32. Half of the study subjects who were using alcohol and marijuana regularly before age 15 were indeed the so-called "bad kids" who came from an abusive, criminal or substance-abusing household and had behavior problems as children. Read more..... Believe it or not Duo Cremated Kin ~~ Mother, son cooked 84-year-old grandmother in backyard pit According to cops, the duo cremated Allmond's 84-year-old mother Ramona last December in a backyard barbecue pit at their secluded northern California home. Ramona Allmond, who suffered from dementia, apparently died in the home she shared with her 50-year-old daughter and grandson. Investigators allege that after Ramona's death, Allmond and Ray continued to collect her Social Security checks and retirement benefits for 11 months (which resulted in the pair's arrest Sunday for embezzlement, as well as elder abuse and conspiracy). Foul play is not suspected in Ramona's death. Tehama County Sheriff's Department deputies learned of Ramona's demise after a relative requested a welfare check on the woman, who had not been heard from for about a year. Allmond and Ray, 30, cremated Ramona in a small concrete pit that they had used weeks earlier to cook the family's Thanksgiving dinner. Allmond and Ray are each being held in the Tehama County jail in lieu of $30,000 bail. 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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