January 8, 2007, 9:45 PM CT

Jefferson Cardiologists Fix Broken Heart

Unexplained chest pain after a heart attack might be more dangerous than a number of physicians originally think.

In a case study would be reported in the recent issue of the international journal Clinical Cardiology, physicians at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia report on a seemingly healthy 55-year-old man who had a silent heart attack and subsequent unexplained chest pain.

Once he was admitted to the hospital, it was discovered that the man actually had a rarely diagnosed complication called subepicardial aneurysm, which, if not quickly treated, could be fatal.

"The chest pain was a rupture of the heart wall about to happen--the most feared complication of a heart attack," explains Michael Savage, M.D., director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. "The rupture occurs from a tear in the muscle that has already been damaged by a heart attack. The heart muscle breaks and the wall bursts commonly causing cataclysmic death soon after".

The Jefferson scientists recommend that when a patient experiences unexplained pain after a heart attack, physicians should consider the possibility of a subepicardial aneurysm.

Diagnosis of a subepicardial aneurysm is extremely rare, says Dr. Savage, who is also associate professor of Medicine, Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. Only 20 cases have ever been published in the medical literature and a number of patients were diagnosed after death. It is highly likely that a number of more patients have died from this complication but the cause of death was unrecognized.........

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January 8, 2007, 9:15 PM CT

New Cancer Drugs

Combining synthetic chemistry techniques with a knowledge of the properties and actions of enzymes, scientists have been able to produce an exciting class of anti-cancer drugs originally isolated from blue-green algae.

This accomplishment is expected to make it possible to produce enough of the promising drugs for use in clinical trials.

In a study featured on the cover of the recent issue of the journal ACS Chemical Biology, a scientific team lead by University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute Research Professor David H. Sherman and researcher Zachary Q. Beck found the trick to turning the green gunk into gold-cancer fighting gold.

"It was simply too difficult to use the native blue-green algae for high-level production using traditional fermentation approaches," said Sherman. But the compound, called cryptophycin 1, held so much promise as an anti-cancer drug that organic chemists got busy trying to find ways to make a synthetic form of the compound in large enough quantities for clinical trials.

Developing an efficient synthetic route to natural product compounds and their analogs is often an essential step in drug development. With drugs such as penicillin and tetracycline, it can easily be done, but cryptophycins present more of a challenge. Sherman's team realized that with all cryptophycins, the most difficult step came very late in the synthesis, at the point at which a key part called an epoxide-a highly strained, three-membered ring oxygen-containing group, crucial for the drug's anti-cancer activity-becomes attached to the molecule.........

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December 28, 2006, 8:54 PM CT

Insights Into Learning

Scientists analyzing the genomics of a marine snail have gotten an unprecedented look at brain mechanisms, discovering that the neural processes in even a simple sea creature are far from sluggish.

At any given time within just a single brain cell of sea slug known as Aplysia, more than 10,000 genes are active, according to scientists writing in Friday's (Dec. 29, 2006) edition of the journal Cell. The findings suggest that acts of learning or the progression of brain disorders do not take place in isolation - large clusters of genes within an untold amount of cells contribute to major neural events.

"For the first time we provide a genomic dissection of the memory-forming network," said Leonid Moroz, a professor of neuroscience and zoology at the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience. "We took advantage of this powerful model of neurobiology and identified thousands of genes operating within a single neuron. Just during any simple event related to memory formation, we expect differences in gene expression for at least 200 to 400 genes".

Researchers studied gene expression in association with specific networks controlling feeding or defensive reflexes in the sea slug. To their surprise, they identified more than 100 genes similar to those associated with all major human neurological diseases and more than 600 genes controlling development, confirming that molecular and genomic events underlying key neuronal functions were developed in early animal ancestors and remained practically unchanged for more than 530 million years of independent evolution in the lineages leading to men or sea slugs.........

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December 26, 2006, 8:05 PM CT

Stem Cells As Cancer Therapy

It is widely hoped that neural stem cells will eventually be useful for replacing nerves damaged by degenerative diseases like Alzheimer disease and multiple sclerosis. But there may also be another use for such stem cells--delivering anti-cancer drugs to cancer cells.

A Perspective article in PLoS Medic ine, by Professor Riccardo Fodde (Erasmus Medical Center, The Netherlands), discusses a new study in mice, reported in the launch issue of PLoS ONE (www.plosone.org), that showed that neural stem cells could be used to help deliver anti-cancer drugs to metastatic cancer cells.

One of the characteristics of neural stem cells is their tendency to move towards diseased areas (researchers call this phenomenon "pathotropism"). This characteristic, says Professor Fodde, "makes them especially attractive candidates not only to replace damaged tissue in degenerative pathologies, but also to deliver therapeutic molecules in patients with disseminated metastatic cancer".

In the study published in PLoS ONE, Karen Aboody and his colleagues report on the eradication of disseminated metastases in a mouse model of a cancer called neuroblastoma. The scientists took advantage of the tumor-tropic (selective migration towards cance r cells) properties of neural stem cells engineered to express an enzyme that activates an anti-cancer drug.........

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December 26, 2006, 7:32 PM CT

Pet Owners Are Sick More Often

A common perception is that pet owner is a young person who is full of action, exercises a lot, and actively plays with a pet, particularly with a dog. The reality is different, however.

The association of pet ownership and health of working aged Finns (20-54 years of age) was studied at the University of Turku as part of a large research project entitled Health and Social Support (HeSSup). The findings were published in PLoS ONE, the new international online publication of the Public Library of Science.

At the total population level, pet ownership was most common among those 40 years of age or older, those whose lives are established and who are settled down as well as among those who live in single family houses and who have couple relationships. Pet ownership was slightly more often associated with a low rather than high social standing or education. Four of five people working in agriculture had a pet, with 41% of those representing other occupational groups having one.

Pet owners are part of the population group that based on their age or low socio-economic standing has plenty of different kinds of illness or disease related risk factors, including a greater Body Mass Index (BMI) than the rest. In this study, they smoked slightly more often and exercised less often than those not having pets. Dog owners did exercise more than those not having a dog, but it did not have an effect on the BMI. Pet owners in general had hobbies associated with hunting or moving about in nature more often than the rest.........

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December 23, 2006, 11:04 AM CT

Two Different Crystalline Forms Of Aspirin

I am sure that you don't think of the crystalline structure of aspirin, when you have a headache and reach out for the aspirin bottle. At least that's what I do. This aspirin pill might relieve your headache, but the same aspirin is causing lots of headaches for some researchers.

The question that is causing problem for scientists is: is there another form on top of the long-known one? A team of scientists from Denmark, Germany, and India seems to have solved this controversial puzzle: yes, there is a second structure-but it does not exist as a pure form. "The two crystalline forms of aspirin are so closely related," explains the research team of Andrew D. Bond, Roland Boese and Gautam R. Desiraju in Angewandte Chemie, "that they form structures containing domains of both crystal types".

In 2004, computer calculations had indicated that while the long-known crystal structure of aspirin (form I) is definitely one of the most stable forms, another version might exist that is just as stable, though it had not yet been discovered-a clear challenge to researchers in the field. The difference between the proposed structures is slight: both have identical layers containing molecules grouped into pairs, but these layers are arranged differently in the two different structures. In 2005, researchers in the USA announced the discovery of the predicted structure (form II). But was this merely an artifact?........

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December 20, 2006, 7:09 PM CT

Abnormal Proteins Linked To Schizophrenia

A new study suggests biochemical changes linked to schizophrenia aren't limited to the central nervous system and that the disease could have more encompassing effects throughout the body than previously thought. The findings, scheduled for publication in the January 2007 issue of the American Chemical Society's Journal of Proteome Research, could lead to better diagnostic testing for the disease and could help explain why those afflicted with it are more prone to type II diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other chronic health problems.

Researcher Sabine Bahn, M.D., Ph.D., and her colleagues at Cambridge University in England and the University of Cologne in Gera number of, detected abnormal proteins associated with schizophrenia in the liver and red blood cells of people who have the disorder. It is the first time the same altered proteins have been detected both within brain tissue as well as in non-brain tissue, as per Bahn.

In time, Bahn says, these protein "biomarkers" could be used to trace the progression of the disease throughout the body.

"If changes in the rest of the body can be observed, and if these changes reflect what is going wrong in the brain, we can use these (findings) to learn about the cellular dysfunction that causes schizophrenia and this will allow us to develop better drugs and diagnostics," Bahn says.........

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December 20, 2006, 4:22 AM CT

Are Nanoparticles Viable Living Forms?

Researchers at Mayo Clinic have successfully isolated nanoparticles from human kidney stones in cell cultures and have isolated proteins, RNA and DNA that appear to be associated with nanoparticles. The findings, which appear in the recent issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, are significant because it is one step closer in solving the mystery of whether nanoparticles are viable living forms that can lead to disease -- in this case, kidney stones.

Kidney stones are associated with pathologic calcification, the process in which organs and blood vessels become clogged with calcium deposits that can damage major organs like the heart and kidneys. What causes calcium deposits to build up is not entirely known. Medical scientists at Mayo Clinic are studying calcification at the molecular level in an effort to determine how this phenomenon occurs.

There is a growing body of scientific evidence that links calcification to the presence of nanosized particles, particles so small that some scientists question whether a nanoparticle can live and if so, play a viable role in the development of kidney stones.

The presence of proteins, RNA and DNA does not prove that nanoparticles are viable living forms because a genetic signature has not been identified, says the study's author John Lieske, M.D., a nephrologist with Mayo Clinic. A genetic signature would prove that nanoparticles are indeed living forms that replicate and can cause disease.........

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December 18, 2006, 7:44 PM CT

What are the characteristics of a fast-growing melanoma?

What are the characteristics of a fast-growing melanoma? Researchers have identified several characteristics that would make it easy to identify fast-growing melanomas. A melanoma lesion is more likely to go faster if they are thicker, symmetrical, elevated, have regular borders or have symptoms. These findings are from the results of a recent study that is published in the latest issue JAMA/Archives journals. The study also found that rapidly progressing melanoma is more likely to occur in elderly men and individuals with fewer moles and freckles, and its cells tend to divide more quickly and have fewer pigments than those of slower-growing cancers.

"Anecdotal experience suggests that there is a form of rapidly growing melanoma, but little is known about its frequency, rate of growth, or associations," the authors write as background information in the article. One prior study suggested that how quickly a melanoma grew predicted how likely the patient was to relapse at one year or to survive without relapsing. Other research indicates that different types of melanoma grow at different rates; for instance, an aggressive type known as nodular melanoma grows more quickly than any other kind.

Wendy Liu, M.B.Ch.B., Ph.D., Peter MacCallum Cancer Center, East Melbourne, Australia, and his colleagues investigated melanoma growth rate in 404 consecutive patients (222 male, 182 female, average age 54.2) with invasive melanoma. Participants' skin was examined by a dermatologist and information about such characteristics as the number of typical and atypical moles was recorded. In addition, the patients were interviewed as soon as possible after diagnosis and preferably with a friend or family present. The scientists gathered information about demographics, skin cancer risk factors, the characteristics of the tumor and who first detected the cancer-the patient, a family member or friend, or a physician.........

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December 13, 2006, 7:06 PM CT

Tobacco Prevention Ads May Backfire

Tobacco company-sponsored anti-smoking advertising aimed at youths not only has no negative effect on teen smoking, it may actually encourage youngsters to smoke, according to a study co-authored by an Oregon State University researcher.

Results from the study also show that tobacco industry-sponsored prevention ads aimed at parents often have harmful effects on students, also increasing their likelihood of smoking.

"We suspected this the minute we saw the kind of ads the tobacco companies were creating," said Brian Flay, a professor in the Department of Public Health at Oregon State University. "Their objective is to get customers, not to stop customers from finding them".

The study appears in the recent issue of American Journal of Public Health.

Flay was one of nine researchers from Bridging the Gap, a policy research program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan, who worked on this study, which is the first to examine how youth are affected by parent-targeted ads sponsored by the tobacco industry.

More than 100,000 students from all areas of the country in 8th, 10th and 12th grades were surveyed to assess the relationship between exposure to tobacco company prevention advertising and youth smoking-related beliefs, intentions and behaviors. Researchers linked these data with Nielsen Media Research data on the exposure of youth to smoking-related ads that appeared on network and cable stations in the 75 largest United States media markets from 1999 to 2002.........

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