March 29, 2007, 4:44 AM CT

Tequila raw ingredient to treat colon diseases

Compounds derived from the blue agave, a fruit used to make tequila, shows promise in early laboratory studies as a natural, more effective way to deliver drugs to the colon than conventional drug-carriers, as per chemists at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico. The development could lead to improved therapys for ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, Crohn's disease and other colon diseases, they say.

Drug delivery to the colon is an ongoing challenge to physicians. A number of drugs are destroyed by stomach acids before they've had a chance to reach the intestine, where they commonly are absorbed. Scientists have tried to circumvent this problem by inserting the drugs into carrier molecules that resist breakdown in the stomach but have had difficulty finding a suitable carrier compound.

The tequila compounds, a class of polysaccharides known as fructans, were developed by the researchers in Mexico into tiny microspheres that are capable of carrying existing drugs that are used to treat colon diseases. Because the compounds resist destruction in the stomach, they could allow more of the drugs to reach the colon intact and improve their effectiveness, the scientists say. Their study was presented today at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 27, 2007, 9:46 PM CT

Coronary Procedure Adds No Benefit

Percutaneous coronary intervention plus optimal medical therapy does not improve outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease, compared with optimal medical therapy alone, according to study results presented yesterday at the 56th Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans, and published online in the New England Journal (NEJM).

The Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Evaluation (COURAGE) Trial, conducted by the Cooperative Studies Program of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), was a randomized, controlled study involving 2,287 patients with stable coronary artery disease treated at 15 VA medical centers, as well as 35 other U.S. and Canadian medical centers. The study, conducted between 1999 and 2004, was also supported by several pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that contributed funding, drugs and medical devices or supplies.

COURAGE participantsmost of them Caucasian males, with an average age of 62had at least one coronary artery that was more than 70-percent blocked. They experienced regular chest pain (angina) at least several times per week. About 38 percent had a history of heart attack, 33 percent had diabetes, 71 percent had high cholesterol and 67 percent had high blood pressure......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 25, 2007, 7:09 PM CT

Statins slow progression of arterial thickening

Among low-risk middle-aged people with subclinical atherosclerosis, the cholesterol-lowering drug rosuvastatin reduces the rate of progression of arterial thickening and stops but does not reverse atherosclerotic disease, according to a study in the March 28 issue of JAMA. The study is being released early to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Cardiology's annual conference.

Lipid-lowering therapy has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events in a large number of studies. Statin drugs as well as other agents and lifestyle changes have also been shown to slow the progression of and even regress atherosclerosis, according to background information in the article. Atherosclerosis is the progressive thickening and hardening of the walls of medium-sized and large arteries as a result of fat deposits on their inner lining. Atherosclerosis is often advanced before symptoms appear, and it is not clear whether treatment is beneficial in middle-aged individuals with a low Framingham risk score (a measure used to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease) and mild to moderate subclinical atherosclerosis.

John R. Crouse III, M.D., of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, N.C., and colleagues conducted a randomized study of 984 individuals. The Measuring Effects on Intima-Media Thickness: an Evaluation of Rosuvastatin (METEOR) study was designed to investigate the effect of a 40-mg. dose of rosuvastatin on carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT, a measure of the thickness of the middle layers of the carotid arteries) over two years in middle-aged individuals with low Framingham risk scores, but with evidence of subclinical atherosclerosis......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 22, 2007, 5:00 AM CT

Phone-based therapy for depression

When people receive brief telephone-based psychotherapy soon after starting on antidepressant medication, strong positive effects may continue 18 months after their first session. So concludes a Group Health study in the April Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

This paper describes one more year of follow-up since a 2004 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) report on the same random sample of Group Health patients.

With close to 400 patients, this is the largest study yet of psychotherapy delivered over the telephone, said Evette J. Ludman, PhD, senior research associate, Group Health Center for Health Studies, the papers lead author. Its also the first to study the effectiveness of combining phone-based therapy with antidepressant drug treatment as provided in everyday medical practice.

Long-term positive effects of initially adding phone-based therapy included improvements in patients symptoms of depression and satisfaction with their care, said Ludman. At 18 months, 77 percent of those who got phone-based therapy (but only 63 percent of those receiving regular care) reported their depression was much or very much improved. Those who received phone-based therapy were slightly better at taking their antidepressant medicine as recommended, but that did not account for most of their improvement. And effects were stronger for patients with moderate to severe depression than for those with mild depression......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 20, 2007, 10:15 PM CT

Dental Visits Determinants Of Underserved

Children's dental insurance and caregivers' preventive dental care visits play a significant role as determinants of underserved African-American children seeing a dentist, according to a study in this month's Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA).

The objective of the study, according to University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) researchers, was to investigate determinants of dental care visits among young, low-income African-American children. They found that children with private dental insurance were five times more likely and children receiving Medicaid were about two times more likely to have visited a dentist than those without dental insurance.

Caregivers' preventive dental visits related to their children seeing dentist

The researchers also found an association between a caregiver's prevention-oriented dental visit and their child seeing a dentist.

Caregivers who had had preventive dental visits were five times more likely to have taken their children to a dentist than caregivers who sought dental care only for treatment or not at all.

According to the researchers, this provides an explanation of an earlier finding that free care is not sufficient to eliminate differences in dental care utilization and oral health among underserved children......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 19, 2007, 5:16 AM CT

Virtual racing games linked to risk taking

Psychology experts have taken the "media priming" effects of popular video console and PC-based games on the road, finding that virtual racing seems to lead to aggressive driving and a propensity for risk taking. Extending previous findings on how aggressive virtual-shooter games increase aggression-related thoughts, feelings and behaviors, scientists at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University and the Allianz Center for Technology observed that of 198 men and women, those who play more virtual car-racing games were more likely to report that they drive aggressively and get in accidents. Less frequent virtual racing was linked to more cautious driving.

The findings are reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

Linking media priming effects the way virtual aggression can lead to the real thing -- to behavior, a second study observed that men who played even one virtual racing game subsequently took significantly higher risks in critical traffic situations on a computer simulator than did men who played a neutral game. Sixty-eight men were in this study.

Finally, the scientists assigned 83 men to play either typical racing or neutral games on a Sony Playstation. In the racing games, say the authors, "To win, participants had to massively violate traffic rules (e.g., drive on the sidewalk, crash into other cards, drive at high speed)." Those who raced subsequently reported a significantly higher accessibility of thoughts and feelings associated with risk-taking than did those who played a neutral game......... Posted by: Gina      Read more         Source

March 14, 2007, 9:59 PM CT

Call to End FDA User Fee System

Opposition to current drug safety legislation is growing, as a group of 22 experts on drug safety and regulation and a coalition of 12 patient, consumer, science, and public health organizations issue two separate open letters to lawmakers. The letter from FDA experts asks the lawmakers to not reauthorize the user fees system that finances the review of new drugs by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The letter from the coalition of nonprofit organizations calls for substantial changes to the Enhancing Drug Safety and Innovation Act introduced by Senators Kennedy and Enzi.

"User fees may appear to save the taxpayer money, but at an unacceptable cost to public health," the letter from the 22 experts warns, citing findings of a panel of experts recently convened by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to address drug safety at the FDA. They call for Congress and the nation to carefully reassess the system in which drugs are developed, tested, approved and followed post-approval, and they support replacing the current user fee model with increased direct appropriations for the FDA. The letter is also signed by drug safety expert Dr. Jerome Avorn; four IOM panel members including Dr. Bruce Psaty and Prof. Alta Charo; three former Editors-in-Chief of the New England Journal (NEJM), Dr. Marcia Angell, Dr. Jerome Kassirer, and Dr. Arnold Relman; and former Asst. Secretary for Health Phil Lee, along with other respected experts from medicine, academia, and public policy......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 6, 2007, 3:55 PM CT

New Way to Fight Autoimmune Diseases

Multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and arthritis are among a variety of autoimmune diseases that are aggravated when one type of white blood cell, called the immune regulatory cell, malfunctions. In humans, one cause of this malfunction is when a mutation in a gene called FOXP3 disables the immune cells' ability to function. In a new study published online next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered how to modify enzymes that act on the FOXP3 protein, in turn making the regulatory immune cells work better. These findings have important implications for treating autoimmune-related diseases.

"We have uncovered a mechanism by which drugs could be developed to stabilize immune regulatory cells in order to fight autoimmune diseases," says senior author Mark Greene, MD, PhD, the John Eckman Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. "There's been little understanding about how the FOXP3 protein actually works." First author Bin Li, PhD, a research associate in the Greene lab has been working on elucidating this process since FOXP3's discovery almost five years ago.

Li discovered that the FOXP3 protein works via a complex set of enzymes. One set of those enzymes are called histone deacetylases, or HDACs. These enzymes are linked to the FOXP3 protein in association with another set of enzymes called histone acetyl transferases that modify the FOXP3 proteins......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 9:46 PM CT

BMI often not an accurate indicator of body fat

Body mass index, or BMI, long considered the standard for measuring the amount of fat in a person's body, may not be as accurate as originally thought, according to new research.

A research team from Michigan State University and Saginaw Valley State University measured the BMI of more than 400 college students - some of whom were athletes and some not - and found that in most cases the student's BMI did not accurately reflect his or her percentage of body fat.

The research is published in the recent issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.

BMI is determined by this equation: A person's weight divided by his or her height squared. Generally a BMI of 25 or above indicates a person is overweight; 30 or above indicates obesity. A person with a higher BMI is thought to be at a greater risk of heart disease, diabetes and other weight-related problems.

"The overlying issue is the same criteria for BMI are used across the board," said Joshua Ode, a Ph.D. student in the MSU Department of Kinesiology and an assistant professor of kinesiology at Saginaw Valley. "Whether you're an athlete or a 75-year-old man, all the same cut points are used".

"BMI should be used cautiously when classifying fatness, especially among college-age people," said Jim Pivarnik, an MSU professor of kinesiology and epidemiology. "It really doesn't do a good job of saying how fat a person really is"......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 4:59 PM CT

Life Can Be a Strain

Powered by mere vibrations or the movement of magnets, novel sensors and transmitters developed by a small company in Vermont are changing the way engineers are looking at fatigue.

Communicating wirelessly via the Internet to engineers halfway across the world, the embedded sensors developed by MicroStrain--a small business based in Williston, Vt., and supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)--are revealing how objects as diverse as the Liberty Bell, enormous mining trucks and even human knees respond to daily use.

By monitoring strain levels and tracking the cumulative effects of fatigue, the researchers' ultimate goal is to supplant the nearly universal system of "replace by this date" with a smarter approach of replacing components based upon the actual operating loads components experience.

"By calculating the amount of fatigue that a component has been exposed to, it is possible to repair or replace the component only when required," said engineer Steve Arms, president of MicroStrain. "Properly implemented, this can significantly reduce costs".

MicroStrain has received several NSF Small Business Innovation Research Program awards to support the development of cutting-edge sensors and compatible wireless transmitters that can carry their information to monitors around the globe......... Posted by: Kevin      Read more         Source