Edmund's Page

Insulin May Reduce Several Inflammatory Factors Induced by Bacterial Infection

edhayes — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:21:20 +0000

Treating intensive care patients who develop life-threatening bacterial infections, or septicemia, with insulin potentially could reduce their chances of succumbing to the infection, if results of a new preliminary study can be replicated in a larger study.

A paper published online ahead of print in Diabetes Care reports that insulin lowered the amount of inflammation and oxidative stress in study participants who had been injected with a common bacteria, or endotoxin, known as LPS (lipopolysaccharide).

The study was conducted by University at Buffalo endocrinologists at Kaleida Health’s Diabetes-Endocrinology Center of Western New York.

Improve Patient Safety And Cut Costs With Clinical Pharmacists

edhayes — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 01:13:05 +0000

What if you could improve patient safety, cut costs, broaden your medical knowledge and find 20% more time in your workday? On October 1, 2010, that is just what we can expect when clinical pharmacists move from the back room to the bedside in ten general medical units at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

As we all know, medications play an intensely complex and ever-growing role in patient care. In tertiary care hospitals, it is not uncommon for patients to take 12 to 16 medications a day. When patients return home, one-third to one-half of them don’t take medications as prescribed, and up to one-quarter never fill prescriptions at all. Furthermore, we all know that medication problems at discharge — such as prescription omissions and instructions that are incomplete, inaccurate, and difficult for patients to understand — are common. It’s no wonder medication issues are a major cause of readmissions.

In pilot studies, the presence of a residency-trained pharmacist as an active part of our medical team addressed all of these concerns. Our clinical pharmacist attended daily bedside rounds, optimized inpatient medication regimens, served as a drug information resource, performed discharge medication reconciliation, and provided discharge medication education, including, in some cases, custom-made medication lists in an easier to read calendar/pictorial format for patients with limited health literacy.

Ritalin Improves Brain Function

edhayes — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:42:47 +0000

Methylphenidate normalizes functional magnetic resonance imaging cingulate responses and reduces impulsivity on a salient cognitive task in individuals with cocaine addiction. Above is an axial map that shows the caudal dorsal anterior cingulate (cdACC) and rostroventromedial anterior cingulate (extending to the medial orbitofrontal cortex, rvACC/mOFC) — cortical regions that showed enhanced responses to methylphenidate as compared to placebo in cocaine addicted individuals. These regions are crucial for the ability to regulate behavior, cognition and emotion.
UPTON, NY — A brain-scanning study at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted with collaborators from Stony Brook University, reveals that an oral dose of methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, improves impaired brain function and enhances cognitive performance in people who are addicted to cocaine. The study — to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 6, 2010 — suggests that methylphenidate, combined with cognitive interventions, may have a role in facilitating recovery from drug addiction.

“Previous studies have shown that methylphenidate does not decrease cocaine use or prevent relapse in addicted individuals, so it wouldn’t work to treat cocaine addiction directly, the way methadone works to treat heroin abuse,” said Rita Z. Goldstein, a psychologist who leads the neuropsychoimaging group at Brookhaven Lab. “But other studies show that methylphenidate does decrease behaviors such as risk taking and impulsivity and improves brain function and cognitive performance in a range of other conditions that also affect the brain’s prefrontal cortex, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), some forms of dementia, and certain kinds of brain injury. If it also has these positive effects in cocaine-addicted individuals, then it could be a useful component of a treatment strategy that helps increase recovering addicts’ impulse control.”

To find out, Goldstein’s group performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 13 cocaine users and 14 healthy control subjects who were asked to perform a cognitive task after being given either a low oral dose of methylphenidate (20 milligrams) or a placebo. The task involved pushing a button to correctly identify the color of a printed word; some words had to do with drug use, others were “neutral.” Subjects received monetary rewards for correct answers.

The Clot Wars – New Rivals to Warfarin as Blood Clot Preventer

edhayes — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:33:35 +0000

For investors who have been asking themselves whether medium-size pharmaceutical companies can survive in an industry that has had recent mega-mergers, the answer seems to be yes. At least for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

The company’s experimental anticoagulant drug apixaban worked better than aspirin in preventing stroke and systemic blood clots for patients who have an irregular heart rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, according to new study data presented on Tuesday at a cardiology conference in Stockholm.

Investment bank analysts have estimated that a new generation of stroke prevention drugs like apixaban, if approved by the Food and Drug Administration, could generate $10 billion or more in annual global sales.

Multivitamin Use Doesn’t Impact Colon Cancer Outcomes

edhayes — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:25:57 +0000

Patients with colon cancer who used multivitamins during and after being treated with post-surgical chemotherapy did not reduce the risk of the cancer returning or their dying from it, according to researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

In a study of patients with stage III colon cancer — characterized as cancer in the large bowel area with some cancer cells in a few nearby lymph nodes — the researchers found that while multivitamin use had no beneficial effect on patients’ outcomes, it also did not have a detrimental effect.

The findings are reported online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and later will be published in a print edition.

NIH-Sponsored Research Yields Promising Malaria Drug Candidate

edhayes — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:12:35 +0000

A chemical that rid mice of malaria-causing parasites after a single oral dose may eventually become a new malaria drug if further tests in animals and people uphold the promise of early findings. The compound, NITD609, was developed by an international team of researchers including Elizabeth A. Winzeler, Ph.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

“Although significant progress has been made in controlling malaria, the disease still kills nearly 1 million people every year, mostly infants and young children,” says NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “It has been more than a decade since the last new class of antimalarials — artemisinins — began to be widely used throughout the world. The rise of drug-resistant malaria parasites further underscores the need for novel malaria therapies.”

Dr. Fauci adds, “The compound developed and tested by Dr. Winzeler and her colleagues appears to target a parasite protein not attacked by any existing malaria drug, and has several other desirable features. This research is also a notable example of successful collaboration between government-supported scientists and private sector researchers.”

Metformin May Protect Against Lung Cancer

edhayes — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:39:55 +0000

Metformin, a drug commonly used to treat type 2 diabetes, shows potential in the prevention of tobacco-induced lung tumors and possibly colorectal tumors, according to two studies published in Cancer Prevention Research.

The first study, conducted by researchers at the NCI, showed that metformin significantly decreased lung tumor burden in mice exposed to a nicotine-derived nitrosamine called NNK, which is the most prevalent carcinogen in tobacco. Researchers treated the mice with metformin either orally or by injection. Those treated orally had between 40 and 50 percent fewer tumors, while those mice treated with injection had 72 percent fewer tumors. Based on these findings, clinical trials of metformin are being considered to determine if this compound could be used as an effective chemoprevention agent for smokers at high risk of developing lung cancer.

A second study, conducted by researchers in Japan, showed, non-diabetics taking metformin had a significantly lower rate of rectal aberrant crypt foci, a surrogate marker of colorectal cancer. Patients in the treatment group had a mean of 5.11 foci compared with 7.56 in the control group.

Results of these studies were discussed at a teleconference hosted by Scott Lippman, M.D., editor-in-chief of Cancer Prevention Research, and professor and chair in the department of thoracic head and neck medical oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010, at 10:30 a.m. ET.

Metformin significantly decreased lung tumor burden in mice exposed to a nicotine-derived nitrosamine called NNK, which is the most prevalent carcinogen in tobacco. Metformin has been previously shown to activate an enzyme called AMP-activated protein kinase that is known to inhibit mTOR, a protein that regulates cell growth and survival in tobacco carcinogen-induced lung tumors.

Pharmacology Sing-A-Long

edhayes — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:41:10 +0000

Pharmacology Sing-A-Long

Click here to view the embedded video.

Melanoma Drug Shows Promise In Shrinking Tumors

edhayes — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 23:05:29 +0000

A new drug used to treat metastatic melanoma patients who have the genetic mutation known as BRAFV600E demonstrated significant tumor shrinkage in the majority of patients during a clinical trial.

Data from the Phase I trial of the drug PLX4032, developed by Plexxikon Inc. and Roche Pharmaceuticals, showed that nearly all patients with the mutation who were treated with the drug showed some response and 81 percent of patients had tumor shrinkage of at least 30 percent. The data were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Igor Puzanov, M.D., assistant professor of Medicine, and Jeffrey Sosman, M.D., professor of Medicine, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, are among the principal investigators on the study. Keith Flaherty, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center of Harvard University, is lead author.

Non-Invasive Therapy Significantly Improves Depression

edhayes — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:58:40 +0000

Major depression is a common and disabling brain condition marked not only by the presence of depressed mood but also by its effects on sleep, energy, decision-making, memory and thoughts of death or of suicide.

Major depression affects 15 million adults in the U.S., and the World Health Organization projects that by 2020, it will be the largest contributor to disability in the world after heart disease.

While antidepressants have helped many to recover and resume their lives, only 30 percent of patients will experience full remission with the first medication they use. Patients typically move on to try a series of other antidepressants. A persistent problem with such drugs has been major side effects, including obesity, sexual dysfunction, fatigue, drowsiness and nausea.

Now, a unique new therapy that applies electrical stimulation to a major nerve emanating from the brain is showing promise.