FDA Approves New Drug Treatment for Type 2 Diabetes
July 31, 2009
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Onglyza (saxagliptin), a once-daily tablet to treat Type 2 diabetes in adults. The medication is intended to be used with diet and exercise to control high blood sugar levels.
The hormone insulin keeps blood sugar (glucose) levels within a narrow range in people who don’t have diabetes. People with Type 2 diabetes are either resistant to insulin or do not produce enough insulin to maintain normal blood sugar levels.
Onglyza is in a class of drugs known as dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors which stimulate the pancreas to make more insulin after eating a meal.
Iron-Binding Drug Could Help Diabetics Heal Stubborn Wounds
July 31, 2009
A drug used to remove iron from the body could help doctors fight one of diabetes’ cruelest complications: poor wound healing, which can lead to amputation of patients’ toes, feet and even legs.
The drug, deferoxamine, helped diabetic mice heal small cuts 10 days faster than those who did not receive treatment, according to researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The team is now working to arrange human trials for deferoxamine. If the results translate, it could help doctors combat such diabetic complications as foot ulcers, an “unmet medical need of gigantic proportions,” said Geoffrey Gurtner, MD, professor of surgery and senior author on the paper published July 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Blisters, cuts or pressure sores on diabetic patients’ lower limbs often heal slowly or not at all, putting patients at risk for infection and amputation. Internal injuries are an issue, as well: More than 40 percent of patients hospitalized for heart attacks have clinical diabetes, and they are less likely to recover fully than their non-diabetic counterparts. The reason, say researchers, is that diabetic tissue fails to reconnect oxygen-deprived areas to the bloodstream with new vessels. What they didn’t know was why the vessels don’t form.
Could Therapeutic Vaccines Treat Hard to Beat Breast Cancers?
July 30, 2009
A comprehensive analysis of nearly 1,600 tumor samples has found that CT-X genes are expressed in nearly half the breast cancers that lack the estrogen receptor (ER). CT-X gene products are the targets of therapeutic cancer vaccines already in phase III clinical trials for lung cancer and melanoma. The study—published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—was led by the international Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR).
ER negative breast cancers, which account for a third of all breast cancer cases, are a group of tumors that has a generally poor prognosis and few therapy options. A subgroup of the ER negative group is triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks the estrogen, progesterone and HER2 receptors. TNBC is responsible for most of the breast cancers that strike down African American and young women.
In the current study, gene and protein expression studies showed that nearly half of primary ER negative and triple-negative breast cancers express members of either or both the MAGEA and NY-ESO-1/CTAG1B families of CT-X genes. Approximately half of the primary tumor samples from patients with the basal-like form of breast cancer, which is usually ER negative, also expressed either or both of these gene families, and nearly two-thirds of metastases from basal-like tumors also expressed these genes.
Common Allergy Drug Reduces Obesity And Diabetes In Mice
July 28, 2009
Crack open the latest medical textbook to the chapter on type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes, and you’ll be hard pressed to find the term “immunology” anywhere. This is because metabolic conditions and immunologic conditions are, with a few exceptions, distant cousins.
However, a group of papers appearing in Nature Medicine, two of which are from Harvard Medical School researchers, have linked type 2 diabetes with immunology in a way that might persuade leading researchers to start viewing them as siblings.
In the first study, researchers used two common over-the-counter allergy medications to reduce both obesity and type 2 diabetes in mice. The medications, called Zaditor and cromolyn, stabilize a population of inflammatory immune cells called mast cells. In the second study, researchers found that a kind of white blood cell called a regulatory T cell, once thought to manage only other white blood cells, also acts as a liaison between the metabolic and immune systems—in this case, controlling inflammation in fat tissue. Fat tissue from obese and insulin-resistant mice and people is marked by a dramatic absence of this cell type, in dramatic contrast to an already reported overabundance in fat tissue of inflammatory immune cells called macrophages.
Daily Potassium Citrate Wards Off Kidney Stones in Seizure Patients On High-Fat Diet
July 27, 2009
Children on the high-fat ketogenic diet to control epileptic seizures can prevent the excruciatingly painful kidney stones that the diet can sometimes cause if they take a daily supplement of potassium citrate the day they start the diet, according to research from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.
A report on the work is published in the August issue of Pediatrics.
“We can confidently say this is a safe and powerful way to prevent kidney stones, and it should become part of standard therapy in all ketogenic dieters, not just those who already show elevated urine calcium levels,” says senior investigator Eric Kossoff, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at Hopkins Children’s. “If you wait, it might be too late.”
Some Blood Pressure Drugs May Help Protect Against Dementia
July 26, 2009
A particular class of medication used to treat high blood pressure could protect older adults against memory decline and other impairments in cognitive function, according to a newly published study from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
Research suggests that some of the drugs classified as angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, specifically those types of ACE inhibitors that affect the brain by crossing the blood-brain barrier, may reduce inflammation that could contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease, a major cause of dementia.
The study appears in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
New Drug May Reduce Heart Attack Damage
July 24, 2009
A new drug that targets a master disease-causing gene can dramatically reduce heart muscle damage after a heart attack and may lead to significantly improved patient outcomes, UNSW researchers have shown.
The drug, known as Dz13, specifically targets and neutralises the gene responsible for inflammation and muscle death in the aftermath of a heart attack, preclinical trials have found.
The drug also reduces incidental cell and tissue death resulting from life-saving interventions such as balloon angioplasty and stent placements used to open blocked arteries, or from the delivery of clot-busting drugs.
Significantly, the heart’s pumping action is protected by the drug, dramatically improving the patient’s chances of a full recovery after a heart attack.
Antidepressant Directly Stimulates Brain Growth Factor Receptors
July 23, 2009
The widely used antidepressant and pain medication amitriptyline — but not other closely related drugs — can impersonate the brain’s own growth factors, researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have shown.
The results are published online and will appear in the June 26 issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology.
Amitriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant first introduced in the 1960s, and other tricyclics are thought to exert their effects by increasing the levels of the messenger chemicals serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain.
But the delay required for antidepressants to work has led scientists to the idea that a secondary effect, pushing neurons to survive and grow, must occur indirectly.
A Drug-Dispensing Contact Lens
July 23, 2009
Taking eye drops multiple times a day can be difficult for patients to do, and because of blinking and tearing, as little as 1 to 7 percent of the dose is actually absorbed by the eye. Now, researchers led by Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, director of the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Children’s Hospital Boston, have developed special contact lenses that can gradually dispense a constant amount of medication to the eye, at adjustable rates. They describe their prototype lens in the July issue of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science.
Although other groups have developed drug-releasing contact lenses, none have been able to achieve a constant, steady release of substantial amounts of drug; typically, a burst of drug is delivered in the first few hours, followed by rapidly dwindling amounts that are too low to be therapeutic. Kohane, collaborator Joseph Ciolino, MD, of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and colleagues at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created a two-layer contact lens with an inner drug-bearing biodegradable polymer film known as PLGA. Both PLGA and pHEMA (used for the coating) have been well studied and are already approved for ocular use by the Food and Drug Administration.
In laboratory testing, the prototype lenses dispensed ciprofloxacin (an antibiotic often used in eyedrops) for 30 days, the longest duration for which contact lenses are currently approved by the FDA; in some tests, the lenses continued releasing drug for up to 100 days. The amounts dispensed were sufficient to kill pathogens in a laboratory assay.
Breast Cancer Drug Shows Promise Against Serious Infections
July 22, 2009
An FDA-approved drug used for preventing recurrence of breast cancer shows promise in fighting life-threatening fungal infections common in immune-compromised patients, such as infants born prematurely and patients with cancer. Some scientists suspected that tamoxifen has antifungal properties; now new research from the University of Rochester Medical Center shows that it actually kills fungus cells and stops them from causing disease.
“It’s still early, but if tamoxifen, or molecules like it, turns out to be an effective treatment against serious fungal infections, it’ll be a welcome addition to our arsenal,” said Damian Krysan, M.D., Ph.D., author of the research recently published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical Center .
While serious fungal infections are generally isolated to patients with cancer, patients in intensive care units, patients with HIV or patients taking immune-suppression medications for chronic conditions, they are among the deadliest infections. Fungus is the third most common cause of blood stream infection in premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. The survival rate for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia is about 95 percent, but if they acquire a Candida albicans fungal infection, that drops to 80 percent. Bacterial meningitis has a 5 percent risk of death, but the risk of death for C. albicans blood stream infection is 20 percent.