Pharmacology

So it was that in the summer of 1988 I discovered America. Now doesn’t that sound like a very ‘arty’ sort of statement?  It comes from Forever Today by Deborah Wearing, and though the lady herself has a musical background, there are parts of this book which should be of great interest to Science 2.0 readers.  To give the context, here is the start of the book description. “Clive Wearing is one of the most famous, extreme cases of amnesia ever known.  In 1985, a virus completely destroyed the memory part of his brain, leaving him trapped in a limbo of the constant present.…

How do you allocate lifesaving drugs when there aren't enough to go around?  83 percent of cancer doctors surveyed say that they've faced oncology drug shortages, and of those, nearly all say that their patients' treatment has been impacted, according to results presented today at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Abstract #CRA6510). The shortages are most profound among drugs to treat pediatric, gastrointestinal and blood cancers and have left physicians surveyed unable to prescribe standard chemotherapies for a range of cancers. Despite the…

Marijuana became popular as a recreational drug and as its legalization movement became more popular, studies were conducted on its therapeutic properties. Medical cannabis is often used by sufferers of chronic ailments, including cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder, to combat pain, insomnia, lack of appetite, and other symptoms. But self-reported milder symptoms often claim that only marijuana helps. Women have 50% of prescription-level pain, for example, but men have gotten 80% of the 'medical marijuana' cards, so objective data is lacking. Prof. Yosef Sarne in the Department of…

Hospitalization due to surgery or critical illness can lead to cognitive dysfunction -   inattention, disorganized thinking, altered consciousness and prolonged disruptions in learning and memory functions - in some patients, especially the elderly. The mechanisms whereby surgery and/or anesthesia may lead to cognitive impairment remain unclear but research has demonstrated that inflammation and release of pro-inflammatory molecules, like cytokines, play an important role in causing brain inflammation and cognitive decline after surgery. Today there is no effective treatment for…

Did you ever have breast milk or spinach? You might as well start shooting up heroin. If dihydrogen monoxide doesn't scare you enough, food activists have been rehashing an old term - opiates.  It's a much more official way of saying you might be addicted to cheese. Or steak. Or coffee. Or rice. Or chocolate. Or almost anything. In the age of Weekly Scare Journalism, opiates are good imagery because the term itself invokes layabouts dreaming in a haze, opium dens and all that. That's what food is doing to you (though not the food they happen to be selling you), according to some fun…

Extended use of the common antibiotic azithromycin may prolong the time between hospitalizations for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a post-hoc analysis of a multicenter study which compared the hospitalization rates of patients treated with a 12-month course of azithromycin to the rates of those treated with placebo.  For their study, the researchers used clinical data gathered from a previous study of azithromycin use conducted by the COPD Clinical Research Network (CCRN), a group of research centers established to study new treatments…

A novel approach to obstructing the runaway inflammatory response implicated in some types of asthma has shown promise in a Phase IIa clinical trial, according to researchers. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial tested the efficacy and safety of the monoclonal antibody, dupilumab, in patients with "persistent, moderate-to-severe asthma" and elevated eosinophils, which are immune cells that mobilize in response to allergens and infections and are commonly seen in asthma. Dupilumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody discovered by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and being developed…

Tiotropium delivered by the Respimat(R) Soft Mist(TM) Inhaler (SMI) increases time to first severe exacerbation and first episode of asthma worsening across a broad spectrum of patients who remain symptomatic despite at least inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) / long-acting beta2-agonists (LABA) therapy. The results are from pre-planned subgroup analyses of data from the PrimoTinA-asthma(TM) Phase III studies being presented for the first time today at the 2013 American Thoracic Society (ATS) congress in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tiotropium delivered by the Respimat Soft Mist Inhaler increases…

The drug candidate J147 was able to reverse memory deficits and improve several aspects of brain function in mice with advanced symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study.   Previous studies have demonstrated that several compounds are able to prevent or delay onset of AD-like symptoms in young mice but that does not mimic the situation in humans, where symptoms usually precede the diagnosis. To address this problem, researchers used older mice, whose symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are already at an advanced stage. Treating these mice with J147 improved their…

An anti-cocaine vaccine has been successfully tested in primates, bringing it a step closer to human clinical trials. Cocaine, a tiny molecule drug, works to produce feelings of pleasure because it blocks the recycling of dopamine -- the so-called "pleasure" neurotransmitter -- in two areas of the brain, the putamen in the forebrain and the caudate nucleus in the brain's center. When dopamine accumulates at the nerve endings, "you get this massive flooding of dopamine and that is the feel good part of the cocaine high," says  Dr. Ronald G. Crystal, chairman of the Department of Genetic…