Pharmacology

Dr. Klaus Buhler, President of the German IVF Register, has reported the one-millionth treatment cycle in reproductive medicine recorded by the IVF Register in Germany this year. Presently, ninety per cent of all centers for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) in Germany collect data from reproductive treatments using RecDate Advance by Merck Serono - a database system developed by the IT consulting firm CRITEX, and marketed under the name MedITEX IVF. The system will contribute significantly to the efforts of the German IVF Register, which is striving to collect, standardize, evaluate and map all…

IntroductionEpilepsy is a serious neurological disorder that affects over 1% of the US population, and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality.  Quality of life can be a significant issue as well. Some deaths are related to the underlying condition that is responsible for the seizure disorder; however many are related to epilepsy, including deaths from seizures themselves.  Injury or death can also occur from drowning, vehicle wrecks or other types of accidents.  In addition, there is the major concern of Sudden Unexplained Deaths in Epilepsy (SUDEP). …

Bbiomarkers of growth hormone doping are not subject to the same natural fluctuations as growth hormone itself, says a new study which could help sporting authorities worldwide catch athletes that use it to boost their performance.   Published in the journal Clinical Endocrinology,  the study's findings show that growth hormone testing might be viable for inclusion in the "athlete biological passport", which logs an athlete's blood test results over the athletic season. Building on their previous work in this area, the researchers in this Anglo-Italian study compared data from four…

It's pretty common to have a level of skepticism regarding modern athletes and performance-enhancing drugs.   A few users taint the entire field, especially if it brings some success.   Baseball, football, cycling ... all elite members are under scrutiny.   But the levels of performance-enhancing drugs in those events is nothing, says a new study.   Participants in this big-money 'sport' have a whopping 80% rate of performance-enhancing drug use. What are we talking about?  Poker. The Nova Southeastern University study says poker players are using drugs such as…

A new study has found an association between hearing loss and the use of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. The findings, published in Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, suggest a potential for long-term hearing loss following use of Viagra, and possibly following use of other phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors (PDE-5i) drugs such as Cialis and Levitra, although results on those drugs are inconclusive. "It appears from these findings that the current government warning regarding hearing loss and the use of PDE-5i medications is warranted," said study author Gerald McGwin,…

Thomas Sydenham (September 10, 1624 – December 29, 1689) was an English physician. Called "father of English medicine" or "English Hippocrates," told this quote: "Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium." Opium (poppy tears, lachryma papaveris) is the dried latex, an emulsion of  polymer microparticles in an aqueous medium, obtained from opium poppies (Papaver somniferoum). The Latin botanical name means, loosely, the "sleep-bringing poppy", referring to the sedative properties of…

Steroid use has been a serious problem in professional sports for many years now. Famous baseball players, Olympic athletes, pro wrestlers and many others have been caught using performance enhancing substances. Concern over the practice has come from fearful parents, officials from various sports leagues worried about their games' reputations, and even the United States Congress, because they have nothing more pressing to deal with. As result of the frenzy, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has developed a relatively new measure called the biological passport designed to detect steroid use…

“Is it schadenfreude, or is it something else?” It is a question Harvard professor David Sinclair asks himself a lot of late. No wonder.Just about everyone doing cell biology has something—and usually critical—to say of him these days. There are loudmouth bloggers calling fraud and normally circumspect colleagues spouting uncomfortable questions about his work. All of this is something new for Professor Sinclair, a soft-spoken man whose calm visage belies his world-rocking discovery of just 10 years ago: that resveratrol, a compound made from an extract of common red wine, significantly…

Not sure chocolate can save the world?   Here is your chance to take part in a study to find out.  Volunteers selected will have chocolate delivered to their homes and be encouraged to eat 50g of it every day for eight weeks as part of a new research study. Researchers at Queen's University Belfast, funded by Northern Ireland Chest, Heart&Stroke and the NI Research and Development Office, are to study 110 people with high blood pressure for the opening stage of a three-year project starting in August. The aim is to discover if a high fruit and vegetable diet incorporating dark…

Researchers have developed and tested a modified enzyme called CocE that can break down cocaine into inactive products nearly 1,000 times faster than the human body does regularly. In combination with previous studies that demonstrate CocE's effectiveness in rodent models, the new results suggest that CocE may be a good candidate for clinical treatment of cocaine toxicity. The research was presented at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting on April 25. The difficulty in designing a therapy for cocaine toxicity stems from the drug’s complex…