Pharmacology

A team of Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators say they have cracked one of clinical medicine's enduring mysteries – namely, why the once-effective tuberculosis vaccine no longer prevents the bacterial lung infection that kills more than 1.7 million people worldwide each year.  The solution could lead to an improved TB vaccine and also may offer a novel platform for vaccines against other pathogens.  The current TB vaccine, known as BCG (bacille Calmette-Guérin), has been around since the 1920s. It was made by weakening (attenuating) a strain of bacteria that causes…

Scientists at South Dakota State University are exploring the mechanisms by which a substance derived ultimately from Red Sea coral could help treat skin cancer. The study built on earlier work by SDSU distinguished professor Chandradhar Dwivedi’s lab looking at the chemopreventive effects of sarcophine-diol, made from a substance called sarcophine that can be isolated from soft coral found in the Red Sea. The new study carried the work beyond looking at sarcophine-diol’s possible use in prevention of skin cancer to consider its potential as a tool in therapies to actually treat skin cancer…

Smoking is bad for you, but it can also help with allergies, according to a new study which says that cigarette smoke can prevent allergies by decreasing the reaction of immune cells to allergens. Smoking can cause lung cancer, pulmonary disease, and can even affect how the body fights infections but along with many harmful effects, smoking cigarettes has a surprising benefit: cigarettes can protect smokers from certain types of allergies.  The new study says that cigarette smoke decreases the allergic response by inhibiting the activity of mast cells, the major players in the immune…

Laboratory experiments have demonstrated the immunological effects of ginseng, say researchers writing in the Journal of Translational Medicine.  Their studies show that the herb, much used in traditional Chinese and other Asian medicine, does have anti-inflammatory effects. The scientists treated human immune cells with different extracts of ginseng. They found that of the nine ginsenosides they identified, seven could selectively inhibit expression of the inflammatory gene CXCL-10. Allan Lau concludes, "Further studies will be needed to examine the potential beneficial effects of…

New research sheds light on how cocaine regulates gene expression in a crucial reward region of the brain to elicit long-lasting changes in behavior. The study in Neuron provides insight into the molecular pathways regulated by cocaine and may lead to new strategies for battling drug addiction. It is well established that addictive drugs induce persistent changes in the brain's reward circuits. Previous research has indicated that addiction to drugs such as cocaine is associated with altered gene expression in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), a region of the brain that is involved in motivation,…

"The method we have developed means we can simultaneously detect various kinds of antibiotic residues (macrolides, tetracyclines, quinolones and sulfonamides) in honey", Antonia Garrido, lead author of the study and the researcher in charge of the UAL's Contaminants Analytical Chemistry Research Group, told Servicio de Información y Noticias Científicas (SINC). In order to develop this method, the results of which have been published recently in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the researchers employed ultra performance liquid chromatography, a technique that makes it possible…

astric ulcer is an illness that affects a considerable number of people worldwide. Although the introduction of proton-pump inhibitors to the classic anti-ulcer therapy has revolutionized treatment of peptic ulcers and other gastrointestinal disorders, there is still no complete cure for this disease. It has been shown that long term use of these drugs leads to various adverse and side effects. Relapses of the malady, ineffectiveness of different drug regimens and even resistance to drugs are emerging. Thus, there is an urgent requirement to identify more effective and safe anti-ulcer agents…

One year after giving birth, women were less likely to have the most dangerous kind of obesity if they had been given probiotics from the first trimester of pregnancy, found new research that suggests manipulating the balance of bacteria in the gut may help fight obesity. Probiotics are bacteria that help maintain a healthy bacterial balance in the digestive tract by reducing the growth of harmful bacteria. They are part of the normal digestive system and play a role in controlling inflammation. Researchers have for many years been studying the potential of using probiotic supplementation to…

It sounds like it should be a New York Times headline - "Tobacco kills everyone!  Women impacted most!"  but, no, females may actually be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, according to new results reported this week at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.   The good news (if there can be good news about lung cancer) is that women tend to do better than men after lung cancer surgery. Swiss researchers studied 683 lung cancer patients who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen…

Ever miss your daily cup of coffee and subsequently get a pounding headache? According to reports from consumers of coffee and other caffeinated products, caffeine withdrawal is often characterized by a headache, fatigue, feeling less alert, less energetic and experiencing difficulty concentrating.  Caffeine withdrawal is at its worst between 24 to 48 hours and lasts up to a week. Researchers from the University of Vermont College of Medicine and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine sought to investigate the biological mechanisms of caffeine withdrawal in a paper published recently in the…