Pharmacology

Who knew you could cure disease by getting down in the mud? Scientists in Arizona report that minerals from clay could form the basis of a new generation of inexpensive, highly-effective antimicrobials for fighting MRSA infections that are moving out of health care settings and into the community. These “superbugs” are increasingly resistant to multiple antibiotics and cause thousands of deaths each year. Unlike conventional antibiotics that are often administered by injection or pills, the so-called “healing clays” could be used as rub-on creams or ointments to keep MRSA infections from…

Selenium is a trace element used in proteins, in the form of the twenty-first naturally occurring amino acid (selenocysteine). Selenium supplementation, for example in mineral tablets, might not be that beneficial for the majority of people according to researchers writing in Genome Biology. Although this trace element is essential in the diet of humans, it seems that we have lost some of the need for selenium, which occurs in proteins and is transported in blood plasma, when our evolutionary ancestors left the oceans and evolved into mammals. The research team including Alexey Lobanov and…

"Awake", a film starring Hayden Christenson and Jessica Alba, is a psychological thriller about a horrifying phenomenon called "anesthetic awareness" where a patient's failed anesthesia leaves him fully conscious but physically paralyzed. How common is it? Research shows that between one and three in every 1,000 patients experience some form of wakefulness during operations. Some may not remember a period of consciousness during an operation – anesthetic drugs can interfere with recall – but they may still suffer subsequent psychological difficulties. In some cases patients aren't given…

Tuberculosis kills two million people per year and so remains a very dangerous disease, though less so in America. Researchers worldwide have been working to produce efficient tuberculosis vaccines but no one has created something that can ensure complete protection from the disease. The efficacy of one of the most widespread vaccines – BCG – varies from 80% to as little as 0%. Specialists of the State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology “Vector” have tested an experimental preparation for tuberculosis vaccinal prevention. The preparation is nontoxic and does not provoke an…

Cannabis, the genus of flowering plants commonly known as marijuana, may create medicines that can help cure nicotine addiction, say University of Nottingham pharmacologists who have been studying the cannabis-like compounds which exist naturally in our bodies (endocannabinoids), and are exploring their potential for medical treatment. This includes treating conditions as diverse as obesity, diabetes, depression and addiction to substances like nicotine. Scientists have known about endocannabinoids since the mid-1990s. This led to an explosion in the number of researchers looking into the…

Following last week’s study suggesting that new generation antidepressants aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, a special report in this week’s BMJ asks do we really know the truth about antidepressants? Or statins? Or any other drug on the market? Lack of access to data is an ongoing problem in the United States, despite passage of the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007, which requires clinical trials to be registered in a public database, write Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee. Although it’s a positive step towards greater transparency, the act may not reduce the…

Polyaromatic hydrocarbon benzo(a)pyrene (BaP), a toxic pollutant spread by oil spills, forest fires and car exhaust is also present in cigarette smoke and may represent a second way in which smoking delays bone healing, according to research presented today at the annual meeting of the Orthopaedic Research Society in San Francisco. In 2005, researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center identified one ingredient in smoke, nicotine, that delays bone growth by influencing gene expression in the two-step bone healing process: stem cells become cartilage; cartilage matures into bone…

Kava has been used in ceremonies and for recreational and social purposes in the South Pacific since ancient times, much like alcohol, tea or coffee is in other societies today. In the 1980s other medicinal uses for kava began to emerge and it was marketed in herbal form as a natural way to treat conditions such as anxiety, insomnia, tension and restlessness, particularly in Europe and North America. More recently, evidence began to emerge about the adverse affect kava could have on the liver and serious concerns about the dangers of kava and the effects on the liver have resulted in…

Drug treatments for depression can take many weeks for the beneficial effects to emerge. The excruciating and disabling nature of depression highlights the urgency of developing treatments that act more rapidly. Ketamine, a drug used in general medicine as an anesthetic, has recently been shown to produce improvements in depressed patients within hours of administration. A new study being published in the February 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry provides some new insight into the mechanisms by which ketamine exerts its effects. The downside? It's in the same class of drugs as PCP (…

A paper by Professor Fabrizio Schifano at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Pharmacy, which has been published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, indicates that 1,022 people died between 1990 and 2004 in instances where the presence of cocaine/crack cocaine was detected. In this descriptive and correlational study, Professor Schifano reviewed the number of mentions on death certificates during the specified period, last year use of cocaine; treatment demand, number of drug offenders; seizures, prices and average purity levels. He found that over the 15 year period, cocaine has…