Saturday, March 5, 2011

Hepatitis News; Alzheimer's may begin in liver



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SUMMARY: The development of direct-acting antiviral agents active against hepatitis C virus (HCV) continues at a rapid pace. Two pharmaceutical companies this month announced progress in the development of investigational HCV polymerase inhibitors. Inhibitex said that it's candidate INX-189 has received "Fast Track" designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which allows for accelerated review and approval. Sweden's Medivir announced the start of the first human trial of its drug, TMC649128, in healthy volunteers.


A brain plaque caused by deposit of amyloid in the nerve cells of the brain.



The plaques, believed to be characteristic of the debilitating Alzheimer's disease, starts in the liver rather than in the brain, a new study says. Amyloid, the main substance in brain plaques associated with Alzheimer's, originates from the liver, not the brain. The mind robbing disease, thus, can be treated outside the brain, said researchers at the Scripps Research Institute and ModGene, L.L.C. Greg Sutcliffe and colleagues used a mouse model for Alzheimer's disease to identify the genes that influence the amount of amyloid accumulated in the brain. Three genes protect mice from the accumulation and deposition of amyloid in the brain. Lower expression of these genes in the liver prevents the formation of amyloid plaques in the mouse's brain, the scientists wrote in the Journal of Neuroscience Research. "We reasoned that if brain amyloid was being born in the liver and transported to the brain by the blood, then that should be the case in all mice and one would predict in humans, too," said Sutcliffe, adding that blocking the production of beta amyloid in the liver may protect the brain. Injecting Gleevec, a new drug used for treating leukemia and gastrointestinal tumors, reduces the production of beta amyloid both in the blood and brain of the studied AD mice, the study found. "This unexpected finding holds promise for the development of new therapies to fight Alzheimer's,'' the lead author said."This could greatly simplify the challenge of developing therapies and prevention.'' SJM/PKH
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Liver Cancer

Andreas Tzakis, M.D.: They are smart to start with, but they become very smart after we culture them outside the body. What we do when we recover a liver to transplant it, we cool it. That’s what we normally do in order to preserve it. We cool it with a solution that we flush it with. Now we take that solution and we isolate the NK cells from the many cells that have been flushed out from the new liver. We isolate the NK cells and then Dr. Ohira and Dr. Nishida and our collaborators at the diabetes research institute where we do all this work outside the body, treat these cells in a way that they make them a lot smarter, four times smarter actually to attack these tumors. They home into the tumor cells that may be still in the body that may be still circulating. Now they also found that these same cells have activity against the hepatitis C virus, which is an extra gift that these patients get, because they found that these cells block the propagation of hepatitis C and after the treatment they become 10 times more potent in blocking the propagation of hepatitis C.............

By Tim Pauling
Published: 05/03/2011
More people who were infected with potentially fatal hepatitis C while being treated with contaminated NHS blood or blood products will be eligible for additional support.

While the extra money for sufferers and bereaved relatives was welcomed by campaigners, they said the payments did not equate with the hardship and suffering caused by the scandal.

In the 1970s and 1980s, hundreds of Scots were infected with the liver disease and HIV after receiving transfusions and other treatments of contaminated blood and blood products.

This led to the establishment of the Skipton Fund to help sufferers. A first-stage payment of £20,000 is available to eligible recipients, with a second-stage payment of £25,000 for those who develop advanced liver disease.

The new provisions include an annual payment of £12,800 for all those who qualify for stage-two payments, as well as an increase in the one-off lump payment to £50,000, whether the patient is alive or dead.

Families of those who died before April 29, 2003, will be allowed to make claims.

Patients and families will have access to a discretionary fund and the annual payment for those with hepatitis C or HIV will be increased in line with the consumer price index.

Patients who develop hepatitis C-related B cell lymphoma will be eligible to claim for stage-two payments.

The Scottish Government said it was impossible to say how many people would be entitled, but it is thought to be a few hundred.

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said she had accepted the recommendations of the review announced by the Department of Health in England in January to provide additional support for those in financial hardship.

She said: “I have today accepted those relevant recommendations, which will be implemented in full. This will also allow for posthumous claims for support to be made on behalf of those who died prior to August 2003.

“No amount of support can restore these people’s health but I believe the measures announced today represent a considerable improvement for those who are most seriously ill or who are suffering financial hardship.”

Chris James, chief executive of the Haemophilia Society, said it was heartening to see Ms Sturgeon had acted “so swiftly” to ensure that victims in Scotland were no worse off than those in England.
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Other Health News
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When reports emerged 30 years ago that young gay men were suffering from rare forms of pneumonia and cancer, public health investigators scrambled to understand what appeared to be a deadly immune disorder: What were the symptoms? Who was most susceptible? What kinds of infections were markers of the disease?
They were seeking the epidemiologist’s most essential tool — an accurate case definition, a set of criteria that simultaneously include people with the illness and exclude those without it. With AIDS, investigators soon recognized that injection-drug users, hemophiliacs and other demographic groups were also at risk, and the case definition evolved over time to incorporate lab evidence of immune dysfunction and other refinements based on scientific advances.
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Feet First? Old Mitochondria Might Be Responsible for Neuropathy in the Extremities
The burning, tingling pain of neuropathy may affect feet and hands before other body parts because the powerhouses of nerve cells that supply the extremities age and become dysfunctional as they ...
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U.S. FDA Removes Warning About Potential Liver Injury From Boxed Warning Of Prescribing Information For Gilead's Letairis
05 March 2011Gilead Sciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: GILD) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a change to the prescribing information for Letairis(R) (ambrisentan 5 mg and 10 mg tablets), the company's...
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Healthy You
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There is approximately 10 pints of blood in the human body, depending on height and weight. Blood consists of cells and a yellow watery liquid known as plasma. There is a variety of different blood types that can be categorized based on what they contain. A person's blood group is based on which genes were passed on from their mother or father.
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Lower potassium levels in the blood may help explain why African-Americans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes as whites, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers...
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Pharmaceutical
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BY MICHAEL SALLAH AND ROB BARRY
rbarry@MiamiHerald.com
A well-known Miami-Dade lawyer who pleaded guilty to selling tens of millions in pharmaceutical drugs without prescriptions on an Internet site serving buyers across the country was sentenced to 40 months by a federal judge in California on Thursday.

A Texas state court has ruled that a trial can proceed against Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen unit for allegedly using false advertising and improper influence - such as grants, trips and other perks - to ensure its Risperdal antipsychotic was placed on the mandatory protocol for the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, a state system protocol for treating psychiatric disorders.

That’s the contention made by Sylvio Baltodano, a former Merck sales administration and compliance manager who worked outside San Juan, Puerto, and claims he was fired because non-Hispanics were held to higher standards than their Hispanic counterparts. He was fired in October 2006 and, subsequently, filed a lawsuit, which was just reinstated by a federal appeals court.

Some whistleblowers just won’t go away quietly. In his latest effort to bring his former employer to its knees, former Pfizer exec Peter Rost has filed a new lawsuit contending the drugmaker violated the New Jersey Conscientious Employee Protection Act by firing him after he told the feds about illegal marketing activities concerning the Genotropin human growth hormone

Off The Cuff
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(The New York Times News Service) -- A former Needham, Mass., doctor and his nurse practitioner caused the overdose deaths of at least six people they knew to be drug-addicted by systematically prescribing them medically unnecessary painkillers in order to make a profit, according to charges handed up Thursday in federal court in Boston.
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Sometimes even well-informed patients have blinders on about the potential of a treatment or clinical trial, writes Dr. Pauline Chen in the latest Doctor and Patient column.
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Celebrity Diagnosis

Medscape Blogger; Michele R. Berman, MD
The 1905 silent film The Kleptomaniac is a social commentary about two women, from different social classes, who both commit shoplifting crimes and are caught, arrested and taken to court. The film highlights the different ways in which the two women, one rich and one poor, are dealt with by the criminal justice system. Fast forward to 2011and troubled actress Lindsay Lohan faces grand theft felony charges over a $2,500 necklace she allegedly stole.
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Noticed
When Your Life Becomes a Verb
By LAURA M. HOLSON
Published: March 4, 2011
LAST Monday night Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of “South Park,” regaled the audience of “Late Show with David Letterman” with a vivid description of their appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony in 2000. They told the audience how they decided to dress in drag that night — their hairy chests scantily covered in silk and taffeta — which they fretted was a mistake even before they left home.
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