A long-term study, now this is something!
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Posted: 23 November 2011
PARIS: Statins safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular illness even years after treatment is stopped, according to a probe into the popular cholesterol-busters published on Wednesday.
Statins work by blocking a liver enzyme that makes fatty molecules which line arterial walls and boost the danger of heart disease and strokes.
With worldwide annual sales of more than 20 billion dollars, the drugs have been dubbed "the aspirin of the 21st century" because of their benefit and wide use.
But lingering questions persist about their long-term safety for the heart, liver and cancer risk.
Researchers at the Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group in Oxford looked at 20,536 patients at risk of cardiovascular disease who were randomly allocated 40mg daily of simvastatins or a dummy look-alike over more than five years.
During this period, those who took the statins saw a reduction in "bad" LDL cholesterol and a 23-per cent reduction in episodes of vascular ill-health compared to the placebo group.
The monitoring of the volunteers continued for a further six years after the trial ended.
The benefits persisted throughout this monitoring period among those volunteers who stopped taking the statins, the investigators found.
In addition, there was no emergence of any health hazard among those who had taken, or were continuing to take, the drugs.
A large number of cancers (nearly 3,500) developed during this follow-up period, but there was no difference in cancer incidence between the statin and placebo groups.
"The persistence of benefit we observed among participants originally allocated simvastatin during the subsequent six-year post-trial period is remarkable," said one of the investigators, Richard Bulbulia.
"In addition, the reliable evidence of safety, with no excess risk of cancer or other major illnesses during over 11 years follow-up, is very reassuring for doctors who prescribe statins and the increasingly large numbers of patients who take them long-term to reduce their risk of vascular disease."
A previous investigation in November 2010 found that long-term use of statins was less risky than thought for people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a common liver ailment.
- AFP/ck
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Long-term study proves benefit of statins in heart disease
Another breakthrough, a medical advancement...
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Posted: 16 November 2011
LONDON: British doctors on Tuesday said they had cured a baby boy of a life-threatening liver disease using a pioneering treatment in which cells are injected into the abdomen.
The team from London's King's College Hospital treated eight-month old Iyaad Syed by injecting him with a group of cells, which acted as a temporary
liver while his real organ recovered from damage caused by a virus, BBC reported.
"This is the first time this treatment has been used to treat a child with acute liver failure," said professor Anil Dhawan, a liver specialist at the hospital.
"It's only a few months back when I first saw this child who was so sick requiring support on dialysis and a breathing machine.
"We think we have given him another chance of life and seeing him now six months down the road with nearly normal liver function is remarkable."
Syed would normally have been put on the transplant waiting list when his liver began to fail, but the hope now is that more cases will be cured using the new technique rather than relying on a scarce supply of donor organs.
Doctors injected liver cells which then processed toxins and produced proteins, fulfilling the role of a temporary liver while his own began to recover two weeks later.
The cells were treated with a chemical to prevent them from being destroyed by the youngster's immune system.
Iyaad's father, Jahangeer, called his son "a miracle boy", adding "it is brilliant and we are very proud of him."
The treatment's development now depends on an extensive clinical trial.
Andrew Langford, Chief Executive of the British Liver Trust, told the BBC: "The principle of this new technique is certainly ground-breaking and we would welcome the results of further clinical trials to see if it could become a standard treatment for both adults and children.
"Sadly, we have reached a breaking point with our transplant list in the UK, where approximately 100 people die waiting for a donor liver to become available each year."
-AFP/vl
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Pioneering liver treatment cures British baby
Posted: 15 November 2011
PARIS: Stem cells from heart-attack patients helped improve blood-pumping ability and restore vitality in cardiac muscle, according to a small trial published on Monday.
It is the first time patients have been given an infusion of their own
cardiac stem cells in the aim of solving the impact of heart failure rather than simply treating the symptoms of it.
The findings are so promising that the study's chief investigator said a potential "revolution" was in the offing if larger trials succeeded.
Stem cells are infant cells that develop into the specialised tissues of the body.
They have sparked great excitement as they offer hopes of rebuilding organs damaged by disease or accident.
The new study, published online in The Lancet, tested cardiac stem cells on 16 patients who had been left gravely ill as a result of an acute myocardial infarction.
The index used for cardiac health is called the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVFV), which calculates the capacity of the left ventricle to expel blood in the space of a heartbeat.
For a person in normal health, the LVFV is 50 percent or higher.
Among the study patients, though, this had fallen to 40 percent or lower. At such a threshold, shortness of breath and fatigue are chronic and often disabling.
The stem cells were isolated from a coronary artery that had been removed when the patients underwent a coronary bypass.
Within four months of treatment, the LVFV rose by 8.5 percent and after a year by 12 percent - four times what the researchers had expected.
Scans of the patients' hearts also showed a reduction in the area of tissue that had been scarred by the infarction, a discovery that challenges conventional belief that once scarring occurs, heart tissue is permanently dead.
The volunteers also reported a substantial improvement in quality of life, and there were no significant side effects.
Seven patients with similar heart problems were enrolled as "controls", to serve as a comparison. There was no change in their LVFV, in scar tissue or in their quality of life.
"The results are striking," said lead investigator Roberto Bolli of the University of Louisville, Kentucky.
"While we do not know why the improvement occurs, we have no doubt now that 1/8LVFV 3/8 increased and scarring decreased.
"If these results hold up in future studies, I believe this could be the biggest revolution in cardiovascular medicine in my lifetime."
The team is seeking funding to launch a larger, or Phase II, trial - the second in the normal three-phase process of assessing a new treatment for safet and effectiveness.
Previous stem-cell work on heart damage has used cells harvested from bone marrow.
The interest in cardiac stem cells is that they are self-renewing, produce daughter cells and differentiate into all types of cells in the heart.
The results were presented concurrently at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.
-AFP/pn
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Broken heart fix with stem cells
Posted: 09 November 2011
WASHINGTON: A post-mortem analysis of half a dozen autistic boys showed that their brains were heavier and contained many more neurons than counterparts without the disorder, US researchers said Tuesday.
The study, while small, suggests that brain overgrowth may be occurring in the womb, according to the findings published in the November 9 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers examined the brains of seven autistic boys, age two to 16, most of whom had died by drowning. The 16-year-old's cause of death was undetermined and one eight-year-old died of muscle cancer.
When they compared them to a control group of six boys without autism who died in accidents, they found that the brains of autistic boys had 67 percent more neurons in the prefrontal cortex and were nearly 18 percent heavier than normal brain weight for age.
"Because cortical neurons are not generated in postnatal life, this pathological increase in neuron numbers in autistic children indicates prenatal causes," the study said.
The researchers suggested that "faulty prenatal cell birth or maintenance may be involved in the development of autism."
The prefrontal cortex is where language and communication is based, as well as behaviors such as mood, attention, and social ability. Typically, autistic children have difficulty in these areas.
However, more research is needed to confirm the link, and to determine if and how brain differences may be tied to the severity of an autistic person's symptoms.
"Factors that normally organize the brain appear to be disrupted," said an accompanying editorial by Janet Lainhart of the University of Utah and Nicholas Lange of the Harvard University Schools of Medicine and Public Health.
Previous studies have suggested that clinical signs of autism tend to coincide with a period of abnormal brain and head growth that usually becomes apparent at nine to 18 months of age, according to the article.
Autism includes a wide spectrum of developmental differences and may range from mild social awkwardness to complete inability to communicate, repetitive movements, sensitivity to certain lights and sounds, and behavioral problems.
As many as one in 110 children is diagnosed with autism. The disorder is three to four times more common in boys than in girls, according to the advocacy group Autism Speaks which helped fund the study.
Other funding came from Cure Autism Now, The Emch Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Thursday Club Juniors, and the University of California San Diego - National Institutes of Health Autism Center of Excellence.
-AFP/pn
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Autistic brains are heavier, with more neurons: study
Posted: 20 September 2011
WASHINGTON: Sharks are primitive creatures but their bodies produce a sophisticated substance that shows promise in fighting a range of human viruses from hepatitis to yellow fever, researchers said on Monday.
The compound, called squalamine, was discovered in 1993 but the study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences is the first to explore its potential use against human viruses.
Researchers tested squalamine - manufactured from dogfish sharks' livers - in lab dishes and in animal subjects and found it could inhibit or control viral infections, and in some cases appeared to cure animals of their ills.
The project began when lead investigator, Michael Zasloff, professor of surgery and paediatrics at Georgetown University Medical Center, sent samples of squalamine to a series of labs around the United States for testing.
Squalamine has been synthesised in a lab since 1995 and is no longer extracted directly from shark tissue.
Tissue cultures showed it could "inhibit the infection of human blood vessel cells by the dengue virus and human liver cells infected with hepatitis B and D," said the study.
Research on animals showed the compound controlled yellow fever, Eastern equine encephalitis virus, and murine cytomegalovirus, a type of herpes virus that afflicts rodents.
"It is clearly a promising drug, and is unlike, in its mechanism of action and chemical structure, any other substance currently being investigated to treat viral infections," said Zasloff.
"We have not yet optimised squalamine dosing in any of the animal models we have studied and as yet we do not know the maximum protective or therapeutic benefit that can be achieved in these systems," he added.
"But we are sufficiently convinced of the promise of squalamine as an antiviral agent that we intend to take this compound into humans."
Squalamine is safe for humans and has been considered a potential tool against cancer and eye diseases, and some clinical trials for those targets are ongoing.
"In several of the early trials squalamine has shown significant and promising activity... in both certain forms of cancer and in diabetic retinopathy," Zasloff told AFP in an email.
Zasloff discovered squalamine in 1993 and is also known for his research on the natural antibiotic properties of frog skin.
- AFP/de
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Secret to shark health could fight human viruses
