The Great Beyond

Cigarettes may be dangerous long after the smoke has cleared and fears are today growing over the threat of ‘third hand smoke’.

The problem, says Hugo Destaillats, is that nicotine in tobacco smoke sticks to walls, floors, ceilings, anything it touches basically. In tests at the of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the United States, Destaillats and his colleagues showed that this residue reacts with nitrous acid to form seriously carcinogenic compounds.

“Our study shows that when this residual nicotine reacts with ambient nitrous acid it forms carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines or TSNAs,” says Destaillats, of Berkeley Lab (press release). “TSNAs are among the most broadly acting and potent carcinogens present in unburned tobacco and tobacco smoke.”

In tests on a smoker’s truck the team found “substantial” amounts of cancer-causing TSNAs. Then in experiments designed to model indoor tobacco smoking they found that these TSNAs were produced in high quantities when residue-laden surfaces are exposed to nitrous acid, which is produced by equipment such as gas cookers.

Third-hand smoke, they write in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, “represents an unappreciated health hazard”.

And don’t think you can get away with smoking outside either.

“Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker’s skin and clothing,” says study author Lara Gundel (press release). “Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere.

“The biggest risk is to young children. Dermal uptake of the nicotine through a child’s skin is likely to occur when the smoker returns and if nitrous acid is in the air, which it usually is, then TSNAs will be formed.”

Are any smokers out there actually going to quit as a result of this finding though?

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 09, 2010
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Cross posted from Spoonful of Medicine

The US Patent and Trademark Office granted its first license related to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to a California biotech, Fate Therapeutics, the company announced today. The decision comes hot on the heels of the UK Intellectual Property Office awarding a similar patent in Britain to a rival California firm, iPierian.

The new, US patent credits the Whitehead Institute's Rudolf Jaenisch, a scientific founder with Fate Therapeutics who licensed the technology to the company, and his former postdoc Konrad Hochedlinger, now at the Massachusetts General Hospital, with inventing a method for reprogramming cells in 2003 — three years before Kyoto University 's Shinya Yamanaka reported the first bona fide iPS cells, in mice.

The patent, however, is fairly limited in scope. It only covers methods that involve introducing one or more reprogramming genes into an adult cell that has been genetically engineered to carry another pluripotency gene in its genome. Although Yamanaka did genetically modify the mouse skin cells used to create the first iPS cells, this technique has since become obsolete*.

Continue reading "First US patent issued for induced stem cell protocol" »

Posted by Ananyo Bhattacharya on February 04, 2010
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The Lancet has retracted the 1998 paper that started the scare over a purported link between MMR vaccines and autism, days after a UK regulator censured the unethical behaviour of its lead author, the doctor Andrew Wakefield.

Among last week's findings of the General Medical Council was that Wakefield “caused blood to be taken from a group of children” at a party, and paid each child £5 for their blood.

The Lancet's editor, Richard Horton, tells the Guardian that when he read the GMC ruling, it became clear that statements in the paper were "utterly false" and that he felt "deceived". Concerns had been raised about the conduct of Wakefield's study in 2004 - but the Royal Free Hospital, where Wakefield worked, said his investigations "had been subjected to appropriate and rigorous ethical scrutiny." The Lancet now says that "the claims in the original paper that children were 'consecutively referred' and that investigations were 'approved' by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false."

Evan Harris, an MP who is the Liberal Democrat's science spokesman, said he welcomed the complete retraction, but added that it "could and should have been done six years ago ... journals don't need to wait for court or GMC findings of fact to retract obviously flawed or unethical papers."

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on February 02, 2010
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Andrew Wakefield, the physician whose research started the scare over a purported link between MMR vaccines and autism, “abused [his] position of trust as a medical practitioner”, according to a panel ruling on his fitness to practise as a doctor.

After a hearing that began way back in 2007, UK regulator the General Medical Council (GMC) ruled that there was enough evidence to prove a number of serious issues with Wakefield’s behaviour and that he had failed in his duties as a doctor.

“These findings, which include those of dishonesty and misleading conduct, would not be insufficient to support a finding of serious professional misconduct,” it said in a ruling released today.

In April a GMC panel will hear from both Wakefield’s legal team and the prosecuting team and decide whether the facts it has established really do amount to serious professional misconduct and, if they do, what the punishment should be.

Continue reading "MMR doctor’s actions branded “dishonest and misleading” " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 28, 2010
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All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page.

The World Health Organization has again faced allegations that it has mishandled and overhyped the H1N1 outbreak.

Speakers at yesterday’s hearing of the Council of Europe’s Health Committee railed against the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic.

“The definition of a pandemic was changed by the WHO last May. It was only this change of definition which made it possible to transform a run-of-the-mill flu into a worldwide pandemic – and made it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to transform this opportunity into cash, under contracts which were mainly secret,” Wolfgang Wodarg, former chair of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s sub-committee on health, told the hearing.

Ulrich Keil, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Munster, told the committee that “a number” of scientists were questioning the declaration of a pandemic.

“We are witnessing a gigantic misallocation of resources in terms of public health,” he said. “Governments and public health services are wasting huge amounts of money in investing in pandemic diseases whose evidence base is weak.”

While swine flu has not become the deadly global pandemic that some feared it has still caused at least 14,142 deaths according to the most recent WHO data and the WHO has strongly defended itself.

It sent Keiji Fukuda, a WHO special advisor on pandemic influenza, to the hearing. “The labelling of the pandemic as ‘fake’ is to ignore recent history and science and to trivialize the deaths of over 14 000 people and the many additional serious illnesses experienced by others,” he said.

Earlier this year Nature warned in an editorial that, “The danger now is that last year’s relatively mild pandemic will create a false sense of security and complacency. The reality is that next time we might not be so lucky — especially given that this time most of the world’s population, living as they do in developing countries, had no access to either vaccines or antiviral drugs.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 27, 2010
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A new cancer genomics project aims to track down the mutations lurking behind childhood cancers.

The $65 million project will sequence normal and tumour tissue from 600 children with leukaemia, brain tumours, and other cancers. It will draw upon an extensive tissue bank maintained by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

NIH-head and sequencing enthusiast Francis Collins is, predictably, a fan: “This is going to be the most significant set of data we can imagine in paediatric cancer,” he told Dow Jones.

Over the past year or so, data has been drifting in from other cancer genome projects (see our coverage here and here), raising hopes that such endeavours could lead to new, targeted treatments. But the collaboration between St. Jude and Washington University's Genome Center in St. Louis, Missouri will be the largest to tackle the cancers that strike children. (By comparison, USA Today reports that the US National Cancer Institute plans to spend $25 million over the next two years on paediatric genome research.)

The focus is warranted because there is reason to believe that the genetic changes underlying cancer in children may differ from those in adults, Washington University dean Larry Shapiro told Reuters.

“It's a huge black box and we're struggling to understand why some kids get cancer and others live to their 90s without it,” said Rick Wilson, director of Washington University’s genome centre (Associated Press).

Posted by Heidi Ledford on January 26, 2010
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Bill Gates has expressed concern that focusing aid money on climate change at the expense of health could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In the 2010 annual letter from his charitable foundation, Gates notes that the Copenhagen Summit talked of pushing for $10 billion per year for the next three years to help developing countries deal with climate change, with a $100 billion per year by 2020 goal.

“I am concerned that some of this money will come from reducing other categories of foreign aid, especially health,” he writes. “If just 1 percent of the $100 billion goal came from vaccine funding, then 700,000 more children could die from preventable diseases.”

Gates warns that the financial crisis and many countries’ budget deficits mean there is a real risk of aid budgets either being cut or not increasing. He singles out the Italian government for criticism for their recent scaling back of foreign aid

The letter goes on to say Gates is spending a lot of personal time on energy and climate and that it is vital that governments supply “large amounts” of funding for basic research as the world attempts to develop sources of cheap, low-carbon electricity.

“I am surprised that the climate debate hasn’t focused more on encouraging R&D since it is critical to getting to zero emissions,” says Gates. “Still, I think it is likely that out of the many possible approaches, at least one scalable innovation will emerge in the next 20 years and be installed widely in the 20 years after that.”

The Gates Foundation itself has not invested in this area, he says, as it concentrates its funding where there is not a large potential market.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 25, 2010
Categories: Earth, environment & ecology, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not often that one team of scientists hits the headlines for two separate studies in a week. But that's what the groups led by David Melzer, of Exeter's Peninsula Medical School, and Tamara Galloway, of the University of Exeter, have achieved - thanks to their research finding correlations between ill-regarded chemicals and human disease.

Last week, it was bisphenol A linked (for the second time) to heart disease. Today, it's the turn of perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs); in a paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives (doi:10.1289/ehp.0901584), higher concentrations of perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in the blood are correlated with higher incidence of thyroid disease in US adults; while perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) is linked to thyroid disease in US men only.

PFCs were thought to be innocuous when introduced in the 1950s. Their stain-repellent and heat-resistant properties have seen them used in fire-fighting foams, food wrappings, pesticides, carpets, upholstery, industrial surfactants, and to make non-stick coatings. Tthe chemicals have already fallen under suspicion from animal studies, which have sussed them as toxic, potentially carcinogenic, and slow to break down in the environment. Animal studies have also shown links to thyroid hormone imbalances before. Last year, a similar sort of statistical analysis on a set of Danish women linked PFCs to fertility problems.

Continue reading "This time, it's thyroid: perfluorinated chemicals back in the news" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on January 21, 2010
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The parasite that causes the most severe form of malaria is circulating in gorillas, according to a new study contributed to PNAS by Academy member Francisco Ayala of the University of California, in Irvine. Scientists previously thought only humans carried this deadly form of malaria (press release).

Ayala and his team analyzed gorilla poop and found DNA evidence of Plasmodium falciparum — the malaria that causes almost all deaths from the disease — in two gorilla subspecies. They also found the parasite in blood samples taken from a wild born "pet" gorilla in Gabon. (BBC)

Chimps and gorillas were known to carry a parasite closely related to Plasmodium falciparum, called Plasmodium reichenowi, but these parasites were thought to have coevolved with their hosts over the past 5 million years or so and be unable to infect the other apes. Some of the early evidence supporting this hypothesis appears to come from a rather ghastly study in 1939, in which blood from P. reichenowi-infected chimpanzees was injected into humans, and blood from P.falciparum-infected humans was injected into chimps, resulting in neither suffering from an infection.

The new findings suggest that human malignant malaria does indeed infect gorillas, although they don't appear to be ill, perhaps due to their long exposure to P. reichenowi. Nevertheless, mosquitoes sucking their blood may pass the parasites to the next host — and as deforestation and habitat destruction in sub-Saharan Africa barrel along, the authors point out, that host is increasingly likely to be a human.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on January 20, 2010
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Pundits and wags are vigorously debating whether or not it is appropriate to televise physician-reporter hybrids in Haiti who, like CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, have made themselves part of the story by treating injured people on air (Gupta iis shown in the CNN clip to the right).

Richard Besser former acting head of the US Centers for Disease Control, and subject of a recent Nature profile is one of several such hybrids now working for the US television network, ABC. He helped out in a difficult pregnancy, and the anecdote serves as a centrepiece to a story on the earthquake’s impact on pregnant women (view the segment here).

There is some conflict between these correspondents’ dual roles. Not intervening in a story is a central tenet in journalism, but as doctors, these individuals are compelled to attend the sick and injured when they can help.

Gary Schwitzer, a health journalist and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org (a website that rates health journalism) encapsulates several sides of the argument here.

The Los Angeles Times picked up on the story here, with some quotes from Besser. "When I see a situation where there's something I could do to help somebody, I'm going to do that," Besser said.

Many are arguing that once intervention begins (and by all rights, in these cases it must) the reporting stops, or else the story risks becoming a tool of self promotion. Others are speculating whether the earthquake in Haiti represents a special case, or whether journalism must by necessity embrace its ability to intervene.

Rahul K. Parikh, a doctor-reporter himself, lauds the coverage of Gupta working to keep a field clinic open while the camera rolled as improving the image of both doctors and journalists at Salon.com.

Even at NASAwatch Keith Cowing baits a NASA public affairs administrator who Cowing says takes a hard line on non-interventionist journalism.

I emailed Besser who responded that these are tough issues probably worthy of future panel discussions. For him, the decision was not about parsing roles, but both to the right end “These are the types of problems in Haiti. Can you understand it better by seein ghte experience of this patient?” He’ll continue to help patients but says that it should only be on the air if it illustrates a larger story.

Posted by Brendan Maher on January 19, 2010
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The US Food and Drug Administration has reversed its position on bisphenol A (BPA), announcing today that the chemical is of “some concern” to the health of fetuses, infants, and young children.

The controversial chemical, which is used in baby bottles, “sippy” cups, and the inner linings of food cans, has been linked to a range of conditions including prostate and breast cancers, reproductive disorders, and cardiovascular problems. In August 2008, the agency ruled the chemical safe, but outside scientists, including the FDA’s own external science board, criticized the agency for ignoring studies showing the chemical to be harmful to human health. The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, had conducted its own review in 2007 and said that it had some concern about BPA in infants and children.

“We share the perspective of the National Toxicology Program of some concern of the health effects of BPA,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said today. “'Some concern' means that we need to know more.” She said that the FDA is partnering with the NTP to conduct studies over the next 18-24 months at the National Center for Toxicological Research in Arkansas to “clarify certainty about potential risks of BPA”. President Barack Obama has asked federal agencies to put together a task force on children’s environmental health.

In the meantime, the FDA is supporting industry actions to remove BPA from its products and facilitate development of alternatives. The agency recommends that people work to reduce their exposure to BPA, but warns parents against abandoning canned infant formula if they are unable to breast feed. “A stable source of good nutrition outweighs exposure,” Hamburg said.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the NTP, said that the agency is investing $30 million to support research on BPA. “We are working with other agencies to learn as much as we can as fast as we can and to share that information as best as we can,” she said.

Earlier this week, David Melzer of the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Exeter, UK, published a study confirming a link between BPA and coronary heart disease in adults.

Posted by Brendan Borrell on January 15, 2010
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A new genetic map of the Artemisia annua plant could help fight malaria by removing a bottleneck in medicine production.

Published in Science, the map identifies genes related to the yield of the plant’s anti-malaria compound Artemisinin. This should enable breeders to produce highly productive varieties without recourse to GM technologies.

Artemisinin is the most effective drug in the arsenal of doctors treating malaria, but producing enough to meet world demand has been problematic.

“The map is already proving to be an essential tool for us,” says paper author Ian Graham, of the University of York (press release). “With our new understanding of Artemisia genetics, we can produce improved, non-GM varieties of Artemisia much faster than would otherwise be possible.”

The York team have already grown generations of A. annua in the lab to prove they can make a more robust crop and they intend to have high-yielding seeds to farmers in the next 2 to 3 years.

As an opinion piece accompanying the research in Science notes, even the most productive varieties of A. annua produce only 0.5% Artemisinin by dry weight of plant material. Attempts to produce synthetic versions of the drug have had mixed results, meaning a more effective plant crop could be vital in combating malaria.

This new paper “has placed us on that track” notes the opinion piece, but there is a cloud on the horizon: “The next big hurdle for this molecule will be emerging resistance to the drug.”

Image: A. annua plants / University of York

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 15, 2010
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Controversial stem cell treatments for human patients are just one of the issues that will be raised in a new misconduct hearing involving a doctor with offices on London’s prestigious Harley Street.

A Fitness to Practise Panel of the General Medical Council – which regulates doctors in the UK – meets today to consider the behaviour of Robert Trossel. Among the allegations under consideration are that Trossel “offered, and made false claims about” stem cell therapy and other procedures to patients with Multiple Sclerosis and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It is alleged that, in doing so, Dr Trossel’s actions were unjustifiable on the basis of the available scientific or clinical medical evidence, inappropriate, not in the best interests of the patients, exploitative of vulnerable patients, false, misleading, dishonest and an abuse of his position as a doctor,” says a statement on the GMC website.

In its notice of the hearing – scheduled to run between 11 January and 5 March – the GMC also says, “It is further alleged that on 17 February 2009 Dr Trossel was convicted in the Court of First Instance of the Court District of Antwerp of Failing to comply with the statutory provision that every removal and transplant of tissues, cells and organs must be carried out by a physician at a hospital as laid down by the Belgian Hospital Act of 23 December 1963 by removing or transplanting stem cells at a place which was not a recognised Hospital.”

The GMC has the power to remove doctors from a UK register and thereby remove their right to practise medicine in the country.

Nature has asked the Trossel’s solicitors for comment on the allegations.

Trossel's name has appeared in the past in investigations of stem cell therapy by the BBC and the Guardian.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 11, 2010
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David Nutt, the drugs researcher whose sacking by the UK government triggered a huge debate over science advice, has announced he will launch his own advisory group next week.

Nutt was sacked from his role as head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) last year after a drawn out row involving his statements on the relative harms of drugs, and the government’s failure to take the council’s advice (see our previous coverage).

A score of leading scientists will attend the meeting, including members of the ACMD, the BBC reports. “We have a really very, very powerful grouping - more powerful than the ACMD in the past has ever managed to pull together,” says Nutt.

Nutt proposed an ‘independent scientific council on drug harms’ after his sacking last year (outlined in the embedded video). However, some have questioned what impact the body will have.

The UK’s Labour government went against the advice of the official – though supposedly independent – ACMD in assigning legal classifications to illegal substances, so it is questionable what notice they will take of this new body.

Likewise, members of the Conservative opposition party – which many expect to soon be in charge of the UK – have also made disapproving noises regarding Nutt in the past. The party generally takes a ‘tough on drugs’ stance.

Having said that, it may be that the advisory council can have some real credibility with those to whom messages about risk really need to reach: those who use or are considering using drug.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 08, 2010
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Mobile phone use may protect against or even help treat Alzheimer’s, concludes a new study in mice.

Mice without the disease exposed to high-frequency electromagnetic fields similar to those put out by mobile phones (‘cell phones’ to our US readers) also appeared to have better memory than control mice, says a study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

“It surprised us to find that cell phone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms,” says study author Gary Arendash of the University of South Florida, Tampa (press release). “It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cell phones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer’s mice.”

In the study – which was originally released in September last year but has only just been press released – researchers exposed mice genetically modified to develop Alzheimer’s and un-modified mice to the electromagnetic field generated by standard cell phone usage for two one-hour periods a day. The cognitive skills of the mice were then examined using a water maze test and the EM field was found to offer both cognitive-enhancing and cognitive-protective effects.

The researchers propose several, potentially related, mechanisms whereby EM fields could act on brains, including increased neuronal activity, increased cerebral blood flow, and increased clearance of the amyloid-beta plaques found in Alzheimer’s sufferers.

“Although caution should be taken in extrapolating these mouse studies to humans, we conclude that EMF exposure may represent a non-invasive, non-pharmacologic therapeutic against Alzheimer’s disease and an effective memory-enhancing approach in general,” write the authors.

Image: experiment set up / USF

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 07, 2010
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The mysterious link between the mysterious disease known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and the mysterious new virus called XMRV just got more mysterious (BBC).

XMRV was discovered by an American group in 2006 during a search for viruses linked to prostate cancer. Then, this October, another American group published in Science a strong correlation between CFS and infection with XMRV — 67% of CFS patients were infected with the virus, compared to 3.7% of controls. The paper made a big splash not only because it's exceptional to find a correlation of 67% between a virus — or any infectious agent — and a chronic disease, but also because apparently about 4% of the healthy American population is walking around with this curious virus lurking around in their bodies. Despite these links, there is no evidence that XMRV causes either of these diseases.

But the link is completely missing on the other side of the pond. Researchers in Germany and in Ireland had a tough time finding a correlation between XMRV and prostate cancer, and now a group of UK scientists are reporting in PLoS-ONE that none of the CFS patients they tested carry the virus. The team boldly asserts they are “'one thousand per cent' confident in their result” (Daily Mail).

There are a few possibilities to explain this discrepancy.

Continue reading "Chronic confusion about chronic fatigue" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on January 07, 2010
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All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page.

China has confirmed that there have been 659 deaths from H1N1 in the country as of 2 January. In total, 120,940 cases of swine flu have been recorded, says the ministry of health.

“The danger of an explosion of outbreaks in some places exists, and the number of fatalities and serious cases will remain at a rather high level,” warned Liang Wannian, director of the ministry’s emergency response office (AFP).

Liang also warned of problems controlling the spread of H1N1, especially in rural areas. The problem may get worse as Chinese New Year approaches and many people travel around the country.

Last month the World Health Organization said that, as of 27 December 2009, over 200 countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases H1N1 and at least 12,220 deaths have been recorded.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 04, 2010
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Messing with the plugs that male mosquitoes deposit in female reproductive tracts could be a way to slow the spread of malaria, says a new study in PLOS Biology.

Such ‘mating plugs’, formed by proteins found in semen, are seen in many species. They are thought to prevent re-mating and / or help with sperm storage. In the new paper, Flaminia Catteruccia, of Imperial College London, and colleagues detail the composition of the plug used by males of the malarial mosquito species Anopheles gambiae.

They demonstrate that inhibiting plug formation prevents sperm storage but is not a major barrier to re-insemination. Given these mosquitoes only mate once, inhibition of plugs and the consequent problems with sperm retention could clearly severely restrict the animal’s numbers were it to be widespread.

“If in the future we can develop an inhibitor that prevents the coagulating enzyme doing its job inside male An. gambiae mosquitoes in such a way that can be deployed easily in the field – for example in the form of a spray as it is done with insecticides – then we could effectively induce sterility in female mosquitoes in the wild,” says Catteruccia (press release). “This could provide a new way of limiting the population of this species of mosquito, and could be one more weapon in the arsenal against malaria.”

Catteruccia and colleagues show that the plug is formed of cross-linking of seminal proteins mediated by a transglutaminase enzyme specific to male glands that produce the semen. They demonstrate that interfering with the expression of this transglutaminase in males inhibits plug formation.

“This is a very novel idea, which is really neat,” Steve Lindsay, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the BBC. “We will need a whole variety of different tools to combat malaria, and this may have a function, but there is no one magic bullet.”

See also: Finding the Right Plugin: Mosquitoes Have the Answer, PLOS Biology.

Image: mosquitoes courtesy of Sam Cotton, University College London.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 23, 2009
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An exploratory stem cell therapy developed in the UK has successfully restored vision to eight partially sighted patients. (Times, FT)

The treatment, developed by scientists at the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle, UK, will now be further tested in a larger trial of 25 patients.

All eight of the patients who took part in the first trial of the treatment reported improved vision, reduced eye pain and a better quality of life. Russell Turnbull, 38, was one of the participants. He lost most of the sight from his right eye in 1994 when he was sprayed in the face with ammonia while trying to break up a fight. The chemical burnt his cornea, leaving him with cloudy vision, pain on every blink and extreme sensitivity to light. His vision was restored after stem cells from his good eye were used to repair his damaged one.

“This has transformed my life,” Turnbull, told the Financial Times. “I’m working, I can go jet skiing and also ride horses,” he adds.

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on December 23, 2009
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The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under George W. Bush has been hired to head up the vaccines unit of pharma giant Merck & Co.

Julie Gerberding, who was director of the CDC during 2002-09, stepped down from the agency when US President Barack Obama took office at the start of this year.

“I’ve had the privilege in my previous work in academia and in the federal government to be a passionate advocate for public health priorities such as vaccines, which are an imperative component of global health development,” says Gerberding (press release). “I am very excited to be joining Merck where I can help to expand access to vaccines around the world.”

Gerberding didn’t have an entirely smooth ride as the first female head of the CDC. She was in charge during the 2001 anthrax attacks and came under fierce criticism for allegedly toning down testimony to congress on global warming at the behest of Bush.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote after her resignation/ousting:

During Dr. Julie Gerberding’s six years directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, critics lambasted her, accusing her of sacrificing science for politics and carrying the Bush agenda on global warming and other issues into the world of scientific research.

Her defenders countered that she kept the agency above political concerns and expanded its mission to include bioterrorism research, combating AIDS globally and responding to national health threats.

Noting her appointment to Merck, Reuters says – perhaps harshly - “she had led CDC from one crisis to another”.

Interestingly, Reuters points out that Gerberding will now be in charge of pushing Merck’s underperforming HPV vaccine Gardasil. This is opposed by many who might be considered traditional Bush supporters over fears that vaccinating against sexually transmitted diseases might promote promiscuity.

Image: Wikipedia

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 22, 2009
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Fears of a ‘second wave’ of CJD cases in the UK have been resurrected by a new research paper in the Lancet.

John Collinge, the leading expert on the brain-destroying variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), and his colleagues report the case of a 30-year old man who died in January this year of the neurological condition. Crucially, this man had a different genetic make up to all the cases seen so far.

Fears over CJD have largely subsided in the UK, following the ‘Mad Cow’ scare in the 1980s over beef contaminated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), a CJD-like disease that occurs in cows. At the end of last year these fears were rekindled by the first mentions of the individual whose death is now reported (see: UK braces for more CJD cases).

The reason the case is important is that one version of the human prion protein gene (PRNP) is known to confer a large susceptibility to prion diseases such as CJD. Previous sufferers have all had this highly susceptible profile but in the case reported in the Lancet the individual had a different, supposedly less-susceptible genotype.

Continue reading "CJD fears resurface in the UK" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 18, 2009
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AIDS researchers were crestfallen after admitting today that a major clinical trail into anti-HIV gel showed it failed to reduce the risk of infection.

Earlier results had suggested that PRO 2000 – a gel applied to the vagina or rectum to combat virus transmission – could reduce the risk of infection by around 30% but the new trial of 9,385 women found it was no better than placebo.

"This is a disappointing result for the product, as the trial shows that it is not effective,” says Jonathan Weber, co-chair of the Microbicides Development Programme management board and a researcher at Imperial College London (press release). “However, the trial itself was very well designed and undertaken, so we know that the results are definitive.”

Among the 3,156 women given PRO 200 gel there were 130 cases of HIV infection. Among 3,112 given placebo gel there were 123 cases. Trial participants were asked to use the gel both before and after sex and they were also given condoms and asked to use these as well as the gel.

The results will be submitted for peer-review publication, says the Microbicides Development Programme. The MDP notes that although this is “certainly the end of research on PRO 2000, and products with a similar level of potency in the laboratory tests” there are trials of a more potent microbicide called tenofoir already underway.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 14, 2009
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Partial bone marrow transplants may cure sickle cell disease in adults, researchers at the US National Institutes of Health report in the New England Journal of Medicine. (US News)

Sickle cell disease is an inherited condition in which some red blood cells take on a “sickle” shape that can clog up blood vessels, causing pain, organ failure and strokes. Symptoms can be treated with blood transfusions and drugs, but these have side effects and don’t always work.

The only curative treatment is a bone marrow transplant that replaces the blood stem cells, but this has only been performed in children, as clinicians thought adult patients’ bodies would have been too ravaged by the disease to survive a bone marrow transplant — which includes chemotherapy, radiation and drugs that suppress the immune system.

By taking the transplantation down a few notches — low-dose radiation, a different immunosuppressant drug and no chemotherapy — the researchers were able to pull off successful transplantations in 9 out of 10 patients, aged 16 to 45. The less intense procedure left some of the patients’ own faulty bone marrow intact, but there was enough room for donor cells to fill in that symptoms of the disease were gone in the 9 patients with successful grafts, at least for the duration of the 30-month study. All 10 patients are still alive and have not developed graft-versus-host disease, although some of them remain on immunosuppressants. (Reuters)

Image: NIH.gov

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on December 10, 2009
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Vietnamese health officials have reported a cluster of drug-resistant H1N1 cases.

In a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine they report that 10 students travelled together on a 42-hour train journey in July this year and at least six of them later developed tamiflu-resistant swine flu. The paper notes that the students did not know each other before the train ride and had no contact with people suspected of H1N1 infection. Nor had any of them received tamiflu (oseltamivir).

“In this cluster, infection developed in at least 6 of the 10 people who were probably exposed to the index patient; this shows that resistant 2009 H1N1 viruses are transmissible and can replicate and cause illness in healthy people in the absence of selective drug pressure,” write the Vietnam H1N1 Investigation Team. “… The loss of oseltamivir as a treatment option for severe 2009 H1N1 infection could have profound consequences.”

Earlier this month the World Health Organization reported two clusters of patients infected with tamiflu-resistant H1N1, one in Wales and one in North Carolina. However both these incidents involved patients whose immune systems were already weakened and the virus was probably passed between patients in each group.

“This [the Vietnam outbreak] is different and it does raise the levels of concern. But it also I think reinforces the message that we do need to be constantly monitoring for this. And reporting it as quickly as it’s observed,” Charles Penn of the WHO told the Canadian Press.

All the patients in the Vietnamese case eventually recovered.

All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 10, 2009
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This morning, convicted murderer Kenneth Biros became the first person executed in the United States using an overdose of thiopental sodium rather than the typical three-drug cocktail. Despite objections that the new procedure could take more than twice as long to kill, it took just ten minutes, according to the local news site Vindy.com.

In the traditional procedure, officials first inject the sedative thiopental sodium, followed by a muscle relaxant, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart. Critics have challenged the method as “cruel and unusual punishment” because it can cause extreme pain if the sedative is not properly administered, and the medical community has long objected to taking part in any form of execution (Nature).

Although the Supreme Court upheld the procedure's constitutionality last year, Ohio became the first state to abandon it after a botched execution last month in which prison staff were unable to identify an appropriate vein. (The Guardian)

However, because the single injection method is untested, it has found its critics as well. Biros’ lawyers called it human experimentation and experts noted that a single injection could take 15 to 30 minutes for the heart to stop beating compared to 7 using the three-drug cocktail. (The Telegraph)

In the end, the court didn't buy the argument from Biros’ lawyers, and he was executed at 11:47 am. (New York Times)

Posted by Brendan Borrell on December 08, 2009
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Loneliness can increase cancer risk, at least in rats, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found that social isolation of normally gregarious rats (and the resulting stress) led to a huge increase in both the number and the nastiness of tumours. They kept lab rats either alone or in groups of five. Those kept alone had a 135% increase in the number of mammary tumours, a 8,391% increase in the size of tumours and a 3.3-fold increase in the relative risk of malignancy.

“There is a growing interest in relationships between the environment, emotion and disease,” says Gretchen Hermes, of the Yale Department of Psychiatry (press release). “This study offers insight into how the social world gets under the skin.”

Other researchers have also shown that social isolation increases the growth of tumours. Earlier this year Suzanne Conzen, of the University of Chicago, and colleagues reported in the journal Cancer Prevention Research that keeping rats alone increased tumour growth and altered mammary gland gene expression.

However the link between stress and breast cancer in humans has not been conclusively established.

Meg Macarthur, from Breakthrough Breast Cancer, says (via the Daily Telegraph), “This extremely early stage research is based on a sample of 40 rats – 20 of which were isolated to identify the impact of stress on developing breast cancer. This very small study suggests that stress due to isolation might increase the number of breast cancer tumours; however, these findings cannot be directly translated to humans.”

When it is published, the paper will be available here.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 08, 2009
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Severe early-onset obesity has been linked to genetic make-up by a paper published yesterday by Nature.

Investigations of 300 children found copy number variation (CNV) – deletion or duplication of large chunks of DNA – was linked to this form of obesity.

“We found that part of chromosome 16 can be deleted in some families, and that people with this deletion have severe obesity from a young age,” says Sadaf Farooqi from the University of Cambridge (press release).

“Our results suggest that one particular gene on chromosome 16 called SH2B1 plays a key role in regulating weight and also in handling blood sugar levels. People with deletions involving this gene had a strong drive to eat and gained weight very easily.”

Although the finding only applies to severe, early-onset obesity – and not the more widespread problem of adult obesity in general – it could have important implications for those raising children with these CNVs. Some of the children in the study had been placed on social services ‘at risk’ registers as a result of their obesity and suspicions parents were deliberately overfeeding them.

“We hope that this will alter attitudes and practices amongst those with professional responsibility for the health and well-being of children,” says Farooqi.

See also
Obese children taken off at-risk register after scientists discover they carry 'fat gene' – Daily Mail
Science rescues children from obesity police – The Times
Weight gain is guided by our DNA but doesn’t usually tell the whole story – Times op ed piece

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on December 07, 2009
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The Treatment Action Group, an AIDS policy think tank, released its latest report today showing that the rising trend in funding for tuberculosis research tapered off in 2008. In addition, the bulk of funding has shifted from government agencies to philanthropic heavyweights like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated $165 million last year.

Tuberculosis infects one-third of people world wide, killing an estimated 1.6 million each year, and the increase in multi-drug resistant strains of TB has raised fears that it could expand its toll (WHO). From 2005 to 2007, TB funding increased by about 15% annually to $473 million. Last year, however, funding increased just 8%, to $510 million.

One key point of the recent report is that research into diagnostics, including support for a TB dipstick that could identify the pathogen in blood or urine, has been lagging. About 35% of TB research funds went toward drug development, whereas diagnostics received less than 10%. Many scientists believe simpler diagnostics could save lives because the current procedure requires microscopic examination of sputum samples, a technique not available in impoverished parts of Africa where TB is most prevalent. (MSNBC)

Posted by Brendan Borrell on December 03, 2009
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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended that the most widely used HIV anti-retroviral treatment be phased out (Reuters, BBC).

The advice to phase out the use of stavudine comes as part of the WHO’s revamped advice for treating HIV on the eve of World AIDS day (press release). That advice includes starting anti-retroviral sooner in adults and adolescents, and for the first time WHO recommends that HIV-positive breast-feeding mothers take anti-retrovirals to try and stop infants being infected.

Mothers infected with HIV are also now recommended to begin taking anti-retrovirals earlier in their pregnancy (previously it was recommended that HIV-positive mothers started taking the drugs in their third trimester to stop the infection being transmitted to the child). The new recommendations say that the anti-retrovirals should be taken from the 14th week and until the end of the breast feeding period. “We are sending a clear message that breastfeeding is a good option for every baby, even those with HIV-positive mothers, when they have access to ARVs," says Daisy Mafubelu, WHO's Assistant Director General for Family and Community Health.

The recommendation that stavudine be phased out was made because of long term and irreversible side effects that the drug causes, including wasting and neurological problems. Other drugs exist that do the same job without side effects, and in the developed world stavudine is not widely used. But it’s cheap and widely available, making it more popular in developing countries.

The recommendations will lead to more people needing treatment, says the WHO, but justifies this saying: “The associated costs of earlier treatment may be offset by decreased hospital costs, increased productivity due to fewer sick days, fewer children orphaned by AIDS and a drop in HIV infections.”

According to WHO, 33.4 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 2.7 million new infections each year. Globally, HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death for women of reproductive age.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 30, 2009
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All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page.

It has been a mixed week for swine flu vaccines.

On Wednesday GSK announced use of one particular batch of its H1N1 jab should be halted after a higher than expected rate of severe allergic reactions related to the vaccine in Canada.

On the other hand, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out and backed the safety of vaccination. It says 22 million Americans have been vaccinated with 3,200 – mostly minor – side effects being reported.

“The vaccine data so far really suggests this is a safe vaccine,” said the CDC’s Anne Schuchat on Wednesday (AP).

In the UK David Salisbury, director of immunisation at the Department of Health, told family doctors to step up their vaccination efforts (Times). So far only 1 million of 10m distributed doses of vaccine have been used (Financial Times).

“Clearly I would have liked a bigger number, but that is what we have so far. I would like to see an acceleration now,” says Salisbury (BBC).

Some reports have indicated that doctors and pregnant women are wary of vaccination in the UK (Pulse).

Ireland is also pushing people to be vaccinated. “Children under five are a high priority group and . . . we are concerned that we are not getting a sufficient number of them vaccinated,” said Pat Doorley, national director of population health, on Friday (Irish Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 27, 2009
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Cross posted from Nature's Spoonful of Medicine blog. Written by Elie Dolgin.

The death toll from AIDS has topped 25 million people, but new infections are dropping sharply, according to a report released yesterday by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

First, the bad news: according to the new report, titled AIDS Epidemic Update 2009, last year some 2.7 million people became infected with the virus. That brings the total number of people living with the disease to around 33.4 million worldwide.

The good news is that this rate of new HIV infection has been reduced by 17% over the past eight years. Since 2001, HIV incidence has fallen by 15% in sub-Saharan Africa and 25% in East Africa. In South and South East Asia, HIV infections declined by 10% in the same time period.

The report also concluded that the number of AIDS-related deaths has dropped by more than 10% over the past five years. That change, it says, is due in large part to more widespread availability of life saving anti-retroviral treatments.

The report’s rosy glow is no license for complacency, however. "This is a sign that HIV infection prevention efforts are making a difference, but we're still not moving fast enough to break the trajectory of the virus," UNAIDS deputy executive director Paul De Lay said at a press conference.

For example, a new case study published in this month’s issue of the journal AIDS describes a particularly nasty strain of HIV that killed a previously healthy 20-year-old within 6 months of infection, even though the virus didn’t show up on standard antibody tests. So, while infections and deaths may be on the decline overall, clinicians and researchers need to stay vigilant to detect the next trick up HIV’s sleeve.

"It is now a morel imperative that we sustain and strengthen the global response to this epidemic," Teguest Guerma, acting director of the WHO's HIV/AIDS department, said at the press conference.

Image: UNAIDS

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 25, 2009
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While American football commentators jokingly talked about contacting rocket scientists to assess the statistical wisdom of a disastrous play call by the New England Patriots last week, the National Football League is actually considering upping its use of brain scientists to combat head injuries. The NFL will reportedly have teams work with independent neurologists on concussion issues according to the Associated Press.

Although concussions are an annual hot topic during the football season, they’ve taken new urgency with recent research and a congressional investigation into the lasting effects of repeated head on collisions including dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. One player contended that team doctors are worrying more about the win than the player's safety and quality of life post-retirement. Still, an AP poll of 160 players recently revealed that many players purposely underreport the effects and severity of head collisions so that they can continue playing.

Last week the Wall Street Journal, proposed a simple solution, remove the helmets and players would be more careful about protecting their noggins. Just look at rugby where there are a few “freak accidents” but less tendency to “lead with your hat.”

The NFL responded that that’s not really something they’d consider. Americans don’t want to watch rugby, apparently.

Image: Tackle by Wigstruck via Flickr under creative commons.

Posted by Brendan Maher on November 23, 2009
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More safety data is needed before an experimental flu vaccine made inside insect cells should be approved, a US federal advisory committee said yesterday.

A US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel voted 6-to-5 that Protein Sciences, a vaccine company based in Meriden, Connecticut, hadn’t proven that its FluBlok vaccine was safe enough to enter mass production. Nine of the 11 panellists, however, said the shot was effective in adults aged 18 to 49, although the vaccine did not appear to work as well in older patients.

The vaccine is made by inserting flu genes into an insect virus and growing it in caterpillar ovary cells. This process only takes two months, compared to the five or six needed to grow virus in chicken eggs, and so it has been touted as a way to speed up manufacturing when new vaccines against potentially pandemic flu strains are urgently needed — like now. Fewer than 50 million doses of H1N1 vaccine are currently available in the US.

Continue reading "Bug-based flu vaccine rebuffed" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on November 20, 2009
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Posted for Meredith Wadman

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is once again under fire for lax oversight of conflicts of interest among the extramural researchers it supports.

A November 18 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services, the NIH’s parent agency, recommends that the agency significantly tighten its policing of conflicts. NIH is the world’s largest biomedical research funder, and it channels 80% of its $31 billion budget to extramural grants.

The inspector general reached his conclusions by examining the financial conflict documentation from 41 extramural institutions for the government’s 2006 fiscal year. Current regulations require grantee institutions to “reduce, manage or eliminate” conflicts reported by their researchers that could reasonably be affected by their NIH-funded work.

The inspector general found that, among the documentation for 184 conflicts involving 165 researchers, only six researchers’ conflicts were eliminated by their universities. The lion’s share, totalling 136, were “managed”. Grantee institutions “rarely” reduce or eliminate conflicts, the report concluded.

Among the report’s recommendations: that universities collect financial interest data in specific dollar amounts and not in ranges such as “$10,000-$50,000”. It also recommends that NIH require researchers to report to their institutions all their financial interests and not just those that they judge could reasonably be affected by their NIH-supported research.

“Full and complete disclosure ensures that the determination of whether a significant financial interest relates to the research rests with the grantee institution and not with the researcher,” the report argues.

Specific dollar amounts would certainly shed more light on the equity holdings of researchers. These were found by the inspector general to be the most common financial interest, with 111 of the researchers reporting equity holdings, and at least six of these holding more than $100,000 [Corrected: 23/11].

NIH is in the process of rewriting its conflict of interest reporting requirements; it is expected to issue new regulations by year’s end (see: Researcher payment reporting under scrutiny).

The report follows a similar briefing from the inspector general in January 2008 (see: NIH in the dark over conflicts of interest). Investigations by Senator Charles Grassley have pointed out several cases of underreporting of six-figure amounts by NIH-funded researchers (see: Money in biomedicine: The senator's sleuth).

Sally Rockey, acting deputy director of the office of extramural research at NIH, said in a statement that, "NIH has demonstrated its commitment to oversight activities and continues to make them an agency priority." She added that the inspector's recommendations "will be considered by the NIH along with public comments ... as it formulates a new regulation that will facilitate effective compliance."

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 20, 2009
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Posted for David Cyranoski

The Chinese government has sent inspection teams to check on H1N1 reporting after a famed Chinese doctor accused local governments of covering up swine flu cases.

Zhong Nanshan of Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases in southern China, called into question the official number of deaths from H1N1, telling the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper that the quoted figure of 53 was too low. “I just don’t believe that there have been 53 H1N1 deaths nationwide,” he said.

Yesterday Ministry of Health spokesman Deng Haihua, said any officials who do not carry out their H1N1 reporting duties or who delay reporting will be “held accountable”. He also said that teams had been sent to inspect pandemic control. In total nine groups have been sent to Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Hunan, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang (official statement).

While many have pointed out that limitations on testing capacity have led to an underreporting, Zhong suggested that some hospitals were intentionally not testing those who died from pneumonia for H1N1.

His words carry weight because he shot to fame during the Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003 for quickly recognizing and reacting to the threat posed by the new virus while government officials around the country tried to cover it up.

All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 20, 2009
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Human embryonic stem cells could be one step closer to the clinic. Santa Monica, California-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that it has applied to US regulators to launch a new clinical trial aimed at reversing vision loss with retinal cells recreated from embryonic stem (ES) cells.

The company plans to test the stem cell-derived retinal cells in 12 patients suffering from Stargardt's disease, a form of inherited juvenile macular degeneration that affects around one in 10,000 children.

ACT researchers previously showed that ES cells could give rise to retinal pigment epithelium cells, the photoreceptors that go awry in the disease. They then demonstrated that the cells could restore vision in a rat model of retinal disease. And in September, the researchers reported that the cells were long-lasting and safe in a mouse model of Stargardt's.

"Our research clearly shows that stem cell-derived retinal cells can rescue visual function in animals that otherwise would have gone blind," said Robert Lanza, ACT's chief scientific officer, in a statement. "We are hopeful that the cells will be similarly efficacious in patients."

ACT's investigational new drug (IND) application is only the second filing with the US Food and Drug Administration for a therapy involving human ES cells. The first company out of the gate, Menlo Park, California-based Geron Corp., had its stem-cell derived therapy to treat spinal cord injury patients approved last January. But the FDA put a hold on the trial before a single patient had been injected with the cells, citing safety concerns. Geron now says it plans to restart the trial in the second half of next year.

For more on why stem cell-derived transplants could work to delay or prevent blindness, see the June 2009 news feature from the sadly now-defunct Nature Reports Stem Cells.

Image: The left eye of a Stargardt's patient from Özdek et al., Eye 19, 1222–1225 (2005).

Posted by Elie Dolgin on November 19, 2009
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People in Papua New Guinea who took part in cannibalistic rituals appear to have rapidly evolved resistance to the deadly prion disease kuru.

Researchers who performed genetic analysis on 3,000 people from the Eastern Highland populations of the island found a novel gene variant that they say is an acquired resistance factor which was selected for during PNG’s kuru epidemic in the first half of the last century.

In total 709 villagers in these populations ate the brains of their dead in rituals but only 152 died of the CJD-like disease kuru, the team report in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“It’s absolutely fascinating to see Darwinian principles at work here. This community of people has developed their own biologically unique response to a truly terrible epidemic, ” says study author John Collinge of the Medical Research Council Prion Unit at University College London (press release).

“The fact that this genetic evolution has happened in a matter of decades is remarkable.”

Collinge suggests that the discovery may shed light on possible cures or treatments for prion diseases in general.

Eating brains in ‘mortuary feasts’ was banned in PNG in the 1950s and kuru has since disappeared.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 19, 2009
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The Ancient Egyptians were more modern than one might think. Not only did they have heart disease, they’re now being given CT scans.

So says a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association by cardiologist Gregory Thomas at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues. Thomas and chums took whole-body CT scans of 22 mummies housed in the Egyptian National Museum of Antiquities in Cairo, Egypt.

And despite its link with our recent lazy, fatty, smoky lifestyle, atherosclerosis – where the artery walls thicken from a build up of cholesterol – was prevalent among the mummies.

Why would cardiologists look at this in the first place, and what does the study tell us? Well, according to the LA Times, Thomas became interested after he read about Pharoah Merenptah.

When he died at age 60 in 1203 BC, Merenptah was plagued by atherosclerosis, arthritis and dental decay, the story says. Thomas reckoned that traces of atherosclerosis might still be there, and set off to Egypt armed with a scanner.

The tell-tale signs were calcium deposits in the hearts and arteries of the mummies, which were spotted by the scanners. Of the 22 mummies, the team were able to find the hearts of 16, and of those 9 had signs of the heart disease.

The disease seemed to be age related – affecting those over 45 of both sexes.

So what does this mean for modern humans? Thomas thinks it shows that heart diseases is just part of what it is to be human, and the British Tabloid the Daily Mail take this as a reason to let fast food off the hook.

But it makes sense – the Egyptians, at least those of sufficient status to be deemed mummyfiable, ate a diet rich in fatty meats, and salt was often used to preserve food because fridges were some 3,500 years away from being invented.

Image by Michiel2005 via flickr under Creative Commons

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 18, 2009
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Francis Collins' successor to lead the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute will be Eric Green, NHGRI's current scientific director and head of intramural research, the NIH said today.

Green, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, has both an MD and a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, and worked on the Human Genome Project as a co-investigator at Washington University's Human Genome Sequencing Center before arriving at NIH in 1994. He now leads NIH's internal genome sequencing center and has led and been involved with many other projects at NHGRI, such as the Undiagnosed Diseases Program, the NIH said.

Continue reading "Green named to head genome institute" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on November 17, 2009
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Here’s some more fuel for the fiery healthcare debate in the United States: if you don’t have health insurance you’re more likely to die after traumatic injury.

Heather Rosen, of Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues analysed the data in the US National Trauma Data Bank from 2002 to 2006. A crude analysis found the uninsured had a 39% higher risk of dying in hospital following traumatic injury, such as a car accident, versus the insured.

When corrected for sex, race, age, injury severity and injury mechanism the uninsured had an 80% higher chance of dying. Looking just at young patients, who would likely have fewer other health issues, found the uninsured were at 89% increased risk, they write in Downwardly Mobile – the accidental cost of being uninsured, a paper in Archives of Surgery.

“This concerning finding warrants more rigorous investigation to determine why such variation in mortality would exist in a system where equivalent care is not only expected but mandated by law,” write the authors. “Although the lack of insurance may not be the only explanation for the disparity in trauma mortality, the accidental costs of being uninsured in the United States today may be too high to continue to overlook.”

It’s not entirely clear why the uninsured should be so disadvantaged. It may be they experience delays in treatment, they may receive different treatment, or they may be less able to communicate with doctors due to poor ‘health literacy’, say Rosen et al.

The authors also note that the database they use may not be representative of the US as a whole.

Despite these problems, in an invited critique of the article, Brent Eastman, of Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla in San Diego, says it is “disturbing to see from this study that, even with guaranteed access, the uninsured have a higher adjusted mortality rate after trauma”.

He adds, “Inclusive trauma systems in the United States are designed to ensure that all trauma patients have expeditious transfer to the level of care commensurate with their injuries regardless of insurance status. Such systems should also guarantee the same level and quality of care to all patients.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 16, 2009
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Two blockbuster cholesterol drugs are not as effective at unclogging arteries as a cheap vitamin for patients already taking cholesterol-lowering statins, according to a new study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine and reported at the American Heart Association meeting in Orlando, Florida.

The new study, with only 208 patients, found that a controlled-release version of the B vitamin niacin, made by Abbott Laboratories (which funded the study), reduced artery plaque significantly better after 14 months than ezetimibe, the active ingredient in Zetia and a combination cholesterol drug Vytorin, both highly profitable pharmaceuticals made by Merck & Co. The trial originally enrolled 363 people but was called off several months early, in July, when investigators concluded there was a clear difference between the two drugs, although they didn't release any results at the time.

Continue reading "Cholesterol drugs' effectiveness called into question — again" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on November 16, 2009
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Anonymous sex worker Belle de Jour, who became one of the first celebrity bloggers in the UK, has revealed herself as a research scientist. Brooke Magnanti, who works on cancer epidemiology, told the Sunday Times she began charging £300 an hour through an escort agency after becoming strapped for cash while finishing her PhD.

“I couldn’t find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn’t have my PhD yet. I didn’t have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva; and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would,” she told the paper. (A number of those commenting on the revelation have used it to highlight the poorly paid status of PhD students.)

The paper says she has informed her colleagues at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, part of the University of Bristol, who have been “amazingly kind and supportive”.

She also told the Times, “I wanted to be a physicist, but that just didn’t work out.” Of the future she says, “I’d like to go back to studying cancer epidemiology and etiology: the causes of cancer and the diagnosis rates. They’re my thing.” (Full interview.)

The Belle de Jour blog enjoyed huge success and was produced as a book and later televised. However, it did prove controversial, with some critics accusing it of glamorising prostitution and even claiming it must have been written by a man.

On the original blog the following message is posted “Belle and the person who wrote her had been apart too long. I had to bring them back together. So a perfect storm of feelings and circumstances drew me out of hiding.” (Some reports say Magnanti revealed herself as ‘Belle’ because a former boyfriend was about to expose her.)

Reaction below the fold.

Continue reading "Famous sex worker outed as cancer researcher" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 16, 2009
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There’s huge excitement in the world’s media about a plan to ‘grow replacement breasts’ for victims of breast cancer.

Over a fortnight ago Australia’s government announced a $2.95 million (AU) grant for the development of an alternative to silicon in breast reconstruction.

“The technique involves the insertion of a customised biodegradable chamber which is contoured to match the woman’s natural breast shape within which the permanent fat found in breasts can be grown,” announced Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings in a press release.

That release seems to have sunk into the morass of the news-swamp with little or no notice until this week.

Australia’s Herald Sun kicked things off, reporting: “Melbourne scientists are poised to begin revolutionary surgery to help cancer victims regrow their breasts.”

Continue reading "Growing new breasts" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 13, 2009
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Analysis of a dozen published clinical trials suggests that the drug company Pfizer selectively reported results to expand the market for their epilepsy drug Neurontin.

Researchers compared internal company documents with published reports, and found some glaring inconsistencies. In 8 of the 12 studies, the main criteria used to judge effectiveness, known as the primary outcome, was changed by Pfizer, they reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Sometimes negative results turned into positive results. Other times, primary study goals were reported as secondary study goals.

"The trouble is, as a scientist, the publication has always been held up to me as the truth," said study author Kay Dickersin, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "It’s the scientific record. What this study indicated is we can’t believe that record." (Bloomberg)

Dickersin obtained the company documents while serving as an expert witness for the prosecution in litigation against Pfizer. In 2004, the drug company paid $430 million to settle a lawsuit for promoting Neurontin for off-label uses not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. (Reuters)

Pfizer disputed the report's conclusions. "We believe the review suffers from significant bias, insufficient data, poor methodology, and cannot pass the threshold of credible scientific research," Pfizer said in a statement. (Washington Post)

Posted by Elie Dolgin on November 12, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A paper in the journal Human Reproduction adds weight to a long-held (by some) suspicion that the plasticising chemical bisphenol A (BPA) does bad things to the body’s hormone balance.

In this study, male workers in Chinese factories handling BPA were compared to a control group of Chinese factory workers who weren’t exposed to BPA over five years.

The results showed that the workers in the factories handling BPA had four times the risk of erectile dysfunction, and seven times more risk of ejaculation difficulty (press release).

This stark conclusion is the first direct evidence that exposure to BPA in the workplace could have bad health effects, the authors led by De-Kun Li, a reproductive and perinatal epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, California.

For years BPA has been associated with a range of health problems, from cancer to diabetes and heart disease.

The suspicion was that BPA was an endocrine disruptor – a substance that mucks up the way hormones in the body, including sexual reproduction hormones – are made and regulated. This study, the authors say, provides the evidence that the US regulators have been after for years. They add that the levels in this study were very high – nothing like the levels people are normally exposed to in everyday life.

The chemical is already regulated. In Canada, for example, BPA is banned in baby bottle manufacture, and in France earlier this year members of the senate sought a ban on BPA. Of course, there is also perhaps a need for caution – don’t be terrified, not all plastics used in baby products or drinks bottles contain BPA, and no links between low exposure levels and adverse health effects have been found. In the US at least, it seems that it is easy to check whether BPA is present: there should be a number 7 printed on any bottle that contains the stuff.

Presumably the publication of this paper will now add much more weight to the arguments of campaigners calling for an outright ban on the chemical. The story has certainly got a lot of media coverage, from Packaging News to CNN.

Bad timing award goes to the Globe and Mail, which ran a column on Monday (the day before the study came out) saying that so far all BPA fears have been hyped by activists.

Image: Getty

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 12, 2009
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The American Medical Association has adopted a new policy that calls for the US government to review its ban on medical marijuana, the physician's group announced Tuesday.

The most well-established clinical application for marijuana istreatment of nausea, vomiting and unintended weight loss, particularly when these conditions accompany chemotherapy. Other studies have shown that marijuana may be effective in treating migraines, MS, PMS, ADHD and dozens of other conditions.

Medical marijuana is already legal in 13 states — with a 14th possibly on the horizon — but is illegal at the federal level. The US government currently classifies marijuana, along with heroin, PCP and many others as a Schedule 1 Drug — its strictest category, professedly reserved for drugs with a high tendency for abuse and no accepted medical use.

Now, the AMA thinks the latter incrimination deserves a new look. Although they noted that the new policy "should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product", the AMA is promoting clinical research, cannabis-based medicine development and alternative delivery methods, such as vaporizers.

The move comes just weeks after the Obama administration announced it would not arrest medical marijuana users and providers who follow state laws.

Image: medical marijuana dispensary in California by Neeta Lind, via Flickr

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 11, 2009
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A graduate student at Boston University did catch Neisseria meningitidis from an experiment, health officials in the city have confirmed. According to the Boston Globe, genetic analysis matched bacteria from a blood sample provided by the sick student to samples from the lab where he was working.

The globe says the student was working in a relatively low level bio-safety level-2 lab, not a sci-fi, high-tech level-4. Back in 2004 three scientists at the university were infected from their lab, leading the city to clamp down on its regulation and leaving BU with an $8,100 fine.

“It’s well known that people who work in research labs are exposed to the risk of infection,” Thomas Moore, associate provost of BU’s South End medical campus said last month when the infection occurred. “It doesn’t always mean they’re sloppy.’’

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 10, 2009
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A paper has been published today in Nature Nanotechnology with a fairly provocative title: Nanoparticles can cause DNA damage across a cellular barrier.

But before we start shouting “grey goo” from the rooftops and blaming nanotechnology for ruining our lives, the paper requires some more considered thought. We already suspect that certain nanoparticles cause damage, but the need for more research is abundantly clear.

What the team, led by Charles Case from the Bristol Implant Research Centre, UK, and his colleagues have shown is that in their lab situation – more of which later – certain nanoparticles can reach through a cellular barrier and cause damage to the DNA in fibroblasts, which are cells important in wound healing.

The fact that nanoparticles can cross a cellular barrier (think blood-brain barrier, or the placenta) could cause alarm, but in this case shouldn’t.

The report is likely to be more interesting for those wanting to study the cellular processes that are happening. The set up in the lab was far removed from a real-life situation. Case’s team used a type of cell that can be used to build a structure that mimics a cellular barrier, they then built up three layers of these cells to make sure there were no gaps, and put the fibroblasts behind it. They then exposed the system to a very high dose of cobalt/chromium nanoparticles – because these are created in small amounts when artificial joints wear during use.

The results showed that the nanoparticles stayed in amongst the barrier cells without killing them. They nanoparticles didn’t reach the fibroblasts. So how was the DNA in the fibroblasts damaged? This is the part that is likely to whet the appetites of other scientists in the field. It looks like the nanoparticles set off a series of signals within the cells of the barrier, that ultimately led to the release of DNA-damaging ATP through two specific channels at the edge of the barrier.

This signalling process meant that the fibroblasts’ DNA was more damaged when the barrier was present than when the fibroblasts were directly exposed to the nanoparticles.

So what does this mean? I can’t put it any better than Andrew Maynard, nanotech regulation expert from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, who told me, “it's an important study as it raises possible new ways in which harm could occur following exposure. But while it raises new questions, it is far from conclusive on whether this is a relevant or significant way in which specific types of nanoparticles can cause harm. More research is needed.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 05, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The science advisor fired by the UK government last week has penned an editorial explaining his actions.

David Nutt, until Friday the chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), was fired after widespread media attention focused on his comments on the relative risks of legal and illegal substances (see links below).

In a guest editorial in this week’s New Scientist, Nutt says that the UK government is both ignoring its own advisors and “falling out of step” with an international trend towards more liberal drug policies. He writes:

The message for the British government is a simple one: don’t exclude rational argument in order to exploit a visceral public response. Politicians have to win the hearts and minds of their electorate. If your policy is informed by an underlying moral imperative, be open about what that is, and don’t try to disguise it with a veneer of pseudo-science. We ignore scientific evidence at our peril.

Nature has also produced an editorial on Nutt-gate this week. It reads, in part:

Scientific advisers who publicly attack decisions they consider to be less than ideal, and in so doing provide ammunition for political opponents of those decisions, are entering dangerous territory.

Nonetheless, in this case, the position of the Labour government and of the leading opposition party, the Conservatives, which vigorously supported Nutt’s sacking, has no merit at all. It deals a significant blow both to the chances of an informed and reasoned debate over illegal drugs, and to the parties’ own scientific credibility.

Previous Nutt News
Cracks show in government over Nutt-gate – 03 November 2009
Sacked science adviser speaks out - 2 November 2009
Government sacks independent drugs advisor - 30 October 2009
UK government vs its own drugs advisor, Part II - 29 October 2009
Ecstasy advice is a bitter pill - 12 February 2009
Love drug gets politicians fighting - 09 February 2009

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 04, 2009
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Many thanks to genome scientists for giving us tastier sausages, for according to the Telegraph’s food and drink section, the best thing about the recently unveiled pig genome is that it will lead us to better bangers.

The announcement was made from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, but the pig, a red-haired Duroc pig came from a farm at the University of Illinois, US.

"The pig is the ideal animal to look at lifestyle and health issues in the United States," the AP reports Larry Schook as saying. Schook, from the University of Illinois in Champaign, led the DNA sequencing project.

The 98% complete genome sequence will be valuable to agriculturalists looking to improve pig breeding practices, look at their immunity to certain diseases, and also help preserve species fo rare, endangered pigs. And it might also help create a swine flu vaccine – but only for pigs (Daily Mail).

The pig genome is particularly useful because our porcine friends are like us in many ways that may not be obvious to the naked eye; they have similar psychology, behaviour and nutritional needs to us says WA today. Except I bet pigs don’t eat sausages.

Image: Scott Bauer - USDA, ARS, IS Photo Unit

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on November 03, 2009
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The fallout from the UK Home Secretary’s sacking of an independent drugs advisor continues.

Yesterday Alan Johnson appeared in parliament to defend his sacking of David Nutt, who chaired the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Johnson stressed that he does not see this as an issue about the government’s approach to scientific advice, but about the particulars of Nutt’s case.

“I asked Professor Nutt to resign as my principal drugs adviser, not because of the work of the council but because of his failure to recognise that, as chair of ACMD, his role is to advise rather than to criticise Government policy on drugs,” he told Parliament. “…There is no doubt in my mind that the advice of independent scientific advisers is essential to substantial aspects of the government’s work.”

Johnson also admitted he did not consult the government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington before sacking Nutt. Beddington told the BBC he agreed with Nutt that cannabis was less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol but wouldn’t say whether he agreed with the sacking.

Johnson may have a bigger problem though. According to the Sun, Science Minister Lord Drayson told the Prime Minister’s office the sacking was “a big mistake” and that he was “pretty appalled”.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind Johnson though, telling the Evening Standard “We’ll get tougher on drugs.”

Bizarrely, Brown went on to say, “On climate change, or health, for example, we take the best scientific advice possible. But in an area like drugs we have to look at it in the round.”

If you can work out what that means please let us know.

Previous Nutt News
Sacked science adviser speaks out - 2 November 2009
Government sacks independent drugs advisor - 30 October 2009
UK government vs its own drugs advisor, Part II - 29 October 2009
Ecstasy advice is a bitter pill - 12 February 2009
Love drug gets politicians fighting - 09 February 2009

Image: University of Bristol

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 03, 2009
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President Obama has lifted a ban on HIV positive individuals entering the United States.

“If we want to be a global leader in combating HIV-AIDS, we need to act like it,” said Obama on Friday. “That’s why on Monday my administration will publish a final rule that eliminates the travel ban.”

That rule was published today in the Federal Register. It states:

While HIV infection is a serious health condition, it is not a communicable disease that is a significant public health risk for introduction, transmission, and spread to the U.S. population through casual contact. As a result of this final rule, aliens will no longer be inadmissible into the United States based solely on the ground they are infected with HIV, and they will not be required to undergo HIV testing as part of the required medical examination for US immigration.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged other nations which impose travel restrictions on those with HIV to follow America’s lead. According to the UN over 50 countries impose travel restrictions of some kind on HIV positive individuals.

“Placing travel restrictions on people living with HIV has no public health justification. It is also a violation of human rights,” says Michel Sidibé, executive director of UNAIDS. “We hope that other countries that still have travel restrictions will remove them at the earliest.”

The US rule change comes into force 4 January, 2010.

“Today a discriminatory travel and immigration ban has gone the way of the dinosaur and we’re glad it’s finally extinct. It sure took too long to get here,” said Senator John Kerry on Friday.

Image: Obama on Friday / White House

Posted by Daniel Cressey on November 02, 2009
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The UK government has told its independent advisor on drug abuse to resign after he again called for a more scientific approach to drugs.

David Nutt, until now chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), delivered a lecture at King’s College London in July, an edited version of which was published earlier this week reiterating his views on the relative safety of different drugs [Corrected 02/11]. We noted at the time that he “looks set for another row with politicians who continue to ignore researchers’ advice over illegal substances”.

In his lecture he said, “Using the [Misuse of Drugs] Act in a political way to give messages other than those relating to relative harms undermines the Act and does great damage to the educational message. We also have to fully endorse harm reduction approaches at all levels and especially stop the artificial separation of alcohol and tobacco as ‘non-drugs’.” (PDF.)

Nutt had earlier riled a previous home secretary, Jacqui Smith, with his comments regarding the dangers of MDMA (‘ecstasy’), comparing the risks of the drug to horse-riding and calling for a wider debate on society’s approach to risk.

Today Alan Johnson, the current UK Home Secretary, told Nutt to resign.

“In a letter he [Johnson] expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt's comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs,” said a Home Office spokesperson. “As chair of the council his actions undermine its role and scientific independence. … [T]he clear role of the chair of the ACMD is to provide independent scientific advice and not to lobby for changes in policy.”

However the sacking of Nutt has already generated a furious response from other UK politicians.

Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP and member of Parliament’s Science and Technology Select Committee, said, “The political sacking of a distinguished scientist, who is the chair of an independent scientific advisory committee, for the ‘crime’ of having different views than the Secretary of State is an enormous blow to the credibility of the Government’s approach to scientific evidence.”

Harris cites a recent response from the government to a committee inquiry on evidence based policy which stated:

The Government agrees that the independence of science advisers is critical. It was precisely for this reason that the GCSA [Government Chief Scientific Adviser] wrote to then-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to express concern over her criticism, in Parliament, of Professor Nutt (Chairman of ACMD) with regard to an article he published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Phil Willis, the chairman of the Science and Technology committee, said, “As Chair of the Science and Technology committee I am writing immediately to the Home Secretary to ask for clarification as to why the distinguished scientist David Nutt has been removed of duties as Chair of Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs at a time when independent scientific advice to government is essential. It is disturbing if an independent scientist should be removed for reporting sound scientific advice.”

UPDATE - Read Nature's interview with Nutt here: Sacked science adviser speaks out
Richard Garside, director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies where Nutt gave his lecture in July, has written to the Home Secretary. His letter, distributed by the Science Media Centre, is copied below.

Image: University of Bristol

Continue reading "Government sacks independent drugs advisor" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 30, 2009
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Legendary guitarist Toni Iommi is undergoing stem cell therapy in an attempt to keep him rocking.

On October 20th he told a BBC radio show, “I’ve had this problem with my hand and I’ve had this stem-cell treatment on it. The joints [were] rubbing on the joints. It was bone to bone and it was getting a bit painful.”

The admission was noted at the time by music websites and the Daily Telegraph and the Times have followed up with new stories today.

Peter Buckle, of the Robens Centre for Health Ergonomics at the University of Surrey, warning in the Times that, “We have found a whole set of injuries affecting the hand, arms and wrist [of guitarists] which you would normally associate with working on a hard, fast production line. The temptation for younger musicians is to press too hard on the strings and try to force the frets. Holding the instrument away from the body to excite an audience may look good but it can put a huge pressure on the shoulder and upper arms.”

Iommi has already overcome damage sustained to his hand as a youth. We remain confident those who think this will force him to hang up his axe are merely paranoid.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 30, 2009
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The head of the UK government’s independent drug advice group looks set for another row with politicians who continue to ignore researchers’ advice over illegal substances.

Earlier this year the UK’s Home Secretary launched an attack on David Nutt, chairman of the government’s own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and a respected academic.

Nutt’s crime, in the eyes of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and other politicians, was to write an article in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. His article called for a wider debate on the risks of drugs and, in passing, compared the risks of MDMA (‘ecstasy’) to horse riding. (See: Ecstasy advice is a bitter pill.)

Credit to the man though, he has stuck to his guns and come back with another reasoned critique, delivered as a lecture at King’s College London. In it he reiterates his call for improving public understanding of the actual risks of drugs and again recommends a more logical classification of these.

Continue reading "UK government vs its own drugs advisor, Part II" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 29, 2009
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The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine today awarded $230 million in disease team awards, intended to move stem cell therapies into the clinic within four years.

Fourteen teams, including twelve academic institutions and two companies as principal or co-principal investigators, received the awards. Canada's Cancer Stem Cell Consortium will pay an additional $35 million for two of the grants that aim to target cancer stem cells, and the United Kingdom's Medical Research Council will award $8 million for two grants that aim to treat macular degeneration and target leukemia stem cells.

Continue reading "California hands out $230 million to move stem cells into the clinic" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on October 28, 2009
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The possibility that six Harvard researchers were poisoned deliberately has been raised by one of those who fell ill after drinking coffee laced with sodium azide.

Matteo Iannacone, a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, said he doesn’t believe the coffee could have been spiked accidentally or as a joke (AP, ABC).

Experts seem to agree. David Benjamin, a local toxicologist and clinical pharmacologist, told the Boston Herald, “An accident? Sodium azide is a poison. Could it have gotten in the coffee machine inadvertently? Absolutely not.”

Although it has only just been made public, the incident occurred on 26 August, when six researchers who drank from a coffee machine in the HMS New Research Building were taken to a nearby emergency room.

“While we do not yet know how this incident occurred, we have recently learned that sodium azide, a preservative commonly used in laboratories, was present in the coffee consumed by the six employees,” the medical school said in a statement. “As the investigation continues, we are being prudent and taking additional precautionary measures to ensure the well being of our community.”

Police are now investigating the incident and lab security is being toughened up.

See also
Java drinkers detail ordeal – Boston Herald
Experts: Harvard Med School Poisoning Intentional - WBZTV

Image: the New Research Building by cliff1066™ via flickr under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 27, 2009
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A single dose of gene therapy greatly improved the vision of 12 patients with a rare, inherited visual disorder. The best results were achieved in the youngest patients, including a 9-year-old boy named Corey Haas, who was considered legally blind before the treatment began and now has the same level of light sensitivity as his normal-sighted schoolmates.

The study "holds great promise for the future" and "is appealing because of its simplicity", Frans Cremers and Rob Collin, of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in the Netherlands, wrote in a commentary accompanying the report, which was published online 24 October in the Lancet.

Leber's congenital amaurosis is an inherited eye disease characterized by severe degeneration of the retina and loss of vision in the first few months of life. The disease, which affects around 1 in 80,000 people, can be caused by mutations in 13 different genes. But all 12 of the patients in the Phase I study, led by researchers at researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, suffered from a defective gene called RPE65, which codes for a vitamin A derivative that is essential for detecting light.

The researchers injected each patient's worse eye with a functional copy of the RPE65 gene inserted into an adenovirus vector. The investigators last year reported success with three adult patients (see 'Gene therapy treats blindness'), and now they've added an additional nine patients, including four children under the age of 11. These youngsters displayed the greatest visual recovery, presumably because their defective retinal cells did not yet have time to completely die off.

Continue reading "Gene fix helps blind boy see" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on October 26, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing can count one more consumer — the director of the US National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins.

Collins announced today at a personalized medicine colloquium in Washington DC that he spat into a set of tubes and sent off his genetic material under a pseudonym to three of the leading personal genetic testing companies. He said that all the companies provided highly accurate genotyping, but with substantial differences in the information that was revealed and the interpretations provided — similar to the conclusions reached by Collins's former human genome sequencing rival, Craig Venter, in a recent opinion article in Nature.

On a more personal level, Collins discovered that he carries two copies of the most common risk factor of type II diabetes. Collins, whose laboratory investigates the underlying genetic basis of adult-onset diabetes, said he was "surprised" by these findings since his family has no history of the disease. Upon learning the test results, Collins got off his Harley-Davidson and instigated a regular exercise regime. The svelter NIH director said he has now lost 20 pounds.

Official NIH photos from before and after Collins became director. Check out those gaunt cheeks!

Posted by Elie Dolgin on October 26, 2009
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Posted for David Cyranoski

Found guilty of embezzlement and bioethical violations but cleared of fraud, Woo Suk Hwang has been handed a 2-year sentence by the Seoul Central District Court.

The sentence, which is suspended for three years and only half the length that prosecutors sought, pleased supporters of the cloning expert and former Seoul University professor. The prosecutors have pledged to appeal.

Hwang was once feted for creating stem cell lines from cloned embryos of patients suffering from a variety of diseases. The accomplishment, which offered the capability to produce an endless supply of stem cells genetically matched to respective patients, turned out to be bogus and his efforts to get eggs required for the cloning procedure turned out to be unethical. (See Nature’s Woo Suk Hwang special.)

In January 2006, while maintaining that he had the ability to do what he claimed, Hwang admitted to falsifying data. In May 2006, he was indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement and violation of the bioethics law.

But scientific fraud, while certainly not a way to endear oneself to colleagues, would be illegal only if Hwang had used fraudulent data to gain grants. Prosecutors argued that he did dupe two companies, SKGroup and Nonghyup, into supplying research funds using the fraudulent data. The court reportedly rejected the allegations on the grounds that the two companies provided the funding without expectation of benefit.

The court did however find Hwang guilty of purchasing eggs in violation of the country's bioethics law and of embezzling KRW 590 830 million of government money by filtering it through bank accounts of associates.

Continue reading "Hwang convicted in Korean court" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 26, 2009
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Global immunization rates of children reached an all-time high last year, but millions of youngsters in the world's poorest countries remain vulnerable to vaccine-preventable diseases, according to a new report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the World Bank.

The State of the World’s Vaccines and Immunization reports that 4 out of 5 children now have access to life-saving vaccines — a record 106 million infants were immunized in 2008. Yet this still leaves around 24 million children who do not receive the complete round of regular shots before the age of one.

The report calls on the world's wealthy nations to invest an extra US$1 billion annually to raise immunization rates above 90%. This would prevent an additional two million childhood deaths per year, the report says.

Some of this money is also needed to pay for the rising cost of immunization as more vaccines join the standard lot, said Rakesh Nangia, the World Bank's operations and strategy director. By next year, Nangia estimates that routine immunization will cost US$18 per child, up from $3-5 in 1980. Once recently developed vaccines, including those that protect against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus diarrhea, come on board, he expects the price to rise to $30. "All good things cost, and so do these vaccinations," Nangia said at a press briefing today in Washington DC.

Continue reading "Vaccine boom for world's kids" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on October 21, 2009
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All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page.

As America faces warnings of a vaccine shortage, Europe is getting underway with the H1N1 jabbing.

In the UK vaccinations start today, with doctors, nurses and pregnant women first in line for shots. “This is the first pandemic for which we have had vaccine to protect people. I urge everyone in the priority groups to have the vaccine,” says Liam Donaldson, the UK’s Chief Medical Officer (press release).

France has also started vaccinating this week, and Germany will begin 26 October, followed by Ireland on 2 November (Independent, Bloomberg).

Last week the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that vaccine production was not going as well as might be hoped. Anne Schuchat told reporters some manufacturers were having difficulties and production was “a bit delayed”.

“We wish that we had more vaccine and there is more vaccine coming out every day,” she said. (See: Swine flu shot shortfall.)

Australia became the first country to begin mass vaccination against H1N1 when it rolled out its programme on 30 September (see: Sky, Brisbane Times).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 21, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine, Swine flu | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for Meredith Wadman

The chief of neurological research at the US National Institutes of Health resigned abruptly on Saturday (17 October) from a pan-government committee coordinating autism research, after an Internet newspaper, Age of Autism, posted handwritten notes she left behind after a 30 September committee meeting.

Story Landis, the director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, had questioned in the notes whether one parent on the committee, [Lyn Redwood] “is pushing autism as [a] multisystem disorder to feed into vaccine injury”.

In her letter of resignation, first reported by The Huffington Post, Landis apologized for “unprofessional” behaviour and said “I understand how my comments triggered frustration and anger” in the autism community.

Image: NIH

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 20, 2009
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All Nature’s pandemic flu coverage is collected on our news special page

Healthcare workers in New York have won a temporary reprieve from compulsory swine flu vaccinations.

New York State Public Employees Federation has taken the State of New York to court in an attempt to overturn a policy that requires doctors and other healthcare workers to be vaccinated against H1N1 by 30 November or face disciplinary action. On Friday a judge granted a temporary restraining order on the emergency vaccination regulation.

“Our lawsuit states this regulation is an absolute violation of the separation of powers, as it is an unconstitutional exercise of the legislature’s authority,” says PEF President Kenneth Brynien.

If such forced vaccination is necessary it should come from the legislature, not from the desk of the State Health Commissioner, says Brynien. The PEF says it encourages its members to be vaccinated but opposes enforced vaccination.

Last month, State Health Commissioner Richard Daines wrote, “Questions about safety and claims of personal preference are understandable. Given the outstanding efficacy and safety record of approved influenza vaccines, our overriding concern then, as health care workers, should be the interests of our patients, not our own sensibilities about mandates.”

A spokesperson for the commission said it would defend the lawsuits brought by the PEF and others over the vaccination rules and that “the precedents are very clear about the commissioner’s legal right” (Newsday).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 19, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine, Swine flu | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A sad story has led to the confirmation of a long-standing hypothesis: in very, very rare cases, a pregnant woman’s cancer cells can sneak through the placenta, evade the developing foetus’ immune system and proliferate in the child.

Since 1866 there have been some 17 documented cases (including the present study) of a baby developing the same cancer as its mother, suggesting that the mother’s cancer cells had metastasized to the developing foetus. This speculation had strong support — for example, three infant boys who developed leukaemia like their moms' had bone marrow cells with two X chromosomes — but had never been backed by good old genetic evidence. One reason for doubt was that the mother's cancerous cells, even if they had slipped through the placenta, should have been destroyed by the foetus' immune system.

Researchers from Japan and the UK have finally demonstrated that mother-to-fetus metastasis can indeed happen, and published their findings online 12 October in PNAS. They focused on a baby who developed a tumour at the age of 11 months. The father then revealed that the mother had been diagnosed with leukaemia a month after giving birth to the child and had died.

Continue reading "Mom passes cancer to baby " »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 13, 2009
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A vaccine that takes the “yay” out of llello has shown some success in decreasing use in cocaine addicts, researchers reported 5 October in Archives of General Psychiatry. But the reduction was short-lived and only occurred in a subset of patients.

Similar to your standard vaccine, the cocaine vaccine induces the body to produce antibodies to cocaine. When a person snorts, smokes, chews or injects cocaine and it enters the bloodstream, the antibodies sop some of it up before it can make it to the brain and give the user an addictive, euphoric high. Then, while it’s trapped in the blood, an enzyme called cholinesterase finishes the job by degrading the chemical. The idea is that the vaccine, used in conjunction with other treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy, would help curb relapses and ultimately break dependency.

The Phase IIb study focused on people who were addicted to cocaine and opiates and were enrolled in an outpatient methadone treatment programme. These patients were ideal because people on methadone maintenance tend to show up for treatment fairly reliably, so the participants could be followed throughout the entire course of study (24 weeks, including the follow-up period).

Continue reading "A neutralizer for nose candy?" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 06, 2009
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Last night Cambridge’s clown school gave the world’s best and brightest the awards they deserved. Harvard University hosted its 19th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, where its Annals of Improbable Research recognized the usual combination of mad scientists and asinine leaders.

Pulling in the biology prize was a Japanese team that discovered pandas are more than just cuddly tax dollar vacuums — their poop packs a potent punch. The group isolated bacteria in panda feces that can reduce kitchen waste by more than 90 percent in mass. Good news, given that pandas produce about 40 pounds of poop a day — and as one might expect, it doesn’t stink.

The Ig Nobel prizes also continued their fascination with skivvies. Back in 2001 the biology prize went to the inventor of panties that filter out flatulence with a replaceable charcoal filter, and this year the public health prize went to the inventors of a bra that can be “quickly converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander” — in this case that needy bystander was Wolfgang Ketterle, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Continue reading "Panda poop, panties and more at the Ig Nobels" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on October 02, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A study published today in the Lancet suggests that if the increases in life expectancy seen over the last 200 years continue babies born since 2000 in North America, Japan and much of Europe are likely to reach 100.

“A key question is: are increases in life expectancy accompanied by a concurrent postponement of functional limitations and disability?” write Kaare Christensen, of the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, and colleagues. “The answer is still open, but research suggests that ageing processes are modifiable and that people are living longer without severe disability.”

Christensen says that data from 30 developed countries shows no “looming limit” to lifespan (BBC). Of course, as has often been pointed out, living longer means people are going to have to work longer to fund their extended retirements.

“I guess it’s good news for individuals and a challenge for societies,” says Christensen (ABC News). “If you’re going to retire when you are 60 or 65, it looks quite different when your life expectancy is 75 or 80 than when it’s 100.”

Meanwhile, in Science, researchers have shown that stopping production of a particular protein in mice increased life span and reduced age-related diseases. In AFP’s words: Scientists find path to fountain of youth.

“We are suddenly much closer to treatments for aging than we thought,” David Gems of UCL told the wire service.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 02, 2009
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Worrying levels of Tamiflu are detectable in rivers during flu season, report researchers in Japan, raising questions about the use of this drug and the possibility of drug resistance emerging.

Gopal Ghosh, of Kyoto University, and colleagues looked for oseltamivir carboxylate in river water. This is the anti-influenza molecule that the body converts Tamiflu into.

Ghosh found the compound in sewage treatment plant effluent in Kyoto at concentrations likely to be “high enough to lead to antiviral resistance in waterfowl” he told Wired. Once resistance emerged in birds it might come back to haunt humans.

The paper in Environmental Health Perspectives detailing this research suggests treating effluent with ozone during influenza epidemics, when use of Tamiflu and the potential for resistance will sky-rocket.

Wired notes:

Once ingested, virtually all Tamiflu will end up in the environment in the active form, notes environmental chemist Jerker Fick of Umeå University in Sweden. … Two years ago, Fick’s team published data showing that most sewage-treatment technologies will remove “zero percent” of any OC present. And ducks love hanging out around warm, nutrient-rich outflows of treated water during winter-flu season. While sampling for waterborne OC last year in Japan, “I saw it myself,” he says.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on October 01, 2009
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Critics from all sides have been queuing up for years to kick the US’s legislation for regulating toxic chemicals, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Now Lisa Jackson, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has outlined how the Obama administration would put the poor old TSCA out of its misery.

In a 29 September presentation, Jackson outlined principles for much-needed reform of the act, which, she said, had “proven an inadequate tool for providing the protection against chemical risks that the public rightfully expects.” Congress will take up these ideas in legislation expected in coming months – probably introduced by Sen Frank Lautenberg (Democrat, New Jersey).

One of the main changes will be that chemical manufacturers must provide EPA with toxicity data on chemicals so that the agency can evaluate risks. At the moment EPA can only begin asking manufacturers for toxicity data after it has already got evidence that a chemical poses a risk. That may seem astonishing to Europeans, whose chemical manufacturers are gearing up to provide bundles of toxicity data under the new sweeping chemicals legislation REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals).

Jackson also wants to strengthen the EPA’s authority to clamp down on chemicals it judges dangerous. The agency has only taken action against five chemicals to date, and in one of those cases, asbestos, a federal appeals court struck down the ban. (AP) Jackson added that the EPA would immediately launch a review of six ‘priority’ chemicals that have raised concerns, including bisphenol A and perfluorinated chemicals.

Most chemical manufacturers agree the law needs to be modernized. But as Chemical and Engineering News notes, they are worried about a new concept floated by Jackson – that manufacturers help ‘support the costs associated with implementation’ of safety assessments. In Europe, industry’s costs for complying with REACH have been estimated at anything from €1.6 billion to a worst case €9.5 billion.

Image: Lisa Jackson / EPA via wikipedia

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on October 01, 2009
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Many Tyrannosaurus rex may have been laid low by a single celled parasite that is still taking down modern birds.

Many tyrannosaurid fossils have multiple smooth holes in their mandibles. These have generally been attributed to either bacterial bone infection or bite wounds.

Now a study published in PLOS One instead points the finger at the trichomonosis parasite. By comparing the lesions seen in fossil dinos to those caused by modern bird maladies and crocodile pox the research team concludes tyrannosaurs were commonly infected with a trichomonas type protozoa.

The population probably became infected through consumption of infected prey, or even through cannibalism, write Ewan Wolff, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues.

Perhaps the most famous victim may have been ‘Sue’, the huge T. rex now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. “The lesions we observe on Sue suggest a very advanced stage of the disease and may even have been the cause of her demise,” says Wolff (press release).

“It is a distinct possibility as it would have made feeding incredibly difficult. You have to have a viable pharynx. Without that, you won't make it for very long, no matter how powerful you are.”

Field Museum palaeontologist Peter Makovicky told the Chicago Tribune. “It ... reinforces what I and many others thought, that [the jawbone holes] were the result of some kind of pathogen.

He adds, “The problem with ... making a diagnosis of an animal that old is that we know she had many things going wrong with her health. [Sue] was old and beat up, with a large lesion on her left leg that may have slowed her. She could have died simply of old age or had been so weakened by age or injury that some other disease took over.”

Image: artist’s impression of a T. rex suffering from a trichomonosis / Chris Glen, University of Queensland

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 30, 2009
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Augustus Bozzi Granville’s sensational autopsy of an Egyptian mummy, a study that he presented to Britain’s Royal Society in 1825, was a trail-blazing first in the field, which laid the foundations for the scientific study of ancient mummies. But his conclusion – that the mummy died of ovarian cancer – was wrong, according to a follow-up analysis performed by researchers at University College London (Proc. R. Soc. B, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1484).

Granville did correctly identify a tumour in the unfortunate woman, named Irtyersenu, who died aged 50 in Thebes around 600 BC. But studies in 1976 and 2000 suggest that this tumour was benign. Instead, Irtyersenu likely died of tuberculosis, say Helen Donoghue and her fellow researchers.

New Scientist notes that because the mummy is covered with a waxy substance, it has been particularly hard to extract DNA from. Nonetheless, the team found DNA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis in tissue from the lungs, bone and gall bladder, and also spotted acids specific to that bacterium’s cell wall in lung tissue and thigh bones.

The new findings don’t overshadow Granville’s achievement, Donoghue tells the BBC. “He was remarkably careful and thorough. It was the first time anybody had tried to do a medical autopsy on an Egyptian mummy. Before that it was all about their entertainment value - it was a bit like a circus - and most of the interest was in the jewellery that was wrapped up in the bandages."

More coverage:

“TB the culprit in the great mummy whodunit” (AP)
“Dr Granville’s mummy was killed by TB, not a tumour, researchers reveal” (The Times)
“Fresh autopsy of Egyptian mummy shows cause of death was TB not cancer” (The Guardian)

Image credit Royal Society

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on September 30, 2009
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An independent study by researchers at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research has confirmed higher rates of dementia amongst professional (American) football players. The study was commissioned by the National Football League (NFL), which has denied a clear link in the past. The New York Times has a great story on it, here's the bottom line:

Former players between 30 and 49 are 19 times more likely to develop memory-related diseases, including Alzheimer's. Retired players ages 50 or higher appear to suffer these diseases at five times the national average. The study was not peer-reviewed but it appears to match similar findings on the effects of workplace head injuries.

More importantly, it contrasts sharply with previous studies commissioned by the league, including the work of the NFL's concussions committee, which has denied a connection between the sport and dementia.

That's not to say this is the final word on the matter. The study has come under some criticism for using phone surveys to diagnose patients. It contacted 1,063 players and caretakers and asked them questions about a variety of health-related topics, including whether they suffered from memory related diseases. Many of the researchers contacted by the Times said that it would have to be followed up with a more rigorous study.

Credit: USAF

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on September 30, 2009
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UPDATE - 30/9:Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for NHS Coventry and Coventry City Council, has released the following statement: “The preliminary post mortem results have revealed a rare serious underlying medical condition which was likely to have caused death. We are awaiting further test results which will take some time. However indications are that it was most unlikely that the HPV vaccination was the cause of death.”

Natalie Morton died on Monday after receiving Cervarix at a school in Coventry.

“The incident happened shortly after the girl had received her HPV Vaccine in the school,” Caron Grainger, joint director of public health for NHS Coventry and Coventry City Council (press statements). “No link can be made between the death and the vaccine until all the facts are known and a post mortem takes place.”

Pim Kon, medical director of Cevarix-manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, said the batch of vaccine used in this case had been quarantined as a precautionary measure. “We are working with the Department of Health and MHRA to better understand this case, as at this stage the exact cause of this tragic death is unknown,” says Kon (press release pdf).

Continue reading "New vaccine scare following UK death" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 29, 2009
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With less than two weeks to go until the Nobel Prize winners are announced, the soothsayers at Thomson Reuters have rubbed their crystal balls and come up with a shortlist of favourites.

The contenders, as predicted by Thomson Reuters' citation analyst David Pendlebury, are based on the number of citations and high-impact papers published in Nobel-worthy fields of study. Since 2002, 15 'citation' Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, seven of which were tapped in the same year as their triumph, including last year’s chemistry champ, Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego.

This year’s frontrunners for physiology or medicine include the codiscoverers of telomeres, the repetitive DNA add-ons at the ends of chromosomes that have been linked to ageing and cancer as they shrink, the researchers who worked out cellular membrane trafficking, and the Japanese researcher who showed that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could track oxygen flow, making real-time brain scans and functional MRI possible.

Continue reading "Nobel nod" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 24, 2009
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Investigators have found a strain of the plague bacteria Yersinia pestis in the body of Malcolm Casadaban, a University of Chicago geneticist who died last week within 12 hours of his arrival at Bernard Mitchell Hospital with "intense flulike symptoms." The autopsy did not identify a cause of death, according to the Chicago Tribune.

No other cases have been reported in Chicago, and none of the other researchers exposed to the strain, used as a vaccine since the 1960s, has fallen ill, but officials gave antibiotics to Casadaban's family, friends, and co-workers. Ken Alexander, head of pediatric infectious disease said that the autopsy did not imply that the strain of the plague was a public health threat. He told the Chicago Tribune that "the more likely possibility, I'd say 999 to 1, is that there was something unusual about him."

Photo: Courtesy University of Chicago

Posted by Lucas Laursen on September 21, 2009
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Good news from UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund. Child mortality rates are continuing to fall: since 1990 there has been a 28% drop in the under-five mortality rate.

The latest figures show that there has been some progress to making Millenium Development Goal 4: to reduce child mortality. The target, set in 2000, was to cut child mortality by two thirds the under-five mortality rate of 1990 by 2015.

The goal is still a long way from being reached, despite the success of a measles vaccination drive.

The rate of improvement has increased, though. The average rate of decline from 2000 to 2008 is 2.3 per cent, compared to a 1.4 per cent average decline from 1990 to 2000, the press release says.

Successes have been seen in particular in Niger, Mozambique and Ethiopia where under-five mortality has been reduced by more than 100 per 1000 live births since 1990.

But still 93% of all under-five deaths in the developing world happen in Africa and Asia. “A handful of countries with large populations bear a disproportionate burden of under-five deaths, with forty per cent of the world’s under-five deaths occurring in just three countries: India, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said UNICEF executive director Ann Veneman. “Unless mortality in these countries can be significantly reduced, the MDG targets will not be met.”

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on September 11, 2009
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US regulators accused a stem cell biotech company on Tuesday of inflating claims about an early stage cell therapy.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Bothell, Washington-based CellCyte Genetics Corporation, along with its former chief executive and former chief scientific officer, with duping investors into believing that its experimental stem cell technology was nearing human trials.

"CellCyte and its senior officers knew that it would take years of research to determine whether the stem cell discovery could be developed into a viable product," said Marc Fagel, director of the SEC's San Francisco office, in a statement. "In their rush to cash in on the promise of stem cell research, they concealed the true facts from investors."

Continue reading "Stem cell company charged with hype" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 10, 2009
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The European Commission has abandoned plans for an EU-managed scheme to buy swine flu vaccines due to a lack of support from member states, reports the European Voice.

In July, Androulla Vassiliou, the European commissioner for health, said the Commission was considering a joint EU procurement scheme for the vaccines. But the proposal now looks likely to not be included in the EU’s swine flu strategy to be published next week. Instead the Commission will offer countries “technical advice” on procurement, the report says.

Jo Leinen, a German Socialist MEP who chairs the European Parliament's environment and public health committee, said the omission is a mistake.

“We know some countries are well prepared and others are less well prepared. There must be a mechanism for shifting the vaccine... The added value of the EU is to show solidarity,” he says.

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on September 10, 2009
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Three new genes associated with Alzheimer’s have been discovered, to the delight of researchers in the field.

In two papers published in Nature Genetics, two teams describe how they compared the genomes of sufferers to healthy controls to identify potential gene variations leading to the disease. Philippe Amouyel’s team identified variants within CLU and CR1, while Julie Williams and her team also identified CLU and added PICALM to the mix.

“If we were able to remove the detrimental effects of these genes through treatments, we could reduce the proportion of people developing Alzheimer’s by 20%,” Williams, of Cardiff University in Wales, told a press conference. “In the UK alone this would prevent just under 100,000 people developing the disease. So the significance of these results in truly meaningful.”

Continue reading "Alzheimer’s genes identified" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 07, 2009
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Doctors employed by the US Central Intelligence Agency may have used detainees as “human subjects” to try to improve the effectiveness of waterboarding and other forms of torture, alleges the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The group has rifled through the heavily-redacted copy (pdf) of the CIA’s report on detention and interrogation practices, and this week released a report (pdf) of apparent health professionals’ ethical and human rights violations.

It's no surprise that doctors have been involved in "enhanced" interrogations — they needed to make sure the detainee wasn't about to die or suffer from organ failure or long-term psychological damage. This has already irked PHR, the Red Cross (who called it "a gross breach of medical ethics"), and other human rights groups, who assert the monitoring doctors are essentially complicit in torture.

But the new report alleges the doctors were more than just safety monitors. PHR says health professionals "participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA's secret 'torture programme'."

The most severe accusation is that doctors gathered data to try to improve the technique's effectiveness, "essentially using the detainees as human subjects, a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation."

Continue reading "Hippocratic loath" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on September 03, 2009
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The Biogen Idec boardroom battle continues to rage on. Mere months after billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn succeeded in getting two of his endorsed directors elected to the board, two of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company's scientific directors have resigned. In July, Phillip Sharp, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-founder of Biogen, relinquished his spot on the board after serving for 27 years. And last month, Cecil Pickett, president of research and development, announced that he would retire from both his full-time day job and the board on 5 October. Both men were not due to step down until 2011.

Nature spoke with Pickett about his decision to resign prematurely. (Sharp declined to be interviewed.)

Did Carl Icahn's attempted takeover of the board influence your decision to retire early?

Not really, the plan all along was just a four-year tenure. That's how I went into it. I cut my job short because I just thought I had accomplished everything I could in the timeframe I had actually given it. We did a lot to build up the mid-stage pipeline and the small molecule discovery efforts, we did some licensing deals, and I did some significant recruiting where there were some weak spots. And given all the flux in the industry I thought it might be a good time to go out and recruit my successor.

Continue reading "Biogen Idec R&D head talks" »

Posted by Elie Dolgin on September 02, 2009
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There were probably some champagne corks popping over at AstraZeneca this weekend as the company unveiled results showing its new drug for thinning blood performs better than one of the world’s current best sellers.

Zeneca’s ticagrelor (marketed as Brilinta) was better at reducing cardiovascular events such as death and stroke than clopidogrel (Plavix). To put this in context: Plavix places as the world’s second or third best selling drug, with annual sales of $6 billion.

Results from a trial of over 18,000 patients were presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting and also published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Death from vascular causes, myocardial infarction, or stroke occurred in 9.8% of patients on ticagrelor versus 11.7% of those on clopidogrel.

Continue reading "Zeneca swells on Brilinta thinner news" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on September 01, 2009
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Another dose of worry has been produced over radiation exposure in America, upping the concerns of those who claim there is too much medical scanning going on.

A study in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine suggests that nearly 70% of the population had at least one medical scan that exposed them to radiation. This follows a National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements study from March that concluded Americans living in 2006 were exposed to over seven times more radiation from such scans than those living in 1980.

Both studies attributed much of the radiation to computed tomography scans.

“While the risk to any individual for a single test may be small, the overall risk to the population becomes a concern if one considers the large number of these procedures being performed each year,” says Brahmajee Nallamothu, and author on the NEJM paper and a doctor at the University of Michigan (press release).

The researchers found 18.6 people per 1,000 got high doses of radiation and 1.9 per 1,000 got very high doses. What’s really stoking the fires here though is not the research itself but a strongly worded commentary running alongside it.

Continue reading "Doctors scrap over radiation tests" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 27, 2009
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A report released by Barack Obama’s 21-strong crew of science advisers (PCAST) on Monday urged that H1N1 vaccines be made available as soon as possible – by mid-September, bearing in mind the start of the new school term.

But although the production line is stuffing bulk vaccines into vials as fast as possible – the recommended ‘fill and finish’ approach – it will not be possible to get them ready (including dose-testing) before October, says Thomas Frieden, acting director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

"We wish we had new vaccine technology that would allow us to turn on a dime and make new vaccine in terms of weeks or months. It's not possible with today's technology to do that," he told Reuters.

PCAST did praise the US administration’s efforts as ‘truly impressive’. But the Project on Government Oversight isn’t so impressed, citing an AP article that quotes public health expert Mike Osterholm as saying that 80% of the US pandemic vaccine flu supply will be coming from abroad. “What if death rates go up, and the shipment of promised vaccine from abroad is blocked by foreign governments?” it says in a 26 August letter to HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

It’s a question that must concern developing countries even more – with no capability to produce vaccines domestically. South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi on Wednesday said his country had no choice but to develop its own H1N1 flu vaccine [Reuters].

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 27, 2009
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A new Health Canada report has found bisphenol A leaching out of the plastic of baby bottles marketed as "BPA-free."

Dr. Brown's Natural Flow bottle, a five-time winner of a "best of the year" award from the parenting magazine American Baby, was the worst offender, showing 0.9 parts per billion of BPA after 238 hours at 60°C. Other brands touted as being free of the toxic chemical ranged from from 0.002 to 0.025 ppb under the same conditions. For comparison, polycarbonate bottles can reach levels of 60 ppb after 238 hours.

"Technically, they're not BPA free," said Pete Myers, chief scientist of the Virginia-based foundation Environmental Health Sciences. "Manufacturers ought to do due diligence to determine whether they're false positives or if there is truly even trace amounts of BPA, how is it getting in there." (Canwest)

It's not just the plastic bottles you have to worry about. Up until last summer, the epoxy liner in SIGG aluminum water bottles contained trace amounts of BPA, Steve Wasik, chief executive of the Swiss bottle manufacturer, announced this week on the company's website. SIGG has since switched to new a "BPA-free EcoCare liner."

BPA-free? I'll believe it when I don't see it.

Image: Dr. Brown's

Posted by Elie Dolgin on August 27, 2009
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A five year, $75 million contract to research Gulf War Syndrome has been pulled from the University of Texas Southwestern over allegations of “persistent noncompliance and numerous performance deficiencies”.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs, which commissions research studies on medical issues of relevance to military personnel, has ended the five year contract after just two years.

Gerald Cross, the VA’s Acting Under Secretary for Health, said research on the conditions that afflict Gulf War veterans “remains a priority” but that the department “must make certain that our resources are used to support effective and productive research”.

UT issued a statement expressing surprise at the cancellation and said it strongly disagrees with the Veterans Affair’s take on the matter.

“We thought we were in some productive discussions with them,” Tim Doke, a university spokesman, told the Dallas Morning News. “I don’t know that we see this as an endpoint, but as another of a long series of disagreements with them.”

Continue reading "Gulf War Syndrome research contract cancelled" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 27, 2009
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Abuse of ADHD medications appears to be rising among American teens.

According to data from poison centres fielding calls on potential teen overdoses, queries regarding attention deficit drugs rose 76%. This rise was more than increases seen generally for teenage substance abuse.

“The sharp increase, out of proportion to other poison center calls, suggests a rising problem with teen ADHD stimulant medication abuse,” write the researchers behind the analysis, published in Pediatrics.

Study author Jennifer Setlik, of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, says there is a “rising problem” with the abuse of ADHD medications, which are sometimes taken as cognitive enhancers, for example to improve exam performance, as well as for more traditional recreational reasons.

In April last year a Nature survey found one in five respondents said they had used drugs such as ADHD treatments to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory (see: Poll results: look who's doping). Later in the year a commentary paper in Nature called for an evidence based approach to evaluating the use of cognitive enhancers by healthy people.

That commentary noted:

Safe and effective cognitive enhancers will benefit both the individual and society. But it would also be foolish to ignore problems that such use of drugs could create or exacerbate.

Setlik et al’s new study shows again how necessary research into this issue is.

Photo: by FGMB via Flickr under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 25, 2009
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After almost three-and-a-half years, the trial of Korean stem-cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang may be drawing to a close.

In two seminal papers published in Science in 2004 and 2005, Hwang claimed to have created patient-specific embryonic stem cells using cloning techniques. In January 2006, a committee at Seoul National University, where Hwang held a post, found that the results were all fabricated.

On 24 August this year, in a final evidence hearing, prosecutors requested a four-year prison term for Hwang, who is charged with fraud, embezzlement of state funds and violation of the country’s bioethics law. Hwang has continually claimed he was duped.

Korean media report that the court is expected to hand down a decision in mid-October.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 24, 2009
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More details are emerging of lead poisoning from processing plants in China.

More than 1,300 children were poisoned by lead pollution from a year-old manganese processing plant in Wenping township, Hunan province (central China). Xinhua says 60% to 70% of children living nearby had unhealthy levels (over 100mg) of lead in their blood. The factory was closed last week.

Last week in Shaanxi province, northern China, 615 children tested positive for lead poisoning attributed to a smelter, which is due to cease operating this Saturday (The Guardian, Xinhua).

The New York Times notes that although the national government has committed to clean-up measures, the World Bank says 59 percent of the water in China’s seven major rivers is unfit to drink, and the government says the air in about a quarter of cities is unhealthy.

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on August 21, 2009
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Potentially vital information on the prevalence of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the UK is still not being collected, as coroners believe they are unable to test for it.

In a story now getting wide pickup, the BBC this morning reported that coroners are refusing to routinely test for CJD during post mortems, arguing that their job is only to discover the cause of death and not to collect such data.

The government wants routine tests but Michael Powers, a coroners’ law expert, told the Today programme, “This is a function which is outside the coroner’s statutory authority, because they are not – those tests – directed to ascertaining the [cause of] death in an individual case. If you step outside the coroner’s authority different considerations apply, most particularly of course consent.”

To date there have been 168 ‘definite and probable’ cases of vCJD in the UK, according to the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (pdf).

John Collinge, of University College London, told Today, “There is a concern that what we’ve seen so far may be the first wave … and that there may be more people silently infected in the community than the number of clinical cases would suggest.”

Powers said he would welcome a change to the law to enable testing and the Department of Health is running a pilot project to obtain samples from post-mortem examinations later this year (Daily Mail).

The issue is not entirely a new one however. In February last year the Guardian reported on the same issue, and was told by coroners’ society secretary André Rebello that “Coroners want to avoid any misapprehension that they might be ordering a post-mortem examination for access to research material rather than our statutory function ... Even if this was not inappropriate, coroners have neither the resources nor the time to be involved."

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 19, 2009
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Cross posted for Monya Baker from The Niche, Nature's stem cell blog

Six months after giving it the green light, the US Food and Drug Administration has told Geron to put plans for a clinical trial in spinal cord injury on hold. The company has differentiated embryonic stem cells into precursors of cells known as oligodendrocytes, which help keep neurons alive. Geron hopes this cell product could promote healing in people who have recently severed their spinal cords.

In a press release, Geron said that the hold was placed after the company submitted data on animal studies done to support delivery of increased doses of its cell product and on animal studies applying the cell product to other neurodegenerative diseases. (See the story from the San Jose Mercury News; here’s the Nature story when trial won approval)

I asked Evan Snyder, who directs the stem cell program at the Burnham Institute and is not privy to the confidential information, to speculate what might have been in the preclinical data that prompted teh FDA's action. It’s possible that the FDA just wanted more time to review newly submitted data, he said. Or on the other end of the extreme perhaps some sort of tumour or adverse reaction had been observed in the animals. Most likely, he thought, given that the company is trying to make larger doses of the cells, is that undifferentiated or non-neural cells have been observed in the cell product.

Clinical holds are not unusual particularly for innovative therapies. The FDA issued a clinical hold for NeuralStem in February on a trial in Lou Gehrig’s disease (the company uses neural stem cells derived from fetal cells)

At a large FDA advisory committee meeting in April last year, experts discussed the risks and benefits of products derived from embryonic stem cells. They were particularly concerned about uncontrolled cell growth. Even if the cells are not cancerous, tumours in the contained spaces of the brain and spinal cord could be devastating. Committee members were particularly concerned for diseases that are debilitating but not immediately deadly, since adverse events caused by experimental procedures could mean that people with years to live die early or end up suffering more. Patient advocates protested that they should be allowed to decide whether to take that risk.

Previous posts
Overview of FDA meeting (includes links to transcripts)
Nitty-gritty questions for making safe products

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 19, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You can pretty much kiss civilisation goodbye in the event of a zombie outbreak, according to a new mathematical modelling study by Canadian researchers.

Led by Robert Smith?, of the University of Ottawa, the team modelled a variety of scenarios using techniques that would be familiar to those studying more plausible pandemics. (And yes, the question mark is part of his name.)

A basic model using three classes of person – zombies, susceptible to infection, and ‘removed’ – found coexistence with the undead was impossible and following a short outbreak, “zombies will likely kill everyone”.

The researchers went on to model for a cure and quarantine, as well as the potential for counterattacks to eradicate the zombie threat. Things still do not look good for humanity, they report in their paper When Zombies Attack!

“A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilisation, unless it is dealt with quickly,” they write in the new book Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress.

“While aggressive quarantine may contain the epidemic, or a cure may lead to coexistence of humans and zombies, the most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often. As seen in the movies, it is imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly, or else we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

This research paper is not a totally academic exercise; Smith et al note that their models may seem unlikely (as the dead can return to life), but they could have applications for those modelling allegiance to political parties or diseases that lie dormant for some time.

“If you look at it in a more realistic way, zombies are about the same as any other major infectious disease, they get out and we try to eliminate them,” study author Joe Imad told Canwest News. “Modelling zombies would be the same as modelling swine flu, with some differences for sure, but it is much more interesting to read.”

Given our worldwide success in acting quickly and in a unified manner to stop the spread of swine flu, I’m going to redouble work on that bunker under the Nature office.

Image: photo by rumikel via Flickr under creative commons

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 17, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine, Neat technologies | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The upper echelons of the FDA are getting a lot of unwanted attention today. Yesterday, the top regulator of the medical devices division, Daniel Schultz, announced his resignation, and now the head of drug approvals is under investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services, reports the Wall Street Journal.

For months, the medical devices division has been on the list of Margaret Hamburg, whom Obama appointed to whip the controversy-plagued FDA into shape. At the center of the division's current mess are products that were approved despite the safety and efficacy concerns of agency scientists. The approval of such products — including a brain-zapping depression-treating device and a knee surgery device — led to allegations of being a bit too friendly with industry.

The criticism isn't just from outsiders. In a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee last October, nine employees alleged that some scientists had been pressured to approve the devices.

Schultz has some company. Janet Woodcock is the director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which approves drugs, and is also accused of being too cozy with industry. (Back in November, she was a drug maker hopeful for FDA commissioner but didn't get it).

Continue reading "Shakedown at the FDA" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 12, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted for David Cyranoski

A Chinese company is offering a test that can, it claims, reveal a child's abilities in areas like memory, speed, thinking, comprehension, emotion, adventure, braveness, focus, perseverance, vigour and physical strength. But amid disquiet about the claims, one of the testers has told Nature they are unhappy about the way the tests are marketed.

Shanghai Biochip's Healthcare division promises the tests will have 99% accuracy, although company representatives quoted by CNN said that the genes will only decide 30%-60% of the child's future, while the rest is up to upbringing, nutrition, education, and other environmental factors.

The company, which told Nature the test would cost RMB2000, says the tests will help direct children to pursuits that match their natural talents.

Continue reading "Testing times ahead for Chinese children" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 07, 2009
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The complex shapes that the HIV genome twists itself into have been totally mapped by the first time by a team of US researchers.

RNA viruses such as HIV like to fold themselves up and a proper picture of the shapes they form has been lacking, with researchers generally confining themselves to looking at small sections. In this week’s Nature, Joseph Watts, of the University of North Carolina, and his colleagues set out to look at the bigger picture.

In a News and Views article accompanying the research paper, Hashim Al-Hashimi of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, notes that structural biologists usually “cut out” the motifs formed by RNA and then “zoom in to determine their three-dimensional structures in an attempt to further understand their function. … However, Watts et al. zoom out and provide an ‘aerial view’ of the secondary structure of the entire HIV-1 genome.”

What they produced is, in Wired’s words, “the cellular equivalent of a rough wiring diagram”.

“What this may reveal is some of the proteins operating at a level below the structures, which may have all sorts of functions within the virus,” says David Robertson, of the University of Manchester (BBC). “More generally, if we can unpick the structures then we can compare the systems of different viruses and gain new understanding of how they work.”

Study author Kevin Weeks says the technique used here with HIV could also be applied to other virus such as influenza and might open up new opportunities for drug treatments (press release).

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 06, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Wyeth, maker of the leading drugs for hormone replacement therapy, paid ghostwriters to help produce scientific papers lauding, yes, hormone replacement therapy, reports the NY Times.

The scandal’s been brewing since late 2008, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) started prodding the company to cough up documents detailing its relationship with medical-writing company DesignWrite Inc. On 27 July, upon request from PLoS Medicine and the New York Times Company, a federal judge ordered the public release of the records, effective 31 July.

The NYTimes says the documents show that, between 1998 and 2005, Wyeth paid DesignWrite to help produce 26 scientific papers that “emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks” of hormone replacement therapy. The articles "were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment".

Continue reading "Wyeth's ghostwriting skeletons yanked from the closet" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on August 05, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

Malaria was originally a chimp disease that jumped to humans sometime between 3 million and 10,000 years ago, a new study suggests. This cross from chimps to humans might even have been down to a single infected mosquito.

Of the 500 million people malaria infects each year, 85% of cases are down to the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, whose closest known relative is a chimpanzee parasite Plasmodium reichenowi. Until now scientists thought that both parasites evolved from a common ancestor that then diverged separately into human and chimp lineages (press release).

In the new study, published in PNAS, researchers analysed genes from eight new strains of P. reichenowi, from wild and wild-born captive chimpanzees in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire, and compared them to human P. falciparum. They found that human malaria descended directly from the chimp malaria, and that this jump likely happened only once. A lack of genetic variations between different examples of the human parasite further suggests the species barrier could have been crossed as recently as 10,000 years ago.

"For me, this is the microbiological equivalent of discovering the origins of HIV," says study author Nathan Wolfe, of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative (CNN). "It jumped over just like SARS did, just like avian flu did, just like HIV did. What is really crucial, what is significant, is it continuing to jump over?"

Human agriculture and closer contact with wild animals as agriculture impinges on the wild habitats can create conditions for a species jump.

"Today, human encroachment into the last forest habitats has further extended, leading to a higher risk of transfer of new pathogens, including new malaria parasites" Wolfe says. "What this finding demonstrates is that the kinds of jumps we're having right now—HIV, SARS, etc.—could very well be the beginning of something that lasts for thousands of years." [BBC, National Geographic]

As if to back up Wolfe’s warning, the first case of a new strain of HIV was recently reported, this time found to come from gorillas.

Image: Nathan Wolfe, Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 04, 2009
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The spread of pneumonic plague in a remote part of China has been gathering huge amounts of press coverage since Beijing notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak on Saturday 1 August.

The town of Ziketan and the surrounding part of Qinghai province has been quarantined, with three deaths now confirmed (see AP).

Pneumonic plague is a lung disease caused by the same bacterium, Yersinia pestis as bubonic plague, believed to be the bug behind the Black Death which killed about half of Europe’s population in the 14th century.

"This is not new," Beijing-based WHO spokeswoman Vivian Tan told Reuters. "There have been sporadic cases reported [in China] over the years. We're not surprised that it's come up. We're in constant contact with the authorities to make sure things are under control."

One reason for the rash of stories may simply be that the Chinese authorities are being much more open about how they are handling the situation than in the past, suggests the BBC’s correspondent in Beijing, Michael Bristow.

Meanwhile, the Times points out that untreated pneumonic plague has a mortality rate of almost 100%.

And although plague may sound like something from the Dark Ages, 2,118 cases worldwide were reported to WHO in 2003, more than 90 per cent of them in Africa.

Posted by Mark Peplow on August 04, 2009
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A new form of HIV from gorillas has been identified in a woman from Cameroon.

The 62-year old woman, who is now living in Paris, appears to have a new human lineage of HIV virus type 1 and is the first definite human infection of HIV-1 from a non-chimpanzee ape source.

Jean-Christophe Plantier, of the University of Rouen in France, and his colleagues found the new virus to be highly similar to gorilla simian immunodeficiency virus but not to have undergone recombination with chimpanzee SIV. They propose the new lineage be labelled P as it is distinct from the currently known types M, O, and N.

“Our findings indicate that gorillas, in addition to chimpanzees, are likely sources of HIV-1,” write the authors in Nature Medicine (paper, press release). “The discovery of this novel HIV-1 lineage highlights the continuing need to watch closely for the emergence of new HIV variants, particularly in western central Africa, the origin of all existing HIV-1 groups.”

The current prevalence of the new HIV in humans is unknown. The researchers say that the woman detailed in the new paper currently shows no signs of AIDS and probably caught the virus from another person as she has not had contact with apes or bushmeat (AP, Reuters).

Paul Sharp, of the University of Edinburgh, believes the new strain probably transferred from chimpanzees to gorillas before arriving in humans. He also says it will probably not spread widely, which is fortunate as he adds, “the medical implication is that, because this virus is not very closely related to the other three HIV-1 groups, it is not detected by conventional test” (BBC).

Image: computer model of HIV by Richard Feldmann / NIH

Posted by Daniel Cressey on August 03, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Amid concerns about the rising cost of healthcare, a new study suggests the American public spent $33.9 billion of their health-dollars on unproven treatments in 2007.

Research by the US National Center for Health Statistics shows this was the cost of out-of-pocket spending on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in that year. Nearly 40% of adults in the 29,266 households surveyed used some form of CAM (report pdf).

Although a relatively trifling amount when set against the $2.2 trillion spent overall on healthcare, $33.9 billion represents 11.2% of 'out-of-pocket expenditures', ie money not claimable from health insurers. The $11.9bn spent on visits to CAM practitioners represents 25% of out-of-pocket spending on physician visits.

Continue reading "US alternative medicine spend reaches $33.9 billion" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 31, 2009
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Two malaria papers out this week in the New England Journal of Medicine have seen some press coverage. Undoubtedly the more concerning discusses the parasite’s increasing resistance to artemisinin-based drugs in Cambodia – see Nature’s news story.

The other, as Carlos Campbell of the PATH malaria vaccine initiative writes in an accompanying editorial, “reminds us that the whole malaria parasite is the most potent immunizing antigen identified to date”. In what AP describe as a “daring experiment” with “astounding” results, researchers found that ten people subjected to mosquito bites three times over three months whilst taking the drug chloroquine gained apparent immunity against malarial mosquito bites a month later.

It’s hard to see, however, that this finding adds much new to the vaccine-hunter’s arsenal.

Continue reading "Mosquitoes against malaria?" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 30, 2009
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Posted for Mico Tatalovic

It seems counterintuitive, but a paper published in Nature raises the possibility of losing weight by injecting fat cells.

In the paper American researchers describe using a molecular switch – two proteins PRDM16-C/EBP-beta – to turn mouse and human skin cells into brown fat cells (paper, press release).

White fat cells store fat, while brown fat cells use those stores to produce heat. Heavier people seem to have more white fat but less brown fat than slim people, so one idea for treating obese people is to increase stores of the energy-burning fat. Until now this could not be done since making brown fat was a mystery.

“Brown fat is one of the body’s natural defenses against obesity,” said cell biologist Bruce Spiegelman of Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the paper. “We’re trying to tap into a natural pathway involved in this kind of biology.” (Wired.)

Continue reading "Fighting fat with fat " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 30, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Pfizer is again reportedly close to agreeing a $75 million settlement over a drug trial in Nigeria that allegedly left 11 children dead and others injured.

Earlier this year in April it was reported that this settlement related to the trial of Trovan had been agreed (see: Pfizer settles Nigerian drug case out of court - April 06, 2009). Pfizer denied any wrongdoing in the trial, which Kano State prosecutors alleged was illegal. Pfizer, in contrast, says the trial was carried out with the consent of the Nigerian government, and conformed to standard ethical practices.

Now the agreement has been officially announced. AFP says:

The agreement, which is due to be inked on Thursday in Nigeria, was formally announced in court on Monday, lawyers from both sides said, without giving details of the amounts involved.
…
"Yes, we have agreed on the out-of-court settlement and we will sign the agreement on Thursday," confirmed Pfizer lawyer Anthony Idigbe.

AFP reports that Pfizer will cough up $35m for the victims and their families, $10m for state costs and $5m to do up Kano’s infectious disease hospitals; $50m in total. However Reuters agrees with the first two numbers but says that $30m is being set aside for “healthcare initiatives chosen by the Kano State government”; $75m in total.

Reuters’ numbers would agree with reports earlier this year from the BBC.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 29, 2009
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US lobby groups filed their second-quarter 2009 records (April, May and June) to the Senate Office of Public Records on Monday night.

The figures are trickling through (AP, or search the database yourself), and it’s no surprise that with landmark healthcare reform legislation working its way through Congress, drug-makers and healthcare trade associations have upped their lobbying efforts.

Continue reading "Roll up, roll up for the lobbying frenzy – now with added health reform dollars" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 22, 2009
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Posted for Fiona Tomkinson, British Science Association Media Fellow

The verdict is out on two researchers, Judith Thomas and Juan Contreras, who falsified results in journals and progress reports for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - spanning an incredible eight years and amounting to more than $23 million in NIH grants (The Scientist).

Thomas and Contreras were performing kidney transplants on rhesus monkeys, to see if immunosuppressant drugs would help the operation. The researchers claimed they removed both native kidneys from their patients, leaving the transplanted kidney, plus immunosuppressant drugs, to fend for itself. But in at least 32 animals, only one native kidney was ever removed.

Peter Abbrecht, of the US Office of Research Integrity, told The Scientist that the accepted studies "could lead to wasted research effort by other researchers and possibly place patients at harm if they were enrolled in clinical trials designed on the basis of the falsified results.”

Thomas has voluntarily agreed to a ten year exclusion from working with any United States Government agency; while Contreras has been given only three years. These bans will ensure both researchers are black-listed in the US, and possibly crush their career aspirations elsewhere. The knock-on effect so far has resulted in losing their jobs at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

“Such behavior is absolutely unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Richard Marchase, UAB vice president for research and economic development, said in a written statement (Birmingham News). “We take our commitment to ethics very seriously, and our first priority is to maintain the integrity of scientific data.”

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on July 15, 2009
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After yesterday’s discovery of the elixir of life, another way to live (nearly) forever appears in the scientific literature today.

In a paper in Science, Richard Weindruch, of the university of Wisconsin, Madison, reports that restricting calorie intake appears to extend life in rhesus monkeys.

So-called Caloric Restriction, which does not involve malnutrition, has previous been shown to extend life in a number of species. Crucially though, evidence in primates has been lacking.

In their new paper, Weindruch et al report that after 20 years, 80% of animals on calorie restricted diets survived, versus 50% of control animals permitted to eat freely.

“We have been able to show that caloric restriction can slow the aging process in a primate species,” says Weindruch (press release). “We observed that caloric restriction reduced the risk of developing an age-related disease by a factor of three and increased survival.”

Continue reading "‘Dieting monkeys live longer’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 10, 2009
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A drug already used in humans was reported yesterday in Nature to extend the lives of mice by up to 14%.

The drug, rapamycin, is a bacterial product developed from a compound found in soil on Easter Island. Although the research is only on mice and the drug suppresses the immune system (hence its use in transplant patients) many papers have jumped on this as an ‘elixir of life’ story.

In a News and Views article accompanying the research paper, Matt Kaeberlein and Brian Kennedy, of the University of Washington, Seattle, write:

Is this the first step towards an anti-ageing drug for people? Certainly, healthy individuals should not consider taking rapamycin to slow ageing — the potential immunosuppressive effects of this compound alone are sufficient to caution against this. On the basis of animal models, however, it is interesting to consider that rapamycin … might prove useful in combating many age-associated disorders.

So how well did news sources fare in presenting this study of mice to their readers? The Great Beyond investigates…

Continue reading "Of mice, men and rapamycin" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 09, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

US President Barack Obama today announced that geneticist Francis Collins will be his nominee to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH.) The announcement caps months of waiting, watching and speculating by NIH groupies who, like the authors of this Nature editorial, were getting restive about the White House delay in naming a permanent chief for the $31 billion agency.

The president’s announcement that he intends to nominate Collins, who from 1993 to 2008 directed NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (called the National Center for Human Genome Research until 1997), came during what has already a big week for the NIH; two days ago, the agency issued its final guidelines on human embryonic stem cell research. Collins, an MD-PhD who turned 59 in April, will find their implementation in his inbox, along with the shepherding of a crush of stimulus-incited grant applications through an overburdened peer review system.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on July 08, 2009
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It’s not every day that an addictive and/or psychoactive substance is heralded in the press as potentially healthy — wait, yes it is (see also chocolate, red wine, nicotine). Everyone loves it when the scientific community supposedly endorses their vices. In most cases, the compounds of scientific interest (resveratrol in wine, flavonoids in chocolate, nicotine in cigarettes) indeed may show promise in a laboratory setting, but claims about the foods containing them are usually confined to headlines.

This weekend, coffee got the press bump. The CBS Early Show announced “Coffee May Lower Alzheimer's Risk”, while the Daily Mail was even bolder with “How two strong coffees a day can ‘reverse’ Alzheimer’s”. The print version of the paper apparently led with “Coffee beats Alzheimer’s”. The Times of India and the Telegraph were both bold enough to use the word “cure” (the Telegraph at least had the decency to throw quotes around the word, though it’s unclear what or whom they were actually quoting).

Continue reading "This is your brain on coffee ... or is it?" »

Posted by Lizzie Buchen on July 06, 2009
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There’s no shortage of reading material on the genes behind schizophrenia this morning. In addition to three papers in Nature announcing the identification of key genetic glitches responsible for increasing the risk of the disease there are at least five different press releases and well over a hundred news articles at the time of writing.

This new research combines DNA data from tens of thousands of people to identify the genetic variations behind schizophrenia risk. It also shows some links between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

“Our findings are a real scientific breakthrough since they tell us a lot more about the nature of the genetic risk of schizophrenia than we knew as little as a year ago,” says a co-author of one of the studies, David St Clair, of the University of Aberdeen (press release).

Here comes the caveat: “However this is not a breakthrough that is going to change clinical practice any time soon,” he adds. “It will still be many years before our findings can be translated into new drug treatments.”

Continue reading "The genes behind schizophrenia" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 02, 2009
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US President Barack Obama controversially decided to spend a billion dollars on ‘comparative effectiveness’ research, as part of the huge stimulus package announced earlier this year. Now the Institute of Medicine has brought out the list he asked for suggesting where the money should go.

Comparing difference between different treatments is hugely controversial in the US, where some see it as an outrageous attempt to bring cost as a factor into the health system.

Others disagree. In a statement Harold Sox, co-chair of the committee behind the new IOM list, said, “Health care decisions too often are a matter of guesswork because we lack good evidence to inform them. For example, we spend a great deal on diagnostic tests for coronary heart disease in this country, but we lack sufficient evidence to determine which test is best.”

His committee whittled down 1,268 suggestions for comparative effectiveness research topics into a 100 item list. It will come as no surprise to find out that coronary heart disease is on it. The best suggestion though has to be this one:

Compare the effectiveness of dissemination and translation techniques to facilitate the use of CER [Comparative Effectiveness Research] by patients, clinicians, payers, and others.

So the committee carefully considering controversial comparisons concluded comparing clinician communication criteria could create crucial clarity? Crikey!

Stand by for more fighting. “Because the committee's work was requested by Congress and the resulting portfolio is so broad in scope, the recommendations may be more influential than they might otherwise have been, but the report is unlikely to quell the controversy surrounding CER,” opines the New England Journal of Medicine.

More coverage
Candidates Aplenty for Spending on Comparative Effectiveness – WSJ health blog
Panel Suggests U.S. Medical Priorities – NY Times

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 01, 2009
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The editor of a respected diabetes journal has admitted he rushed an article on a Sanofi-Aventis drug into print in response to the company’s plunging share price.

Rumours about the results of the study on Lantus (insulin glargine) are perceived to be behind a 14% tumble in Sanofi shares last week.

“The market was falling and there were rumours about papers that we assumed were ours,” says Edwin Gale, editor of the Diabetologia journal and a researcher at the University of Bristol (Bloomberg).

“Because we were aware there were leaks, we felt there would be an alarmist, uncontrolled statement coming out in the press, so we did a rush job on it, coming out a week earlier than expected. We’ve never had to do that before.”

Bloomberg notes that Ralph DeFronzo, a diabetes researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center, warned in an 11 June conference call that an “earthquake” might put doctors off Lantus.

Continue reading " Share price tumble prompted ‘rushed publication’ of drug study " »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on July 01, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The news that New York’s stem cell research initiative will be allowed to pay $10,000 to women who donate their eggs is enjoying another round of media coverage today.

As we noted last week:

[The New York Empire State Stem Cell Board] reached the decision on 11 June. Board members noted that taxpayer funds are already used to compensate some egg donors in state-subsidized in vitro fertilization programs. They also emphasized that researchers in other states that do not allow payment for eggs – including Massachusetts and California -- have largely failed to recruit donors.

The Washington Post published a sizeable piece on the decision today, noting that it makes NY state the first to allow taxpayer-funded researchers to pay women for eggs for stem cell research.

Researchers quoted in the Post story are divided over the move.

“In a field that’s already the object of a great deal of controversy, the question is, are we at the point where we really need to go that route in order to do the science?” says Jonathan Moreno, professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “I’m not convinced.”

The NY Times notes that National Academy of Science guidelines prohibit paying women for eggs used in stem cell research.

Headline watch
$10,000 is an egg-cellent price, says stem cell panel – NY Daily News

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 26, 2009
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Posted for Erika Check Hayden

Some baboons are born with an in-built resistance to a malaria-like disease, scientists have found. It is the first known example of a genetic variant in a non-human primate species that is correlated with a complex trait — in this case, resistance to a parasitic disease.

Like ancestral humans, baboons are large-bodied primates that roam the grasslands of East Africa. The research reveals that both groups have evolved similar solutions to fighting off malaria parasites that are common in that region.

"Our study suggests that looking at genetic differences between non-human primates may help us learn more about the possible solutions that evolution has come up with for us to cope with these sorts of things," says Jenny Tung, a graduate student at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who conducted the research with Gregory Wray, also of Duke, and Susan Alberts of Duke and the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi.

Continue reading "Baboon genes help fight parasites" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 25, 2009
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The British Chiropractic Association, which sued science writer Simon Singh over a column in which he wrote about the organisation's stance on certain childhood medical conditions, has now released a list of studies which it says "support the claims which Dr. Singh stated were bogus."

Singh and others had challenged the BCA to support their claims with scientific evidence instead of taking the case to the libel court.

Skeptics, such as Martin Robbins on Lay Scientist, have already begun to deconstruct the list, pointing out that few of the 29 listed studies dealt directly with the medical efficacy of chiropractic and that those which did failed to conform to the statistically powerful, randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind standard to which many medical studies are subject. Robbins also identifies a case of what he calls "dishonest quote-mining." [The comment is here.]

Robbins provides a list of other examinations of the BCA evidence, included below.

Continue reading "Chiropractors reveal "plethora of medical evidence"" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 22, 2009
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Global spending on health in developing nations has increased massively in recent years, but research published today in the Lancet questions how well spent it really is.

So called ‘development assistance for health’ went up from $5.6 billion in 1990 to $21.8 billion in 2007, according to a study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. But, while poor countries did generally receive a bigger share of this pot than richer nations, some are missing out.

Angola, Ukraine and Thailand are among the 30 poorer countries with the most illness and premature death. They are also among the twelve countries missing from the list of those nations receiving most health aid, says Christopher Murray, study author and researcher at the University of Washington.

“With no one tracking this massive growth in spending, it’s no wonder that some countries receive far more than their neighbours for no immediately apparent reason,” he says (press release). “We’re hoping that this attempt to count money that has never been counted before in a careful and consistent way will lead to greater transparency and better use of health resources.”

Continue reading "$20 billion, and for what?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 19, 2009
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This is a drill, actual inventory procedures may vary.

It's a fact of lab life that stuff gets lost in the shuffle. Digging up that old data spreadsheet or lab notebook is probably not too much more than an inconvenience for most researchers. But if you happen to work at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick in Fredrick, Maryland then it's a lot more serious than that.

At a press conference yesterday Col. Mark Kortepeter, USAMRIID's deputy commander told reporters that a recent inventory had turned up some 9,300 vials of previously uncatalogued pathogens, including serum samples from patients who had contracted hemorrhagic fever during the Korean War. The inventory also turned up Ebola, plague, anthrax, and botulism. Most of the samples were left by researchers who had since retired from the laboratory.

The report was bound to get tonnes of press, in part because USAMRIID is the former employer of Bruce Ivins, a researcher who the FBI named a "person of interest" in the 2001 anthrax attacks. Ivans died of a Tylenol overdose in July of 2008. This February, it emerged that Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus at the lab had gone unaccounted for, and all work was suspended until this inventory was completed.

Officials told reporters that numerous new security measures have been installed at the lab since 2001, and they've instituted an "aggressive" inventory system to ensure that future samples don't go unnoticed. It's clear that USAMRIID hopes to use this event to draw a line under its recently troubled past.

Image: US Army/ArraySarah

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on June 18, 2009
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The New York Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) has approved the use of state funds to compensate women who donate eggs for embryonic stem cell research.

The board, which implements New York’s $600 million stem cell research initiative, reached the decision on 11 June. Board members noted that taxpayer funds are already used to compensate some egg donors in state-subsidized in vitro fertilization programs. They also emphasized that researchers in other states that do not allow payment for eggs – including Massachusetts and California -- have largely failed to recruit donors.

Nevertheless, the decision sparked a predictable outcry from activists. The New York State Catholic Conference called it “a grossly unethical, dangerous and exploitative move that treats women’s body parts as commodities,” (Catholic Courier) and Thomas Berg, a Catholic priest and a member of the ESSCB’s ethics committee, criticized the board for not allowing public comment on the issue (Christian News Wire).

Posted by Heidi Ledford on June 17, 2009
Categories: Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At least two bloggers have taken credit for independently making hundreds of formal complaints against British chiropractors for false advertising. British chiropractors have drawn extra attention in the wake of a libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer Simon Singh (The Great Beyond, 10 June 2009), and a related campaign to keep libel laws out of science.

The head of the Leicester branch of Skeptics in the Pub explained on his blog Adventures in Nonsense on Saturday how he automated a search for false claims on chiropractic websites, and filed complaints with local Trading Standards offices and with the General Chiropractic Council (GCC). The activist has forced numerous companies to change the public claims they made about health remedies through similar steps in the past.

He told Nature that Saturday's post came in response to a blog post on Zeno's Blog, a blog about false medical claims, which announced an independent letter-writing campaign last week.

A self-identified ex-member of the GCC questions whether the council will take action on so many complaints at once, since members under investigation are exempt from paying the membership dues which fund the GCC's activities, and because a committee member is targeted by the complaint.

The author of Zeno's Blog told Nature: "I don't necessarily expect it to be a smooth process, but, as a statutory body, I fully expect the GCC to follow through on all valid complaints."

The author of Adventures in Nonsense said that he had already written the to GCC to ask how they would handle this and other potential conflicts and was awaiting a response. He added that while he has long had an interest in false claims made by many different businesses, the Simon Singh case had "focused [skeptics'] energy on chiropractic."

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 15, 2009
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GlaxoSmithKline’s diabetes Avandia, previously plagued by problems associated with heart attacks, is in the news again. Late last week, GSK announced results of a large-scale clinical trial claiming that in the long term Avandia did not increase cardiovascular risk “compared to other commonly used diabetes medicines”.

The news means that GSK will hope that sales get a boost, but also that doctors will prescribe the drug more. “We believe that Avandia remains an important diabetes medicine for the appropriate patients,” said Ellen Strahlman, GSK’s Chief Medical Officer.

But there is still resistance. In the same issue of the Lancet (summary here) where the results of the trial, called Record, were published, Ravi Retnakaran and Bernard Zinman from Mount Sinai Hopsital, Toronto, Canada, offer caution. “definitive conclusions about the relation between rosiglitazone and cardiovascular disease remain elusive,” they say, and look at not just Avandia, or rosiglitazone but also a drug in the same thiazolidinedione family, pioglitazone.

“We believe that the evidence regarding the risk–benefit ratio for thiazolidinediones needs a prudent approach to the use of these medications in the management of type 2 diabetes.”

The whole thing is rounded up nicely over at FiercePharma, including links to other coverage and explanation of some of the controversies that have plagued the drug's history. The debate will rage for some time it seems.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 10, 2009
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The libel case between the British Chiropractic Association and science writer Simon Singh appears to be drawing unwelcome attention to chiropractic in the UK.

The BCA sued Singh last year over a column he wrote attacking the organisation's medical claims. Nature has covered the case and a related campaign to 'Keep Libel Laws Out Of Science' coordinated by the non-profit lobby group Sense About Science most recently in a blog post and in a pair of news stories here and here.

Yesterday, the chair of the McTimoney Chiropractic Association (MCA), a professional organisation of practitioners of a form of chiropractic, reportedly emailed the group's members advising that they remove their websites to avoid being targeted by a coordinated campaign of complaints to the General Chiropractic Council (GCC), the UK's chiropractic regulating body. A copy of the email is posted on Chiropracticlive.com.

The message notes that "complaints against more than 500 individual chiropractors have been sent to the GCC in the last 24 hours." A representative from Sense About Science told Nature that the organisation is not involved in the complaints to the GCC.

Numerous chiropractors have removed their websites, but bloggers have already pointed to publicly available archived copies of the old sites, which made claims that the MCA suggested its members should not be making.

The MCA did not answer the telephone or respond to an email from Nature today.

The letter from the MCA is reposted in full below:

Continue reading "Chiropractic group advises members to 'withdraw from the battleground'" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 10, 2009
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Libel scorekeepers take note: campaigners have collected over 4000 signatures from the public, joining a core of 150 prominent figures in science, government and the media who signed a statement Wednesday to “Keep Libel Laws Out of Science.”

The spark for the campaign was the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer Simon Singh. Last month, a British judge decided that Singh’s words, published in The Guardian in 2008, made a factual allegation that the BCA dishonestly promoted medical treatments its members knew did not work. Singh maintains otherwise, and he announced last Wednesday that he is appealing the ruling.

The BCA released a statement Friday in response to the campaign, declaring that “The BCA sued Simon Singh only as an act of last resort.” The brief statement notes that “to stifle scientific debate would clearly be wrong,” but that “scientists must realise that they cannot simply publish with impunity what they know to be untrue and libellous.”

Fear of libel suits also means that web publishers must closely monitor--and sometimes remove--potentially libellous public comments from their sites, as happened with a statement by Stephen Curry last week on Nature Network. He has since commented on the removal, writing that, "This development seems to introduce a level of self-censorship that I had not been fully aware of before. If I can find a positive note, it will make us rely even more heavily that we already do on solid evidence."

The UK judge presiding over the case—who with a single previous ruling prompted legislation denying the jurisdiction of UK libel law in several US states—is unlikely to be overruled by the appeals court, Singh says. For now, then, the present ruling on meaning stands, and the score is BCA: one ruling; Simon Singh: thousands of supporters.

Previous coverage on Nature:
Science writer will appeal libel case ruling (Nature News, 3 June 2009)
Science writer waits on legal advice in libel case (The Great Beyond, 19 May 2009)
Court setback for science writer (Nature News, 13 May 2009)
Simon Singh loses first round in chiropractic fight (The Great Beyond, 8 May 2009)

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 08, 2009
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The World Health Organization has recommended that health authorities in all nations being routinely vaccinating young children against rotavirus, which causes 500 000 diarrheal deaths and 2 million hospitalizations every year.

Continue reading "WHO recommends expanded use of diarrhea vaccine" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on June 06, 2009
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Think bankruptcy is just for folks with too many credit cards? Think again.

Major health costs (see table) contributed to over 60% of US bankruptcies in 2007, according to a study of over 2,000 individuals, although this is obviously before the credit crunch really started to bite. The study [pdf], published in The American Journal of Medicine (AJM) this week, is a follow-up to a study in 2001 which found that major health costs accounted for 46.2% of US bankruptcies in that year.

The surprise is that over three quarters of those bankrupted had medical insurance and middle-class incomes.

Continue reading "Health costs drive US bankruptcies even for the insured" »

Posted by Lucas Laursen on June 05, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Administration of a common diabetes medication to mice appears to “considerably improve” the performance of an experimental anti-cancer vaccine, according to newly published research.

Yongwon Choi, one of the team behind the new study and a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, says the discovery is “potentially extremely important and could revolutionize current strategies for both therapeutic and protective vaccines” (press release).

In their paper in this week’s Nature the researchers take a slightly more measured line, saying this “surprising finding” could “have important implications for therapeutic and prophylactic vaccine development”.

Continue reading "Does diabetes drug boost vaccines?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on June 04, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Jane Qiu

It was strange bedfellows indeed at a meeting on regenerative medicine in Beijing last month. At the opening ceremony Hu Xiang, chief executive officer of Beike Biotechnology in Shenzhen, gave a speech as a key sponsor, sharing the podium with government officials and influential public figures including China’s health minister Chen Zhu.

With multi-lingual websites and promoting agencies in the US, Europe, Thailand and India, Beike has earned international notoriety by recruiting patients around the world to receive untested stem-cell therapies in China. It supplies stem cells to a network of over two dozen hospitals in China and one in Thailand for treating a myriad of diseases. Hu told Nature that Beike has treated over 5,000 patients since 2005. The company claims to be conducting clinical research, but is yet to publish any data in major international peer-reviewed journals. (See related Nature story here.)

Ellis Rubinstein, president of the New York Academy of Sciences which cohosted the meeting, says that he did not know Beike’s track record, but was grateful that someone had put down “some serious money to support the event”; several major pharmaceutical companies had pulled out as sponsors. “We are having a financial crisis in a good part of the world. That’s the reality in which we are operating,” he says.

Some researchers, like Zhao Chunhua of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, were deeply concerned. “Having Beike sharing the podium with such a distinguished list of speakers has simply sent out a very wrong signal,” he says.

Posted by Alex Witze on June 02, 2009
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An as yet unpublished study reporting the emergence of artemisinin-resistant malaria in Cambodia is getting a fair share of attention. The study was first alluded to by a 20 May Bloomberg story, now unavailable on the Bloomberg site but still available here.

Roll forward 8 days and to a BBC reporter on the ground in Cambodia, reporting directly from the site of two clinical trials, where the news seems to be coming from. The BBC then ran another story that says: “International scientists say they have found the first evidence of resistance to the world's most effective drug for treating malaria. They say the trend in western Cambodia has to be urgently contained because full-blown resistance would be a global health catastrophe.”

In the UK, science reporters were then bombarded with offers of comments from expert malaria scientists, courtesy of the Science Media Centre, and the story took off. The Daily Mail has the considered "Killer new malaria bug discovered" headline for one, although other reports are somewhat more measured.

The studies are not yet complete, nor published or peer-reviewed. The WHO has no updates on its website about this work.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t important, but with stories mysteriously disappearing, and no signs of any reports, it is hard to form a firm opinion about the dangers. Of course, artemisinin should not be used on its own, but in combination with another anti-malarials, and in 2006 WHO recommendations were taken on board by 13 pharma companies to stop selling single-drug malaria medications.

The news from Cambodia doesn’t sound good, but the real extent of the situation will not be made clearer by a rash of media reports. We need to await the clinical trial data, and the peer-reviewed results of those trials.

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on June 01, 2009
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Sure, Francis Collins is likely going to be the next head of the US National Institutes of Health. But is he famous? A new ad campaign called the Rock Stars of Science is trying to bring a little celebrity to the sciences by picturing famous researchers together with rock stars. (In case you can't recognize him behind those cool shades: that's Collins to the right of Joe Perry. And for those of you who have no idea who Joe Perry is: he's the guy with the striped hair to the left of Collins.)

The campaign launched with a 6-page photo portfolio in GQ magazine. “It’s like being in the middle of a genius sandwich”, the ad quotes Josh Groban, apparently a singer of some sort, who was pictured between UCLA neurologist Jeffrey Cummings and Elan Corp’s chief scientific officer, Dale Schenk.

Musical ability was not a prerequisite to participate in the campaign, at least not for the scientists. One scientific rock star – cardiologist Eric Topol of The Scripps Research Institute -- told theheart.org: “I was asked to leave the band in ninth grade and take a study hall because my clarinet playing was so pathetic.” And participants evidently weren’t given much choice about their wardrobe: “I was the only scientist that ended up in tennis shoes and barefoot, but what can you do?” lamented Schenk to The Scientist. (Personally, I think NIAID director Anthony Fauci looks quite dapper in his white “cool and dry” “cotton-rich” button-down shirt, available for $49.95 at Macy’s.)

It’s all for a good cause of course: the ad campaign aims to highlight the importance of biomedical research and the need for science funding. Medscape Medical News notes that the campaign hopes to fight the social forces behind a recent survey which found that only 4% of Americans could name a living scientist and – prepare to be shocked – that Britney Spears is more influential than Stephen Hawking. Yeah. Good luck with that.

Images: Geoffrey Beene/GQ

Posted by Heidi Ledford on May 29, 2009
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Journalists, scientists and even a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament met in a pub last night in support of science writer Simon Singh, who is fighting a libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association, which Nature covered two weeks ago and last week.

The 7 May ruling, in which Justice David Eady spelled out how he would interpret Singh's article if the case goes forward, will make it difficult for Singh to defend himself in a full trial.

The Skeptics Club, which meets at the Penderels Oak pub in London, invited speakers including comedian Dave Gorman, journalist Nick Cohen, and Lib Dem Dr. Evan Harris. The speakers decried English libel law, which is famously plaintiff-friendly, and warned of the dampening effect it is having on scientific discourse before welcoming Singh, who made jokes and thanked the crowd for its support.

Singh has until 28 May 2009 to decide whether to settle the case (for a cool £100,000+, he says), appeal the ruling, or fight the case under the current definition of his article. Lawyers from the Guardian, which was not sued, advised Singh that he was unlikely to win in an English court, but he and his personally retained counsel are still considering whether to appeal Eady's ruling and how their appeal might fare in a European court, he said.

Asked what impact a ruling against him would have on his science writing career, Singh joked, "I'll go back to writing cosmology and Fermat's last theorem. Everyone was very nice about it."

He added that he would not accept settlement terms that limited his ability to write about chiropractic in the future.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on May 19, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Meredith Wadman

Is it possible to catch a sexually transmitted disease from a transplant of reproductive-tract tissue? That gross-out possibility doesn't seem too likely, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was advised this week.

A panel of expert advisers to the US regulatory agency said on 14 May that, while rigorous data are lacking, epidemiologic and anecdotal evidence suggests that the transmission of Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae through products like amniotic membrane transplants used in eye surgery (pictured) are exceedingly slight.

“Any potential for transmission with these products would seem to be very low-- acceptably low,” said panel member Emily Erbelding, an infectious-disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Continue reading "One way you'll probably never catch an STD" »

Posted by Alex Witze on May 15, 2009
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The US Food and Drugs Administration is getting serious flack today from commentators (Eye on FDA, Testcountry) over a 5 May warning letter telling General Mills that the popular cereal's health claims are too drug-like.

A two-year-old marketing campaign claims that Cheerios can reduce cholesterol by 4% in 6 weeks. The FDA, which was responding to a complaint by the National Consumers League, had the option to send a less severe informal letter asking the company to change its labelling, according to the Eye on FDA posting.

Another federal body, the Federal Trade Commission told Kellogg's earlier this year to stop claims that Frosted Mini-Wheats improved children's attention spans, reports Bloomberg.

The FDA, which is reportedly trying to make its image more consumer-friendly under the new White House administration, may be suffering from internal growing pains. Officials at the agency's headquarters "did not know, they were upset and said this was a field office that was freelancing," a former FDA official told AdvertisingAge. A spokesperson for the agency who would not comment on the fracas directly told AdvertisingAge that "warning letters speak for themselves."

Image: screenshot of Cheerios website earlier today.

Posted by Lucas Laursen on May 14, 2009
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While Reporters Without Borders celebrates the release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, Physicians for Human Rights are holding a virtual and live vigil today to draw attention to the continued imprisonment of Iranian doctors Kamiar and Arash Alaei.

The brothers’ HIV relief work landed them in an Iranian prison in June 2008. They were charged and later convicted of “communications with an enemy government” and “seeking to overthrow the Iranian government under article 508 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code” this winter according to the vigil website.

The doctors, who studied and have attended conferences in the US, had distributed condoms and clean needles in Iranian prisons to curtail HIV transmission.

Saberi's conviction ("cooperating with a hostile state" ) was overthrown on the grounds that the United States is not hostile to Iran, according to an editorial in the Boston Globe. The reversal has diplomatic overtones, writes the Globe, which should also apply to the doctors.

Previous Nature coverage of this topic
An appeal to President Ahmadinejad - Nature Editorial, 29 January 2009
Iranian AIDS doctors' trial draws condemnation - Nature, 28 January 2009
Iran puts leading HIV scientists on trial - The Great Beyond, 07 January 2009
Iran holds AIDS doctors - Nature, 17 September 2008

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 12, 2009
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Clinical cancer research is often conducted by scientists with conflicts of interest, such as ties to the company making a drug tested in a study. And studies conducted by conflicted researchers are more likely to report positive findings, researchers reported yesterday.

The findings come from a study led by Reshma Jagsi of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who published her results in the journal Cancer.

Jagsi and her colleagues studied 1,534 cancer research reports published in eight top journals in 2006. Twenty-nine percent of the studies appeared to have a conflict of interest. However, only 17 percent disclosed a conflict of interest. And randomized clinical trials that measured a treatment's impact on patient survival were more likely to report positive results if a conflicted researcher was involved with the study, Jagsi's team found.

Continue reading "Cancer studies sometimes conceal conflicts" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on May 11, 2009
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Pharma companies Merck and GSK are squaring up for a fight, with rival products vying for a slice of the controversial cervical cancer vaccine market.

Merck’s Gardasil has already been on the market for a while, and the company last week unveiled results showing that it can protect for over eight years, extending the known protection time.

GSK meanwhile unveiled a study on its product Cervarix, which it claims shows it to be better than Gardasil. Cervarix has yet to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, although it is used in other countries.

The whole issue of vaccinating against cervical cancer has been controversial. Both Merck and GSK’s vaccines actually protect against Human papillomavirus (HPV) , which can cause the cancer. Some groups, mainly on the political right, fear that vaccinating young people against STDs may encourage promiscuity, although the US Centres for Disease Control recommends vaccination for all 11 and 12 year old girls.

According to the Wall Street Journal, $1.4 billion of Gardasil sold last year, while GSK moved about $231 million-worth of Cervarix. As Mike Huckman notes on MSNBC’s Pharma’s Market blog, which vaccine works best is only one part of the fight.

“Sales of Gardasil are going down,” he writes. “By its own admission, Merck is having a tough time getting females in their late teens and early- to mid-20s to get the set of three shots.

“It’s hoping to find a way to break through with that population and to win approval of the vaccine for older women and males to reignite sales growth. And Glaxo will be late getting into the game.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 11, 2009
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Count Lennart Bernadotte of didn’t quite make it to 100. He died in 2004 at the age of 95, but not before ensuring that his life’s great project had a future. Great grandson of King Oscar II who presented the first Nobel awards in Stockholm in 1901, Count Lennart launched, exactly sixty years ago, the Nobel Laureates Meeting in Lindau, a pretty but very provincial town on Lake Constance. The original aim of the weeklong meetings was to encourage isolated and struggling scientists and doctors in post-war Germany by bringing them into social contact with great living scientists from around the world.

Over the next 55 years or so, not a lot changed, even though Germany was no longer isolated or struggling. The meetings – morning lectures, afternoon discussions, evening dances - were popular but remained anachronistically provincial. By the turn of the millennium that had become unsustainable. Laureates were becoming less interested in a long trip to speak with locals at meetings primarily conducted in German, however charming the location.

In 2005, the meetings were internationalised and thrust into the modern world (Nature 436, 170-1). Now 600 hand-picked students from all around the world mingle, discuss and dance with 20 or more Nobel laureates during summer.

To commemorate the centenary of Count Lennart’s birth on 8 May, the Meetings organisers set up a science-history project to digitalise selected lectures from their archives and make them openly available on their webpage (www.lindau-nobel.de). The first eleven selected lectures are now live, more will follow in phases throughout the summer.

The cleaned up voice recordings, accompanied by an introduction and charming black-and-white photos taken in Lindau, bring legendary scientists to life – be it Rita Levi Montalcini (Physiology or Medicine, 1986) pushing her human-rights agenda, Rosalyn Yalow (Physiology or Medicine, 1977) appealing to women to help solve social problems or simply the extraordinary plumminess of the British tones of Lawrence Bragg (Physics 1915) and Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (Chemistry 1964). A particular treasure is the lecture on the gravitational constant by Paul Dirac (1933, Physics). Dirac was renowned for being almost pathologically socially withdrawn. Despite this, he showed up to the first ten meetings in Lindau, where, they say, he remained almost silent aside from his lectures.

Coming soon – Werner Heisenberg, Konrad Lorenz, James Watson and other stellar personalities.

Image: Nobel Laureate Dorothy Crowfoot-Hodgkin (Chemistry 1964) and young researchers at
the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 1986.

Posted by Alison Abbott on May 11, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Chemistry, Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association against science writer Simon Singh arrived in court yesterday.

Singh is being sued by the association over an article he wrote for the Guardian which was less than complimentary about the BCA. (See Chiropractors get litigious, again - August 19, 2008, also the ‘For Simon Singh and Free Speech’ Facebook timeline.)

Yesterday, the judge in the case ruled that Singh’s assertion that the BCA “promotes bogus treatments” was a statement of fact, and not comment (Index on Censorship).

Continue reading "Simon Singh loses first round in chiropractic fight" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on May 08, 2009
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A string of e-mails posted on the non-for-profit news site ProPublica has reignited a long-running debate on the role of psychologists in interrogation.

The e-mails relate to a 2005 document from the American Psychological Association (APA) on psychological ethics and national security. The document lays out guidelines for psychologists working for the Pentagon and other security services. Among other things the document says that psychologists must report acts of cruel or degrading treatment, but that they may consult on interrogations.

The e-mails show that psychologists actively involved with the military had a disproportionate influence on the way the guidelines were written. "These guys were writing a get out of jail free card for themselves," says Nathaniel Raymond, senior investigator at the Cambridge-based Physicians for Human Rights, which has called on the APA to investigate.

The APA calls those accusations "ill-founded". The guidelines were meant to help psychologists working in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, to navigate the ethical minefield surrounding military intelligence gathering. In that context it only makes sense that the panel would consult with those who needed guidance the most. "To allege that the APA leadership engaged in unethical conduct in the development of this task force’s report is wholly without merit," the organization said in a statement.

The Boston Globe has done a really good story on the subject here.

Posted by Geoff Brumfiel on May 08, 2009
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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded 81 grants worth $100,000 (£65,000) each for research projects into unconventional approaches to tackle global health issues, such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrheal diseases (Telegraph, AP, Baltimore Sun).

Among the grant recipients of five-year grants is Eric Lam at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who is exploring tomatoes as an antiviral drug delivery system.

Continue reading "Gates Foundation awards grants for unconventional projects " »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on May 06, 2009
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South Korea has re-entered stem cell science, with the national committee on bioethics approving the first research proposal since the national scandal over Woo Suk Hwang’s fraudulent stem cell claims.

A new study will be undertaken at Cha Hospital in Seoul.

“The decision will help reactivate stem cell research in South Korea,” says Chung Hyung-Min, the hospital’s lead researcher (AFP). “Stem cell research has been done by scientists in Britain and other countries. But there has been no successful case yet, using human eggs.”

Reuters says the research will involve “producing human stem cells through cloning” while AFP confusingly says the project will be “using aborted human eggs to develop cures for grave human diseases”. The Korea Times says the approval is for “somatic stem cell cloning”.

A number of conditions have been placed on the research team. The Korea Times explains:

In lifting the ban, the committee called on the hospital to minimize the use of human eggs by having the research conducted primarily on lab animals. The use of human eggs will be limited to 800 for the research, lower than the 1,000 originally requested by the centre.

The hospital was also required to remove all references about stem cell research leading to 'cures' for certain diseases and improve the quality of its consent process for egg donors.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 30, 2009
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Common genetic variations implicated in autism are reported in two papers published this week by Nature. The studies represent the first robust evidence of a link between such common variations and autistic spectrum disorders.

“The genes that were discovered appear to be involved in the development of the frontal lobe of the brain ... that is, involved in complex behaviour such as social behaviour and also abstract thought,” says study author Geri Dawson, chief officer of the Autism Speaks group (ABC News).

In one of the papers the research team uses a genome-wide association study with 780 families to pinpoint six single nucleotide polymorphisms linked to autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs). The second paper pin-points two major gene pathways as linked to ASDs

“It is very exciting,” says Hakon Hakonarson, who led both studies (LA Times). “It opens up the opportunity someday for new interventions to fix the bad consequences this variant has on brain function and development.”

Hakonarson is director of the Center for Applied Genomics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

More coverage
Autistic Kids Have Altered Genes Controlling Brain Development – Bloomberg
Biggest autism study identifies gene variations behind condition - Times

Papers
Common genetic variants on 5p14.1 associate with autism spectrum disorders
Autism genome-wide copy number variation reveals ubiquitin and neuronal genes

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 29, 2009
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“Mmm… chocolate”. Remember who said that? It was Homer Simpson. Why do you remember? Maybe it’s because that utterance inspired you to eat some lovely, unctuous, fatty chocolate, which boosted your memory.

For ‘tis written: scientists from the University of California, Irvine, have shown that the molecule oleoylethanolamide (OEA), which is released when fat gets to the gut, can help rats to retain memories after they’ve been through a training exercise. The study came out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The experiments involved giving rats OEA, then checking their ability remember during two exercises – navigating a maze and avoiding something nasty.

Having lots of OEA normally quashes the appetite, tricking the brain into thinking its stomach is full. But this compound also seems to help consolidate memories, reporter John von Radowitz in The Scotsman. (Scotland of course famous for its high-fat cuisine in the guise of deep-fried battered chocolate bars.)

The process might have evolved many years back in our history, the authors suggest.

“Remembering the location and context of a fatty meal was probably an important survival mechanism for early humans,” author Daniele Piomelli told BBC News.

The Daily Telegraph tells us that a memory pill to help “students and Alzheimer’s patients” is on the cards. Whether that is the case or not right now, the work could lead to new therapeutics for people with memory or other cognitive problems, the authors suggest.

Image: By Chotda from Flickr under Creative Commons

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on April 28, 2009
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A genetically modified corn has been produced in an attempt to combat worldwide problem of vitamin deficiency.

Somewhere between 40 and 50% of the world’s population is suffering from diseases caused by a lack of minerals and vitamins, say Paul Christou, of the University of Lleida in Spain, and his colleagues. In response they have created a corn with enhanced levels of three compounds: the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene, vitamin C, and vitamin B9.

“In assessing strategies to deal with micronutrient deficiency, the provision of a varied diet with fresh fruit, vegetables, and fish would be ideal,” the researchers write in PNAS. “However, where this varied diet is impossible because of poverty and poor governance, super-enhanced, nutritionally complete cereals could provide a durable solution to improve the health and general well-being of impoverished populations.”

Previous vitamin enhanced plants have had increased levels of only one compound, meaning only one problem would be solved. The new Christou-corn potentially opens the door to magic-maize that could help improve health more generally.

“Our research is humanitarian in nature and targets impoverished people in developing countries. This specific project is targeted towards sub-Saharan Africa,” Christou told the BBC. “Our funding is exclusively from public sources so we are not encumbered by any commercial constraints.”

Gary Toenniessen, of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, warns that many countries in Africa where the crop might be useful don’t have procedures in place to approve and evaluate GM crops and several countries have outright banned them (AP).

Another expert who spoke to AP was more positive. “I could see this transforming the field. It's just really cool stuff,” said Martina Newell-McGloughlin of UC Davis.

Image: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 28, 2009
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An international team of researchers has successfully converted adult cells into embryonic-type stem cells without a potentially dangerous method previously used in this transformation.

In the brilliantly named journal Cell Stem Cell, the team reports that they successfully generated pluripotent stem cells from mouse cells that normally generate connective tissue. Crucially, their technique does not involve the use of genetic material or viruses.

“Scientists have been dreaming about this for years,” says paper author Sheng Ding, of the Scripps Research Institute in California (press release).

Continue reading "Induced stem cells advance" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 24, 2009
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An animal rights activist has been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list, ranking him among terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

Daniel Andreas San Diego is wanted for allegedly bombing two biotechnology facilities near San Francisco, says the FBI. He is the first US ‘domestic terrorist’ to make the Most Wanted list.

Both of the buildings bombed were apparently targeted for doing business with Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company that has long been targeted by animal rights extremists.

“San Diego is a known San Francisco Bay-area animal rights extremist, involved with the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign, commonly referred to as SHAC,” says Michael Heimbach, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division (statement). “We continue to make great strides in dismantling animal rights and environmental extremists, like Daniel Andreas San Diego.”

According to Heimback, animal rights and environmental extremists have committed over 1,800 criminal acts and caused over $110 million in damages. A reward of up to $250,000 is on offer for information leading to the location and arrest of San Diego, who is considered armed and dangerous.

Coverage
Animal rights activist on FBI terror list – SF Chronicle
In defense of people – Chronicle editorial
Vegan Daniel Andreas San Diego who tried to close British animal lab is put on FBI list – (London) Times
Wanted: FBI Adds Environmental Terrorist to Most-Wanted List – WSJ Environmental Capital blog

Image: detail from FBI wanted poster

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 22, 2009
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Patients with diabetes given a stem cell transplantation were able to go without insulin for over three years in some cases, according to a new study in JAMA.

Researchers from American and Brazil treated 23 patients with type 1 diabetes and 20 used less insulin or none at all during the follow-up period, 12 continuously and 8 transiently. The idea is to stop the patients' own immune systems attacking insulin-producing cells.

“We were trying to preserve islet beta cell mass, that is, the cells that produce insulin, by stopping the immune system attack on these cells,” says study author Richard Burt, of Northwestern University (Forbes).

“Why new onset? Because we wanted to make sure there were still some islets there. We don't believe stem cells form islet cells, but if the islet cells are still there, there might be regeneration if we stop the attack soon enough.”

Continue reading "Diabetes breakthrough ‘is not a cure’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 15, 2009
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UPDATE – Current Nature editor Philip Campbell’s tribute, John Maddox 1925–2009, is now on our website:

It was with great sadness that I and my colleagues at Nature learned of the death on Sunday of Sir John Maddox — or 'JM', as his colleagues always referred to him.

There was puzzlement, too. Yes, John had been looking frail recently, but, well, this was JM — the perpetually restless, irresistible, unstoppable force. The editor who conducted some gatherings with 'shock and awe' as some recall. The 'man with a whim of iron' as others used to call him. And the man who survived countless cigarettes and glasses of red wine, many consumed late into the night as he wrote the week's Editorials at the last possible moment.

As Walter Gratzer, of King’s College, London, wrote recently, “John Maddox brought an old-fashioned Nature into the modern age from the mid-1960s.” (History of Nature feature.)

A full appreciation from Nature will follow shortly. Meanwhile, here is what the world is saying.

Without too much trouble I could probably fill blogs for a month with tales of John: of waiting at the typesetter while he finished an editorial way beyond deadline; of a plan to visit Mexico together when we wined and dined the very attractive press attache at the Mexican Consulate; of how he regularly set fire to his waste-paper basket. Of being sent to the wine bar with a fiver for a bottle of Chateau Thames. Of him disappearing on a Friday night and saying, as the door closed, that he wanted a thousand words from me by Monday for the following week’s issue – on anything I pleased. Of many cases of exasperation and irritation, and many more acts of kindness.

- Henry Gee, Nature editor

He was one of those fellows who shaped the direction of science for quite a long period of time with the power of one of the most influential science journals in the world. I suspect every scientist of my generation read his editorials in our weekly perusal of the journal.

- PZ Myers, Pharyngula

One of the toughest adversaries I’ve ever wrangled with is Sir John Maddox. He was hard-headed, scarily knowledgeable, hyper-articulate, unfailingly gracious even as he ripped you a new one.

- John Horgan, Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology

As Editor of Nature, he restored the journal to an unchallenged position as the place to publish interesting research quickly, and did so at a time when Britain’s influence in world science was otherwise declining. His judgments, sometimes quirky but never dull, were always backed by persuasive argument and a sense of humour.

- The Times

It was a mark of his skilled editorship that Nature could publish a paper on, say, the Loch Ness monster without sacrificing its authority.

“He took command of Nature in a big way,” the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins said. “He had a tremendous grasp of science in the full range, from physics to biology to public affairs as they affected the world of science.”

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and Britain’s astronomer royal, called Mr. Maddox “a dominant figure,” adding that “he helped establish Nature’s status internationally and built it up by developing supplements to increase its coverage.” After retiring as editor in 1995, he assumed an influential elder statesman role, acting, Mr. Rees said, “as a general guru of science and scientific policy.”

- NY Times

"He adored science and talked about it all the time," she [his daughter, Bronwen Maddox] says. "He was enormously enthused by it. He was a physicist, and took to the biological sciences with enthusiasm, but I think his heart stayed in physics."

- Scientific American

Posted by Daniel Cressey on April 14, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Earth, environment & ecology, Energy, Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Neat technologies, On Nature News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

A gene variant linked to late-onset Alzheimer's may affect the brain's workings early in life, decades before forgetfulness becomes apparent.

Publishing in PNAS (doi: 10.1073/pnas.0811879106), Clare Mackay from the University of Oxford, and colleagues at Imperial College London, scanned the brains of 36 healthy adults between 20 and 35 years old. Eighteen of the volunteers carried the ApoE4 allele of the APOE (apolipoprotein E) gene, which is associated with late-onset Alzheimer's. About a quarter of the population have one copy of ApoE4, which for reasons unknown increases their risk of developing Alzheimer's fourfold, says the Alzheimer's association.

The volunteers were asked to do memory tests, and to do nothing, while hooked up to fMRI machines. Though all performed equally well on the memory tests, the APOE4 carriers showed greater activity in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in long-term memory. Other distinctive differences in hippocampal brain activity were spotted even when the volunteers did nothing. (The images show increased brain network activity for the APOE4 carriers, relative to non-carriers, while resting and performing memory tasks).

Continue reading "Alzheimer's gene linked to overworked memory" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on April 07, 2009
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US scientists today report preliminary data on a brain imaging study they say may help lead to the identification of a ‘footprint’ of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the brain. Rajendra Morey, director of the neuroimaging lab at Durham Veterans Administrative Medical Centre, and his colleagues are presenting results of their study on 42 US soldiers who had recently served in Iraq or Afganistan at the World Psychiatric Association International Congress on Treatments in Psychiatry in Florence. Journalistically speaking, the group of probands is attractive, and so the study has been press-released in advance.

One group of 22 suffered from PTSD while a second group of 20 did not. Using an experimental paradigm designed to indicate how easily distracted the soldiers were, the neuroscientists showed that there were differences between the two groups of soldiers in activation of a brain area called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, a region they say is associated with the ability to maintain vigilance. The scientists say this concords with established understanding of the underlying psychology of PTSD. Sufferers are hypervigilant, and fail to stay focussed because they are always on the look-out for unexpected threats.

They also saw also saw differences in activation in brain areas previously shown to be associated with PTSD - the medial prefrontal cortex, a large slab of tissue onto which scientists have tentatively projected many possible functions, and the amygdala, which reproducibly indicates the emotional saliency of a signal (ie ‘is what I am seeing or hearing truly appalling, or is it not quite so bad?’)

What do the results tell us? Primarily that it is possible to see group differences in brain activation patterns between people with PTSD and those without it. It is a solid piece of information, but the hope of eventually finding a useful and reliable way of predicting an individual’s susceptibility to PTSD, or to diagnosing it – as expressed in the meeting abstract – is still just a hope. This is part of a body of work which is very much in progress. Seeing group differences is a long way from being able to predict syndromes from an individual’s brain scan. For many reasons, individual brain scans are still highly variable.

Posted by Alison Abbott on April 03, 2009
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Video games might improve your eyesight, according to a paper published by Nature Neuroscience.

Daphne Bavelier, of the University of Rochester in New York, and colleagues found that study subjects who played action video games (either Unreal Tournament 2004 or Call of Duty 2) had improved ability to detect small changes in shades of gray on a uniform background, so-called ‘contrast sensitivity’. Those who played a more sedate game (The Sims 2) showed no improvement.

“Unfortunately, contrast sensitivity is one of the aspects of vision that is most easily compromised,” says Bavelier (Independent). “This problem affects thousands of people worldwide, including those with professional activities requiring excellent eyesight, and ageing populations, along with individuals who are clinically evaluated for vision problems such as amblyopia.”

The new study suggests playing certain video games might help with contrast problems. After 50 hours of playing the action-game group had improved their ability to see shades of gray by 43%.

“[Contrast sensitivity function] improvements are typically brought about by correction of the optics of the eye with eyeglasses, contact lenses or surgery,” the researchers write. “We found that the very act of action video game playing also enhanced contrast sensitivity, providing a complementary route to eyesight improvement.”

Gary Rubin, of the University College London Institute of Ophthalmology, told the BBC, “Contrast sensitivity is a very basic visual function, and usually they are more difficult to alter in adulthood. This is a small study, showing a small effect, but it was carefully done, and merits further investigation.”

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 30, 2009
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A British team will announce a multimillion-pound research project this week to develop blood from embryonic stem cells, the Independent reports.

The team is made up of a consortium involving NHS Blood and Transplant, a section of the National Health Service responsible for providing organ transplantation and blood for England and Wales, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity.

The Wellcome Trust is believed to have promised £3m towards the cost of the project, with further funding coming from the other consortium partners, the Independent writes.

Continue reading "Britain joins race to make blood from stem cells" »

Posted by Natasha Gilbert on March 25, 2009
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Posted for Declan Butler

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company by sales, has put a bit more flesh on proposals outlined last month by Andrew Witty, its chief executive to share some of its patents to boost research into neglected diseases, and to making its drugs available more cheaply in the very poorest countries.

The company's 2008 Corporate Responsibility Report, released on Tuesday, says it will put some 500 granted patents and 300 pending applications into the pool (press release, report).

The report also confirms the company will also introduce differential pricing: “Secondly, on 1 April 2009 we will reduce our prices for patented medicines in the 50 poorest countries in the world, the LDCs [least developed countries], so they are no higher than 25 per cent of the developed world price. Where possible we will reduce our prices further while ensuring we cover our manufacturing costs so this offer is sustainable.”

Continue reading "GSK’s pledge to the developing world, Part 2" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 25, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UK scientists are about to embark on a project to scale up the production of synthetic blood from stem cells.

A team led by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service will try to use stem cells from human embryos not needed in IVF treatment to produce type-O negative blood. This blood would then be free of any risk from viruses.

“In principle, we could provide an unlimited supply of blood in this way,” says Marc Turner, director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and a researcher at the University of Edinburgh (BBC).

“We should have proof of principle in the next few years, but a realistic treatment is probably five to 10 years away.”

The Independent notes:

Scientists in other countries, notably Sweden, France and Australia, are also known to be working on the development of synthetic blood from embryonic stem cells. And last year, a team from a US biotechnology company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it has been able to produce billions of functioning red blood cells from embryonic stem cells.

In a separate article the paper points out that ACT managed to make up to 100 billion red blood cells, but that a litre of donated blood contains around 5 trillion cells.

Site: Alamy

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 23, 2009
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The rush to manufacture drugs in living organisms continues. Hot on the heals of the drug-goat, a team of European researchers have created transgenic tobacco plants that produce a potential treatment for diseases such as diabetes.

Mario Pezzotti, of the University of Verona, and colleagues successfully engineered the plant to produce anti-inflammatory compound interleukin-10, they report in BMC Biotechnology. Now they are going to feed these tobacco leaves to mice with autoimmune diseases to see if they are an effective treatment.

“Transgenic plants are attractive systems for the production of therapeutic proteins because they offer the possibility of large scale production at low cost, and they have low maintenance requirements,” says Pezzotti (press release). “The fact that they can be eaten, which delivers the drug where it is needed, thus avoiding lengthy purification procedures, is another plus compared with traditional drug synthesis.”

The press release, with considerable understatement, notes that tobacco “isn’t famous for its health benefits”. However, Pezzotti says it has many advantages for genetic modifiers such as himself.

“Tobacco is a fantastic plant because it is easy to transform genetically and you can easily regenerate an entire plant from a single cell,” he told Reuters.

Surely though it’s time to start considering the end user of any of these products.

The drug-laced milk from GM goats didn’t make it past the regulators in the US, but would consumers rather drink milk or eat tobacco leaves? The scientist who can make a GM chocolate that contains drugs is going to make a killing…

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 19, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The pope came under fierce attack this week after he suggested that condom use might hamper the fight against AIDS in Africa.

The pontiff, who is currently visiting Africa, reportedly told journalists that AIDS is “a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem” (BBC).

That drew angry criticism from health experts. The French foreign ministry said his statements pose “a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life” (Bloomberg).

Continue reading "Pope under fire over condom comments" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 18, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

A drug company executive has admitted to faking cancer to avoid a trial over a synthetic blood product.

Howard Richman, former vice-president at Biopure Corp. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, pretended to be his doctor on the phone to convince his lawyer he had colon cancer that was spreading. He also forged a doctor's note saying he was undergoing surgery and chemotherapy, leading a judge to cancel the trial (AP).

The US Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a lawsuit against Richman, the company, and three other Biopure executives alleging that the company had misled investors about the progress of a synthetic blood substitute called Hemopure. The Food and Drug Administration had rejected clinical trials, but the company left investors in the dark (Boston Globe).

Richman pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in a US District Court in Boston this week. He could face up to 10 years in prison.

Biopure has had its share of challenges recently; last November, it sued an NIH scientist over a meta-analysis that linked a class of blood subsitutes, including Hemopure, to increased risk of heart attack and death (Nature).

Posted by Alex Witze on March 13, 2009
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A study by Swiss researchers published this week [Br. J. Sports Med doi:10.1136/bjsm.2008.056242 (2009)], is focusing media attention on the inflexibility of a test that screens for testosterone abuse, but fails to flag up some cheats. The problem was not unknown: drug testers are already taking steps to counter it. As a commentary and editorial [subscription required] in Nature pointed out last August, there may also be flaws with more stringent steroid analyses – the ones that are actually used in court to charge athletes with doping.

The screen in question measures the ratio of testosterone to its close relative, epitestosterone, in urine. Too much testosterone and your sample is flagged up for further, more sophisticated, isotope analyses. The problem is that due to genetic variation, some athletes can use testosterone without ever breaching a fixed alert threshold ratio set in 2004 by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

To drive this home, Christophe Saudan and his colleagues tested 171 football players from various nations, and found that Asians in their sample – most of whom had a crucial genetic deletion – naturally secreted lower levels of testosterone in their urine, so were more likely to slip under the radar screen than African, European or Hispanic individuals. A unique and non-specific threshold is ‘not fit for purpose,’ the researchers say.

Fortunately, drug testers are aware of this problem.

Continue reading "Drug testing: one size doesn't fit all" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on March 13, 2009
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Tthe California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has sharpened the agency’s focus on translating stem cell-based treatments into treatments, in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to loosen restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research.

Continue reading "CIRM carves out translational role after Obama stem cell shift" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on March 13, 2009
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It’s been a busy week for massive pharma deals. After a nine-month corporate struggle, Roche has finally clinched a complete merger with Genentech, offering $46.8 billion – or $95 a share – for the 44% of the biotechnology firm that it doesn’t already own.

The offer, described as a ‘friendly agreement’ [press release], comes days after Merck and Schering-Plough shook hands on a $41 million merger, and six weeks after Pfizer snapped up Wyeth for $68 billion.

Analysts think Roche has done well to get Genentech’s board onside for under $100 a share – some were predicting much higher sums. The board had earlier rejected sub-$90 a share offers. And Roche also managed to push through an agreement before clinical trial results due in April, which are expected to drive up Genentech’s value by expanding the use of its blockbuster anticancer drug Avastin.

Details of the combined company’s operations have also been released – but there is no clear picture yet on how many jobs might go.

Continue reading "Roche and Genentech seal the deal" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on March 12, 2009
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New discoveries in genetics always seem to work their way into fertility clinics before they are used in any other area of medicine. An announcement from a team in the Netherlands today is a case in point.

The team has developed a test that can identify embryos with genetic abnormalities that predispose them to developing two incurable cancer syndromes called neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and Von Hippel-Lindau disease (VHL). Families with these diseases can use the test during assisted reproduction in a procedure called preimplantation genetic diagnosis to discover which of their embryos are free of the genetic mutations that cause them. These embryos can then be implanted in the mother’s womb. Indeed, the team reports that one set of healthy twins was born to a couple who used the test to screen for VHL-causing mutations.

Continue reading "Healthy babies born after use of new gene screening technique" »

Posted by Erika Check Hayden on March 11, 2009
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Celebrities in China are grumpy about the country’s new food safety law, which was approved by Parliament on 28 February.

One of the regulations says individuals who recommend food in advertisements are legally liable for damages if the product is later found to be unsafe. Celebrities are widely believed to be directly targeted by the provision, Xinhua reports.

Feng Xiaogang, the movie director famed for hit films such as “The Banquet” (2006), tells Xinhua he thinks the rule is “unfair”, and that many celebrities are concerned about it.

“I won’t advertise for any food product any more,” Ni Ping, a well-known television presenter, told press at a session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body with many celebrity members (SciDev.net). Ni has taken flak for advertising chestnut juice made by Sanlu, the now-bankrupt state-owned company at the heart of last year’s scandal involving melamine-tainted milk.

Continue reading "Chinese celebs unhappy with food safety law" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on March 10, 2009
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Holes in brain tissue caused by stroke may be fixable using a ‘scaffold’ for stem cells, say researchers from the UK.

Previous attempts to seed such holes in rat brains with stem cells found that the stem cells tended to migrate into surrounding healthy tissue, rather than plugging the gap. Now Mike Modo, of King’s College London, and colleagues have found that a scaffold of biodegradable polylactic-co-glycolic acid polymer laced with stem cells can plug holes in just seven days.

“We would expect to see a much better improvement in the outcome after a stroke if we can fully replace the lost brain tissue, and that is what we have been able to do with our technique,” says Modo (press release). “This works really well because the stem cell-loaded PLGA particles can be injected through a very fine needle and then adopt the precise shape of the cavity. In this process the cells fill the cavity and can make connections with other cells, which helps to establish the tissue.”

Their work is due to be published in Biomaterials. This image shows the brain before and after the stem cells were introduced:

Anthony Hollander, a stem cell expert at the University of Bristol, told the Daily Mail, “It is too early to say if it will be clinically effective in patients but the more we explore these possibilities the more likely it is that we will develop successful therapies.”

More
Stem cells could help treat strokes – PA
Stem-Cell Repair Kit for Stroke – Technology Review

Image: modified from figure in Bible E et al., The support of neural stem cells transplanted into stroke-induced brain cavities by PGLA particles, Biomaterials (2009), doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2009.02.012.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 09, 2009
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The viruses that normally give you a sniffle or a poorly tum might be responsible for causing diabetes. This may sound unusual – a virus being responsible for a non-infectious disease – but it has been debated for many years among diabetes experts.

The research, carried out at the Peninsula medical school in Plymouth, UK, involved looking for enteroviruses in the pancreases of young people who had died soon after contracting type 1 diabetes. The suspicion was that the viruses were attacking beta cells – insulin factories. And that suspicion has now been shown to be right – 60% of the pancreases had evidence of viral infection of beta cells. And it could be more common than 60%: "The protein isn't completely stable, so 60% is a conservative estimate," researcher Adrian Bone of the University of Brighton, UK told New Scientist.

Continue reading "The diabetes virus?" »

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 06, 2009
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Americans are being exposed to vastly more radiation from medical tests than they were twenty years ago, according to the US National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements.

The council says Americans living in 2006 were exposed to over seven times more radiation from such scans than those living in 1980, mainly due to computed tomography and nuclear medicine. The council’s executive vice president Kenneth Kase says the increase was “not a big surprise to anybody” and doctors are emphasising that such tests are vital in modern medicine (ABC News).

“The medical information derived from CT scans literally saves thousands of American lives on a daily basis,” says John Boone, a radiologist at the University of California, Davis Medical Center.

This is not to say that there is no fallout from this report.

Continue reading "Huge rise in US medical radiation doses" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on March 04, 2009
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The US Food and Drug Administration has accused India-based drug manufacturer Ranbaxy of falsifying data in both approved and pending drug applications.

All drug applications from Ranbaxy’s Paonta Sahib facility have been halted as a result, using what is known as the Application Integrity Policy. The company was warned by the FDA last year about “deviations from US current Good Manufacturing Practice”.

“The FDA’s investigations revealed a pattern of questionable data raising significant questions regarding the reliability of certain applications, and this warrants applying the Application Integrity Policy,” says Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement released yesterday. “Today’s action reflects the FDA’s continued vigilance and its steadfast commitment to safeguarding the public’s health.”

Ranbaxy says it is analysing the FDA’s letter and adds, “The FDA has said it has no evidence the drugs on the market are substandard and also that they comply with specifications upon testing. No products from Ranbaxy’s other manufacturing facilities are included in the AIP.”

Comment on the situation below the fold.

Continue reading "Ranbaxy ‘falsified drug approval data’, says FDA" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 26, 2009
Categories: Chemistry, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The US National Academies is hosting a meeting on "integrative medicine" this week, and some scientists are not happy about it.

The meeting, a "Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public" held in Washington DC, bills itself as a discussion of "health care that addresses together the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of the healing process". The academies' Institute of Medicine organized the summit in partnership with the Bravewell Collaborative, a private philanthropic organization based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

On the agenda are topics such as social determinants of health, mind-body medicine, and continuous care for chronic disease. "The purpose of the meeting is to discuss alternatives to the current health care system, which anybody would agree is facing a tremendous crisis," says Ralph Snyderman, a rheumatologist and chancellor emeritus of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who chaired the summit planning committee.

Continue reading "Integrative medicine: What's that?" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 26, 2009
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Posted for Roberta Kwok

Researchers have linked a genetic variation to a tendency to avoid gloom. As described in a study published today, people who carry longer versions of a serotonin-related gene are drawn to pleasing images, while paying less attention to negative ones.

The gene affects levels of the mood-altering neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain, and its promoter region, called 5-HTTLPR, comes in short or long forms. Researchers took DNA samples from 97 people to determine which combination of alleles they had. They then showed pairs of pictures, one positive or negative and the other neutral, and gauged the participants' reactions.

The 16 people with two long forms of 5-HTTLPR preferred the happy images and avoided the depressing ones, the study found. Those with at least one short allele did not show the same pattern and seemed to favour the negative images, though that effect was not statistically significant.

"We have shown for the first time that a genetic variation is linked with the tendency to look on the bright side of life," says lead researcher Elaine Fox of the University of Essex, UK (press release). The findings appear in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Scientists have previously found that people with short alleles of the gene are more likely to be depressed or attempt suicide (AFP). They may also have more intense neurochemical reactions to stress.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 26, 2009
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Soccer fans take note: if your anger over a lost game affects your heartbeat, you could be at greater risk of developing a dangerous heart arrhythmia in the future.

The concept that rage can be risky is not entirely new. Reuters cites previous research showing that “earthquakes, war or even the loss of a World Cup Soccer match” can increase death from heart attacks.

Rachel Lampert of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut and her colleagues report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that they monitored the heart rate of 62 patients with a history of heart disease. The patients were subjected to “a mental stress protocol” in which they recounted a recent event that made them angry. Those patients who experienced an anger-induced change in their heartbeats were more likely to later develop serious irregularities in their heart rate over the next year.

Before you rush out to enroll in anger management classes, there are a few points to keep in mind. The researchers began with a pool of patients who were already vulnerable to heart arrhythmia. And what they’ve found is a correlation, but doesn’t establish causation. So whether those anger-induced affects on the heart actually contributed to future arrhythmia remains unclear.

That said, a little anger management never hurts. CNN offers a few tips from the Mayo Clinic in its story.

Posted by Heidi Ledford on February 24, 2009
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Both the Guardian and Australia’s ABC news have picked up on last week’s Nature story by K. S. Jayaraman about India’s moves to protect traditional knowledge by allowing European patent officers to check new patents against a database of historical remedies.

The database details ancient treatments from systems such as Ayurveda and Yoga and it is hoped it will ensure companies cannot patent things which have been used in India for generations. “We are trying to establish the claim on traditional cures,” Vinod Kumar Gupta, of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, told Jayaraman.

Continue reading "India moves to protect traditional medicine" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 23, 2009
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China has banned actors from mimicking doctors or disease-sufferers in television adverts.

According to state media, the ban follows a story in the Beijing Times which exposed one actor who pretended to be four different experts on television in order to promote various drugs (Xinhua). In another case, 12 ‘experts’ selling medicine on TV shows were exposed as fakes on the internet (Shanghai Daily).

China has experienced numerous problems with fake drugs. In the most recent example a counterfeit diabetes product caused at least two deaths (Reuters, AFP).

Truth in advertising though? It’ll never catch on in the west.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 18, 2009
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Yoghurt bacteria could be used to deliver an anthrax vaccine, if Todd Klaenhammer gets his way.

The North Carolina State University researcher has just published a paper in PNAS describing how swallowing a vaccine based on the lactic acid bacteria protected mice against exposure to anthrax. As he notes in his paper the Lactobacillus bacteria can pass through the stomach and are safe in large amounts, making them potentially useful as a vaccine delivery mechanism.

“Normally, you can’t eat vaccines because the digestive process in the stomach destroys them, so vaccines are traditionally administered by needle,” says Klaenhammer (press release). “But using ‘food grade’ lactic acid bacteria as a vehicle provides a safe way of getting the vaccine into the small intestine without losing any of the drug’s efficacy in binding to the dendritic [immune] cells, which can then trigger an immune response.”

Klaenhammer is not the only person working on oral vaccines, and there are a large number currently in development. Way back in 2003, a review article in the American Journal of Drug Delivery noted other people were trying live vectors, transgenic plants, and even “virus-like particles”. An oral polio vaccine is already in use.

Still, anything that avoids needles is great progress. Now all we need to do is convince a vocal minority that vaccines are actually a force for good, any maybe produce this vaccine in a low-fat, raspberry flavour…

"This is eating the good guys," says Klaenhammer (News and Observer).

The research should be live here soon.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 17, 2009
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Ever since Barack Obama was made the 44th president of the United States, stem cell researchers have been poised over their lab benches, waiting for the moment he would lift the ban on federally funded embryonic stem cell research.

Their wait may nearly be over.

“We’re going to be doing something on that soon, I think. The president is considering that right now,” David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, told ‘Fox News Sunday’ at the weekend.

This is probably not a moment too soon. Stem cell research advocates have been making unhappy noises of late about how long it seemed to be taking the new administration to get round to lifting the ban, as the LA Times has pointed out:

Wary of a delay, one prominent advocacy group sent Obama a letter recently saying that he had pledged to revoke the Bush order. “We wanted him to know that we were still counting on the campaign commitment,” said Amy Comstock Rick, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.

Writing for the Encyclopaedia Britannica blog, Jonathan Slack, director of the Stem Cell Institute at the University of Minnesota says:

Lifting the ban also will be welcome because it will eliminate the red tape that is required to separate the financial accounting of federally fundable and non-fundable work. This can be quite complex; for example, a shared piece of equipment may have been partially paid for with federal funds. Fine judgement may be required to determine whether, say, 50 percent funding represents a problem if the machine is only 30 percent used for federally non-permitted purposes.

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 16, 2009
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Sanofi-Aventis’s new CEO, Christopher Viehbacher, made his debut today to present the company’s 2008 earnings, and speculation yesterday was that the executive – fresh from his former position at GlaxoSmithKline – would come in thundering for renewed cost cutting efforts and an overhaul of the company’s R&D system.

Both topics came up during his presentation this morning, but Viehbacher, who took the helm in December, declined to give details. He spent much of the presentation on the defensive: Sanofi’s stock fell 28% last year, making it the worst performer among Europe’s top pharma companies. Meanwhile, Sanofi employees have largely been spared from the painful cuts undertaken by other pharma companies to reduce costs.

Viehbacher acknowledged criticisms that Sanofi has an overstuffed, unfocused drug pipeline, and said the company would be taking a hard look at its research programs with the aid of its new science adviser, former NIH chief Elias Zerhouni. Viehbacher predicted cuts to internal R&D and increased acquisitions of small- to mid-sized biotech companies. And he said he’s shying away from megamergers with other large firms, which could put to rest periodic rumours that Sanofi may purchase fellow pharmaceutical company, Bristol-Meyers-Squibb. (For an example, check out this BNET Pharma article.)

When pushed to give numbers and dates for the company’s cost cutting plans, Viehbacher shot back, “Hey, look guys I’ve been at this job for 10 weeks. Give me a little room here.” He went on to elaborate that R&D cuts are not undertaken lightly. Sacrificing an internal R&D program to make room for acquisition of a new biotechnology company feels like turning against his own children, he said. “I love my children better than my nieces and nephews. It’s a fact of life,” he said. “You can never get far from human emotion, and that’s what makes R&D a tricky exercise.”

Posted by Heidi Ledford on February 11, 2009
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The controversial doctor whose research led to the MMR safety scare has been accused of manipulating his research data. According to an investigation by the Sunday Times, Andrew Wakefield “changed and misreported results” in a Lancet paper which has been used as support by those who believe the now conclusively debunked claim that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism.

The Times says:

In most of the 12 cases [in the paper], the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

Wakefield is currently being investigated by the UK’s regulatory body for doctors, the General Medical Council.

“You also know that, at this juncture in the GMC process, it would be inappropriate for Dr Wakefield to give a detailed response to you,” his lawyers told the Times. “He has denied the allegations and gave a detailed response over many days to the GMC panel.”

However, a response – apparently from Wakefield – has been posted on anti-MMR websites.

Continue reading "Fakefield? MMR-autism link doctor stands accused" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 09, 2009
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Posted for Heidi Ledford

A local entrepreneur has donated $100 million over the course of 10 years towards the establishment of a new immunology research institute. The new ‘Ragon Institute’ plans to focus initially on development of an HIV vaccine, but eventually aims to tackle broader issues in immunology and infectious diseases.

In a time of shrinking endowments and overstretched budgets, it is refreshing to hear that some philanthropists still have their wallets open. At the announcement of the institute yesterday morning, Harvard University President Drew Faust called the donation “particularly extraordinary at this time.”

The heroes of this story are Phillip “Terry” Ragon – an MIT grad who made his fortune by founding a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts – and his wife, Susan Ragon. For more about their motivation to invest, check out the Boston Globe story.

Continue reading "$100 million stimulus package for Boston-area HIV research" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 05, 2009
Categories: Financial Crisis, Health and medicine, Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bill Gates had a good idea yesterday, but failed to take it to its logical conclusion.

To make a point about malaria the billionaire software mogul punctuated a talk by releasing mosquitoes into the concerned audience.

“Malaria is spread by mosquitoes. I brought some,” Gates told the invitation-only Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference in California (Fox News, AFP). “Here I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.”

As the New York Daily News and other papers noticed, at a conference like TED this was always going to end up on twitter.

“Bill Gates just released mosquitos into the audience at TED and said: "Not only poor people should experience this." :)” wrote Facebook manager Dave Morin. eBay founder Pierre Omidyar added, “That's it, I'm not sitting up front anymore.”.

Later the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – which has combating malaria as one of its aims – said the insects were not carrying the disease. Now if Bill Gates really wanted to solve the malaria problem, what he should have done is get all the world’s important people in a room and actually infect them with malaria. I think we’d see interest in malaria research rise pretty sharply after that.

Image: Punchstock

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 05, 2009
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Another victim of the credit crunch: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Last week Rajat Gupta, the chairman of the fund’s board, warned the international meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that “the global fund is not immune to the environment today of the global financial crisis” (AFP).

Currently the gap between the cost of programmes eligible for funding and the funds pledged by nations is about $5 billion for the months up to 2011 (Christian Science Monitor, NY Times).

Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, can see where some of the money can come from. He thinks the US government should take back the alleged $18 billion in bonuses Wall Street bankers are getting (NY Times).

“Those bonuses are being paid out of our bailout funds,” he says (LA Times). “I suggest the U.S. government reclaim that funding and put the money into the Global Fund immediately.”

And Eve Odete, Oxfam’s Pan-Africa Policy Officer, is warning of a “possible reduction in social spending as the global financial crisis is likely to hit Africa hardest this year” (Reuters). Given that we’re just printing money at the moment, it shouldn’t be too hard for the world’s treasuries to run off a few extra notes should it?

Posted by Daniel Cressey on February 03, 2009
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One of the researchers behind last year’s pioneering stem cell windpipe transplant has revealed an early interest in medicine.

Anthony Hollander, of the University of Bristol, has revealed that as a child in 1973 he wrote to British children’s TV programme – and national institution – Blue Peter to request help, with better spelling than mine at age nine:

This may seem very strange, but I think I no how to make people or animals alive. Why Im teling you is because I cant get the things I need.

A list of what I need.
1. Diagram of how evreything works (inside youre body)
2. Model of a heart split in half, (both halvs)
3. The sort of sering [syringe] they yous for cleaning ears (Tsering must be very very clean)
4. Tools for cutting people open
5. Tools for stiches
6. Fiberglass box, 8 foot tall, 3 foot width.
7. Picture of a man showing all the arteries.

Continue reading "‘This may seem very strange, but I think I no [sic] how to make people or animals alive.’" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 30, 2009
Categories: Biology & Biotechnology, Health and medicine | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) are back in the news again: a study published in Human Reproduction [pdf] has linked two of them to human fertility problems.

Researchers from UCLA measured levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) in blood samples taken from 1,240 pregnant Danish women from 1996-2002. Those with higher levels of the PFCs in their blood had taken longer to become pregnant than those with the lowest levels.

The link is ‘tenuous but interesting,’ according to Tony Rutherford, chairman of the British Fertility Society. As The Times reminds us, correlation does not prove causation.

"There are probably things in the environment that are affecting us in ways we don't know about, but you have to get to the basic biology of what's the mechanism of action - that's the missing link," Jamie Grifo, director of reproductive endocrinology at New York University Medical Center, tells the Washington Post. "The problem with the study is, it creates more anxiety and fear, but it doesn't answer [that] question."

Continue reading "Perfluorinated chemicals linked to pregnancy delays" »

Posted by Richard Van Noorden on January 29, 2009
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Posted for Erika Check

Is gene therapy inching its way towards a comeback? Today, doctors report that they have used the technique to cure 8 children with one form of the rare illness called severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID. And the achievement is so far free from the complications that accompany gene therapy to treat a form of SCID caused by a different genetic glitch.

The result is welcome positive news for gene therapy, which has been struggling to rehabilitate its image after some stunningly bad news rocked the field 6 years ago. At that time, doctors treating SCID patients were cautiously optimistic that they were writing gene therapy’s first success story by infused corrective genes into patients with so-called “X-linked SCID.” But the success stories were marred in 2002 when one of the X-linked SCID patients developed cancer. The trials were later allowed to restart, but five of 20 patients treated with gene therapy have since developed cancer, and one has died.

Today, doctors led by Maria-Grazia Roncarolo of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan publish the results of gene therapy trials in children with a different form of SCID that is caused by a deficiency of an enzyme called adenosine deaminase. Children with this version of SCID can be treated with bone marrow transplants and enzyme replacement. But in 8 of 10 children who lacked a matching donor, doctors report, treatment with a corrected adenosine deaminase gene allowed them to survive without enzyme injections.

“The prospects for continuing advancement of gene therapy to wider applications remain strong,” write two scientists who were not involved in the study in a commentary accompanying the report.

Coverage
Gene therapy cures form of 'bubble boy disease' – AP

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 29, 2009
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The medical condition ‘cello-scrotum’ has been unveiled as a hoax by its perpetrators.

Back in 1974 Elaine Murphy and John M Murphy read a letter to medical journal the BMJ detailing the music-related chafing condition ‘guitar nipple’. Deciding that this was probably a spoof they submitted a letter noting a similar phenomenon in cellists.

“Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim,” they write in a new letter to the BMJ. “Somewhat to our astonishment, the letter was published.”

Not only was the 1974 letter published, it was later cited and – despite doubters – seemed about to become medical cannon canon before the Murphy’s new intervention.

Noel Bradshaw, a cellist with the London Symphony Orchestra, told the Times, “You would have to be doing something fairly extreme to get that by playing the cello. Otherwise, given the angle of the cello, you would have to have pretty enormous bollocks.”

Can you spot which of the following musical medical conditions is fictional?

Fiddler’s Fingers – skin inflammation from allergy to ‘exotic woods’ used in fiddle construction. True?
Violin Face – elongated faces from playing the violin. True?
Horn heart – arrhythmia caused by playing the French horn. True?
Punk piercing – unintentional stabbing associated with punk-music fashion. True?
Baton bulge – swelling in conductors’ thumbs from vigorous waving of their batons. True?

Answer below the fold.

Best headline - Medical hoax: 'Cello scrotum' was just a test tickle, AFP.

Elaine Murphy is now a Baroness and is on the oversight board of the National Health Service. John Murphy is chairman of St Peter’s Brewery.

Continue reading "‘Scrotum-gate’ hits the headlines" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 28, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Heidi Ledford
A controversial lawsuit got the green light to move forward yesterday when the California Supreme Court rejected Wyeth’s protests against a previous ruling that Wyeth could be held liable for side effects caused by a drug it did not make.

Plaintiff Elizabeth Conte says that she developed a neurological condition (called tardive dyskinesia) after taking a drug called metoclopramide. Metoclopramide is sold under the brand name Reglan by Wyeth, but Conte took a generic version of the drug manufactured and sold by other companies.

Nevertheless, Conte alleges that her doctor relied on drug labelling and a write-up in the Physician’s Desk Reference that were supplied by Wyeth. That labelling, she says, underplayed the risks of the drug. She tried to sue the generics manufacturers as well, but was unable to satisfactorily show that her doctor paid any attention to their labelling. The doctor did recall reading Wyeth’s labels, and so a California Appellate Court decided last November that her case against Wyeth could proceed.

Continue reading "Bewildering pharmaceutical case free to proceed" »

Posted by Asher Mullard on January 22, 2009
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A Chinese court has sentenced two men to death for their roles in producing and selling melamine-tainted milk, which killed at least 6 children and made around 300,000 ill.

Babies began suffering from kidney problems caused by the melamine in late 2007 and doctors were blaming the powdered milk by July 2008.

Sanlu, the now-bankrupt state-owned company at the heart of the scandal, allegedly failed to recall products despite knowing that they were contaminated because Party officials wanted them to keep quiet about the scandal.

The two men who were sentenced were Zhang Yujun and Geng Jinping, the BBC reports. Zhang Yujun was convicted for producing 600 tonnes of fake fatal protein powder, from which he earned £715,000. Geng Jinping was sentenced for producing and selling the toxic products to milk companies.

Continue reading "Two sentenced to death in China over tainted milk" »

Posted by Asher Mullard on January 22, 2009
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Posted for Erika Check

John Reed will resume his work on the board of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine after a state commission found that a letter he wrote in 2007 “raises ethical concerns”, but does not violate state ethics laws.

In August 2007, Reed, president of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, asked CIRM staff to appeal its decision that a Burnham-affiliated scientist was ineligible for a grant. The Santa Monica-based group Consumer Watchdog asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate the move and Reed recused himself from the CIRM board that December.

On 7 January, Kourtney Vaccaro, chief of the commission’s enforcement division, sent a warning letter to Reed via his attorney. “In our view, by submitting a “letter of appeal” to CIRM staff, Dr Reed intended to influence a decision that had the potential to affect his economic interests,” Vaccaro wrote. However, because the decision had already been made, Vaccaro said, it could no longer be influenced, so the commission will close the complaint without further action.

CIRM modified its appeal process last year in the wake of the controversy.

“We are delighted that with the completion of the review by the Fair Political Practices Commission Dr John Reed will reengage in his role as an ICOC [board] member,” CIRM board chairman Robert Klein said in a statement. “As CIRM matures, we continue to review and enhance our policies and procedures to avoid potential problems in the future.”

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 13, 2009
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The controversy over whether Robert Gallo was robbed of a Nobel Prize in Medicine may end up lasting as long as the drawn-out battle over the discovery honoured by that prize.

A letter published in Science last week is the latest salvo in the flap over the Nobel, half of which was awarded last October to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for the discovery of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Both scientists were at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in the 1980s; Gallo, at the time, was at the US National Cancer Institute. The French and US scientists fought for years over who actually deserved credit for the discovery, and finally agreed to share credit in 1987. But the Nobel committee seems to have broken the truce by shunning Gallo and instead giving half the prize to German Harald zur Hausen for his work on the human papilloma virus.

The Science letter calls Gallo “an unsung hero” and argues, “Without Gallo's contributions, the relevance of this virus to AIDS might not have been recognized for years… Gallo's contributions should not go unrecognized.”

Continue reading "Nobel Prize row rumbles on" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 12, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Scientists have found the first late-onset Alzheimer’s genetic risk factor specifically linked to women, but it doesn’t necessarily explain why more women get the disease.

The gene is PCDH11X, and it’s found on the X chromosome. That’s bad news for women, who carry two X chromosomes while men only have one. According to the study, published in Nature Genetics, the high risk only kicks in if the patient has two copies of a particular PCDH11X variant.

“What you have in a nutshell is the first study showing a gene on the X chromosome and the first sex-specific effect [for Alzheimer’s],” senior investigator Steven Younkin, a consultant-researcher at the Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus, told HealthDay. “It does not mean women are at increased risk for Alzheimer’s.”

Continue reading "Clue to Alzheimer’s on X chromosome" »

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 12, 2009
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It turns out that grumpy people who say cellphones are destroying life as we know it may be on to something. According to the Washington Post, “Cellular telephones are perhaps the biggest threat to survey data that epidemiologists have confronted in years.”

The problem is that it is much easier to do surveys with landlines than it is with cellphones (or mobile phones, as the British are wont to call them). Given 16% of adults in the US live in houses that only have cellphones that could be a problem.

According to the Post it takes nine calls to cellphones to get one completed entry in the Federal Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey, which tracks health and behavior. As it only takes five calls to landlines it costs a lot more if you want to include cellphones in your survey, which you have to if you want accurate data. An additional complication, says the newspaper, is that “people answer the same question differently depending on how you reach them”.

Read the full article here.

Image: Getty

Posted by Daniel Cressey on January 12, 2009
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Drug regimes that increase the production of stem cells may circumvent some present limitations to a stem cell therapy, a new study suggests.

Stem cells have been hailed of late as the cures of disease and the saviours of patients. Yet researchers still face many obstacles before these new therapeutic tools ca