Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Study identifies potential new marker for heart failure diagnosis,…
- Shorter distance on six-minute walk test points up a greater risk of…
- Fighting fit
- Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D
- Final Report of Genasense Phase 3 Trial in Melanoma Published in…

Study identifies potential new marker for heart failure diagnosis,…
WebWire - WebWire (press release) - Sep 15, 2006
Contrary to prior findings, however, apelin did not prove useful for either diagnosis or prognosis, a finding that, Januzzi notes, “may lead investigators away from this marker for future use in heart failure diagnosis and prognosis”

“The strong predictive power of galectin-3 underscores the fact that heart failure is also an inflammatory process” explains Roland van Kimmenade, MD, of University Hospital of Maastricht, the paper’s co-lead author. “Cardiologists tend to forget that the heart is more than a hollow muscle and that only one third of the organ consists of muscle cells. Moreover, verifying the role of galectin-3 in heart failure may lead to new standards for therapeutic decision making or even the development of new agents that would inhibit this inflammatory cascade”

Januzzi agrees, “This is the first time a marker with putative inflammatory function has been shows to have potential diagnostic and especially prognostic value in heart failure, and the complementary nature of galectin with NT-proBNP for prognosis is an exciting finding” He adds, “We are going to be using the PRIDE study data to examine several other candidate markers that could lead to development of a comprehensive biomarker profile to guide targeted application of specific therapies” Januzzi is an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Additional co-authors of the report are Patrick Ellinor, MD, PhD, Adrian Low, MB, Abelardo Martinez, MD, and Calum MacRae, MB, ChB, PhD, of MGH Cardiology; and Umesh Shara, MD, PhD, Jaap Bakker, Harry Crijns, MD, PhD, Paul Menheere, PhD, and Yigal Pinto, MD, PhD, of University Hospital of Maastricht. The study was supported by grants from the Netherlands Heart Foundation and the William Marquard Fund for Cardiac Research. Several of the researchers receive support from Roche Diagnostics, which manufactures the NT-proBNP assay; and Pinto holds a patent on cardiovascular applications of galectin-3 testing. Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School… Contrary to prior findings, however, apelin did not prove useful for either diagnosis or prognosis, a finding that, Januzzi notes, “may lead investigators away from this marker for future use in heart failure diagnosis and prognosis”

“The strong predictive power of galectin-3 underscores the fact that heart failure is also an inflammatory process” explains Roland van Kimmenade, MD, of University Hospital of Maastricht, the paper’s co-lead author. “Cardiologists tend to forget that the heart is more than a hollow muscle and that only one third of the organ consists of muscle cells. Moreover, verifying the role of galectin-3 in heart failure may lead to new standards for therapeutic decision making or even the development of new agents that would inhibit this inflammatory cascade”

Januzzi agrees, “This is the first time a marker with putative inflammatory function has been shows to have potential diagnostic and especially prognostic value in heart failure, and the complementary nature of galectin with NT-proBNP for prognosis is an exciting finding” He adds, “We are going to be using the PRIDE study data to examine several other candidate markers that could lead to development of a comprehensive biomarker profile to guide targeted application of specific therapies” Januzzi is an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Additional co-authors of the report are Patrick Ellinor, MD, PhD, Adrian Low, MB, Abelardo Martinez, MD, and Calum MacRae, MB, ChB, PhD, of MGH Cardiology; and Umesh Shara, MD, PhD, Jaap Bakker, Harry Crijns, MD, PhD, Paul Menheere, PhD, and Yigal Pinto, MD, PhD, of University Hospital of Maastricht. The study was supported by grants from the Netherlands Heart Foundation and the William Marquard Fund for Cardiac Research. Several of the researchers receive support from Roche Diagnostics, which manufactures the NT-proBNP assay; and Pinto holds a patent on cardiovascular applications of galectin-3 testing. Massachusetts General Hospital, established in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

Shorter distance on six-minute walk test points up a greater risk of…
EurekAlert - EurekAlert (press release) - Sep 15, 2006
“Forty-nine of these patients, 23 percent, died during that time period. The six-minute walk test’s ability to separate those alive at six months from those who died was not only significantly better than chance, but also superior to the forced vital capacity percent (FVC%) predicted test. ”
The authors noted that a lower six-minute walking distance was associated with more severe lung disease, status as a minority and lower educational attainment in a nationwide cohort of patients with IPF who were listed for lung transplantation. The test also predicted waitlist mortality independently of age, sex, race, lung function indices, presence of pulmonary hypertension and other potential confounders. According to the investigators, the six-minute walk test has at least four advantages over other tests: 1) it is less costly than other tools; 2) it can be performed on patients with severe hypoxemia (inadequate amounts of oxygen in the blood) who require continuous high-flow oxygen; 3) it can be performed in any sufficiently long hallway by appropriately trained personnel; and 4) it does not require specialized equipment and expertise found only in established pulmonary function laboratories;
The authors concluded that a test like FVC% predicted might not be valid for gauging survival in patients with IPF who have been listed for lung transplantation because of the serious nature of their illness. ###
Contact: David J.

Fighting fit
Toronto Star - Sep 15, 2006
They instinctively know what clothes to wear, they never look bad when they’re all sweaty, and they say things like "push past the pain" and "toss me that medicine ball. " I have little to share with these women. The only reason I have ever purchased track pants is because they have an elastic waist. There are days when jeans are just too optimistic for a middle-aged mother of two, and when I jam a pair of my 12-year-old son’s runners on my feet, I convince myself I am "sporty. " I write for a living… Craig answered my email, and forwarded my rather snarky letter to his publicist. Stephen and I met at Penguin to decide if there was a role in this for someone like me, who obviously had no business being near a boxing ring. Publicity by its very nature is usually kind of goofy. It was set that Craig would be boxing another (male) novelist at Florida Jack’s Boxing Club in Toronto’s Yorkville area on Oct. 5, and there would be a panel of writer judges. It gave a new meaning to the term "literary event". I blithely promised them that I would not only spar a six-foot-one man in a publicity bout, but I would get in shape, learn how to box and do it in two weeks.

Epidemic Influenza And Vitamin D
Medical News Today - Sep 15, 2006
So many millions died in other countries, they couldn’t bury the bodies. Young healthy adults, in the prime of their lives in the morning, drowning in their own inflammation by noon, grossly discolored by sunset, were dead at midnight. Their body’s own broad-spectrum natural antibiotics, called antimicrobial peptides, seemed nowhere to be found. An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus - white blood cells releasing large amounts of inflammatory agents called cytokines and chemokines into the lungs of the doomed - resulted in millions of deaths in 1918. As I am now a psychiatrist, and no longer a general practitioner, I was not directly involved in fighting the influenza epidemic in our hospital. However, our internal medicine specialists worked overtime as they diagnosed and treated a rapidly increasing number of stricken patients. Our Chief Medical Officer quarantined one ward after another as more and more patients were gripped with the chills, fever, cough, and severe body aches that typifies the clinical presentation of influenza A… An overwhelming immune response to the influenza virus - white blood cells releasing large amounts of inflammatory agents called cytokines and chemokines into the lungs of the doomed - resulted in millions of deaths in 1918. As I am now a psychiatrist, and no longer a general practitioner, I was not directly involved in fighting the influenza epidemic in our hospital. However, our internal medicine specialists worked overtime as they diagnosed and treated a rapidly increasing number of stricken patients. Our Chief Medical Officer quarantined one ward after another as more and more patients were gripped with the chills, fever, cough, and severe body aches that typifies the clinical presentation of influenza A. Epidemic influenza kills a million people in the world every year by causing pneumonia, “the captain of the men of death. ” These epidemics are often explosive; the word influenza comes from Italian (Medieval Latin ?nfluentia) or influence, because of the belief that the sudden and abrupt epidemics were due to the influence of some extraterrestrial force. One seventeenth century observer described it well when he wrote, “suddenly a Distemper arose, as if sent by some blast from the stars, which laid hold on very many together: that in some towns, in the space of a week, above a thousand people fell sick together.

Final Report of Genasense Phase 3 Trial in Melanoma Published in…
Free with registration - PR Newswire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Sep 15, 2006
“In our paper, long-term followup has confirmed the trends that were observed in the earlier analyses,” said Dr. Bedikian, Professor of Medicine at M. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, who is the lead author on the paper. “This was the first trial to achieve such a broad array of positive endpoints. I believe the aggregate data indicate that Genasense can be.