Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- Sen Grassley asks medical journals about ghostwriting
- Stem Cells’ ‘Suspended’ State Preserved By Key Step Scientists Report
- Post-transplant combo can replace toxic immune-suppressing drugs …
- rgan transplant drug extends life of older mice
- Autistic kids learn things differently
- A strategy for GERD and Barrett’s esophagus
- Scientists lay out gene map of Korean male

Sen Grassley asks medical journals about ghostwriting
TheHeart.rg
There are concerns that “some medical literature may be little more than subtle advertisements rather than independent research” writes Grassley. With these articles then having an impact on physicians’ prescribing habits and the subsequent cost to the American taxpayer through Medicare and Medicaid programs any attempt to manipulate the scientific literature is troubling he adds. In April 2008 Dr Harlan Krumholz (Yale University School of Medicine New Haven CT) along with lead investigator Dr Joseph Ross (Mount Sinai School of Medicine New York NY) reported evidence of Merck employees preparing manuscripts sometimes in collaboration with medical publishing companies and then recruiting academic physicians to be the first authors [. The paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association offered a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes influence of industry. “What I would like to see is a clear and explicit statement from the journals that if there is a circumstance where there is found to be ghostwriting there would be some significant consequences” Krumholz told heartwire this week. “If a bunch of journals banded together and said if we find incontrovertible evidence of ghostwriting and there would have to be some process for making that distinction then that person would be banned from publishing.

Stem Cells’ ‘Suspended’ State Preserved By Key Step Scientists Report
Science Daily (press release)
Additional co-authors are graduate student Adi Alajem and Eran Meshorer PhD assistant professor of genetics both at Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Kathrin Plath PhD assistant professor; Rupa Sridharan. PhD postdoctoral fellow and Michael Mason graduate student all of the Eli and Ely Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA; João Ramalho-Santos PhD assistant professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the University of Coimbra Portugal. The research is supported in part by the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. Adapted from materials provided by. Email or share this story:|.
Related from Cnurology: Stem Cells in Urology?

Post-transplant combo can replace toxic immune-suppressing drugs …
EurekAlert (press release)
A combination of treatments can effectively replace calcineurin inhibitors in preventing graft rejection when kidney transplants are performed on monkeys scientists at the Emory Transplant Center have shown. The non-human primate research was conducted at the National Institutes of Health and Yerkes National Primate Research Center Emory University. The results are published in the July issue of Nature Medicine. The finding opens the door to less-toxic post-transplant treatment that could be administered once a week rather than a dizzying mound of pills every day says senior author Allan Kirk MD PhD scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. “Both of the drugs used in this regimen are already used separately in humans thus a clinical trial could be developed quickly” Kirk notes. ne key ingredient in the combination is an experimental therapy called a costimulation blocker designed to interfere with the T cells that cause graft rejection without affecting other organs. Costimulation refers to one of two signals T cells need from other cells (antigen presenting cells) to become fully activated.

rgan transplant drug extends life of older mice
The Associated Press
The drug couldn’t be used for that purpose in people. It suppresses the human immune system to prevent a transplant recipient’s body from attacking the donated tissues raising the odds of disease. Researchers didn’t start the medicine on the mice until they were about 600 days old the equivalent of about 60 years for people. Despite that delay the rapamycin seemed to work said lead author David Harrison of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor Maine. That surprised and impressed gerontologist George Martin at the University of Washington who was not part of the study. Females fed rapamycin lived 14 percent longer than those that didn’t take the drug. For males it was 9 percent longer.

Autistic kids learn things differently
Times of India
The study conducted byresearchers from Kennedy Krieger Institute and Johns Hopkins University Schoolof Medicine showed that greater the kids relied on their internal sense of bodyposition (proprioception) the greater was their impairment in social skillsmotor skills andimitation. For their study theresearchers recruited 14 children with autism and 13 typically developingchildren and examined the patterns of generalization as they learnt to use anovel tool. They furtherexamined how much the autistic kids relied on visual information to guidelearning and how much they relied on proprioceptive information to guidelearning. ?These findingscan lead to important advances in methods for treating autism. Applying theknowledge gained in the current study targeted interventions can be developedthat enhance visuo-motor associations in children with autism as they learn newskills? Nature magazine quoted Dr.

A strategy for GERD and Barrett’s esophagus
Modern Medicine
Morganstern is Medical Resident Division of Gastroenterology Department of Medicine Mount Sinai Medical Center New York New York. Anandasabapathy is Associate Professor of Medicine Director of Endoscopy Division of Gastroenterology Department of Medicine Mount Sinai Medical Center. Disclosure: The authors state they have nothing to disclose. AbstractChronic gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a risk factor for the development of Barrett’s esophagus the predominant precursor to esophageal adenocarcinoma. It is important for the primary care physician to identify those at greatest risk of developing Barrett’s esophagus for referral for appropriate endoscopic screening. Many older patients display atypical symptoms or may be asymptomatic.

Scientists lay out gene map of Korean male
Reuters
In a paper published in Nature the researchers from South Korea and the United States said they made use of recent technical advances to home in on DNA sequences — single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs — that were unique to the man. SNPs are single-letter changes in DNA sequences. ne of the researchers Kim Jong-Il of Seoul National University’s Genomic Medicine Institute described SNPs as “the single most important source of inherited differences between human beings. The team detected more than 3. 45 million SNPs in the Korean man’s gene map and a number of these have been associated in the past to various cancers diabetes Alzheimer’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis they wrote. “Some could affect the efficacy dosing or toxicity of certain drugs” they added. A growing number of genomics companies hope to offer people a complete analysis of their genetic information in future and are fighting to bring down costs.