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terrasig | May 1, 2010. . .because my voice has also been absent from the offline world.
Yes, the final gift to me from LungMutiny2010 is a case of inhaled corticosteroid dysphonia - and another opportunity to cultivate compassion for those with chronic illnesses and permanent loss of physiological functioning.
Here's a recap: After a three month battle with pneumonia, I returned to the university as much as I could about six weeks ago. I say "as much as I could" because, once again, I was amazed by how little my body would let me do after being confined to bed for ten weeks.
Some days I'd just be doing great and…
terrasig | March 25, 2010Have you ever taken one of the now-over-the-counter heartburn relief remedies like Tagamet, Zantac, or Pepcid?
How about the beta-blocker atenolol (Tenormin) or metoprolol (Lopressor) for antihypertensive therapy, or the original less-selective beta-blocker propranolol (Inderal) for migraines, presentation anxiety or stage fright?
If you answered yes to either question, you owe a debt of gratitude to Sir James Black, the Scottish physician who left us earlier this week at age 85. The best obituary I have seen memorializing Sir James comes from the UK Telegraph.
Black was called the father…
terrasig | February 19, 2010Just a quick post on an article that caught my eye: Jazz Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, CA, has announced that the US FDA has accepted their new drug application (NDA) filing for JZP-6, or sodium oxybate, for the treatment of pain and fatigue associated with fibromyalgia.
The NDA was based on positive outcomes of two, Phase III clinical trials - those randomized, placebo-controlled double-blind trials that serve as the gold standard for drug efficacy. The company expects an approval decision from FDA by October 2010.
Jazz has already garnered approval for sodium oxybate under the brand name…
terrasig | February 19, 2010In our last post, we discussed a recent USPTO ruling that rejected a claim of the Pfizer patent on the erectile dysfunction drug, sildenafil (Viagra®), to a novel oral treatment for the disorder. The patent appeals panel ruled that the existence of horny goat weed, a traditional Chinese medicine used orally for impotence, was grounds for rejection of the claim.
Frequent commenter daedalus4u pulled out US Patent #6,469,012 (filed Mar 4 1996, issued Oct 22 2002) wherein the relevant claim 24 reads:
A method of treating erectile dysfunction in a male human, comprising orally administering to a…
terrasig | February 18, 2010Reuters and Bloomberg reported earlier this week on an ongoing patent battle (read: pissing match) between Pfizer and Eli Lilly & Co. relating to their erectile dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis, respectively.
A US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) appeals committee has ruled that an element of Pfizer's patent on sildenafil, the active chemical in Viagra, is invalid because the drug is insufficiently different from a traditional Chinese medicine called Yin Yang Huo or horny goat weed.
At issue is Pfizer's claim to a method for treating male erectile dysfunction. The patent appeals…
terrasig | February 10, 2010From Monday's issue of The Press in York, England:
A breast cancer patient from York says she is "disgusted" by a shortage of the drug she and hundreds of other women rely on to reduce the risk of the disease returning.
Mother-of-two Marion Barclay, 45, said the situation became so serious last Friday, she faced the prospect of missing her daily dose of Arimidex tablets.
This story is one of several reports on sporadic, worldwide shortages of Arimidex®, the brand of anastrozole sold by AstraZeneca. Anastrozole is a competitive inhibitor of the cytochrome P450 monooxygenase isozyme known as…
terrasig | January 9, 2010While the coffee wasn't quite ready this morning, I ventured to the Wall Street Journal health page at the Wall Street Journal, one of my frequent first-reads.
I was immediately intrigued by a short article from the excellent Jennifer Corbett Dooren about Roche-Genentech gaining US FDA approval for a new rheumatoid arthritis drug, Actemra.
Actemra (tocilizumab) is a monoclonal antibody that works via a novel mechanism of blocking the receptor for interleukin-6, a pro-inflammatory molecule called a cytokine. What is most important is that Actemra appears to work in patients who have not been…
terrasig | January 5, 2010
On October 8, 2009, paramedics responded to a 911 call at a mystical retreat being held at Angel Valley Spiritual Retreat Center in West Sedona, Arizona, a stunningly beautiful area known widely as a mecca for New Age enthusiasts. Eyewitness accounts compiled in this October 21 New York Times article describes what medics encountered upon arriving at a 415-square-foot "sweat lodge" on the center's grounds:
Midway through a two-hour sweat lodge ceremony intended to be a rebirthing experience, participants say, some people began to fall desperately ill from the heat, even as their leader,…
terrasig | November 20, 2009
Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97.
Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills 2 million a year worldwide. The concept of using drug combinations to increase individual drug potency and slow the emergence of resistance is now a mainstay of therapeutic approaches for cancer, HIV, and other infectious diseases.
Gellene…
terrasig | November 3, 2009I am running out of eyelash puns having written at least six posts since the summer of 2007 on a class of anti-glaucoma drugs that have been harnessed for their cosmetic side effect: promotion of eyelash growth. Bimatoprost (Lumigan®) and latanoprost (Xalatan®) are members of the prostamide class of drugs that can manage some forms of glaucoma by reducing intraocular pressure. When administered as eye drops, the drugs mimic the effect of endogenous prostaglandin PGF2α, acting as a local hypotensive to promote outflow of aqueous humor from the eye through the trabecular meshwork.
Invoking the…
terrasig | October 31, 2009This post appeared here originally on 31 October 2007
Have you ever wondered, perhaps on 31 October, why witches are depicted as riding brooms?
The answer is alluded to by Karmen Franklin at Chaotic Utopia in her post as to why witches need to know their plant biology.
The excerpts I'm about to give you come from a superb and accessible pharmacology text entitled, "Murder, Magic, and Medicine," by John Mann, host of the BBC Radio 4 series by the same name.
Witches
"Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble" - Macbeth IV, i
Hallucinogenic compounds called tropane alkaloids…
terrasig | October 7, 2009Welcome visitors coming from a recommendation by Dr Carmen Drahl at C&ENtral Science, the blog of the American Chemical Society's Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN):
Terra Sig has a fantastic post about the chemistry prize. The money quote: "If I see electrons being pushed around, it's chemistry."
Thank you for the kind words, Dr Drahl. New readers, feel free to weigh in down in the comments as to your take on this year's Chemistry prize.
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three amazing scientists who elucidated the chemical bond-by-chemical bond action of the…
terrasig | July 7, 2009While invoking my little-known real name, the ABC News Medical Unit shows its commitment to providing scientifically-objective and medically-valid commentary to the Michael Jackson circus.
The post cited was from 26 June where I discussed the first Michael Jackson revelation that he had repeatedly been given the unusual opioid drug, meperidine, presumably for his chronic back pain.
From this morning's ABC News story by Vic Walter and Richard Esposito with contributions from JoAnna Schaffhausen:
One pharmacologist blogged about [p]ropofol this week and explained in his science blog how Demerol…
terrasig | July 1, 2009Judging from the press inquiries I've had since 5 am EDT today, expect today's focus in the Michael Jackson case to be on the anesthetic drug, propofol (Diprivan®).
Last evening, California nutritionist and registered nurse Ms Cherilyn Lee gave an interview to Campbell Brown on CNN (and this AP exclusive report) describing Michael Jackson's repeated requests of her for the intravenous sedative drug for his insomnia. She wisely rejected his requests, instead providing him with a vitamin and mineral "energy" injection called Myers' cocktail.
However, four days before Jackson's death she…
terrasig | June 30, 2009
I love it when new readers stumble upon old posts.
Such was the case when I received the following delightful comment from Seattle-based psychologist, Dr Gary Grenell, on my April 2008 post about the passing of Dr Charlotte Tan, a pediatric cancer chemotherapy pioneer:
I was probably in one of her earliest actionmycin-D trial groups for Wilms tumor in 1957. Now at age 55, 52 years later, still going strong!
Most of you scientific youngsters today probably only know of actinomycin D as a laboratory tool for inhibiting RNA synthesis. But here in the following repost, learn about the…
terrasig | June 26, 2009AOL's celebrity gossip page TMZ.com was first yesterday to report Michael Jackson's death, in part due to their direct line to one or more Jackson family members.
They appear to have had another scoop today in referencing a family member who reported that Mr Jackson had received an injection of the opioid analgesic, Demerol (meperidine), at 11:30 am yesterday. It is not clear whether this shot was administered by Dr Conrad Murray, the physician who was present when the 911 call was made to L.A. dispatchers. (Non-US readers may also refer to meperidine as pethidine or the trade name, Pethadol…
terrasig | May 31, 2009When one thinks of a heroin user, thoughts most often come to mind of a person living in squalor in a big metropolitan city or that of an artsy, poetic hipster (while there are many literary works on the life of heroin users, my all-time favorite is Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical account written by Jim Carroll during the ages of 12 to 15. From this description of Carroll's two works on his life with heroin at the catholicboy.com website of Carroll scholar, Dr Cassie Carter: "After reading about 30 pages of the Diaries, [Jack] Kerouac stated that 'at the age of 13, Jim Carroll writes…
terrasig | March 21, 2009After writing this post, I came across Alex's obituary and guestbook on Legacy.com. By all accounts, Alex was a great kid - loved and admired by many - an accomplished hockey player and musician with a love for the mountains. This could have been you or I, or worse, one of our own children.
Breaking my heart this morning is news from Boulder that last month's death of 20-year-old CU student, Alexander McGuiggan, was from consumption of "opium tea."
Police department spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said investigators believe McGuiggan and others had acquired poppy plants -- which are available…
terrasig | March 9, 2009
I'm very proud today to see one of my formative professors, Dr Fulton Crews, quoted extensively in a USAToday article on a new, web-based alcohol awareness initiative, "Rethinking Drinking," from NIH's National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) Division of Treatment and Recovery Research.
While many associate heavy drinking with liver problems, it can also increase the risk for heart disease, sleep disorders, depression, stroke and stomach bleeding. Consumed during pregnancy, it can cause fetal brain damage, says Fulton Crews, director of the Bowles Center for Alcohol…
terrasig | February 23, 2009Welcome 4 March readers of The Daily Grail - please be sure to also click on the original post about the DMT article by my colleague, Laura Mariani.
Thanks to Dave Munger & Co's ResearchBlogging.org, I just found a fabulous neuroscience grad student blogger from Emory University: Laura E Mariani at Neurotypical?
Doctor-to-be Mariani blogged last Monday about a paper in Science where the endogenous ligand of the orphan sigma-1 receptor was identified as the hallucinogen, N,N'-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. The work originated with the group of Arnold Ruoho and colleagues at the University…