terrasig | June 15, 2007As you may have noticed, my posting frequency has been a bit light as of late between work, family, and other non-blog responsibilities. So, I'm going to take a bit of a hiatus to recharge the old batteries - maybe a week or ten days.
There's plenty of other good pharmaceutical reading both here at ScienceBlogs and in my blogroll so I'm sure you'll be kept up-to-date.
Thanks very much for reading and I'll be back here again soon.
terrasig | June 11, 2007As I noted in a previous post on arsenic trioxide, you just never know what source will give rise to the next promising drug. Last week's New England Journal of Medicine marked a key study on an old drug, mitotane (Lysodren, Bristol-Myers Squibb), that is a structural derivative of the pesticide, DDT.
Adrenocortical carcinoma is a rare cancer with only 16-38% of patients surviving for five years. Following surgical resection, 75-85% of patients experience a relapse. Therefore, a group of Italian and German researchers sought to identify drugs that could be used as adjunct therapy in this…
terrasig | June 7, 2007Another Wine Escapade - "Some Old World vs. New"
by Erleichda
Our wine and dinner group known as Jim's Disciples met recently at a BYOB neighborhood Italian-American restaurant. It wasn't my neighborhood, as there is nothing close by to the woods where we reside, but the sort of place a neighborhood would be proud to call its own, a gem of a place, tucked away on a darkened side street. The organizer for this evening's entertainment thought we might scrutinize old world versus new, of whatever grape varieties we felt like comparing. And, to make it interesting, each pair of wines brought…
terrasig | June 3, 2007Yesterday morning's press release from the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting included discussion of three abstracts on complementary therapies being tested in cancer and cancer-related indications. The highlights on the major news services are that 1) a shark cartilage extract failed to provide survival benefit in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, 2) an American ginseng extract reduced cancer-related fatigue, and 3) flaxseed slows prostate cancer growth.
Just a few comments, mostly on the positive results, that didn't make it into mainstream media reports:
The…
terrasig | June 2, 2007Here are some interesting news items I found during the week but lacked the time to blog about:
Natural alternatives to growth-promoting antibiotics in livestock feed in EURelated: Herbal therapy for pigs at PigProgress.net
Coke and Cargill partner on herbal sweetener, Stevia (Rebiana)
Singapore herbal remedy adulterated with potent prescription drugs
Famed Karolinska Institutet opens Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine
Herbs misused relative to evidence-based guidelines
Slippery elm bark poaching in Kentucky
Creosote shrub compound extends mouse lifespan
People shouldn't start taking NDGA…
terrasig | May 29, 2007From today's New York Times,
The 62-year-old former commissioner [Zheng Xiaoyu] received the unusually harsh sentence amid growing concerns about the quality and safety of China's food and drug system following several scandals here involving tainted food and phony drugs.
China is now under mounting pressure to overhaul its food export controls after two Chinese companies were accused earlier this year of shipping contaminated pet food ingredients to the United States, resulting in one of the largest pet food recalls in American history.
The government is also investigating how diethylene…
terrasig | May 29, 2007We've discussed previously the use of herbal extracts from black cohosh (Actea racemosa) for relief from hot flashes and other vasomotor symptoms of menopause and perimenopause. A clinical trial in Annals of Internal Medicine last December, showed that one black cohosh extract was no better than placebo for this indication. Lack of efficacy has been shown in other settings yet black cohosh remains one of the most popular herbal products in North America.
Regardless of whether it works, black cohosh has been investigated by Health Canada for its link to rare but serious cases of liver damage…
terrasig | May 28, 2007It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men [and women] who goes into battle.
- Norman Schwarzkopf
Superb Memorial Day posts today from Orac at Respectful Insolence and Mark Chu-Carroll at Good Math, Bad Math.
terrasig | May 27, 2007After worries over the last few weeks of diethylene glycol being substituted for glycerin in cough syrup and toothpaste, I was happy to be reminded that we have a green source for glycerin. No need to risk using Chinese-sourced glycerin - glycerin (glycerol) is a by-product of biodiesel production.
But rather than sell it for pharmaceutical uses, researchers at the University of Missouri at Columbia are investigating the biodiesel by-product for use in cattle feed:
In a study that began this month, Monty Kerley, professor of ruminant nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural…
terrasig | May 26, 2007Seventy-nine years ago today marked the passing of Dr John Jacob Abel, known as the American father of Pharmacology. Beyond his work on epinephrine, insulin, and devising a dialysis machine, Abel founded the departments of pharmacology at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University.
The American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) is celebrating their 100th anniversary by marking the scientific pedigree of its members back to Dr Abel.
terrasig | May 24, 2007I seem to have missed this NYT article over last weekend. Following from the continuing appearance of diethylene glycol in glycerin imported from China, yet another consumer product is found to be adulterated, again in Panama:
Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been found in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste in Panama, and customs officials there said yesterday that the product appeared to have originated in China.
This just goes to show that any product containing glycerin, from cough syrup to toothpaste, runs the risk of containing the cheap substitute, diethylene…
terrasig | May 23, 2007The 2 May issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has an interesting news article on the advancing use of arsenic trioxide against a variety of human malignanices, mostly cancers of the blood.
The medical uses of arsenic reach back more than 2,000 years, but only recently has Western medicine embraced its surprising rise from folk cure-all to proven cancer treatment.
The January announcement of positive results in a 6-year NCI-sponsored phase III clinical trial to treat a rare form of leukemia is merely the latest in a series of kudos for arsenic's medicinal prowess. The latest…
terrasig | May 19, 2007It's nearing the beginning of June, the traditional time for increased stock trading based on results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting (1-5 June in Chicago). The meeting is often the first time that the general public learns of the progress of cancer drugs in development, often in companies for which many people hold stock. ASCO press releases dominate newspaper business sections during that week because the preliminary release of results influences stock prices.
ASCO released its abstract proceedings book early this week and, the Wall Street…
terrasig | May 18, 2007Actually, sharks do get cancer but a 15-year-old book by William Lane led people to think otherwise, launching investigation of shark cartilage as a source of antiangiogenic, anticancer compounds. While there is one promising shark cartilage extract (Neovastat) in clinical trials for multiple myeloma, most oral preparations on health food store shelves aren't stabilized and characterized well-enough to guarantee stability of antiangiogenic compounds.
But it gets worse with this news today from FDA's MedWatch program that illustrates once again the safety problems of some dietary supplements…
terrasig | May 16, 2007Time is short today so here are two quick picks of blog posts well worth reading on topics related to our normal discussions:
Joseph at The Corpus Callosum discusses a paper and a news report on putting drug safety risks in objective perspective relative to other risk behaviors we encounter daily, like driving a car. Depending on one's aversion to risk, some drugs can be considered relatively safe or dangerous, but Joseph points out that one must also consider the benefits of drugs in these risk assessment. But safety is not absolute: all beneficial activities and behaviors carry some risk…
terrasig | May 13, 2007My Mom did all the great 'Mom' things and was also instrumental in my career choice. After I started grade school, she started feeling out a career in nursing by working as a secretary in the emergency room department of a local hospital. She decided to go to nursing school when I was between 9 and 11 and I remember that her medical books - texts on physiology and pharmacology - began to pique my interest in this field.
Her dinnertime recollections of the previous night's ER happenings engrossed me, but simply grossed out my father. As I grew to have a family of my own, I became even more…
terrasig | May 12, 2007Via my colleague, PharmCanuck, comes news of an in-depth radio program on dichloroacetate (DCA) that aired this past Tuesday on CBC's, "The Current." As a reminder to readers who aren't already bored senseless of my discussion of this chemical, DCA is a small molecule freely-available in the public domain that was shown to slow the growth of human lung tumors implanted in rats by researchers at the University of Alberta. I've posted on this issue a number of times and have been well outposted by my surgical oncology blogging colleague, Orac at Respectful Insolence.
(Real Audio segment: 21:…
terrasig | May 11, 2007The practices of Mannatech distributors were the focus of a detailed article in this morning's Wall Street Journal by Suzanne Sataline.
The Issue: Some consumers are using Mannatech nutritional supplements to seek relief from serious medical problems.
The Background: The company's free-lance salespeople sometimes suggest product uses that go well beyond recommendations on their labels.
What's Next: The Texas attorney general is scrutinizing the company, which also faces a class-action lawsuit from shareholders.
Dietary supplements like those sold by Mannatech are, in general, short on science…
terrasig | May 9, 2007Via the Knight Science Journalism Tracker at MIT, I was directed to one of the best-written articles on melamine contamination of pet food and animal feed.
David Brown at the Washington Post is the guilty party whose article appeared Monday. Brown does a terrific job of explaining how the modestly toxic substance, melamine, can cause renal failure when combined with cyanuric acid. Not widely reported in the press is the fact that cyanuric acid, another nitrogen-rich compound, has also been found to contaminate some wheat gluten and wheat flour from China.
For example, here is the most…
terrasig | May 9, 2007Between melamine and diethylene glycol, most of my attention this past week has been on unsafe food and drug additives in products imported into the US and other countries. Nicholas Zamiska has an article in today's Wall Street Journal detailing this widespread problem: China, India, and Mexico are the countries that lead the number of refusals of food product imports by the US FDA:
Formaldehyde, which has been linked to cancer, has legitimate uses in adhesives and embalming. But in Indonesia, Sutikno, a 35-year-old tofu maker in south Jakarta who goes by one name, uses it to keep the tofu…