Blogs / 80beats

Naturally lush lashes can be yours within 16 weeks, claims the drug company Allergan, which has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Latisse, the first ever eyelash-enhancing medication. According to the company, clinical trials show that daily dabs of Latisse on the edges of eyelids produce longer, thicker lashes, although mild side effects are possible. Allergan plans to start selling prescription-only Latisse by the end of March.

The eyelash-enhancing ingredient in Latisse is bimatoprost, a compound derived from fatty acids that bind to receptors in the eyelashes that may be involved in the development and re-growth of hair follicles. Allergan has used bimatoprost since 2001 in Lumigan, an Rx eye drop that lowers eye pressure in people with glaucoma [Scientific American]. Drugmakers stumbled upon the idea for Latisse when doctors and patients noticed lusher lashes on glaucoma patients taking Lumigan. Soon after, some doctors began writing Lumigan prescriptions for cosmetic patients, and competitors raced to create eyelash products that used bimatoprost or similar ingredients [The Wall Street Journal, subscription required]. Allergan, which also produces Botox, has since sued 11 companies for patent infringement for using bimatopost to promote lash growth.

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An experimental drug has shown promise in preventing emphysema in mice exposed to cigarette smoke, giving researchers new hope that they’ll soon find a way to combat one of the most stubborn, untreatable, and common killers of humans. Even though the study focuses on emphysema in mice, the researchers suggest the drug could work in people by delaying or preventing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which encompasses emphysema and chronic bronchitis and is the fourth most common cause of death in the United States [Science News].

The drug, called CDDO-imidazole, or CDDO-Im, works by activating a gene called Nrf2, explains study coauthor Shyam Biswal. In prior research, Biswal and colleagues found that Nrf2 works as a “master gene,” turning on genes involved in protecting the lungs from pollution and cigarette smoke. “The Nrf2 pathway is the major antioxidant and detoxifying response in the lungs. Therapies targeting this pathway need to be developed and tested in patients,” said Biswal [Reuters].

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Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth is under scrutiny for its practice of paying ghostwriters to draft scientific journal articles favorable to its products and publishing them under the names of academic researchers. Some of the ghostwritten reports involve Wyeth’s hormone replacement therapy, Prempo, and deny the results of a federal study that linked the drug to an increased risk for breast cancer. The inquiries come as part of the Senate Finance Committee’s examination of “medical ghostwriting,” part of a broader probe into the influence of drug companies on the health-care industry [Wall Street Journal].

The investigation is being spearheaded by Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who last week sent a letter to Wyeth’s chairman requesting documentation of the company’s ghostwriting and publishing procedures. The letter [pdf] said Wyeth’s publications resembled “subtle advertisements rather than publications of independent research” and that “any attempt to manipulate the scientific literature, that can in turn mislead doctors to prescribe drugs that may not work and/or cause harm to their patients, is very troubling.” In response, a Wyeth spokesman accused Mr. Grassley of recycling old arguments and insisted that “The authors of the articles in question, none of whom were paid, exercised substantive editorial control over the content of the articles and had the final say, in all respects, over the content” [New York Times].

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If you could take a pill to boost your concentration and mental stamina, would you do it? Around the country, thousands of college students are already answering “yes” to that question and are using prescription medications like Ritalin as study aids, and researchers say the demand for such “smart pills” is likely to grow. Now, in a new essay, a group of neuroscientists and bioethicists is arguing that society shouldn’t frown on such practices; instead the authors assert that “we should welcome new methods of improving our brain function,” and that doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night’s sleep [Chronicle of Higher Education].

Stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall are prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and are commonly used by people without a prescription to help them focus their attention, while a narcolepsy drug called Provigil is sometimes used by people trying to keep their brains alert and awake. The new essay cited a recent survey that found nearly 7 percent of students in U.S. universities have used prescription stimulants, and on some campuses, as many as a quarter of students have used the drugs for non-therapeutic purposes. “It’s a felony, but it’s being done,” [coauthor Martha] Farah said [Reuters].

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A promising target for next-generation cancer therapies might not be a target after all, according to a new study in Nature [subscription required]. The work calls into question the “cancer stem cell theory,” which claims that a rare class of cells, cancer stem cells, are responsible for initiating and spreading cancer tumors. But by tweaking previous experimental procedures, researchers working with human melanoma cells in mice now report that cancer stem cells are much more prevalent that previously thought. “We’re not trying to claim there is no merit to the field, but we think that the frequency of cancer stem cells will be much higher,” said [co-author] Sean Morrison… . “And there will be some cancers like melanoma where lots of cells will be tumorigenic and it won’t be possible to treat those cancers by treating a small subset of cells” [Wired Science].

Cancer stem cells—so-called because they share genetic similarities with standard stem cells—were first identified in 1994 and since then have been reported in cancers of the brain, breast, colon, and pancreas. They provided a well-defined target for cancer drugs since they were thought to number only a few in a million. Like evil relatives of standard organ-forming stem cells, cancer stem cells build tumors. It’s an appealing idea because it provides a new, well defined target for treatment [Wired News]. However, not everyone in the field was smitten with the new theory.

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The official death toll from the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe has climbed to nearly 500, according to the World Health Organization. But doctors on the ground say the actual fatalities may be closer to 1,000, with more than 12,000 infected since the start of the outbreak in August. Severe shortages of clean water, food, and medicine have allowed the normally treatable illness to ravage the country. Poorer areas have been without running water for months and just this week, the government cut off water to the nation’s capital, Harare. “The country is reaching a catastrophic level, in terms of food, health delivery, education,” said Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC [opposition party] leader. “Everything seems to be collapsing around us” [Times Online].

Authorities say they have run out of water-purifying chemicals and have therefore shut down the water system in an attempt to contain the waterborne disease. But without running water, sanitation systems are nonexistent and sewage lies in the open air. “Proper hygiene is the best protection against cholera and you can’t do that without clean water,” [BBC News] said Marcus Bachmann of Doctors Without Borders. Residents have resorted to digging shallow wells and using contaminated water despite the government’s warning to use only boiled water. “We are afraid but there is no solution, most of the time the electricity is not available so we just use the water,” resident Naison Chakwicha said [USA Today]. The Health Minister has even asked residents to stop shaking hands. “Although it’s part of our tradition to shake hands, it’s high time people stopped,” he said [CNN].

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To mark World AIDS Day yesterday, researchers engaged in a “thought experiment” meant both to demonstrate the challenges and the possibilities confronting a world beset by the HIV virus. What would happen, they asked, if everyone was tested annually for HIV, and all people with positive results were immediately put on antiretroviral drugs? In a new study published in the journal The Lancet [subscription required], researchers predicted what the effects of such a policy would be in South Africa. They worked out that treating everyone with the virus with antiretroviral drugs would reduce incidence from 20 per 1000 people to just 1 per 1000 within 10 years…. That’s because the drugs keep levels of the virus in the blood down, making people less infectious - even if they have unsafe sex [New Scientist].

Currently, people have to seek out HIV tests, and those who don’t engage in high-risk behavior (like unsafe sex or intravenous drug use) often never get tested. In addition, the expensive antiretroviral drugs currently aren’t prescribed to HIV-positive patients until their immune systems are compromised and they begin to show symptoms of AIDS. The researchers argue in their article that present policies aren’t working, as 33 million people around the world are currently infected with HIV. The American College of Physicians also released new recommendations this week, advising doctors to routinely screen all patients if possible.

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Researchers may have uncovered one of the universal causes of aging: A crucial type of protein that serves a double duty in organisms ranging from yeast to mice, and that becomes overwhelmed as the organism ages. The protein is charged both with repairing DNA damage and with regulating gene expression (so that, for example, a gene necessary for liver function doesn’t suddenly get turned on in the brain), and a new study has shown that when the protein is busy repairing DNA, it can’t perform its other task. Says lead author David Sinclair: “One idea of why we age is that DNA becomes damaged or mutated…. But perhaps the main culprit is the effect of genes switching on and off, and that should be reversible” [Wired News].

About a decade ago, researchers identified a protein called Sir2 that zooms to the spot of broken DNA in yeast cells and repairs the breaks. But to do that, Sir2 has to abandon its job of inactivating a sterility gene elsewhere in the yeast genome. The result is yeast cells that have intact DNA but are sterile, a symptom of aging in the fungi…. “This may be a very fundamental Achilles’ heel of life,” says Sinclair [ScienceNOW Daily News]. Now, Sinclair’s team has identified the mammalian equivalent of that protein, called SIRT1, and have determined that it plays a similar role in aging mice: When it focuses on repairing DNA damage, it neglects its gene regulation duties.

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A hormone produced in the gut appears to limit bone formation, scientists report in Cell [subscription required]. The hormone, serotonin, is the same one produced by the brain to regulate mood, learning, and sleep, but the new study finds that serotonin produced by the gut has an entirely separate function. Mice engineered to produce extra serotonin formed weak bones, while mice engineered to produce less serotonin developed extra-strong bones. The research, though still basic, suggests new avenues of osteoporosis research in humans. “It’s what you’d call a landmark study,” Bjorn Olsen [a Harvard cell biologist who was not involved with the study] says. “It opens new doors” [Science News].

Although serotonin produced by the gut makes up 95 percent of the body’s serotonin, its function had not been well understood. The connection between serotonin and bone formation revealed itself through two types of rare human diseases, both involving the gene Lrp5. People with one mutation produced less Lrp5 protein, developing fragile bones and blindness, while people with another mutation produced extra Lrp5 protein, developing unusually dense bones and resistance to osteoporosis. However, when the authors of the new study looked into the gene further, they were surprised to find that it acted not in bone cells but in cells of the gut. “We, as bone [researchers], thought of the skeleton as functioning independent of everything else,” said [Cliff Rosen, a bone biologist]. This group “asked the question, ‘could there be other regulators outside the skeleton that are regulating bone?’ and found the answer to be ‘yes.’” [The Scientist].

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Unfavorable results of drug trials are often swept under the rug, according to a new review of FDA drug applications. Nearly a quarter of drug trial outcomes submitted to the FDA by pharmaceutical companies—most of them unfavorable—remained unpublished or only partially published after five years. Published results were often positively skewed from those originally reported to the FDA. “These new findings confirm our previous suspicions that this is happening on a much broader systemic level. It shows that information is unavailable to those who really need it the most — the clinicians and the researchers,” [Science News] says An-Wen Chan of the Mayo Clinic.

Drug companies are required to submit the results of all drug trials to the FDA as part of new drug applications. After approval, these results are supposed to be made public, usually in the form of scientific publications. However, the new review published in PLoS Medicine found disturbing omissions and bias on the road to publication. The new analysis examined 164 trials for 33 new drugs that were approved by the FDA from January of 2001 to December 2002. By June 2007, one quarter of the trials were either published only in a partial form — as an abstract, or part of a pooled publication — or were not published at all [Science News]. Of 43 negative outcomes reported to the FDA, only 20 were later published. Nine percent of all published outcomes were more positive than those originally reported to the FDA.

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Contrary to conventional wisdom, marijuana may actually fight memory loss, scientists report—but only if taken in small doses amounting to just one puff a day. Researchers tested a compound similar to THC, the main psychoactive substance in marijuana, on rats and found that the chemical reduces inflammation in the brain and promotes the growth of new brain cells. Elderly rats given the compound performed better on learning and memory tasks. “Could people smoke marijuana to prevent Alzheimer’s disease if the disease is in their family? said [researcher Gary Wenk]. “We’re not saying that, but it might actually work” [Telegraph].

In one part of the study, researchers injected the THC-mimicking drug, called WIN-55212-2, into young rats with inflammation in their brains. The drug reduced inflammation. In a second part, the researchers injected WIN into older rats that were then put into a swimming tank with hidden resting spots. The medicated rats were better able to find and remember the resting spots. Dissection of the rat brains revealed not only reduced inflammation but the growth of new neurons. The results were presented at last week’s Society of Neuroscience meeting.

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A new intelligent pill designed by Philips, the Dutch electronics company, promises to deliver medicine in the right place, at the right time, inside your body. The company, best known for consumer products like webcams and wireless headphones, is packing some of the same technology into the new pill, known as the iPill. Containing a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and a reservoir for medication, the inch-long capsule is designed to treat digestive tract disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis [Times Online].

Once swallowed, the iPill allows researchers to keep track of its precise location through a wireless transmitter. It sends dispatches about the temperature and acidity of its surroundings to an outside receiver as it travels through the GI tract over the course of a day or two. The acidity, measured by pH, of the gut decreases as the pill gets further from the stomach, and that allows researchers to pinpoint the place where the drug is needed [San Francisco Chronicle]. Researchers can pre-program drug release when certain conditions are met or cue the drug release using a remote controller.

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Dosing menopausal women with testosterone may be the key to helping those with low libidos get back in the mood, according to a new study. Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceuticals has published the results of a new trial of their testosterone patch, called Intrinsa, and say the results are encouraging for frustrated older women seeking a “Viagra for women.” However, nagging safety concerns are likely to keep the drug off the market in the United States for some time to come (although the drug is already on sale in Europe): During the new study, four of the test subjects using the patch developed breast cancer.

The 52-week study included 814 women with sexual desire disorder, characterized by troublesome low sexual desire or function…. The women were asked to keep sexual encounter diaries, and researchers used other established measures to assess sexual response during the six-month evaluation phase of the study. They found that compared to placebo users, the women who used the 300 microgram patch reported significant improvements in sexual functioning, including desire, arousal, orgasm, and pleasure [WebMD].

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A drug that mimics the effects of a compound found in red wine has been shown to prevent obesity and diabetes in mice that were fed a high-calorie diet and prevented from exercising, taking another step towards the target of a anti-obesity pill. The natural compound found in grapes and red wine, called resveratrol, is believed to have numerous health benefits related to longevity, heart health, and metabolism. But tests in mice suggested gallons of wine would be necessary for humans to stand a chance of getting the same benefits. The scientists turned their attention to creating a more potent drug [BBC News].

The new experimental drug, called SRT1720, was developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Researchers explain that mice fed a high-fat diet were tricked into switching their metabolisms to a fat-burning mode that normally takes over when energy levels are low…. “We are activating the same enzymes that are activated when people go to the gym,” said Peter Elliott, a vice president at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, the Glaxo unit that developed the drug. “That is why we believe the profile for this drug is very safe” [Reuters].

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As if heath news wasn’t confusing enough these days (think good cholesterol, bad cholesterol), researchers say they’re zeroing in on a way to promote “good” fat, which efficiently burns energy and could be used to combat obesity. While adults have very little of this beneficial fat naturally, researchers are hunting for pharmaceuticals that could boost production.

[T]here are two distinct types of fat tissue: white ‘bad’ fat acts as an energy store whereas brown ‘good’ fat, which largely disappears by adulthood, helps in burning calories to generate body heat, which is crucial to keep babies warm…. These cells are brown because they are rich in energy burning structures called mitochondria [Telegraph]. Now, two new studies reported in the journal Nature [subscription required] have investigated ways to trigger the creation of these cells.

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