»medicine«

Health and medicine is big business, and everybody wants to get a share of it. Now, we don't want to demand industry or scientists, again, to disclose competing interests but the patients' groups. They hardly exist without support by the industry, writes the Lancet (1.7.2006) in an editorial. The paper reports a case where the UK charity CancerBACKUP recommends the drug Herceptin against breast cancer without pointing to side effects or critics of its use. Well, according to the Lancet the charity's sponsor and the drug's maker are the same.

Sascha Karberg reports in Financial Times Deutschland (4.7.2006) about a cooperation of the British Wellcome Trust and company Novartis to develop drugs against malaria. The project is remakable because generally the big pharma companies don't engage in disease of the poor -- most people affected with malaria live in the developing countries and have no money for the drugs. But Novartis realized that its researchers feel bound to the demands of society (not only making money and boosting shareholder value) and seek for societal relevant research. Hence, to make Novartis attractive for the best scientists it engages with the Wellcome Trust in malaria research. The Trust already pumped hugh amounts of money into malaria research with high quality output but poor realization in drugs. Hence, Novartis shall take the development and business part.

Benedict Carey wonders in the NY Times (11.11.2006) why psychologists or psychiatrists often disagree on the diagnosis or treatment of a child's mental disorder or behaviour.

Spanish scientists have found an important antagonist of Hepatitis C infections, reports Joaquín Mayordomo (El País, 24.10.2006). Manuel Romero Gómez first discovered that insulin resistance in HCV patients halves the power of interferon and ribavirin medication. That means vice versa that responders show less often impaired insulin production than non-responders. Gómez also knows now why it is like that: Impaired insulin levels trigger the production of infection factors like TNF what damages the liver and counteracts to the pharmaceuticals. The implication of this work: "Patients should reduce their weight to lower the insulin resistance. Than the medication will be more succesful," says Gómez.

Drug companies lose hundreds of millions of dollars when large-scale human clinical trials fail. Helen Pearson examines for Nature (30.11.2006) whether alternative procedures could help avoid such disappointments. She describes the case where a promising stroke drug of pharma firm AstraZeneca failed a phase III clinical trial.
On average, "the failed phase III trial shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise. More than 40 percent of drugs that enter phase III trials - the final and most extensive stage of clinical testing - are abandoned because they prove ineffective or unsafe," writes Pearson. Phase III trials are the costliest part of drug development. They involve lots of patients; in this case with two phase III trials 4900 people.

Lucy Atkins writes in the Guardian (23.3.2006) what body signs or physical attributes indicate future medical problems.

Tiny molecules guide the way for the sperm to find the egg cell inside the womb, or the cancer cell to spread. Barbara Hobom reports in FAZ (20.4.2006) about chemotaxis, the scientific notion that cells have particular receptors on their outside membrane that help to navigate through the body by clinching to special proteins. Recent research has shown that the run of the myriad of sperms for the egg is no random competition, but the tracking down of odour-like molecules released by egg cells. And the ability of sperm to 'smell' the egg is somewhat correlated to its maturity for fertilisation. Concerning the spread of metastases inside the body, chemotaxis describes why cancers only proliferate to particular tissue or organs.

Robert Rentzsch arranges for Nature online (24.2.2006) a FAQ on blood doping, a method that may be used by athletes at the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, to boost their performance. Includes also a brief description of the role of EPO in doping.

According to Deutschlandfunk radio (15.3.2006) the World Health Organisation WHO welcomes the advanced research of Hungarian company Omninvest into a potential vaccine against the bird flu virus H5N1. Results of first trials were convincing, says Klaus Stöhr, the head of the WHO's influenza task force.
(>> more background)

Iain Hollingshead compare in the Guardian (25.2.2006) the hysteria with bird flu with the recent SARS outbreak (for your relief: SARS has been contained by 2003). Medically, Sars is now "one of the best studied of any emerging infective disease", according to Kathryn Holmes of Colorado University, writes Hollingshead. "While it would now take an unfortunate accident or a fresh mutation for the Sars virus to re-emerge, scientists would be well prepared to contain it if it did."