Antibiotics should not used to treat a runny nose
Antibiotics should not be given to patients with acute purulent rhinitis (a runny nose with coloured discharge), a familiar feature of the common cold, concludes a study published on the British Medical Journal website.
General practitioners often prescribe antibiotics for respiratory tract infections when nasal discharge is purulent. Most guidelines recommend against their use for this condition, but this advice is based on one study that showed no effect.
So researchers in New Zealand searched the scientific literature for trials comparing antibiotics with placebo for acute purulent rhinitis (duration less than 10 days).
Patent issued for method to manufacture Immtech’s drug candidate compounds
Immtech Pharmaceuticals has announced that The United States Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent related to the manufacturing of Immtech’s drug candidate compounds.
Immtech has an exclusive, worldwide license under this patent, based on Immtech’s license agreement with the Company’s consortium of scientists. The patent, entitled “Process for the synthesis of bis-aryl diamidoxime compounds,” claims a method for making drug candidate compounds, such as Immtech’s pafuramidine maleate (DB289). The patent names scientists from both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Georgia State University as inventors.
Researchers identify potential ovarian cancer stem cells
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified potential ovarian cancer stem cells, which may be behind the difficulty of treating these tumors with standard chemotherapy.
Understanding more about the stem-like characteristics of these cells could lead to new approaches to treating ovarian cancer, which kills more than 16,000 U.S. women annually and is their fifth most common cause of cancer death.
The report will appear in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
