Reason for cystic fibrosis infections uncovered
People with cystic fibrosis are prone to lung infections, especially with the bug Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and now a German team has discovered why. Their experiments with mice show that the accumulation of a fatty substance called ceramide in the respiratory tract is the reason.
The good news is that one enzyme, dubbed Asm, is in large part responsible for this build-up, so treatment aimed at blocking this enzyme might reduce lung infections in people with CF.
The underlying cause of the disease cystic fibrosis is known to be a gene mutation, but how this promotes lung infections was unclear.
Micardis cuts heart risks in large study
A six-year study pitting the newer blood pressure drug Micardis with the ACE inhibitor ramipril found Micardis was just as effective in preventing serious heart problems as the older drug, but with fewer side effects, international researchers said on Monday.
The Boehringer Ingelheim drug Micardis, or telmisartan, is typically used in patients with heart failure, but the study found it worked as well as the ACE inhibitor ramipril, marketed in the United States as Altace by King Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Flu shots leave heart failure patients at risk
Patients with heart failure are especially vulnerable to influenza and most doctors recommend they get flu shots, but a study suggests these annual jabs may not offer them full protection, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
They found heart failure patients in a study had lower immune responses to the vaccine compared with healthy people of similar ages, leaving them more vulnerable to infection.
“What we theorize is that heart failure as a condition leads to impaired immune function, which renders these patients less able to respond to the vaccine,” said Orly Vardeny of the University of Wisconsin, who presented the study at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago.
Two Indonesian youths die of bird flu
Two Indonesian youths have died from bird flu, a health ministry official said on Monday, taking the confirmed death toll in the country worst affected by the virus to 107.
A 15-year-old boy from Subang, in West Java, died on Wednesday in an area where chickens had died, said Nyoman Kandun, director general of communicable disease control at the ministry.
An 11-year-old girl from Bekasi, east of Jakarta, who died on Friday also tested positive for the virus, the official said.
2-drug blood pressure therapy lowers cardiovascular risk
An international blood pressure study comparing two single-pill drug combinations has yielded results so significant that the study has been stopped early – and the researchers say their findings might alter the way high blood pressure is treated worldwide.
The randomized study showed that both drug combinations helped people who had high blood pressure and other cardiovascular risk factors get their BP down to recommended levels – despite the fact that two-thirds of them had been unable to achieve good BP control with other medications before they entered the study.
But even more important, the study revealed that the patients taking one of the combinations had 20 percent fewer heart-related events than the patients taking the other one. Those events included cardiovascular deaths, heart attacks, strokes, hospitalizations for unstable angina and treatments to re-open blocked heart arteries.
Potential association of type 2 diabetes genes with prostate cancer
-Scientists have identified six new genes which play a role in the development of type 2 diabetes, and among the group is the second gene known to also play a role in prostate cancer.
The new findings bring the total number of genes or genomic regions implicated in diabetes to 16, said Laura Scott, assistant research scientist in the Department of Biostatistics. Researchers from the University of Michigan were one of three teams of scientists in Europe and North America that led the multi-group collaboration. The findings, which were published today in the journal Nature Genetics, provide new insights into the mechanisms which are usually responsible for the control of glucose, or sugar, levels in the blood, and to the derangements that can result in type 2 diabetes, which impacts more than 170 million people worldwide.
One of the newly discovered genes, which goes by the name of JAZF1, contains a separate variant that has recently been shown to play a role in prostate cancer, and is the second gene that appears to play a role in both conditions.
