January 31, 2008

• Encysive Pharmaceuticals Launches Thelin in Sweden
  (Encysive) -- Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc. today announced the commercial availability of THELIN(r) 100 mg tablets in Sweden. THELIN is approved for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and has received reimbursement approval for use in Sweden.
  

• Breakthroughs In Artificial Lungs Could Assist In Transplants
  (USA Today) -- Researchers from academic institutions across the country who are developing and testing prototypes believe artificial lung clinical trials in humans, similar to studies already underway in Canada and Europe, may begin as early as this spring.
  

• Percutaneous Pulmonary Stents To Remedy Stenosis In Repaired Valves
  (MedPage Today) -- The marriage of the valve and stent was conceived by Philipp Bonhoeffer, M.D., of the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, who first performed the intervention in 2000 in Paris on an 11-year-old boy. Dr. Wilson presented Dr. Bonhoeffer's data and studies of his own on 121 of the patients.
  

• Autoimmune Disease Cure May Lie In Protein
  (Ivanhoe) -- Researchers at VIB, the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, in connection with Ghent University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, discovered a protein responsible for initiating this inflammation reaction. The protein, named MALT1, slices another protein called A20. In normal circumstances, A20 inhibits inflammation but when MALT1 is present, the inflammation reaction amplifies.
  

• Sildenafil Prevents Rebound Pulmonary Hypertension In Infants
  (Lifescience-online) -- Lara Shekerdemian, M.D., of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and five associates gave a single dose of sildenafil to 15 infants undergoing withdrawal from inhaled nitric oxide therapy. None experienced rebound pulmonary hypertension, a common therapeutic complication.
  

• Know Your Family Health History
  (13WHAM-TV) -- A young woman recently diagnosed with a rare lung disease is teaming up with doctors to remind all of us how important it is to learn about your family's health history.

• Sleep Apnea Tied To Risk Of Mental Impairment
  (Reuters) -- Older women with sleep-related breathing problems may have a heightened risk of impairments in thinking and memory, a new study suggests.
  

• Jaw Surgery Aids Sleep Apnea Sufferers
  (ABC7) -- During GBAT, doctors go in through an incision inside the lip. They move a portion of bone about the size of a penny, then add a small permanent plate to the keep the tongue from blocking the airway.
  

• Anti-Clotting Drug Trial Shortened By Bleeding Problems
  (HealthDay News) -- Idraparinux is one of a number of anti-clotting agents being tested as possible replacements for the current standby warfarin (Coumadin), which is highly effective but difficult to manage, requiring frequent blood tests.
  

• Some Transplant Patients OK Without Years Of Drug Treatment
  (Chicago Tribune) -- Doctors produced the groundbreaking result by injecting transplant recipients with blood stem cells taken from their donors' bone marrow. The stem cells multiplied and protected the transplanted organ from an immune system attack.
  

• Fen-Phen Case Bail Is $102 Million
  (Kentucky.com) -- U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman set bond for Gallion at $52 million; for Cunningham at $45 million; and for Mills at $5 million.
  

• Interstitial Lung Disease And Pulmonary Hypertension
  (Medscape) -- Pulmonary hypertension (PH) in interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a very new and hot topic that has been receiving a lot of interest in the literature. Imre North, MD, from the University of Chicago led a series of discussions at the 2007 Chest meeting. The discussions focused on the World Health Organization group 3 PH associated with disorders of the respiratory system and/or hypoxemia.
  

• Care Of The Transplant Patient
  (Medscape) -- The critical care management issues of organ transplant recipients is a growing area to which intensivists are increasingly being exposed, not only in the big academic institutions, but also in smaller community hospitals.
  

• Long-Term Effect Of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure On BP In Patients With Hypertension And Sleep Apnea
  (Medscape/Chest) -- Objective: To analyze the long-term effect of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) on ambulatory BP in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and hypertension, and to identify subgroups of patients for whom CPAP could be more effective.
  

• Sildenafil Effective Against Pulmonary Hypertension With Connective Tissue Disease
  (Medscape) -- Sildenafil has proven to be an effective treatment for PAH in general, but whether it was useful against the PAH-CTD subtype, which carries a poor prognosis, was unclear.
  

• Aboriginal Instrument Class: ‘Primal Scream Therapy'
  (Mohave Valley News) -- There are also health benefits, Jones said. According to the British Medical Journal, regularly playing the instrument reduces snoring and sleep apnea as well as reducing blood pressure and relaxing the nerves.
  

• Drug Makers Make Name Games Big Business
  (Forbes) -- The names of these incredibly popular medicines don't have defined meanings. But millions of dollars are spent creating just the right sound and image.

• Hypoxia During Air Travel In Adults With Pulmonary Disease
  (PubMed) -- Although in-flight medical emergencies are infrequent, some adults with pulmonary disease may experience significant physiological stress, exacerbation of their underlying illness, and severe hypoxemia during air travel.
  
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• Six More Genes Linked With Autoimmune Disease Lupus
  (AFP) -- Separately or together, the six play a part in the molecular pathway of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a chronic form of lupus that can affect skin, lungs, blood vessels, the brain and nervous system.
  

• NEJM Editorial On Significance And Limitations Of New Lupus Gene Expression Research
  (EurekAlert) -- “Overall, these papers confirm what investigators have been finding over the past decades,” says Dr. Crow, the co-director of the Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research and director of the Autoimmunity and Inflammation Research Program at Hospital for Special Surgery. “They show that many aspects of the immune system are involved in the development of the disease, but they also provide a new level of detail regarding the specific molecular pathways that contribute.”
  

• Did Sleep Apnea Unit Focus Gas?
  (Allentown Morning Call) -- A 63-year-old man killed Friday when high levels of carbon monoxide seeped into his Upper Macungie Township hotel room may have been more susceptible to the dangerous gas because he apparently used a medical device to force extra air into his lungs as he slept, officials said Saturday.
  

• Keratinocyte Growth Factor Aids Experimental Lung Transplant
  (Medscape) -- Use of keratinocyte growth factor (palmiferin; delta-N23-KGF) prevents intra-alveolar edema in experimental lung isografts in rats, according to German investigators.
  

• Living Donor Liver Transplant Yields Better Survival Than Deceased Donor
  (Medscape) -- "Our study confirms that the practice of living donor liver transplantation provides considerable reduction in risk of pre-transplant death to liver transplant candidates," lead researcher Dr. Carl Berg told Reuters Health.
  

• Surgery Not the Best Option for Sleep Apnea
  (Medscape) -- In an article in the January 5 issue of BMJ, the researchers suggest that although surgery to expand the upper airway in patients with OSA is becoming increasingly popular in Australia and elsewhere, it is not always the most appropriate and cost-effective choice.
  

• Trial Date Set For Fen-Phen Lawyers
  (Cincinnati Enquirer) -- A federal judge has set a May trial date for three lawyers charged with stealing millions of dollars intended for hundreds of Kentuckians sickened by the diet drug fen-phen.
  

• Smoking Belies Milder Disease But Worse Prognosis For Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Patients
  (Science Daily) -- Smokers and ex-smokers with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), an untreatable progressive lung disease that usually leads to death within a few years of diagnosis, have a worse prognosis than non-smokers, according to research from London.
  

• Low One-Year Survival Rate For Salt Lake City's University Hospital Lung Transplants Prompts Inspection
  (Salt Lake Tribune) -- The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients' latest data, released Friday, shows the U.'s average one-year survival rate for the years 2004 through 2006 was 59 percent, compared with the United Network for Organ Sharing's (UNOS) expected survival rate of 85 percent.
  

•   Organ Donation Debate, UK
  (Medical News Today) -- A system that assumed everyone was willing to donate organs unless they explicity opted out ahead of their death could "close the aching gap between the potential benefits of transplant surgery and the limits imposed by our current system of consent", wrote Gordon Brown, the prime minister, in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday.
  

• ZymoGenetics' Partner Merck Serono Gets FDA Nod For Lupus Trial
  (Reuters) -- ZymoGenetics Inc said its partner Merck Serono, German drugmaker Merck KGaA's affiliate, received approval from U.S. health regulators for the design of a late-stage lupus trial testing the drug atacicept.
  

• Encysive Pharmaceuticals Launches THELIN In Belgium And Luxembourg
  (Encysive) -- Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc. today announced the commercial availability of THELIN(r) (sitaxentan sodium) 100 mg tablets in Belgium and Luxembourg for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension.
  

• First Heart, Lung Transplant Patient Leaves Hospital
  (Prague Daily Monitor) -- The patient who underwent the first successful combined heart and lung transplant in the Czech Republic last November, was released from Prague's Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM) in a good condition Friday, IKEM heart centre head Jan Pirk told CTK.
  

•   Tot Defies Odds To Celebrate Birthday
  (Belfast Telegraph) -- The Fortwilliam tot suffers from a rare heart and lung condition called pulmonary hypertension (PH). She also suffers from a hole in her heart, Down's Syndrome and epilepsy.
  

• Life On Hold - Baltic Woman Hopes For New Lungs
  (The Times-Reporter) -- Planning her way into buildings is only the beginning of the list of things Zinkon has to do daily. In April 2004, she was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary hypertension, or “high blood in the lungs,” as she calls it.
  

• Team Creates Rat Heart Using Cells of Baby Rats
  (New York Times) -- The researchers removed all the cells from a dead rat heart, leaving the valves and outer structure as scaffolding for new heart cells injected from newborn rats. Within two weeks, the cells formed a new beating heart that conducted electrical impulses and pumped a small amount of blood.
  

• Can You Write Off Your Weight?
  (Newsweek) -- A new book claims putting pen to paper can help you slim down.
  

• Artery Stiffness Tied To Mortality In Pulmonary Hypertension
  (Medscape) -- In the December issue of Chest, Dr. Vonk-Noordegraaf and colleagues at VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam note that they studied 86 patients to investigate whether a measure of proximal pulmonary artery stiffness -- area distensibility and relative cross-sectional area change (RAC) via MRI -- might be of use in predicting mortality.
  

• Judge Moves Fen-Phen Case Ahead
  (Lexington Herald-Leader) -- Melbourne Mills Jr., Shirley Cunningham Jr. and William Gallion had asked a judge to dismiss wire fraud charges against them, saying that federal investigators had violated their attorney-client privilege.
  

• Rural Residents Get Fewer Organ Transplants
  (HealthDay News) -- The study of almost 175,000 potential transplant recipients showed that those living outside metropolitan centers "were 8 percent to 15 percent less likely to be wait-listed and 10 percent to 20 percent less likely to undergo heart, liver and kidney transplantation than patients in urban environments," the report said.
  

• Human Growth Factor Holds Promise For Better Lung Transplants
  (OnMedica) -- Experiments by German researchers using keratinocyte growth factor (KGF) in lung transplants in rats could pave the way for more effective grafts in humans.
  

• Medicare Coverage Recommended For In-Home Sleep Testing
  (Reuters) -- On December 14, 2007, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a policy memo proposing to allow coverage of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) based upon diagnosis of sleep apnea by home sleep testing (HST). A public comment period is currently open, and the final policy will be published in March 2008.

• Lawyers Again Seek Release In Fen-Phen Case
  (Kentucky.com) -- U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman closed a bond hearing Monday afternoon held to determine whether Shirley Cunningham Jr., William Gallion and Melbourne Mills Jr. should be released from the Boone County jail, where they have been since Aug. 10. No decision was made Monday and the hearing will continue Friday.
  

• Plaintiffs Seek To Force Auction Of Partial Ownership Of Curlin
  (Kentucky.com) -- An attorney for 418 people, plaintiffs in a lawsuit against two of Curlin's minority owners, want a judge to order foreclosure on Curlin, the stable that officially owns him and its parent company. A foreclosure could have 20 percent ownership in the horse up for bid by the Boone County sheriff, with any money made from the public sale going to settle a $42 million judgment.
  

•   Lung Transplant Team Celebrates 100 Percent Success Rate
  (Irish Independent) -- The centre at Dublin's Mater Hospital -- which is now two years old -- has successfully completed 16 transplants on patients aged between 18 and 62.
  

• Friends Help Carry The Burden Of Dieting
  (USA Today) -- Weight loss can be catching, even when relatives and friends are thousands of miles apart.
  

• Hospitalizations Increase For PH
  (USA Today) -- The study, led by Chaya Merrill, found that hospital admissions for pulmonary hypertension increased more than 50% from 1997 to 2005, from 301,400 to 456,500. The average cost for each hospitalization in 2005 was $4,300 higher than the average for all hospital stays, $12,400 vs. $8,100.
  

• Cardiac Abnormalities Common In Systemic Sclerosis
  (Medicexchange.com) -- Left and right heart diseases, including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), left ventricular hypertrophy, and diastolic dysfunction, are frequently found in patients with systemic sclerosis, according to a prospective study conducted in France.
  

• Protein's New Role Discovered In Autoimmune Disease
  (Science Daily) -- Investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have identified the previously unknown role of a chemical ‘messenger’ leading to autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
  

• Survivors Celebrate Christmas Miracles
  (The Jackson Sun) -- Four years ago, he had open heart surgery to replace one valve and repair another. At that time, he also was having trouble breathing. Doctors determined he had pulmonary hypertension.
  

• Disney Dream Trip For Brave Oliver
  (this is gloucester.co.uk) -- A Special wish is coming true for little Oliver Sherwood who suffers from a rare lung disorder.Oliver may seem like other two-year-olds but he suffers from pulmonary hypertension (PH). This means he has to take medication seven times a day and needs oxygen on standby.

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