March 30, 2007

• Biomarker May Help Distinguish Cardiac And Pulmonary Dyspnea
  (Medpage Today) -- Office-based use of the biomarker pro-B-type natriuretic peptide (proBNP) to help diagnose the cause of dyspnea in the general population may be feasible, Danish researchers said here.
  

• Proteo, Inc./Proteo Biotech Ag: European Commission Grants Orphan Drug Status To Elafin For The Treatment Of PAH
  (Business Wire) -- After recommendation by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), Proteo Biotech AG has received orphan drug status from the European Commission for its drug candidate Elafin for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.
  

•   New Start For Lung Transplants In Greece
  (Ekathimerini) -- Greece is to start conducting lung transplants again, following the success of an operation last November on a 66-year-old man with chronic lung disease, doctors told reporters in Athens yesterday.
  

• Doctors Baffled By Patients Not Taking Prescriptions
  (USA Today) -- Study after study shows that in the USA and other developed countries, only about half of people with chronic health conditions continue to take medication as directed. Doctors say the problem cuts across all socioeconomic groups, and the problem often goes unrecognized.
  

• Exclusive License Agreement For Modified Release Beraprost Assumed And Restated By Lung Rx, Inc.
  (United Therapeutics) -- Lung Rx, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Therapeutics Corporation (Nasdaq: UTHR), today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Toray Industries, Inc. ("Toray") to assume and restate the rights and obligations of the agreement entered into between United Therapeutics and Toray in June 2000 concerning the commercialization of modified release formulations of the cardiovascular medicine beraprost.
  
  -Acrobat Reader (free) required. Click here to get Acrobat Reader.

• Vision Screening Unnecessary For Asymptomatic Post-Transplant Patients, Study Finds
  (OSN SuperSite) -- Susan Lightman, PhD, FRCOphth, of Moorfields Eye Hospital, and colleague Toks Akerele, MBChB, examined ocular morbidity rates in 115 patients on long-term, high-dose immunosuppression for maintaining their heart, lung, or heart and lung transplants. They published their findings in the March issue of the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
  

• Oral Concerns In People With Lupus
  (eMaxHealth.com) -- Dr. Freedman, whose expertise is related to diseases involving the mouth, including autoimmune processes, presented a lecture on the effects of lupus and oral health. He began by informing the audience that there are three major categories of lesions that occur in the oral cavity of people with lupus.
  

• Trial Ordered Over Firm's Distribution Of Fen-Phen Settlement
  (Law.com) -- A New York state judge has ordered a trial to determine whether the law firm that negotiated a massive settlement with the maker of banned diet drug fen-phen violated ethical rules by apportioning the settlement in a manner designed to inflate the firm's share of the funds.
  

• Federal Rules Offer First Protection To Living Organ Donors
  (Kansas City Star) -- "This is the first time that Medicare regulations have been written to address the rights of living donors," said Jeannie Miller, who directed the analysts who wrote the rules. Two years in the making, the rules will be published Friday in the Federal Register and take effect 90 days after that.
  

• ‘Miracle’ Birthday For Lung Patient Liam, 12
  (This Is Local London) -- Liam, from Phipps Bridge in Mitcham, was diagnosed with pulmonary veino-occlusive disease last April - a rare condition which restricted the oxygen supply to his lungs.
  

• New Lungs Give ‘New’ Life To Ramea Man
  (Newfoundland Gulf News) -- Mr. MacDonald was diagnosed with scleroderma in 2003. The disease is known to cause hardening of the skin but can also, as in Mr. MacDonald’s case, attack internal organs. The condition attacked his lungs in 2005 and a lung transplant became necessary, despite different treatments.
  

•   600 Irish Wait For Organ Transplants
  (Irish Health) -- St Vincent's had doubled its liver transplant figure from 32 in 2005 to 65 in 2006, Mr Murphy said. At the Mater, nine lung transplants were performed in the first year of the hospital's lung transplant programme.
  

• Health Insurance Options Dwindle For Self-Employed
  (LA Times) -- Health plans offered by professional associations were once havens for millions of people who couldn't get coverage anywhere else. But as medical costs have soared, groups representing professions as varied as law and golf have been forced to stop offering the benefit or been dropped by insurers.
  

• Update On Therapies For Pulmonary Hypertension
  (Swiss Medical Weekly) -- This article discusses the currently available drug therapy for PH, considers the surgical option for some patients with chronic thromboembolic disease, and looks forward to possible new forms of therapy emerging from bench research.
  
  Well worth reading--thank you Ralf

• Bosentan (Tracleer®) Receives Positive EU Opinion For Reduction Of New Digital Ulcerations In Systemic Sclerosis Patients
  (Actelion) -- The CHMP has recommended that the European Commission approve bosentan (Tracleer®) for the reduction of the number of new digital ulcers in patients with systemic sclerosis and ongoing digital ulcer disease. The European Commission is expected to make a final decision within two months.
  

• Marketing Authorisation Application for Ambrisentan Validated by European Medicines Agency
  (Gilead) -- Gilead Sciences, Inc. today announced that GlaxoSmithKline's Marketing Authorisation Application (MAA) for ambrisentan for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) was validated by the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) following a review by the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP).
  

• Researchers Find Protective Effects Of Natural Inhibitor
  (eMaxHealth.com) -- "Our lab hypothesized that this potent vasodilator called prostacyclin may help shield patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease from pulmonary damage," says Dr. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, co-author of the study and also a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at the Center for Critical Care and Respiratory Medicine at Ohio State’s Medical Center.
  

• Man Who Had 3 Hearts Leaves Pennsylvania Hospital
  (ABC) -- A 46-year-old man whose body was powered by three separate hearts in the span of a month walked out of the hospital Thursday and said he felt like competing in a triathlon. "I feel like a million dollars, actually," said patient Gary Onufer. "I feel like a whole new person."
  

• Feds Unveil Strict New Transplant Rules
  (LA Times) -- Under pressure to tighten oversight of the nation's transplant centers, federal health officials unveiled strict new standards Thursday that could force dozens of organ programs to give up precious federal funding or have it pulled from them.
  

• Grand Jury Looks At Fen-Phen Issue
  (Lexington Herald-Leader) -- A federal grand jury here yesterday began looking into the activities of three Lexington lawyers accused in a civil lawsuit of misappropriating more than $64 million from a huge 2001 fen-phen lawsuit settlement.
  

• A Killer of a Whale Launch - Assisted Suicide Novel Hits Shelves
  (WebWire) -- n Whale Song, published by Kunati Books, a young woman searches for answers years after the mysterious and tragic assisted suicide of her mother who was suffering from Primary Pulmonary Hypertension.
  

• Abolishing The Middlemen Won’t Make Health Care A Free Lunch
  (New York Times) -- Medical insurance, whether private or government, is always going to be faced with a fundamental problem: patients and doctors will try to get the most out of any system.
  
  For more information, or to contact your elected officials about this, see Action Central

• Is Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension Ever Reversible?
  (Medscape) -- A reader asks: "Is pulmonary arterial hypertension ever reversible? Is it curable?"
  

• Patients, Doctors Taken In By Off-Label "Buzz"
  (ConsumerAffairs.com) -- For years, desperate pulmonary fibrosis patients -- including World Trade Center rescue workers -- have poured money into a drug called Actimmune, hoping it would save them from an early death, even though the drug had never been approved for treatment of the disease.
  

• La Jolla Pharmaceutical Provides Update On Interim Antibody Results From Riquent Lupus Phase 3 Trial
  (PharmaLive) -- The updated analyses reinforce the previous conclusion that there is a definitive and significant dose response between the 100 mg, 300 mg and 900 mg doses of Riquent compared with placebo (p=0.0001). These interim data were initially announced March 8, 2007.
  

• FDA Approves Alexion's Soliris(TM) For All Patients With PNH
  (Medical News Today) -- Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced that it has received marketing approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Soliris(TM) (eculizumab). Soliris is the first therapy approved for paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), a rare, disabling and life-threatening blood disorder defined by chronic red blood cell destruction, or hemolysis. Soliris is indicated for the treatment of patients with PNH to reduce hemolysis.
  

• 2-For-1 Liver Transplant Saves Two
  (Washington Post) -- There's a push to increase liver-splitting that could have many more people who are awaiting transplants being asked to share a piece of their new organ.

• New Trend In Organ Donation Raises Questions
  (Washington Post) -- Under the procedure, surgeons are removing organs within minutes after the heart stops beating and doctors declare a patient dead. Since the 1970s, most organs have been removed only after doctors declared a patient brain dead.
  

• Soothing The Pain Of Prescription Drugs' Cost
  (LA Times) -- Many Americans have trouble paying for prescription drugs. But as legislators, employers, insurance and drug companies wrestle with the issue, patient advocates say consumers could be doing more to lower their own drug costs.
  

• Interferon May Trigger Hepatitis After Liver Transplant
  (Medscape/Reuters) -- Liver transplant recipients who are given pegylated-interferon alpha-2b and ribavirin to treat hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection appear to be at increased risk of autoimmune hepatitis, according to Italian researchers. Interferon is already known to trigger autoimmune disorders in immunocompetent patients.

• Obstructive Sleep Apnea Patients Show Silent Brain Infarction Lesions
  (Science Daily) -- Patients with moderate to severe sleep apnea who have significantly higher serum levels of inflammatory markers that serve as precursors to coronary artery disease, as well as lesions associated with silent brain infarction, have an elevated risk of stroke, according to a group of Japanese medical researchers.
  

• Stem Cell Finding Could Help Fight Autoimmune Disease
  (HealthDay News) -- In a finding that could help researchers better understand autoimmune disease, scientists say a process called autophagy prompts dying embryonic stem cells to send out "eat me" and "come and get me" signals to ensure their elimination by healthy cells.
  

• Grand Jury To Look At Diet-Drug Attorneys
  (Louisville Courier-Journal) -- A federal grand jury will hear evidence next week against the three Lexington lawyers accused in a lawsuit of misappropriating more than $64 million from Kentucky's fen-phen settlement, according to two witnesses who say they have been asked to appear.
  

• Gift Helps Boy Breathe Easier
  (WOWT) -- He's endured much as a young boy. He was born with pulmonary hypertension, high blood pressure in the lungs.
  

• Longing For Home
  (NWI Times) -- When she was 8 years old, the Fegely Middle School student was diagnosed with primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare and incurable disease that slows blood filtering in the lungs and causes a backup in the heart.
  

• Left Ventricular Assist Devices Decrease Fixed PH In Cardiac Transplant Candidates
  (The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery) -- Objective: Fixed pulmonary hypertension is a contraindication for cardiac transplantation because of the increased risk of donor heart failure. We sought to determine whether left ventricular assist devices improve fixed pulmonary hypertension in cardiac transplant candidates to enable safe cardiac transplantation.
  
  abstract only

• Sildenafil Improves Exercise Capacity In Pulmonary Fibrosis
  (MedPage Today) -- In a small pilot study, 57% of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis given sildenafil were able to increase the distance they could walk in six minutes, according to David Zisman, M.D., of the University of California at Los Angeles.
  

• Sleep Apnea Common In Pacemaker Users
  (WebMD) -- Researchers evaluated 98 pacemaker patients for sleep apnea. Fifty-nine percent of the patients had undiagnosed sleep apnea.
  

• Lung Transplant Girl 'Doing Well'
  (Sunday Times) -- Doctors at Royal Perth Hospital where Aimee underwent a complicated 10-hour operation say the the 17-year-old is doing well on a long road to recovery.
  

•   L&G Relaunches CI Product
  (ifaonline.co.uk) -- The new product covers three more illnesses than the old product: Encephalitis, Systematic lupus erythematosus, and Primary pulmonary hypertension.
  

• Cleveland Clinic Discovery May Help Sufferers Of PH
  (Cleveland Plain Dealer) -- Studying hypertensive lung cells, Erzurum discovered they behave much like cancer cells, growing rapidly without oxygen and consuming high amounts of glucose. "They ate up sugar like crazy," she said.
  

• At The End Of Life, A Racial Divide
  (Washington Post) -- After lives in which they often struggle to get medical care, African Americans and other minorities are more likely than whites to want, and get, more aggressive care as death nears and are less likely to use hospice and palliative-care services to ease their suffering, according to a large body of research and leading experts.
  

• Reducing Transplant Rejection Rates
  (Huliq.com) -- A new study involving a type of stem cells from the lungs of transplant patients demonstrates for the first time that these progenitor cells reside in adult organs and are not derived from bone marrow, which leads to the possibility that the cells may be able to help with the rejection of donated organs and with various kinds of lung disease.
  

• Graft Failure May Occur If Recipients Can't Afford Maintenance Drugs
  (Medscape) -- Dr. Mark A. Schnitzler, from the St. Louis University School of Medicine, and his associates believe that non-compliance is an important cause of organ rejection, and non-compliance is often related to patients' inability to pay for immunosuppressive agents, which are required for the remainder of the patient's life.
  

• La Jolla Pharmaceutical Announces Positive Interim Antibody Results From Riquent(R) Lupus Phase 3 Trial
  (PRNewswire) -- The results showed a significant dose response when comparing all Riquent-treated patients to placebo-treated patients (p < 0.0001), and each Riquent dose group to the placebo dose group (p < 0.0015 for 100 mg, p < 0.0001 for 300 mg and 900 mg).

• Thelin Receives Australian Marketing Approval
  (Encysive) -- Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc. today announced that the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has granted marketing approval for THELIN(r)(1) (sitaxentan sodium(2)) 100 mg tablets as a once daily oral treatment for patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).
  

• NT-ProBNP Useful For Predicting Mortality Due To Pulmonary Hypertension
  (Medscape/Reuters) -- By integrating hemodynamic impairment and renal insufficiency, measuring the level of N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) may be superior to brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) for predicting pulmonary hypertension mortality, new research suggests.
  

• Drug Maker Stops Work On Lung Disease Medicine
  (New York Times) -- The drug’s maker, InterMune, said yesterday that it was abandoning efforts to develop the product, Actimmune, as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis because results from a late-stage clinical trial showed the drug did not prolong lives. The drug is already federally approved to treat two other rare conditions.
  

• Collaboration Increases Number Of Lungs, Shortens Transplant Wait List
  (eMaxHealth) -- Shortening, then eliminating, the list Olson's story is at the crux of Herrington's passion to increase the number and availability of donor lungs and transplants. She partnered with colleagues at Mayo Clinic's transplant program in 2004 to share best practices and make consistent protocols for lung donations and transplants.
  

• Positive Study With Bosentan (Tracleer®) In CTEPH
  (Actelion) -- In this first-ever double-blind study in a patient population suffering from this form of pulmonary hypertension, the six-minute walk test remained stable over the four months of blinded evaluation in both treatment groups. Patients on bosentan showed a significant improvement in breathlessness (Borg dyspnoea score) with exercise and there was a trend in favor of bosentan towards prevention of worsening WHO functional class.
  

• MELD Has Many Clinical Applications
  (Medscape) -- The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD), a model for predicting survival in patients with liver disease, has many applications but could be refined further, according to a review published in the March issue of Hepatology.
  

• Most Support U.S. Guarantee Of Health Care
  (New York Times) -- A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
  For more information, or to contact your elected officials about this, see Action Central

• Primary Graft Dysfunction Is Risk Factor For Later Lung Transplant Complication
  (Doctors Guide) -- Primary graft dysfunction, a common complication that affects up to 25% of lung transplant patients shortly after surgery, constitutes a significant risk factor for later deadly bronchiolotis obliterans syndrome (BOS). BOS is a leading cause of death after the one-year anniversary of a lung transplant.
  

• Miami Hospital Testing Revolutionary Heart Valve Procedure
  (NBC6.net) -- Forty-eight hours after having a heart valve replaced, 13-year-old Daniel Rodriguez is good as new. What makes this procedure so unique is that you can actually implant the valve into the heart of a child without having to do open heart surgery, officials said.
  

• Sleep Apnea Ups Cardiovascular Risk
  (UPI) -- "There is abundant physiologic evidence implicating OSA in perpetuating, if not enticing, heart failure," said study author Sean M. Caples of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn.
  

• FDA Panel Rejects Medtronic Device
  (St. Paul Pioneer Press) -- Dr. Michael McGoon, the director of pulmonary hypertension at the Mayo Clinic, said he was disappointed by the advisory committee's vote. While McGoon was not directly involved in the research presented Thursday, he is conducting a study of Chronicle in a different group of patients — people with high blood pressure in lung arteries.
  

•   Coming To TV Soon - The Bravest Girl In Exmouth
  (Exmouth Journal) -- Exmouth Community College student Leanne, now 18, has confounded the experts, and is now leading a fulfilling and happy life, thanks to the support of her friends and family and the miracle workers at London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.
  

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