Tag: Gardiner Harris

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Dieter Durand and Susanne Kutter in Wirtschaftswoche feature a disputation between Alzheimer-researcher Konrad Beyreuther and author Cornelia Stolze, who has written a book claiming Alzheimer’s disease does not exist as an exactly defined disease.

While Beyreuther maintains the disease is real and can be clinically separated from other forms of dementia, he concedes that current medications are useless and that diagnosis often is inadequate. Stolze in her book “Vergiss Alzheimer” (“Forget About Alzheimer’s”) states that patients with signs of dementia often are labeled as Alzheimer’s disease patients although they are not, that they receive useless medications, that the real causes of their respective dementias, such as diabetes, depression, stroke, or dehydration, are overlooked and not treated, and that medical doctors make money with unreliable early diagnostic tests. A review of the book is to follow soon – please regularly check the akampioneer.

Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) comments on a proposal by several US stem cell researchers in the “Cell Stem Cell” journal. The manifesto calls for establishing a market for human donor egg cells so that scientists can use these cells for cloning experiments. While the purpose is not cloning humans but generating pluripotent human stem cells, Müller-Jung warns that the push will once again put the “cloning humans” debate on the table – a discussion he thinks is needed like a hole in the head. He states there are plenty of experiments already demonstrating that sooner or later it will be possible to generate pluripotent human stem cells for regenerative medicine by reprogramming human body cells.

Martina Lenzen-Schulte, also in FAZ, features the first attempts to use the mirror neuron concept for clinical purposes, e.g. for the rehabilitation of stroke patients to support regain of movement control.

Hildegard Kaulen in FAZ reminds her readers that a substantial part of the research crowned by nobel prizes never received third-party funds. She expresses sympathy with the proposal put forward in “Nature” by Stanford University’s John Ioannidis to either allocate research grants by lottery, by dividing up the money so that each applicant receives the same amount, or simply by handing out money to outstanding scientists with the only specification to use it for research. He criticizes that it has never been investigated which method to allocate research grants is the best and that the current practice consumes too much valuable time that should be spent more creatively on research.

Die Welt reports in a feature by dpa on material scientists of the Technical University Dresden who use wood for pipes that are as strong and resilient as pipes made from concrete. Wood is cut to rectangular blocks, which are heated to 140°C and compressed. Subsequently, all air – which amounts to up to two third of the wood’s volume –  is removed. The resulting panels are then bonded and formed by applying steam. The team led by Peer Haller of the university’s Institute for Steel and Wood Construction calculates that a post carrying 50 tons of weight needs 155 kg of steel but only 28 kg of wood treated with the new procedure.

Katrin Blawat in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reports that Umckaloabo, an alcoholic extract of Pelargonium sidoides roots, is under investigation by Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM). The medication, which is sold as OTC in Germany for the treatment of acute bronchitis (with annual sales of about € 40 million), is suspected to cause inflammation of the liver, with six cases reported in 2011.

The New York Times (NYT) this week deals in-depth with the recommendation of the United States Preventive Services Task Force that men no longer should have an annual prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. Gardiner Harris interviewed the experts involved in reviewing PSA testing, citing Dr. Roger Chou, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Oregon, as saying “the idea that knowing you have a cancer isn’t always a good thing is a very difficult concept for many people.” Chou states that the vast majority of men who have prostate cancer will never be bothered by it. Urologists however view the issue differently, stating the task force chose to focus on the wrong studies and it was wrong to throw PSA testing away.

Last not least, in preparation of the coming common cold season, Ulrike Gebhard in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) explains that men suffer from the common cold more often than women. Reason is – according to researchers from Belgian Gent University – that women often carry extra portions of genes from the toll-like receptor (TLR) gene family. As a result, they produce more of the so-called miRNA molecules that support the body in fending off viral infections. The downside of women’s more powerful immune system is increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases and a more violent reaction to certain vaccines.

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

Can bioplastics, which is derived from renewable resources and biodegradable, become an alternative to conventional plastics made from mineral oil? Not yet, writes Nina Weber in Der SPIEGEL. Cultivation of raw material needs pesticides and fertilizers and the predominant bioplastics used to date is made from polylactic acid (PLA), which is biodegradable only at high temperatures. The prospects may become better – but only if PLA can be derived from plant remains and if enough PLA is on the market so that recycling is profitable.

Gardiner Harris in The New York Times reports on flaws in a widely cited lung cancer study involving more than 50,000 patients. The study’s conclusion that  80% of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through wide use of CT scans made the headlines in 2006. Now it seems that the researchers are unable to locate 90% of the consent forms so that  a confidential report evaluating the study on behalf of the lead study center recommend that the trial be stopped already in 2008. The study is still ongoing.

The New Scientist reports on findings that the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum can be killed by kinase inhibitors, common anti-cancer drugs. In in-vitro experiments at Lausanne Federal Polytechnic in Switzerland researchers exposed malaria-infected liver and blood cells to kinase inhibitors and observed that some of these compounds selectively killed the parasite, but not the cells.

Also in New Scientist, Ahmed Zewail, who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1999, claims that the Middle East is ripe for a scientific revolution.  At present, he states, Arab, Persian, and Turkish scientists as a group are underperforming as compared to colleagues in the West or Far East. Zewail thinks that the recent revolutions will open the door to improve on literacy, women’s participation and education and bear the chance to remove red tape and allow freedom of thought. He calls on partnering with Muslim countries to establish centers of excellence in science and technology.

Finally, Alex Knapp in Forbes introduces Justin, an impressive humanoid robot made in Germany by DLR, the German aerospace agency. So far, this incredible piece of German hard- and software engineering is used to catch two balls at once while making coffee. the akampioneer very much hopes he will learn better tricks to avoid the “invented in Germany, marketed elsewhere” pitfall.

Food for Thought: Weekly Wrap-Up

In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Manfred Lindinger takes up the issue whether nanotechnology poses danger to human health and the environment in an article and an interview with Jochen Flasbarth, president of the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt – UBA). Flasbarth points out that UBA’s nanotechnology study published last year, highlighting gaps in knowledge about potential health hazards, was misunderstood by the media and the public as a sweeping warning of all things nano. He also dismisses calls for introducing a label for products containing nanotechnology: “If there is no risk, we don’t need to put up a warning sign.”

Several German papers feature and discuss an ad-hoc statement on preimplantation diagnosis  issued January 18 by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. It was drafted by 13 eminent German academians from biology, medicine, law and philosophy & ethics, among them nobelist Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard. The statement calls for admission of PID under narrowly defined circumstances (high risk of serious monogenic disorder, chromosomal dysfunction, miscarriage or stillbirth). The parliament needs to to regulate PID after the German Federal Supreme Court last year ruled that Germany’s ban on PID was based on misinterpretation of the country’s Embryo Protection Law.

John Tierney in The New York Times provides new insights on people who underwent personal genetic testing to learn about their risk for conditions from obesity to cancer and Alzheimer’s. It is widespread belief among experts and politicians that personal DNA testing needs careful supervision and cannot be offered without expert guidance. The NYT introduces two studies – one follow-up study of about 2,000 people who had a genomewide scan by Navigenics  and one representative sample of 1,500 people – and found that the medical field overestimates the level of psychological anxiety or trauma caused by the results and is way too paternalistic about the tests. One researcher is quoted by saying: “We should recognize that consumers might reasonably want the information for nonmedical reasons. People value it for its own sake, and because they feel more in control of their lives.”

Gardiner Harris reports that the Obama administration has become so concerned about the slowing pace of new drugs coming out of the pharma industry that it has decided to start a federal billion-dollar drug development center. The “National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences” will open in October this year and will beef up early research results by finding leads against new targets or even perform preclinical studies so that projects become attractive to the pharma industry. NIH director Francis S. Collins who is behind the idea, is quoted by NYT as saying: “I am a little frustrated to see how many of the discoveries that do look as though they have therapeutic implications are waiting for the pharmaceutical industry to follow through with them.” In a first step, more than $700 million in research projects from other NIH institutes will be brought together at the new center.

Gina Kolata reports on an FDA advisory committee recommending approval of a new brain scan that can detect the typical plaques in the brains of living Alzheimer disease patients. The test has been developed by Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, now a subsidiary of Eli Lilly (see akampioneer, June 24, 2010).

In the New Scientist, Anil Ananthaswamy features findings from Australian researchers suggesting that Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and maybe other, more common diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or diabetes, might be cured by antibiotics and subsequent (re-)colonization of the colon with bacteria from healthy people. The hypothesis was derived from case studies of Parkinson’s patients treated for colon infections, in which the treatment also abated the Parkinson’s symptoms. The researchers from the Center of Digestive Diseases in New South Wales are now planning a pilot study in Parkinson’s patients. Already, neuroanatomists from German Ulm University have suggested in 2003 that Parkinson’s might be caused by a bug that breaks through the mucosal barrier of the GI tract and enters the central nervous system via the vagus nerve (Journal of Neural Transmission, DOI: 10.1007/s00702-002-0808-2).

Linda Geddes reports on how cytokines associated with inflammation can enter the brain under certain circumstances and cause depression. Unfortunately, the article fails to mention German biotech company Affectis which already has Cimicoxib, an anti-inflammatory COX-2 inhibitor, in Phase II trials for the treatment of depression, after researchers discovered that COX-2 inhibitors can alleviate depression.