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Two Painkillers Fail to Slow Alzheimer's
Study Finds That Two Popular Pain Relievers Fail to Slow the Progression of Alzheimer's Disease

CHICAGO June 3
Two popular pain relievers failed to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease in people with mild to moderate mental decline, a study found, dampening hopes that widely used anti-inflammatory drugs might be an effective treatment.
After a year on the prescription drug Vioxx or over-the-counter Aleve, known generically as naproxen, patients were no better off than those taking dummy pills.
The results "are not encouraging for those who are in need of an effective immediate intervention," said Georgetown University's Dr. Paul Aisen, who led the study.
Despite the disappointing findings in people already diagnosed with Alzheimer's, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as those studied could still prove effective in preventing the disease in the first place, said Neil Buckholtz, chief of the National Institute on Aging's division of dementias in aging. The institute helped pay for the study and is sponsoring continuing research on the theory.
Some previous studies have suggested that certain pain relievers might slow or prevent Alzheimer's. The theory is based in part on evidence that some people who use a lot of anti-inflammatory medication, such as those with arthritis, seem to be less prone to Alzheimer's.
Researchers believe that inflammation contributes to the neurological damage found in the mind-robbing disease.
But the earlier studies were less rigorous than Aisen's research, which compared anti-inflammatory drugs and dummy pills head-to-head.
His study involved 351 men and women about 74 years old on average with Alzheimer's symptoms. The findings appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
NIA researcher Lenore Launer said in an accompanying editorial that it might be that when Alzheimer's has progressed to the point of causing symptoms, it is too far advanced to be affected by anti-inflammatory drugs.
"Full-blown Alzheimer's disease exhibits extensive brain pathology," Launer said, adding, "Slowing the progression at that stage may be too late."
Many people hoping to reduce Alzheimer's symptoms take drugs such as Vioxx and Aleve but should stop because they can cause serious gastrointestinal problems, Aisen said. Six people in the study developed serious gastrointestinal bleeding.
Patients took 25 milligrams once daily of Vioxx a standard dose or 220 mgs twice-daily of Aleve a relatively low dose for a year. They were compared to patients taking a placebo.
Northwestern University professor Linda Van Eldik said it is possible that higher doses would have a beneficial effect and that other anti-inflammatory drugs would have better results.
"It would have been great if it had worked, but I don't think it's closing the door" to the use of such drugs against Alzheimer's, said Van Eldik, a member of the Alzheimer's Association's scientific advisory council.
Naproxen and other older nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs target two enzymes involved in inflammation. Vioxx is a newer painkiller called a cox-2 inhibitor that targets only one of the enzymes.
Source: ABCNews.com

Posted by RaRa at 6/03/2003 06:19:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Scientists identify new virus: Germ may cause many unexplained infections
June 2 — It isn’t SARS, but infectious disease specialists are trying to learn more about a recently discovered virus that some think may be the culprit in many unexplained respiratory illnesses around the world.
THE EXACT prevalence of human metapneumovirus isn’t known, but Yale University researchers recently found it in 6.4 percent of retested lab samples from 296 children with respiratory symptoms in late 2001 and early 2002, according to a study published Monday in the June edition of Pediatrics.
It was also discovered after the fact in about 4 percent of retested specimens taken from Rochester, N.Y.-area adults in 1999 through 2001, University of Rochester researchers reported in a Journal of Infectious Diseases article earlier this year.
While those sites are the only published evidence of the virus in the United States, it is thought to be far more prevalent and also has been found in Canada, Europe and Australia.

NOT AS INFECTIOUS AS SARS
Like SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, human metapneumovirus has been associated with flu-like infections and pneumonia-like symptoms, but it does not appear to be as infectious as SARS, said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn of Yale University medical school, senior author of the Pediatrics study.
None of the patients in the Yale or Rochester reports died.
Symptoms may include nasal congestion, wheezing, and lung inflammation, and the symptoms may range from mild to serious enough to require hospitalization, Kahn said.
“It can be added to the list of newly emerging human respiratory viruses and really represents another challenge for the medical community,” Kahn said.
It belongs to the paramyxovirus family, which also includes a common bug called respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. SARS is believed to be caused by a different pathogen.

A CULPRIT IN CHILDHOOD ILLNESSES?
The average child gets about 10 respiratory infections by age 1 and many more throughout childhood. Many are caused by cold viruses, influenza or RSV, but doctors aren’t able to pinpoint a cause in about a third of the cases, Kahn said.
Human metapneumovirus may be the culprit in many such cases, he said.
The virus, nicknamed hMPV, was first identified about two years ago in the Netherlands but likely has been around for a long time, said Dr. Ann Falsey of the University of Rochester.
It has less conspicuous features under the microscope than other viruses and may simply have gone undetected or misdiagnosed before the Dutch discovery, Falsey said.
“This may be one more piece to the puzzle as to what all these respiratory infections are,” she said.
The Yale and Rochester researchers detected the virus in specimens retested after the Dutch discovery.
Early efforts to find a potential vaccine for the virus are under way, said Dr. Larry Anderson, a respiratory disease specialist at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are no commercially available tests for hMPV; diagnoses can only be made at special research labs, Kahn said.
More research is needed to learn how common it is, whether it occurs seasonally like influenza, and to determine the range of symptoms it can cause and what treatments might help, Kahn said.
“There’s a lot more that we don’t know than we do know right now,” he said.
Source: msnbc.com

Posted by RaRa at 6/02/2003 05:48:00 PM | Permalink | Comments