Pharma Weblog

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - An expanding waistline in older men is associated with worsening lower urinary tract symptoms and poorer sexual function, according to research reported at the American Urological Association meeting in Anaheim.

At a press briefing, Dr. Steven A. Kaplan from Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, noted that waist size is one component of the so-called metabolic syndrome, which signifies an elevated risk of heart disease and diabetes. "It is becoming very clear that when you have multiple components of the metabolic syndrome you can bet that you will have components of pelvic dysfunction, which we would define as sexual dysfunction and voiding dysfunction," Kaplan said.

He and his colleagues tested the idea that waist circumference may be a useful predictor of prostate volume and the severity of pelvic dysfunction.

They grouped 88 men (average age, 62 years) with moderate or severe untreated voiding symptoms by waist circumference: 30-36 inches, 36-40 inches, and more than 40 inches.

Increasing waist circumference was significantly associated with "every parameter we looked at," Kaplan said. Prostate volume, PSA level, voiding symptom score, erectile dysfunction, and ejaculatory dysfunction all increased as waist size increased, he explained.

"The results were simply remarkable. They even surprised us," he commented. "We have no doubt, at least from this cohort of patients, that increasing waist circumference is associated with worsening male health — voiding and sexual function."

This study, Kaplan concluded, shows that obese men are at increased risk of pelvic dysfunction and can be "easily diagnosed" by measuring waist circumference. More…

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Injections of botulinum toxin A, or Botox, into the prostate gland eased the symptoms of enlarged prostate in men for up to a year, according to the results of a small study published Wednesday.

Researchers at the Chang Gung University Medical College, Taiwan, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, based their study on 37 men with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BHP), or enlarged prostate.

All patients received a single injection of Botox into their prostate, the researchers said in their paper published in a summary ahead of this week's American Urological Association's annual conference, in Annaheim, California. More…

SUNDAY, June 3 (HealthDay News) — Gene therapy using nerve growth factors reversed erectile dysfunction in rats within four weeks, say University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers.

Erectile dysfunction (ED) affects between 15 million and 30 million men in the United States. Many men suffer nerve damage-related ED after surgery for prostate cancer.

The Pittsburgh team found that the genes for the "glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor" (GDNF) and the GDNF family ligand, called neurturin, were both effective in treating erectile dysfunction in the rats. The genes were placed in a genetically engineered herpes simplex virus, which was then injected into the rats' damaged cavernous nerve. More…

Retired New Jersey firefighter is reporting decreased insulin doses and lower blood glucose levels within one month after his adult stem cell treatment for diabetes (type 2), diabetes induced erectile dysfunction and peripheral artery disease in Cologne, Germany.

Cologne, Germany (PRWEB) June 19, 2007 — Retired Fire Captain, Calvin Miller of Union City, New Jersey is reporting decreased insulin doses and lower blood glucose levels within one month after his adult stem cell treatment for diabetes (type 2) , diabetes induced erectile dysfunction and peripheral artery disease in Cologne, Germany.

Mr. Miller was recently treated at the XCell-Center using adult stem cells derived from a small amount of his own bone marrow. The stem cells were introduced directly into his pancreas using a minimally invasive catheter procedure via the right femoral artery. To battle the common diabetes complications of peripheral artery disease and erectile dysfunction, stem cells were also introduced into his thighs and calves, and into the arteries that supply the penis, respectively.

"Before scuba diving this past Sunday morning, I injected only 32% of my normal insulin dose. During the day, I ate normally - for a diabetic - without injecting any more insulin. That evening, I measured my blood sugar and I was astounded that it was only 126. A month ago, even with my full insulin doses, I never had readings below 170," said Miller.

These are the third, fourth and fifth diseases in two years for which Mr. Miller has chosen to undergo stem cell therapy. After being treated with stem cells for coronary artery disease in January 2005, he was featured in BusinessWeek Magazine (June 2005) . In September 2005, he was treated for ischemic cardiomyopathy using minimally invasive surgery.

"Actually, what really got my attention this past weekend was that I also felt a regeneration of heart function…and that was after a 3 km swim," Miller added with a grin.

About the XCell-Center
The XCell-Center is the first privately-owned center in Europe to specialize in regenerative medicine using autologous adult stem cell therapy. Newly completed in 2006, the XCell-Center features the latest medical equipment and technology. The XCell-Center is a fully licensed clinic with German specialized physicians working in accordance with German law and European guidelines. It is located on the second floor wing of the Eduardus Hospital in Cologne, Germany.

The XCell-Center currently treats Diabetes and its complications (Erectile Dysfunction and Peripheral Artery Disease), Stroke, Spinal Cord Injuries, Ischemic Heart Disease and degenerative diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Before the end of this year, the XCell-Center will publish clinical data coming from their SCIDEM I and II trials. In these trials, diabetes (type I and II) patients will be treated with their own stem cells and compared with a control group receiving traditional therapy. The findings will be presented at different international scientific meetings. Later this year, another clinical trial for stroke patients will commence.

For more information on Stem Cell Therapy:
XCell-Center Website: http://www.xcell-center.com

Stem Cell Therapy for Diabetes Blog: http://www.stem-cell-diabetes.blogspot.com

XCell-Center GmbH
at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine
Custodisstrasse 3-17
Cologne, Germany 50679

E-Mail: info @ xcell-center.de

Phone: 1-866-680-8202 (USA Toll-Free) or (+49) 0221-802-5095 (Germany)

Fax: 1-713-583-9322 (USA) or (+49) 0221-2921-2550 (Germany)

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XCell-Center GmbH
Ruud de Jong
+49 0221-802-5095
E-mail Information
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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The type of prostate cancer treatment a man gets has a lot to do with the kind of specialist he sees first, according to a study released on Monday that lends scientific evidence to something many men have likely guessed.

Prostate cancer can be treated effectively using radiation, radioactive seeds or surgical removal of the prostate. Surgery or drugs to stop production of testosterone, known as hormone therapy, may also be used in high-risk patients.

Doctors often also advise close medical observation, also known as watchful waiting.

Each treatment is associated with different benefits and side effects. Prostate surgery can cause urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction; radiation therapy can cause diarrhea and erectile dysfunction; and hormone therapy can cause hot flashes and breast tenderness.

"You want your physician to convey this information without a bias," Dr. Thomas Jang, a urologist from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists.

Although the 5-year survival rate for men with localized prostate cancer is nearly 100 percent, it is the third most common cause of cancer death in men of all ages, and the most common cause of cancer death in men over 75.

No scientific studies have proven which therapy works best, so men typically follow their doctor's recommendation, said Jang.

The study of more than 85,000 men aged 65 and older with prostate cancer that had not yet spread uncovered a strong correlation between physician type and treatment.

If a man's doctor happens to be a urologist, for example, the recommendation for men under 70 most often will be surgery — 70 percent of the time. For men over 75 who saw only a urologist, the choice was watchful waiting or hormone therapy in 91 percent of the patients.

But if they saw both a urologist and a radiation oncologist, 78 percent of younger men and 85 percent of older men got radiation therapy.

Because patients tend to fare well on all the treatment options, the choice comes down to which side effects and treatment options best fit the patient, Dr. Justin Bekelman, a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, who worked on the study, said in an interview.

"It's not enough to say, Google it and check it out," he said.

Most prostate cancer patients tend to see a urologist first because they are the doctors who perform biopsies and make diagnoses.

"I think urologists as gatekeepers have to present balanced information," Jang said.

The American Cancer SocietyP.S.

American Cancer Society expects 218,890 U.S. men to be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2007 and 27,000 to die of it.

Originaly from Source

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The male impotence drug Viagra may be useful for treating jet lag as well, according to Argentine researchers who gave it to hamsters made to feel like rodent globe-trotters.

The researchers manipulated the schedule of turning lights on and off to induce jet lag in the laboratory animals, they reported on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

National Academy of Sciences.

Adult male hamsters given Viagra, also called sildenafil, recovered from jet lag up to 50 percent faster than hamsters that were not given it, the researchers said.

The scientists stopped giving the hamsters the highest dose they had been using in the experiment due to a certain side effect.

"However, we used the intermediate dose for the rest of the experiments because at that dose animals did not manifest the effects of sildenafil-induced penile erections," they wrote.

Flying across multiple time zones can confuse one's sleep-wake cycle, resulting in the condition called jet lag, marked by insomnia, sleepiness and difficulty concentrating.

Researchers Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires gave doses of Viagra to the hamsters at night, then switched on bright lights six hours early to simulate eastbound flight.

They judged how well the hamsters adjusted to the changes by observing when they began running on exercise wheels.

The drug helped the rodents cope with jet lag only when given before the equivalent of an eastbound flight, not the reverse when they delayed turning on lights to simulate westbound travel, the study found.

The researchers said the findings suggested that Viagra could be useful to help people cope with jet lag or shift work. They said the dose needed for such uses could be lower than the one used for treatment of erectile dysfunction.

Viagra interferes with an enzyme that lowers levels of a naturally occurring compound that plays a role in the regulation of the circadian cycle, the body's internal clock, the researchers said.

Viagra is marketed by Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat erectile dysfunction in 1998. More…

Botox is not just for wrinkles anymore. New research suggests that it may boost the quality of life of men with enlarged prostate when injected directly into the gland.

The small study revealed that about 75 percent of men suffering from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) experienced partial symptom relief following the treatment.

"Many men have enlarged prostate," noted study senior author Dr. Michael B. Chancellor, a professor of urology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "They take pills, but sometimes they don't work, or sometimes they have side effects, and they're afraid of surgery. So now, Botox has been shown to be safe and effective, and a single office injection, which takes about 5 minutes, can achieve success for one entire year. So, it's a new and very exciting alternative that is something between standard drugs and surgery." More…

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Laboratory studies conducted at Queen's University Belfast, UK suggest that taking the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra may adversely affect sperm function and possibly male fertility.

Recreational users of Viagra need to be informed of the drug's potentially harmful effects on sperm function, the investigators say.

In their experiments, Dr. David R. J. Glenn and colleagues observed that exposure of cultured sperm to Viagra, compared to no exposure, led to a "sustained enhancement of motility," both in numbers of progressively motile sperm and their velocity.

However, exposure to Viagra — at concentrations equivalent to the average maximum total blood concentration present 30 minutes after a single oral dose of 100 milligrams — also caused a premature "acrosome reaction." Acrosomes are structures that cover the head of the sperm and contain a variety of enzymes that help the sperm penetrate the outer membrane of the egg.

That Viagra may induce early activation of the acrosome reaction has "important clinical implications because sperm that acrosome-react before contact with the oocyte are incapable of fertilization," the researchers note in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

"Given that the majority of sperm acrosome react on exposure to (Viagra), the drug may cause significant impairment to their fertilizing potential," they write.

This is a concern, Glenn and colleagues say, given that Viagra and other like-drugs are widely available on the Internet and are increasingly being used "recreationally" by young healthy men of reproductive age as sexual enhancers — not just by older men who have erectile dysfunction.

SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, May 2007. More…

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Injections of botulinum toxin A, or Botox, into the prostate gland eased the symptoms of enlarged prostate in men for up to a year, according to the results of a small study published Wednesday.

Researchers at the Chang Gung University Medical College, Taiwan, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, based their study on 37 men with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BHP), or enlarged prostate.

All patients received a single injection of Botox into their prostate, the researchers said in their paper published in a summary ahead of this week's American Urological Association's annual conference, in Annaheim, California.

A year into the treatment 27 patients - 73 percent of the group - experienced a 30 percent improvement in urinary tract symptoms and quality of life, said Dr Yao-Chi Chuang, chief investigator for the Taiwanese university.

Chuang said Botox - a popular, surgery-free cosmetic treatment for wrinkles - reduces the size of the prostate gland through a cellular process called apoptosis, in which the prostate cells die in a programmed manner.

The treatment posed no significant side effects, such as stress urinary incontinence or erectile dysfunction, said Pittsburgh's Michael Chancellor, senior author of the study.

The reduction in size of the prostate can improve urine flow and decrease residual urine left in the bladder, he said.

"Our results are encouraging because they indicate that Botox could represent a simple, safe and effective treatment for enlarged prostate that has long-term benefits," Chancellor added.

BHP is one of the most common diseases affecting men as they age. More than half of all men over the age of 60 and by age 80 develop enlarged prostates, the researchers said.

Forty to 50 percent will develop symptoms of BHP, including more frequent urination, urinary tract infections, the inability to completely empty the bladder and, in severe cases, eventual damage to the bladder and kidneys, they added.

Botox is a powerful neurotoxin introduced nearly two decades ago. It is used to cure some facial problems but is best known for its cosmetic qualities in paralysing facial muscles and thus giving foreheads a wrinkle-free appearance. More…

Before talking about the Cialis's case history it's necessary to remember the famous Pfizer's medication Viagra. After on the 27th of March 1998 The U. S. Food and Drug Administration approved Viagra, this prescription was a success, and just for the first year of marketing Pfizer sold medicines, total cost of which overreached one billion dollars. Unfortunately for Pfizer the situation was altered significantly after the FDA authorized Levitra on the 19th of August, 2003 and Cialis on the 21st of November, 2003 too. In 1993 the pharmaceutical company Icos started to examine a PDE5 enzyme inhibitor called IC351 as it was essentially the process through which the erectile dysfunction medicines affected. In 1994 during clinical researches of some cardiac medication Pfizer's researches descried the sildenafil citrate, a white crystal powder, which was a part of the medicine, caused the probationers, taking part in the researches, to have erections as it blocked the enzyme that was responsible for the production of the chemical substation causing erection, normalizing thus erectile function of the penis for some time.

Despite the fact that the investigators were not attempting the chemical mix IC351 for erectile dysfunction therapy, the mixture appeared to have an accompanying effect that could possibly cost millions or even billions of dollars. In 1994 at the nearest opportunity Icos got the exclusive right to IC351, and during 1995 the medical researches of the first phase were taking place. In 1997 the second phase of the medical studies was started and for the first time Icos tested its medicine on patients with erectile dysfunction. The second phase continued for about two years and when it was over the third phase was commenced.

In 1998 ICOS Corporation and Eli Lilly & Company decided exploiting the preparation for erectile dysfunction for financial profit and in two years they registered a new medicine application with the U.S. FDA for IC351; they made a decision to name the medicine Cialis this time though. In May of 2002, Icos and Eli Lilly & Company informed the American Urological Association that the researches carried out in the third phase showed that Cialis's effect lasted for about 36 hours. In a year U.S. FDA approved Cialis. In comparison with Viagra Cialis has one essential advantage. The matter is that the half life of Tadalafil (Cialis), is 17.5 hours so this medicine works up to 36 hours, even if there is still about a quarter of the absorbed dose in the body by that time. As to Sildenafil (Viagra), its half life is just 4 hours.
In 2006 Eli Lilly bought ICOS Corporation for $2.1 billion dollars.