Spending on alternative therapies four times greater than on conventional pharmaceuticals.

Following on from last Friday's snippet on alternative vs conventional medicine, a study of spending on pharmaceuticals and alternative therapies in Australia shows that four times as much is spent on the untested, unproven therapies (AUS$2.3 billion per year) than on prescribed pharmaceuticals.

Furthermore, untested alternative therapies have increased in price by 120% (i.e. more than doubled) since 1993, even allowing for inflation.

The study is published in the American journal Preventive Medicine.

That's a lot of money to spend on things that might be doing nothing at all or could even potentially be doing you more harm than good...

[David Harris' Science News]

I wonder what the number is in the US? It is strange that people would rather trust something that is declared to be 'natural' when nothing has actually ever been done to demonstrate efficacy, much less whether it is harmful. I am reminded of the Danny Kaye movie 'The Inspector General' with a great song about Yakov's Miracle elixir that cures everything (mainly because it kills you, but you're cured).  11:45:11 PM    

One gene, two important proteins. James E. Darnell, who discovered the first ever cancer-causing "STAT" gene in humans, has made yet another discovery about its fruit fly counterpart. Reporting in the Sept. 15 issue of Genes and Development, he and colleagues show that the one and only STAT gene in flies, which was also discovered by Darnell's group, actually codes for two -- not one -- important proteins. [EurekAlert - Medicine & Health]

A really well-written press release. It makes me want to go out an read the article. STAT proteins have been know for some time. They control the cell's responses to outside stimuli and are often altered in tumor cells. It turns out that, in fruit flies, a specifc STAT gene is made in 2 forms. One form is missing the portion of the protein responsible for activity. Now, why would a cell make a protein that has no apparent activity? The reason is called a dominant negative effect. This altered protein may not have any activity but it can still bind its substrate every bit as well as the normal protein. By doing so, it ties up the substrate so the normal protein can not perform its duty. The normal protein sees less substrate floating around to bind up, because it is all bound to the altered protein. Since the altered protein performs no action on the bound subtsrate, the overall effect is to inhibit the activity of the normal protein. As this report states, much like a key broken off in a lock, the altered protein prevents a new key from being inserted, effectively stopping the reaction. The report is wrong about one thing. It is DOMINANT not DOMINATE.It is called a dominant negative because the altered protein is not only inactive itself but acts to inhibit the activity of the normal protein. Remember dominant and recessive genes from genetics. When recessive and dominant genes are both present in an organism, you do not see expression of the recessive. Usually, the recessive gene is recessive because it makes less active protein. The dominant gene makes more, active protein, with its resulting effects on the organism. In most cases the expression of the recessive gene has no effect on the expression of the dominant gene. They have no real effect on each other since both act to produce something in a positive fashion. One just produces more or makes a more active form. But, in the case of a dominant negative mutation, the altered gene can dominate the normal gene, acting to inhibit directly the activity of the normal genes. So, not only is the altered gene inactive, but it reduces the activity of the normal gene. Dominant negative mutations are used commonly in recombinant technology but this is a nice example of how Nature was there first.  11:34:12 PM    

Wake Forest-Johns Hopkins team discovers prostate cancer gene. Scientists in the Center for Human Genomics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have discovered a gene that "may play an important role in prostate cancer susceptibility in both African-American men and men of European descent." Public Health Service, US Department of Defense [EurekAlert - Medicine & Health]

The statistics indicate this gene might be involved but I think a LOT more work will have to be done. Mutations in this gene were found in only 4.4 % of Caucasians and 12% of African-American men WITH prostrate cancer. That means that 95.6% of the Caucasians with prostate cancer DO NOT have these mutations. Now, lots of things can be happening - the gene may have an effect on severity; other processes besides the mutation may be important in the proteins effect on prostrate cancer; there may be other important genes involved. We are a long time from using this gene for screening all men for susceptibility to prostate cancer.  11:01:04 PM    

One in one hundred babies in the US are involved in a car crash while in the womb. One in 100 babies born in the United States will have been involved in a police-reported car crash while in the womb, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Injury Research and Control (CIRCL) report, published in today's Injury Prevention, a publication of the British Medical Journal Publishing Group. The study also found that trimester status has only minor bearing on the risk of being injured in a crash. [EurekAlert - Medicine & Health]

This seems awfully high. And I never trust a report that comes up with excuses to explain the data it does not like. They say that the accident rate for pregnant woman is half of that found for non-pregnant woman, but then say to ignore this result. Now, if we are supposed to believe that one conclusion is valid by considering the data, it seems to weaken the argument when we are supposed to ignore another conclusion from the same data. There may be good reasons to do so, but you had better be awfully careful. Physicists work all the time by making certain simplifications that allow them to ignore some data. But social scientists risk real problems when they chose to 'simplify' since the underlying causes are not nearly as quantifiable as in physics.  10:54:19 PM    

Using naltrexone to treat alcoholics with a 'Mediterranean drinking pattern'. Naltrexone has been used to treat alcoholism in the United States for close to a decade. Initial studies of naltrexone's effectiveness examined alcohol-dependent individuals who drank primarily on holidays and weekends. Researchers in Spain examined naltrexone's effectiveness on alcohol-dependent individuals who drank throughout the week. Fewer naltrexone-treated subjects relapsed to heavy drinking than placebo-treated subjects. Pharmazam/Zambón S.A. [EurekAlert - Medicine & Health]

I guess no one has ever heard of a 'Texas Drinking Pattern' - consume large amounts of alcohol whenever the temperature is above 50 degrees, no matter what day it is. More if you just cut the lawn. Or walked outside to get the paper. (I know. I grew up in Houston and the consumption of cheap beer was often what got you through most of the month of August ;-)  10:47:28 PM    

Gene therapy promising for preventing restenosis. An experimental gene transfer technique shut down cell re-growth in the arteries' interior lining and reduced the inflammatory response [^] two main causes of re-narrowing of newly opened blood vessels, researchers report in today's rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. [EurekAlert - Medicine & Health]

I worked on a molecule called CD39 that was found on the cells lining the walls of blood vessels. Its main job was to prevent platelets from clumping together and forming blood clots. Now this is a very complicated cascade but it is interesting to note that CD39 activity is greatly reduced following oxidative stress. So, if we have oxidative stress, we have less CD39, with less inhibition of platelets and the increased possibility of clots blocking the vessel.I wonder if CD39 is involved in restonosis, or if adding CD39 would reduce the likelihood of restonosis?  10:42:28 PM    

Infpormation Overload and Scholarly activity. Quote: "A vendor to a large pharmaceutical company says that the firm wasted almost two years trying to isolate a compound, not realizing that fellow colleagues had already obtained a patent for it. University of Minnesota researchers, as many others do, discovered after three years of research that results they were writing up had already been published." [Serious Instructional Technology]

I have seen the same sort of thing happen. Poor communication and information flow often result in duplication of effort. Transparency lessens the likelihood of repetition. Scientists talk of mining the bioinformatics data. Data mining often involves individual efforts with litle interconnections. Different people examine the same data and explore the same paths, but with no tools to easily disperse their information. I prefer data farming, with a collective group to examine the data (Some sort of anarcho-syndicalist commmune). With every decision being ratified at a biweekly meeting.  10:32:14 PM