News

Coronary artery disease (CAD) affects millions worldwide. In North America, nearly 700,000 people are diagnosed with multi-vessel CAD and require immediate revascularisation and of these, 200,000 are diabetic. Coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are the two main modalities of revascularisation. The previous BARI, CARDia, TAXUS and SYNTAX randomised clinical trials offered conclusive evidence favouring CABG over PCI as the preferred method of revascularisation (1).

A study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology [1] has found that curcumin, commonly found in curries, is effective at improving cardiac function and may have potential in treating patients who have had a heart attack.

High density lipoprotein (HDL), or ‘good cholesterol’, is an apoprotein containing-lipid particle that plays a vital role in reverse cholesterol transport by removing cholesterol deposits from both intravascular and extravascular tissues and transporting it back to the liver for excretion or re-utilization(1, 2). In conventional medical wisdom, elevated levels of high-density lipoproteins (HDL) translate into lower risk of atherosclerosis and ischaemic heart disease.

Three pathological subtypes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are currently thought to exist, supported by distinct histological and clinical presentations. These are: typical AD, hippocampal-sparing AD and limbic-predominant AD [1]. The clinical presentations are accounted for by the loss of function of specific brain regions caused by generalised neurotoxicity.

Upper Respiratory Tract Infections (URTIs) are a leading cause of sickness and loss of productivity amongst adults and school-aged children [1]. Vitamin D has been shown to play a role in a variety of respiratory diseases, including asthma, COPD, malignancy and infectious diseases – although the mechanism for these is largely unclear [2].

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) due to demyelination of the brain and spinal cord. It manifests as a multitude of symptoms including optic neuritis, sensory deficits and motor weakness. Most cases of MS present with a relapsing-remitting course and patients often deteriorate in health and bodily functions as their disease progresses. Current treatment of MS includes parenteral agents such as beta-interferon and glatiramer acetate.

Airway diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) are characterised by airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR), respiratory cough, and dyspnoea. Transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is highly expressed by sensory neurons and vagal afferents innervating the airways, and is thought to contribute to the features of airway diseases. Since TRPV1-sensitive nerves may play a role in AHR and bronchoconstriction, there has been much interest in pharmacological therapy which targets TRPV1, in order to treat various respiratory diseases.

A recent paper by Curtis et al. aimed to validate a recently developed multi-biomarker disease activity (MBDA) test (Vectra™ DA, Crescendo Bioscience) relative to clinical rheumatoid arthritis (RA) activity in patients from InFoRM, BRASS and Leiden Early Arthritis Clinic cohorts [1]. 12 biomarkers used to compute the composite MBDA score included IL-6 and TNF-RI (cytokine signalling), VCAM-1 (leukocyte recruitment), EGF, VEGF-A, MMP-1, MMP-3, YKL-40, leptin and resistin (angiogenesis, cartilage and bone remodelling), as well as CRP and SAA (acute phase response).

The fast-growing field of tissue engineering provides an interesting application of stem-cell technology to the generation of biological tissues. In recent years, we have begun to see the emergence of these techniques in a clinical context for tissue transplantation. In 2008, there was widespread interest as a patient with end-stage bronchomalacia received the first bioengineered trachea transplant (1). In this groundbreaking procedure, a donor trachea was decellularised to create a structural scaffold, seeded with the patient’s stem cells and then transplanted back into the patient.

International sepsis guidelines recommend that empirical combination antibiotic therapy be used for the treatment of gram-negative infections (1). This is to increase the chance that the organism will be sensitive to at least one therapy, to prevent superinfection and to encourage more effective bacterial clearance (2). However, the efficacy of this approach has not been clinically proven for patients with severe sepsis – a subpopulation with altered pharmacokinetics. This study compares the effects of combination vs. monotherapy for patients with severe sepsis (3).

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one of the most common genetic diseases, with an incidence of 1/3200 in the Caucasian population. Inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion, it was in 1983 when the defect in cAMP-mediated chloride transport was discovered [1]. CF presents with a syndrome of chronic pulmonary infection, malabsorption and failure to thrive. The hallmark pulmonary features include airway infection and inflammation, obstruction and structural disease [2, 3]. Early treatment of CF potentially delays progression of disease and improves quality of life.

Cancer and neurodegenerative diseases are not only the most devastating illnesses currently affecting our population, they may also be the direct result of a fine balancing act within our cells according to a study published in Lancet Oncology this week [1]. Cancer is characterised by inhibition of cell death and uncontrollable proliferation leading to cell immortality whereas neurodegenerative diseases are characterised by inappropriate cell death, irreversibly destroying certain populations of neurons. Very simply, cell immortality on one side of the balance and cell death on the other.