I love the world of doctors. Writing medical materials has pretty much convinced me that medical professionals must spend a great deal of their training time just learning alternate terms for ordinary things–like “coronary” for “arteries to your heart.”

Anyway, four highly respected members of the cardiovascular [heart and blood vessels] community are holding forth at a conference in Alberta, Canada on the “serious medical repercussions of ischemic reperfusions [oxygen-deprived blood flow] injury leading to acute coronary syndromes [heart attacks and other heart problems], Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery (CABG) and other cardiovascular interventions (heart operations).”

If you’d like to hear the webcast today go to the Medicure website at www.medicureinc.com, then click on the link found on the home page: http://events.onlinebroadcasting.com/medicure/101304.

Okay, the article is actually about the role of folate (you can get in red beef, spinach, dried beans and peas) in helping lower blood pressure in younger women. It was a bit less stellar for older women.

But you hear us talk about nitric oxide all the time in this blog. So the part that attracted me was the statement that in this study of 250,000 women (that’s a significant number for a long-term study) folate reduces levels of “homocysteine,” a compound that runs around in our blood and is thought to lower blood pressure. Of course, if this compound gets too high, it reduces levels of nitric oxide–which relaxes blood vessels. So in other words, blood vessels stiffen up if they don’t get enough nitric oxide, and stiff blood vessels are much better candidates for heart attacks and strokes…

This nitric oxide is miraculous–both good and bad.

But this study says you need a LOT of folate–like 800 micrograms a day. “Folate is a B vitamin that is found naturally in leafy green vegetables such as spinach and turnip greens, fruits, dried beans and peas. To consume 800 micrograms a day, you would need to take a multivitamin plus eat three-quarters of a cup of breakfast cereal fortified with 400 micrograms of folate, or other foods. A half cup of spinach, for instance, has 100 micrograms, and three ounces of beef liver has 185 micrograms.”

Okay, but why does folate work better in younger women? And why was the study done only on women? Hmmm. Stay tuned…

Amazing news comes from South Africa today. Neurologists there have discovered a revolutionary technology that grafts nerves from the lining of the nose (new layers of these nerves are grown every month) to stimulate nerves in other areas of the body — and begin to restore sensation and even the ability to move in patients with paralysis.Professor Geoffrey Raisman of the National Institute for Medical Research there, says he hopes to see people with spinal cord injuries (such as those suffered by Christopher Reeve–former Superman star who just died) walking within 10 years.

Wow. The nerves in the nose that regularly renew themselves as a source of regenerative recovery. It seems like a miracle. It seems like something we should somehow have known long, long ago. If this works as expected, this could begin to make all the controversy about stem cell research a moot point. Maybe there are other nerves in the body that can work the same way and we wouldn’t have to use discarded human embryos after all.

This is a technology we’ll be watching closely.

It looks a lot like the modern equivalent of using leeches to suck blood as a cure. A recent British clinical trial contraindicates traditional head injury treatment that uses corticosteroid drugs. It showed that if used within 2 weeks after serious head injuries, the drugs increase deaths by 20%.

“The study involved 10,000 patients from 239 hospitals in 49 countries and was co-ordinated by scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Oxford.” Of patients treated with the steroid drugs 3 more out of every hundred died than among those on placebos.

The thought now is that steroids and drugs routinely used to treat inflammation in other areas may be way off base–and may be inadvertently killing many people. Here’s what one professor said:

“We are trying to stop inflammation with corticosteroids steroids, but maybe

inflammation is part of the healing process,” he said. “Whenever we are

interfering with nature, we have to have a certain humility because we could be

wrong.” [emphasis mine]

Herein lies the rub for all bioscientists. Everything in the body is so interrelated–and so many substances play both positive and negative roles in health and disease–that attempting to solve a challenge by dealing with only one or a few facets of a problem ends up being, as the doctor said, “playing Russian roulette” with patients’ lives.

This is further evidence of the need to weave more of the mind/body/spirit connection into our Western attitudes about healing. Fewer people died with no medicine at all than those who received treatment considered de rigeur by most physicians. It’s a huge call for rethinking our beliefs and our approaches–perhaps in many areas.

Passing the Kansas Economic Growth Act was only the first of many efforts the state is making to position itself as a player in the bioscience boom. They’re conducting a week of summit meetings; they’ve got the founder of New Economy Strategies in Washington, D.C. helping them create the state’s bioscience road map over the next six months. “With 40 states now targeting the bioscience industry and its high-paying jobs–and the new Kansas Bioscience Authority now funneling bioscience-related tax revenue into new research, businesses and products–the pressure is on for Kansas to find and capitalize on its niche,” says this Wichita Eagle article. At the same time, they worry that the region’s leaders won’t work together enough to put real muscle behind the effort.

As a seasoned industry expert observed yesterday during a bioscience meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s nice to see a new source of jobs and growth emerging to take the place of the old manufacturing order. Clearly, this is happening in a lot of places in the United States–but bioscience is not as simple to understand as nuts and bolts. The end products are much more complex, and a great deal of the work touches on areas humans have traditionally left to the priests and the philsosophers. In vitro fertilization, stem cell research, cloning and other processes raise all kinds of questions no one’s ever had to think much about before.

This is a race that will not be run full out, with eyes closed and only the goal (of economic growth and jobs) in mind. This is a race that will call upon all the intelligence, skills and soulfulness mankind can muster.

Three Americans Win Nobel Prize for Physics (washingtonpost.com) for discovering that “quarks, the particles that make up protons and neutrons, bind more closely together as they are pulled apart.”

Quarks are the bottom line for subatomic particles–there’s nothing smaller. ANd here’s a new scientific term we’ll all be hearing lots more about in the future: quantum chromodynamics. This describes the “colors” of quarks–their unique set of characteristics and electrical charges.

Scientists use what they call the Standard Model to talk about the interactions of the three basic forces of particle physics — the strong force (that’s what’s just been proven), the weak force (which is about radiation decay) and electromagnetism. Unlike the strong force that quarks show in binding together, the latter two forces grow weaker with distance.

Gravity, which is considered the fourth force, hasn’t quite yielded enough secrets for scientists to link it to the Standard Model to achieve a “theory of everything.” But when they do, what we’ll have is the beginning of a map of the universe that doesn’t just show us relationships, but actually explains interactions.

Imagine if we add this understanding of physics to our understanding of genes and stem cells in molecular biology and so on. We will surely achieve a quantum leap in our ability to grasp–and therefore change–the course of many more things in life…an awesome responsibility indeed.

Smell is a powerful sense that reaches deep into the primitive, feeling area of the brain. This prize-winning work is truly groundbreaking neurology with revolutionary implications for many areas of human life–not least of which are the perfume, the erotica, and the advertising industries.

The two molecular biologists (a man and a woman are sharing the Nobel Prize) discovered that “as much as 5 percent of the genes in mammals were devoted to the sense of smell–an astonishingly high percentage that reflects their importance.” Can you imagine that every mammal has 1500 different smell processors in its nose–only one in each cell of the nasal lining? Incredible. And 900 of the genes associated with smell in humans have simply gone dormant as we’ve come to rely more on sight and hearing.

Just think: Advertisers will begin to create “aroma” campaigns. Just as now you can open a flap in a magazine and sample a new fragrance, soon the sexy smell of leather in a new car will hit you when you pick up a Cadillac ad. Restaurants will create ads that feature the mouthwatering smell of pot-roast-like-your-mom-used-to-make. Gyms will attract new members with the smell of “clean.” This is going to create a whole new category of jobs. We already have IT experts; now we’ll have ST (smell technology) experts who will be in great demand. They’ll be asked not just to formulate smells and aromas that work through different media, but also to analyze what makes a smell attractive.

Beware. Soon you’ll be placed in an SS (smell sense) category and then everyone will know what “turns you on” in the smell department. In any case, this stuff looks like it might present some exciting investment possibilities.

Cool idea: People with money invite startup companies from their own state to tell their stories. Companies from all over the state of Virginia were asked to submit applications to be considered for review at the conference. Four of the biotech ones that got picked have some pretty exciting ideas:

• REDEEM THE EARTH – plant-based environmental solutions for helping land (in manufacturing sites, mines, agricultural land, and firing ranges) recover from various poisoning agents;
• NON-INVASIVE TARGETING – ways of delivering drugs that are molecular (meaning biological) and use ultrasound (imaging with sound waves) so doctors can target therapies to specific sites (we’re trying to locate these guys because this description needs further clarification);
• KEEP BETTER TRACK OF DRUGS – a system for tracking drugs that combines a database of up-to-date drug product, packaging and legal information with a sensor that authenticates drug products throughout their life cycle (from manufacture to sale) without destroying them; and
• PHYSICAL HELP FOR ADDICTION – therapies to help reduce addicts’ dependencies on drugs and alcohol.

The Virginia Biotechnology Association, a 200-member statewide trade group that “promotes the impact” of the life sciences on the local economy, is hosting the event. Trade associations are common for other kinds of businesses. Why not for biomed/tech? Maybe this kind of organization would have more wollop than an unrelated group that’s given a mandate to do something for bioscience. After all, trade association members are business owners with a lot more to lose–and to gain–from how their industry is accepted, understood and promoted than people who have no heart-felt stake in the outcome, but rather whose main job may be about proving how “plugged in” they are…

It’s all over the news this morning. Pharmaceutical giant Merck’s stock is suffering after it announced a recall of its most popular anti-pain-and-we-think-and-cross-our-fingers-it’s-also-anti-cancer drug. Annual global sales revenue of $2.5 billion for 2003 ($1.8 billion in the U.S. alone) lost…

What’s surprising to me, though, is how long it took them to take it off the market. A whole year ago I wrote a website on this topic for a personal injury law firm. My research showed ample evidence that Vioxx significantly increased the risk of heart attack in those taking it. And this Wasington Post article cites one of the same startling facts I uncovered: that Merck itself had disovered the risk–more than TWO years ago in 2002. The FDA, which issued Merck a warning letter back then, has been watching ever since, and apparently has only now totally convinced itself that the higher risk was more than a fluke.

The most amazing part, though, is that aspirin and ibuprofen are considered just as effective for the pain. Wonder how many people made Merck executives rich and died with their desire for this designer drug?

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