BioPharmArena.com

The recent “failure” of a Merck HIV/AIDS vaccine has “led to two conflicting calls for action, neither of which got it right,” a Los Angeles Times editorial says. Grant recipients “wanted the vaccine search to go on as before,” while “treatment activists wanted the money stripped from research,” the editorial says, adding that NIH at a conference last week “appeared to be taking a wiser approach” and said that it “would continue funding vaccine research” with a likely focus on “basic research and smaller, less expensive trials.”

After the Merck trial was halted, some groups “lost little time … in calling for vaccine funding to be rerouted to treatment and prevention,” according to the editorial. It adds that U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS vaccine research is less than $700 million annually — a “relative pittance compared with that for treatment and prevention, which stands at more than $15 billion annually and is expected to at least double in the next year.” It is “too easy to forget that people can develop resistance to” antiretroviral drugs and “suffer significant side effects,” the editorial says, adding that the “research effort that brought about these treatments was a tremendous achievement, but scientists still have much to learn about the virus.”

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MedicalNewsToday.com

The House Rules Committee on Tuesday by voice vote allowed a bill (HR 5501) that would reauthorize the U.S. global HIV/AIDS program to be considered by the full House, CQ Today reports. According to CQ Today, compromises reached on the bill in the House Foreign Affairs Committee appear to be “alive and well” after the Rules Committee rejected floor consideration of several amendments (Graham-Silverman, CQ Today, 4/1).

The bill would authorize $50 billion for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief over the next five years. The measure reflects a compromise reached between House leaders from both parties and the White House. Although it removes a provision included in PEPFAR’s original mandate that would have required one-third of HIV prevention funding to be spent on abstinence-only education, the bill includes new language requiring “balanced funding” for prevention programs that ensure that abstinence and faithfulness teachings “are implemented and funded in a meaningful way.” Under the measure, countries that spend less than 50% of funding for the prevention of the sexual transmission of HIV on abstinence and fidelity programs will be required to explain the decision to Congress.

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MedicalNewsToday.com

“The ‘Diagonal’ Approach to Global Fund Financing: A Cure for the Broader Malaise of Health Systems?” Globalization and Health: The study examines how the “polarization” between “vertical” financing, or funding disease-specific approaches, and “horizontal” financing, which aims to improve overall health systems, has “obscured” the prospects offered by “diagonal” financing, which aims to reach disease-specific targets through improved health systems. According to the study, the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in April 2007 agreed to consider financing comprehensive country health programs, and the new International Health Partnership will help low-income nations to develop such programs. This “combination could lead” the Global Fund to a “much broader financing scope,” the study says. It adds that a “transformation” of the Global Fund into a “Global Health Fund is feasible, but only if accompanied by a substantial increase of donor commitments.” According to the study, the transformation of the Global Fund into a diagonal, and perhaps eventually horizontal, financer “should happen gradually and carefully and be accompanied by measures to safeguard its exceptional features” (Ooms et al., Globalization and Health, 3/25).

From MedicalNewsToday.com

Artemisinins in Malaria Therapy, written by WRAIR researchers Dr. Qugui Li, Dr. Wilbur K. Milhous, and Dr. (COL) Peter J. Weina (Division of Experimental Therapeutics at the WRAIR, Silver Spring, MD) provides a fascinating overview of the historical use and recent developments in the treatment of one of the oldest and still one of the most prevalent scourges of mankind - malaria.

WRAIR, initially known as the Army Medical School, was founded in 1893 by then U.S. Army Surgeon General George Sternberg. In 1900 General Sternberg sent the newly appointed U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission to Cuba headed by Major Walter Reed. Major Reed and his team became the first to confirm the theory that yellow fever was transmitted by a mosquito vector. Since this historic discovery, WRAIR’s many contributions to mankind in its 100 plus year history includes the discovery of the etiology and treatment of many of mankind’s leading killers.

More than half of the routine vaccines given to service members were co-developed by the military. Development of other licensed vaccines was supervised by investigators who began their careers at military research centers (e.g. yellow fever vaccine by former Army Surgeon General William Gorgas, mumps, measles, and varicella vaccines by Maurice Hilleman, and oral polio vaccine by Albert Sabin). Vaccines currently in advanced development stages include new adenovirus vaccines, and vaccines for malaria, dengue, and hepatitis E.

The history of using artemisinins for malarial like conditions dates back more than 2000 years to when it was a part of the herbal arsenal utilized in Traditional Chinese Medicine as a treatment for malarial like conditions. Artemisinins are derived from the sweet wormwood plant Artemisia annua which not only grows in China but also just down the road from WRAIR along the Potomac River. Revival of the use of artemisinins in the era of modern medicine began in China in the 1970’s with the first purified crystalline artemisinins produced in Shandon Province in 1972.

Although lead author Dr. Qigui Li received his MD and pharmacology degrees in China in the early 1980s, he did not become aware of artemisinins until the late 1980s, while a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. Dr. Li stated that “the Chinese had first published their findings in the Chinese Medical Journal in 1979, but when the WHO approached Chinese scientists for samples of the plant so they could conduct their own assays they were rebuffed. In retrospect, we can appreciate that this was just after the Nixon era, Mao Tse-tung was still in power, and the Chinese were very skeptical about sharing information for fear it would be utilized by the commercial pharmaceutical companies in the West for monetary gain.” Since joining the WRAIR team in 1991, Dr. Li has performed or supervised the majority of the pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics on all of the artemisinin derivatives.

In December of 2005, the World Health Organization stated, for the first time, artemisinins are the first line of therapy for most cases of malarial illnesses. Artemisinins are also being investigated as antiviral and anticancer agents.

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Dr. Dr. Qigui Li is currently the senior staff Pharmacologist and Section Chief of Pharmacokinetics/Pharmacodynamics in the Department of Pharmacology, Division of Experimental Therapeutics at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. He has received the WHO Research Fellowship Award, the NRC Research Associate Fellowship Award, and Best Investigator/PhD. Candidate from Schering Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Li received his Pharmacology/MD degree from Tongji Medical University, Wuhan, PR China in 1983 and his PhD in pharmacokinetics from the Free University of Berlin, West Berlin, FR Germany in 1989. Following the PhD in pharmacokinetics, Dr. Li completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Free University of Berlin in 1991. He joined WRAIR in 1991.

Dr. Wilbur K. Milhous is currently a Professor of Global Health & Internal Medicine and serves as the Associate Dean for Research at the College of Public Health, University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa. He gained his 28 years of experience as a small molecule drug developer in numerous assignments at the WRAIR serving more recently as Chief Science Officer for Therapeutics and the Research Coordinator for the MIDRP. Under the mentorship of former WRAIR scientists Bob Desjardins and Craig Canfield, Dr. Milhous underwent his infectious disease chemotherapy training in a combined doctoral (University of North Carolina) and training with industry (GlaxoSmithKline) program prior to arriving at WRAIR in 1983. He was the first scientist to conduct in vitro testing of artemisinin extracts and has since been totally fascinated with the molecule resulting in numerous publications and patents. Dr. Milhous, along with former WRAIR colleague, Dennis Kyle, is currently teaching Critical Path Method as an academic discipline in the Global Health Infectious Diseases Research Program at USF Health.

Dr. (COL) Peter J. Weina is currently Chief, Pharmacology, , and Medical/Laboratory Director, Leishmaniasis Diagnostics Laboratory with the Division of Experimental Therapeutics at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, MD. He is also Chair, Integrated Product Team for the Development of Intravenous Artesunate, Military Infectious Diseases Research Program and Medical Research and Material Command, Fort Detrick, MD. He received a PhD (Zoology & Pathology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988 and completed his MD degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in 1996. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine in 1999 and a Fellowship in Infectious Disease in 2002. Dr. Weina is currently a Fellow with the American College of Physicians and has been awarded one of America’s Top Physicians - Infectious Diseases (2004-2005).

Nearly half of all HIV-positive African adults who become infected with Salmonella die from what otherwise would be a seven-day bout of diarrhea. Now, UC Davis School of Medicine scientists have discovered how salmonella becomes lethal for AIDS patients. Their findings also implicate a mechanism by which HIV evades the powerful drugs used to treat AIDS.

“We have found the defect in the immune response that allows Salmonella to cross the mucosal barrier of the gut, enter the bloodstream and infect other organs,” said Andreas Bäumler, a UC Davis professor of medical microbiology and immunology and co-author of the study.

The results of the study, which will be published online by Nature Medicine March 23, revealed that viral infection of the intestine results in the depletion of a type of white blood cell, called Th-17, in the gut mucosa. This T helper lymphocyte produces IL-17, a cytokine or chemical messenger that plays a crucial role in the inflammatory response, recruiting other immune system cells to the site of infection.

This kind of interruption in the gut’s immune response could be allowing HIV to maintain reservoirs that evade drug treatments, said Satya Dandekar, professor and chair of the department of medical microbiology and immunology.

“It’s like putting out the fire, but leaving the embers smoldering,” Dandekar said.

The rise in patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in sub-Saharan Africa has led to a dramatic increase in the frequency of non-typhoidal Salmonella serotypes (NTS), the strains of the bacteria that cause acute food-borne disease world wide. Normally, this infection is limited to the intestine, causing gastroenteritis. In AIDS patients, however, the infection spreads to the bloodstream and causes what is called NTS bacteremia.

While at a conference, Bäumler was surprised to learn from epidemiologist and physician Melita Gordon of the University of Liverpool that Salmonella was quickly becoming one of the leading causes of death in parts of Africa. (Gordon is a co-author on the current paper.) Bäumler returned to Davis and approached Dandekar about collaborating.

Dandekar had been studying the role of gut-associated lymphoid tissue in HIV. In a 2006 study, she found that HIV continued to replicate in the gut mucosa and suppress immune function in patients being treated with antiretroviral therapy - even when T-cell counts from blood samples from the same individuals indicated antiretroviral treatment was working.

“We think the real battle between an individual’s immune system and HIV is happening in the gut mucosa where there is massive destruction of immune cells,” Dandekar said. Gut-associated lymphoid tissue, she pointed out, accounts for 70 percent of the body’s immune system.

In HIV-infected patients, there is a gradual loss of CD4+ T cells over time. These cells, also called T helper cells, organize the immune system’s attack on disease-causing invaders, like Salmonella. Unlike the steady decline of T cells in peripheral blood, there is a very rapid loss of CD4+ T cells in the gut mucosa, Dandekar said.

“We wanted to know whether the loss of the CD4+ T-cells in the gut contributed to the inactivation of the immune system one sees in HIV-infected patients,” she said.

Both Bäumler and Dandekar said the timing was perfect for their collaboration. Together, they developed a novel technique that allowed them to study early intestinal responses to Salmonella infection in rhesus macaques infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), an established model for HIV infection.

“We found that animals that had no SIV infection were able to generate immediate responses to bacterial exposure, producing Th17 cells in large amounts,” Dandekar said. The SIV-infected animals, however, had either a significantly lower response or lacked did not produce measurable amounts of the cytokine.

“This muted Th17 response led to dissemination of Salmonella from the gut to the peripheral blood,” Dandekar said.

The team of researchers also used mice that lacked the IL-17 receptor, an arm of the mucosal immune response, to confirm that IL-17 deficiency leads to increased systemic dissemination of Salmonella.

“We believe IL-17 deficiency causes defects in the mucosal barrier of the gut,” Dandekar said.

Both Bäumler and Dandekar agreed that the results of their collaboration have exciting implications for both HIV and Salmonella research and, more importantly, get scientists closer to finding treatments for HIV and the deadly form of Salmonella.

In terms of HIV, the results suggest that Th17 may make a good biomarker for monitoring HIV infection and testing the efficacy of vaccines and other therapies. They also suggest that efforts to enhance Th17 function may improve existing antiretroviral treatments.

“We are interested in looking at different molecules and compounds to see if we can boost mucosal immune defenses in the gut,” she said.

Dandekar is also interested in looking at Th17 function in those who respond well to treatment and in long-term non-progressors, those individuals who carry HIV for years without going onto develop AIDS.

“Now we know these cells are playing a big role, but we need to better understand how they are contributing to immune inactivation and inflammation,” Dandekar said.

In terms of Salmonella, Bäumler’s next step is to discover the mechanisms by which non-immunocompromised patients are able to rid themselves of the infections.

“We now know which cytokines orchestrate the mucosal barrier function, but we still don’t know what kills these bacteria,” he said.

This article was originally published in  MedicalNewsToday.com

UroToday.com- Resiniferatoxin (RTX) and botulinum toxin type A (BTX-A) have drawn increasing attention in recent years as potential treatments for lower urinary tract symptoms (luts), including overactive bladder (OAB). RTX acts by desensitizing the transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1 (TRPV1) a non-specific Ca2+ channel previously known as vanilloid receptor. BTX-A is used in purified form as a medication for disorders involving involuntary muscle contractions including blepharospasm and strabismus. It acts by inhibiting the fusion of neurotransmitter-containing synaptic vesicles with the neuronal membrane an event essential for the release of neurotransmitters. It also reduces the release of glutamate and substance P from sensory neurons thus reducing the transmission of sensory input by these cells. Both drugs have been used in patients with bladder pain syndrome / interstitial cystitis. Cruz and Dinis from Porto, Portugal present an interesting review of the use of these compounds for the treatment of urinary disorders.

A role for intravesical RTX and BTX-A in the treatment of inflammatory bladder pain and frequency is strongly supported from data collected from animal models of chronic cystitis. Studies of RTX in humans for bladder pain syndrome are conflicting. A small randomized and placebo controlled trial of 18 patients showed good results at one month with no significant benefit at 3 months. A large pharmaceutical trial with 163 patients and several different doses of RTX compared to placebo showed no efficacy or even a potential signal of efficacy. For BTX-A, the results have also been contradictory in clinical trials. Not only is efficacy in question, but it carries risks of urinary retention that are not insignificant.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Studies published in the Jan. 10 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) are providing clues into the treatment and diagnosis of LAM, or lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a progressive and deadly lung disease that affects women in their childbearing years. There currently are no treatments for LAM and scientists estimate as many as 250,000 women may be going misdiagnosed or undiagnosed.

Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine reported on a study testing the drug sirolimus in patients with LAM or tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) with angiomyolipomas, benign kidney tumors common to both diseases. Approved to help transplant patients fight organ rejection, sirolimus treatment resulted in a 50 percent reduction in tumor growth; a significant improvement in lung function was observed in LAM patients. In addition, a letter published in the same issue of NEJM reports on preliminary data to support the use of a serum marker test to confirm a diagnosis of LAM. The disease has traditionally required a lung biopsy or CT scan for confirmation of diagnosis, contributing to diagnosis complications.

“These studies represent significant advances for LAM patients,” said Leslie Sullivan-Stacey, J.D., President and CEO of The LAM Foundation, a supporter of both studies. “The LAM Foundation has been the driving force behind major breakthroughs in LAM research over just the last decade, and we now have scientific evidence to support further study of treatments and diagnostic tools. The sirolimus study already is serving as the basis for other studies in TSC and LAM, including the first-ever LAM treatment trial, now enrolling patients.”

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS) announced that the final analysis from a recently completed, randomized, placebo-controlled, blinded Phase II clinical study reaffirmed that its single-dose, drinkable typhoid vaccine candidate was highly immunogenic and well-tolerated with an acceptable safety profile in the population studied. For the study, a total of 151 Vietnamese children between 5 and 14 years of age were enrolled. A total of 101 children received the vaccine candidate and 50 children received placebo. This clinical study is the first trial involving a pediatric population and was performed in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, Oxford University and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Study Results

- 97% of the children dosed developed an immune response, which was defined as an increase in Salmonella typhi LPS-specific IgG antibody levels and/or Salmonella typhi LPS-specific IgA antibody levels in the blood, suggestive of systemic and mucosal protective immunity, respectively. This represented a statistically significant difference from the placebo group.

- 93% of the children developed responses as measured by increases in Salmonella typhi LPS-specific IgG antibody levels suggestive of systemic protective immunity and 94% developed an immune response as measured by increase in Salmonella typhi LPS-specific IgA antibody levels suggestive of mucosal protective immunity.

- There were no safety concerns following administration of a single dose of the drinkable typhoid vaccine candidate. The proportion of subjects reporting adverse events was similar for the vaccinated group (26%) and placebo group (22%); this difference was not statistically significant.

- There were no serious adverse events reported, no deaths and no subjects withdrew due to adverse events. There were small differences in specific adverse events with more gastrointestinal symptoms and headaches reported in the vaccinated group and more respiratory symptoms in the placebo group.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Computer analysis of existing drugs may be key to fighting new infectious agents and antibiotic-resistant pathogens like deadly tuberculosis strains and staph ’superbugs.’ Researchers in Canada say the use of such “emergency discovery” technology could save time, money and lives during a sudden outbreak or a bioterrorism attack. They reported at the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Drug ‘repurposing’ or ‘reprofiling’ is not new: Pharmaceutical companies have been seeking new uses of old drugs to extend patent protections and whenever new, off-label uses of the drugs are found. But reprofiling to deliberately develop emergency drugs is a new concept, made possible by advances in chemoinformatics, a new field that merges chemistry with computer science, according to study presenter Artem Cherkasov, Ph.D., of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

GlaxoSmithKline on Wednesday announced that it has given consent to Toronto-based drug company Apotex to use two of its patented antiretroviral drugs, lamivudine and zidovudine, to manufacture Apo-triAvir — a fixed-dose combination of the two drugs and the antiretroviral nevirapine — for Rwanda, the Toronto Star reports. According to the Star, consent was given through Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (Talaga, Toronto Star, 8/9).

The World Trade Organization last month in a statement announced that Rwanda plans to override the pharmaceutical patents and import 260,000 packs of Apo-triAvir. Under an August 2003 waiver to WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, known as the “paragraph 6 system,” developing countries with a public health crisis are allowed to import generic drugs when they cannot manufacture the drugs themselves. According to WTO, Rwanda is the first country to use the waiver, which would allow it to import generic drugs that are manufactured under compulsory licenses in other countries. The TRIPS waiver submission was made last month by the Treatment and Research AIDS Centre. Rwanda plans to import the 260,000 packets during the next two years (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 7/25).

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Medicalnewstoday.com

FDA and Pfizer Inc. announced the approval of Selzentry, or maraviroc, the first agent in a new class of oral HIV medications: chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) coreceptor antagonists.

By selectively blocking the CCR5 coreceptor, which is HIV’s predominant route of entry into T cells, maraviroc prevents CCR5-tropic HIV-1 from entering the cells. All other oral HIV treatments on the market combat the virus once it has already entered T cells, according to Pfizer.

According to the product’s FDA-approved labeling (PDF), Selzentry is indicated in combination with other antiretroviral medications for the treatment of adult patients with only CCR5-tropic HIV-1 detectable disease and evidence of viral replication despite treatment with other antiretroviral agents.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop new drugs to combat agents of bioterrorism.

The one-year, $880,000 grant will fund the college’s new Institute for Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences. The center will discover new and effective medicines to fight bioterrorism and assist the college in obtaining additional funding sources to develop medicines to fight other infectious and chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and bipolar disorder.

“Anthrax has been identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the most serious threats of bioterrorism, and UIC’s College of Pharmacy has an extensive research program devoted to the discovery and development of antibiotics for the treatment of this and other infectious diseases,” said Jerry Bauman, dean of the College of Pharmacy. “This grant will allow us to expand on our current studies.”

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Medicalnewstoday.com

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday it has approved Pfizer’s new antiretroviral drug, maraviroc (brand name Selzentry), for use in adults with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The approval is for adults who have not responded to other HIV treatments.

Maraviroc is a new type of drug designed to slow the progress of HIV and was fast tracked for review by the FDA. Experts said that this offers a new alternative to the thousand of Americans who need a new treatment for HIV.

The drug should be on sale next month said New York based Pfizer in a prepared statement.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Anticipating the need for patient-friendly technologies that can deliver therapeutic doses of prescribed drugs with minimal reliance on the patient, drug developers continue to explore noninvasive routes of administration. Delivering drugs through the skin - transdermal delivery - possesses several attractive attributes, but as work with passive transdermal patches has progressed, so too has the realization of the true extent of the barrier to drug delivery presented by the stratum corneum, the skin’s outer layer of dead, hydrophobic, keratinized cells. By using a variety of energy and mechanical approaches, active transdermal delivery expands the potential for delivering drugs noninvasively by actively transporting the drug across and through the skin.

Led by established technology companies including Alza/J&J, Becton Dickinson, and 3M, combination microporation drug delivery products will dominate the active transdermal sector for the next three years, representing almost two-thirds of the market in 2009. Other important active transdermal segments include iontophoresis and heat-assisted transdermal products. Products based on electroporation, ultrasound and lasers will also compete for market share.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Civil law suits were filed in a Montreal court yesterday against Andrew Speaker, the 31 year old lawyer from Atlanta, US, who flew to Europe while infected with a drug resistant strain of TB two months ago.

According to a report from the Associated Press (AP) in Montreal, the plaintiffs are nine people; eight fellow air passengers and a brother and roommate of one of them. They are suing him for potentially exposing them to the disease. Representing them is Montreal lawyer Anlac Nguyen.

A CTV news report said that the nine people comprise five Montreal residents, two Ottawa residents and two Czech citizens. Between them they are seeking a total of 1.37 million Canadian dollars (1.31 USD).

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Electronic health records have been hailed as a key element in making U.S. medical care more effective and efficient, but a new study led by a researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that electronic records were not associated with improved quality of outpatient health care in 2003 and 2004.

Of 17 quality indicators assessed by the study, electronic health records made no difference in 14 measures. In two areas, better quality was associated with electronic records, while worse quality was found in one area.

Senior author Randall Stafford, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, said that given the overall mediocre performance of physicians in the 17 quality indicator areas, he and his colleagues had expected better quality from doctors using electronic records.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Since the institution of nationwide folic acid fortification of enriched grains in the mid 1990s, the number of infants born in the United States and Canada with neural tube defects has declined by 20 percent to 50 percent. Concurrent with the institution of fortification, however, the rate at which new cases of colorectal cancer were diagnosed in men and women increased, report researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University. Joel Mason, MD, director of the USDA HNRCA’s Vitamins and Carcinogenesis Laboratory, and colleagues analyze the temporal association between folic acid fortification and the rise in colorectal cancer rates, and present their resulting hypothesis in an article in the July issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.

“Nationwide fortification of enriched grains is generally considered one of the greatest advances in public health policy,” says Mason, who is also an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. “But since the time that the food supply in North America was fortified with folic acid, we have been experiencing four to six additional cases of colorectal cancer for every 100,000 individuals each year compared to the trends that existed before fortification.

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Medicalnewstoday.com

A number of health care experts say that Michael Moore “might be glorifying” other countries’ health care systems in his new film “Sicko,” but many “accept his argument that other nations are doing a better job than the United States in providing coverage for all residents and making sure people have access to primary care and preventive services,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Ken Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University, said, “We, unlike any other country, have 46 million people who are uninsured, and that raises a whole host of health and financial issues.” Thorpe added, “Ours is really is a sick-care system. We have tremendous technical capabilities to deal with people with serious illness.”

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Medicalnewstoday.com

New EU mercury regulations passed recently will help prevent healthcare workers from being directly exposed to mercury and will also reduce mercury pollution in the environment. The new laws, seen by Health Care Without Harm Europe (HCWHE) as a positive step forward, include a ban on the sale of mercury thermometers for use in healthcare. Mercury blood-pressure devices for use by professionals have, however, escaped being banned.

Karoline Ruzickova, Safer Materials Coordinator for HCWHE, says: “The ban will ultimately mean an end to spills from thermometer breakages. This will reduce indoor contamination and the costs and inconvenience of cleaning up mercury spills. It will also reduce contamination of the environment resulting from incorrect disposal of mercury thermometers.” (1)

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Medicalnewstoday.com

Several newspapers recently published editorials and opinion pieces discussing “Sicko,” filmmaker Michael Moore’s documentary about the health care industry. Summaries appear below.

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Medicalnewstoday.com