New articles about diabeties drugs...
Suddenly I got 3 articles about diabeties (T1 and T2), today. So I'll post them all here at once. Also the last one has info about diabeties wound treatments.

--
Diabetes drug to get 'black box' warning in US

 IT HAS taken a while, but on 6 June the US Food and Drug Administration announced the diabetes drug Avandia will soon come with a prominent "black box" warning about the risk of congestive heart failure. Experts reviewing the drug for the FDA first called for one over a year ago. Some say the delay is another example of industry versus science, with science the loser.
“Some say the delay is another example of industry versus science, with science the loser”
An oral drug that lowers blood sugar, GlaxoSmithKline's Avandia has been used by patients with type 2 diabetes since 1999. Concerns over possible heart-related side effects were raised by diabetes specialists in 1999, and again last year by FDA reviewer Rosemary Johann-Liang, who says the FDA ignored her proposal for a stronger warning. The FDA is investigating her claims.
With drug makers pushing for speedy approvals, science is often sacrificed and reviewers' opinions stifled, says Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC.
Legislation to boost the evaluation of drugs' safety after they go on sale is being debated in the US House of Representatives this week.
From issue 2608 of New Scientist magazine, 16 June 2007, page 7

--
Sugar supplement may treat immune disease

A sugar supplement may sweeten the overactive immune cells responsible for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and type 1 diabetes and stop them attacking the body's tissues.
Autoimmune diseases are triggered when receptors on the outside of immune cells called T-helper 1 (Th1) cells start binding "self" antigens rather than pieces of foreign invaders. Anything that decreases the amount of binding should suppress the autoimmune response.
Previous studies suggested that glucosamine, a dietary supplement commonly taken by people with osteoarthritis, has some immunosuppressive effects. This led Michael Demetriou and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, to investigate a similar but more potent compound called N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc).
A large number of proteins in the body are modified by the attachment of sugar molecules to their surface through a process called glycosylation, and altered glycosylation has been implicated in some autoimmune diseases. Demetriou's team found that naturally occurring GlcNAc molecules attach to T-cell receptors and these GlcNAc "branches" form a lattice on the cell surface that prevents the receptors from clustering near where the antigens are located (see Diagram). Less clustering means less antigen binding, and less activation of Th1 cells, reducing the autoimmune reaction.
Mice given oral GlcNAc supplements had twice as much GlcNAc branching on their T-cell receptors as untreated mice. The researchers also found that T-cells engineered to cause the mouse equivalent of MS failed to do so if they had been incubated in GlcNAc first. A daily oral dose of GlcNAc also prevented type 1 diabetes in mice genetically engineered to develop the disease (The Journal of Biological Chemistry, DOI: 10.1074/jbc.M701890200).
“T-cells engineered to cause the mouse equivalent of multiple sclerosis failed to do so if they had been incubated in GlcNAc”
"I'm astounded by their outcomes," says Nick Giannoukakis, a pathologist at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania. In 2002, he showed that glucosamine worked as well as standard immunosuppressants in increasing the amount of time transplanted hearts lasted in mice.
However, he warns that evidence is still needed that glucosamine or GlcNAc can reverse symptoms in animals with autoimmune diseases, rather than just preventing them from occurring in the first place.
There is some preliminary evidence to support this. In 2005, Abdolmohamad Rostami's team at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, showed that glucosamine can suppress MS symptoms in mice that had recently developed the disease. Meanwhile, a small study of 12 children with autoimmune inflammatory bowel disease, suggested that GlcNAc lessened symptoms in eight of them.
Rostami also cautions that, as they are immunosuppressive, more research is needed to prove the safety of glucosamine and GlcNAc supplements in humans with autoimmune disease. Also, the blood-brain barrier is open in MS patients and little is known about what these compounds do in the brain, he says.
From issue 2607 of New Scientist magazine, 07 June 2007, page 20

--
Bugs struck down by 'super-oxidised' water

WATER washes away many things, but could it be used to kill harmful viruses, fungi and bacteria in wounds? The developers of a form of "super-oxidised" water certainly think so - and they claim it may do so more effectively than bleach, without harming human tissue.
Information on the product, called Microcyn, was presented last week at Global Healthcare, a biomedical business conference in Monte Carlo, Monaco. It revealed that wounds of patients with diabetes treated with the product and an antibiotic healed within 43 days on average, compared with 55 days for patients given the standard treatment of iodine plus an antibiotic.
Oxychlorine ions are the key ingredient, rapidly piercing the walls of free-living microbes and killing them. Human cells are spared because they are tightly bound together in a matrix, says Hoji Alimi, founder of Oculus, the company in Petaluma, California, that developed Microcyn. "Microcyn only kills cells it can completely surround," he says.
“Oxychlorine ions are the key ingredient, rapidly piercing the walls of free-living microbes and killing them”
Ordinarily, water consists of hydroxyl and hydrogen ions as well as H2O molecules. However, by exposing purified water to sodium chloride through a semi-permeable membrane and then using electrolysis, various oxychlorine ions are formed too. These kill microbes and viruses, but are present in much lower amounts than in bleach, which also contains a slightly different combination of ions, including large amounts of the highly reactive hypochlorite ion.
Despite containing 300 times less hypochlorite than bleach, Microcyn killed 10 strains of bleach-resistant bacteria, according to a study by Eileen Thatcher of Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. "It may be that other, unusual ions [that are] in Microcyn but not bleach are instantly lethal to bugs," says Thatcher. Alimi has also found a way to stabilise the ions by making them react with and regenerate each other during storage, so that the fluid remains active for up to two years.
While Microcyn was officially approved in the US for cleaning wounds around two years ago, some physicians have also been using it "off label" to accelerate healing by repeatedly applying it to the wound. "When you spray it on, you see the treated tissue 'pink up' and go beefy, which is good because it means the oxygen supply has resumed," says Cheryl Bongiovanni, director of wound care at the Lake District Hospital in Lakeview, Oregon, who has used Microcyn on around 1000 diabetic patients with leg and foot wounds over the past 18 months. Official phase II trials to test the product's wound-healing potential are currently taking place in the US and Europe.
"It does seem promising," says Andrew Boulton of the Manchester Royal Infirmary in the UK, who is conducting one such trial. "Hopefully it will confirm our initial good experience."
Tracy Kelly of Diabetes UK says that 15 per cent of people with diabetes who develop foot ulcers eventually suffer amputations. "We would welcome any safe, effective treatment which could help hasten recovery," she says.