Sleep, Nutrition Routines In Hospitals May Compromise Patients’ Immune System, Physicians Say

Reuters (10/22, Kennedy) reports three physicians from Johns Hopkins argue, in a viewpoint paper in BMJ Quality and Safety, that noisy conditions in hospitals can interrupt sleeping habits of patients, and hospital policies of withholding food for long periods of time before procedures can weaken a patient’s immune system while he or she is hospitalized..

Top FDA Official Says Regulators Should Consider Potential Benefits Of E-Cigarettes

The Congressional Quarterly (10/22, Siddons, Subscription Publication) reports that Mitch Zeller, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products, said Wednesday that regulators have to consider the possible health benefits for smokers who transition to e-cigarettes. “If there is an opportunity to shift those unable or unwilling to quit from the most harmful form of nicotine delivery, to the least harmful form,” Zeller said, “then I think that we as regulators have an opportunity to explore what those options are. “

President Obama Announces New Steps To Fight Opioid Abuse Epidemic

A number of major national outlets covered President Obama’s announcement yesterday of new initiatives to fight the nation’s abuse opioid abuse epidemic. The efforts, announced during the President’s visit to West Virginia, drew mostly positive reactions from medical groups and lawmakers. However, several sources suggest the Administration’s work on the issue so far has been largely ineffective.

        The Washington Post (10/22, Mufson, Zezima) reports that the Obama Administration “announced Wednesday it will take steps to increase access to drug treatment and the training of doctors who prescribe opiate painkillers.” The efforts, which President Obama unveiled at a forum in Charleston, West Virginia, include doubling the number of physicians who can prescribe buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opiate addiction, to 60,000 over the next three years. The Administration will also double the number of providers that can prescribe naloxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. The Post adds that “West Virginia — the home of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell — is the epicenter of America’s opiate epidemic, where more than a decade ago people started getting hooked on prescription drugs.”

        Reuters (10/22, Edwards) reports that the President directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to invest $8.5 million in opioid addiction prevention. Reuters adds that about 45 percent of heroin users in the US are also addicted to prescription opioids, according to the CDC.

Most Americans Say They Can’t Afford Monthly Premiums Above $100

CNBC (10/22) reports that a “large majority of adults say ‘$100 a month or less’ is the highest monthly premium they can afford to pay for health insurance in 2016, according to a survey released Wednesday” by HealthPocket.com. Fifty-seven percent of respondents gave that price range when asked about coverage affordability. The second-most common answer “was $200 per month, which was the response of just 17 percent of respondents.” CNBC adds that cost “or perceived cost” is the main reason that the remaining uninsured give when asked why they haven’t purchased health insurance. According to the article, ACA plans “routinely cost more than $100 per month before the federal subsidies available to many enrollees are factored into the price.”

GOOD NEWS! NEW TREATMENT COULD CURE ASTHMA!!!

Scientists discover asthma's potential root cause and a novel treatment
Cardiff scientists have for the first time identified the potential root cause of asthma and an existing drug that offers a new treatment.

Published today in Science Translational Medicine journal, University researchers, working in collaboration with scientists at King's College London and the Mayo Clinic (USA), describe the previously unproven role of the calcium sensing receptor (CaSR) in causing asthma, a disease which affects 300 million people worldwide.

The team used mouse models of asthma and human airway tissue from asthmatic and non-asthmatic people to reach their findings.

Crucially, the paper highlights the effectiveness of a class of drugs known as calcilytics in manipulating CaSR to reverse all symptoms associated with the condition. These symptoms include airway narrowing, airway twitchiness and inflammation - all of which contribute to increased breathing difficulty.

"Our findings are incredibly exciting," said the principal investigator, Professor Daniela Riccardi, from the School of Biosciences. "For the first time we have found a link airways inflammation, which can be caused by environmental triggers - such as allergens, cigarette smoke and car fumes – and airways twitchiness in allergic asthma.

"Our paper shows how these triggers release chemicals that activate CaSR in airway tissue and drive asthma symptoms like airway twitchiness, inflammation, and narrowing. Using calcilytics, nebulized directly into the lungs, we show that it is possible to deactivate CaSR and prevent all of these symptoms."

Dr Samantha Walker, Director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK, who helped fund the research, said:

"This hugely exciting discovery enables us, for the first time, to tackle the underlying causes of asthma symptoms. Five per cent of people with asthma don't respond to current treatments so research breakthroughs could be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people.

"If this research proves successful we may be just a few years away from a new treatment for asthma, and we urgently need further investment to take it further through clinical trials. Asthma research is chronically underfunded; there have only been a handful of new treatments developed in the last 50 years so the importance of investment in research like this is absolutely essential."
While asthma is well controlled in some people, around one-in-twelve patients respond poorly to current treatments. This significant minority accounts for around 90% of healthcare costs associated with the condition.

According to Cardiff Professor Paul Kemp, who co-authored the study, the identification of CaSR in airway tissue means that the potential for treatment of other inflammatory lung diseases beyond asthma is immense. These include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic bronchitis, for which currently there exists no cure. It is predicted that by 2020 these diseases will be the third biggest killers worldwide.Professor Riccardi and her collaborators are now seeking funding to determine the efficacy of calcilytic drugs in treating asthmas that are especially difficult to treat, particularly steroid-resistant and influenza-exacerbated asthma, and to test these drugs in patients with asthma.
Calcilytics were first developed for the treatment of osteoporosis around 15 years ago with the aim of strengthening deteriorating bone by targeting CaSR to induce the release of an anabolic hormone. Although clinically safe and well tolerated in people, calcilytics proved unsuccessful in treating osteoporosis.
But this latest breakthrough has provided researchers with the unique opportunity to re-purpose these drugs, potentially accelerating the time it takes for them to be approved for use asthma patients. Once funding has been secured, the group aim to be trialling the drugs on humans within two years.
"If we can prove that calcilytics are safe when administered directly to the lung in people, then in five years we could be in a position to treat patients and potentially stop asthma from happening in the first place," added Professor Riccardi.
The study was part-funded by Asthma UK, the Cardiff Partnership Fund and a BBSRC 'Sparking Impact' award.