Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation: Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor-? Induced Systemic Lupus Erythematosus().

Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor-? Induced Systemic Lupus Erythematosus().

Filed under: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Open Rheumatol J. 2012; 6: 315-9
Almoallim H, Al-Ghamdi Y, Almaghrabi H, Alyasi O

Anti-tumor necrosis factor-alpha induced lupus (ATIL) represents a major diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. Most cases of ATIL are caused by infliximab, followed by etanercept and adalimumab. Symptoms can range from common, mild cutaneous lesions to rare, serious pleural or pericardial effusions, deep venous thrombosis, life-threatening pneumonitis, and neuritis. Constitutional symptoms often present in association with positive autoantibody serology. Diagnosis can be considered if there is a temporal relationship between symptoms and anti-tumor necrosis factor-? (TNF- ?) therapy and at least one serologic and one non-serologic American College of Rheumatology criteria. Since it is contraindicated to use anti-TNF-? drugs in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, it is recommended to perform a thorough immunological screening in any patient with polyarthritis to assure accurate diagnosis. In addition, prior to anti- TNF therapy, baseline immunological investigations (including antinuclear antibodies) should be performed, and there should be close follow up to assess the development of lupus manifestations. The main approach in the treatment of ATIL is withdrawal of the offending drug. Traditional therapy with corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents may be required to achieve full resolution of lupus symptoms. In this review, we discuss the pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and management of ATIL.
HubMed – drug

 

Open Drug Discovery Teams: A Chemistry Mobile App for Collaboration.

Filed under: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Mol Inform. 2012 Aug; 31(8): 585-597
Ekins S, Clark AM, Williams AJ

The Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) project provides a mobile app primarily intended as a research topic aggregator of predominantly open science data collected from various sources on the internet. It exists to facilitate interdisciplinary teamwork and to relieve the user from data overload, delivering access to information that is highly relevant and focused on their topic areas of interest. Research topics include areas of chemistry and adjacent molecule-oriented biomedical sciences, with an emphasis on those which are most amenable to open research at present. These include rare and neglected diseases, and precompetitive and public-good initiatives such as green chemistry. The ODDT project uses a free mobile app as user entry point. The app has a magazine-like interface, and server-side infrastructure for hosting chemistry-related data as well as value added services. The project is open to participation from anyone and provides the ability for users to make annotations and assertions, thereby contributing to the collective value of the data to the engaged community. Much of the content is derived from public sources, but the platform is also amenable to commercial data input. The technology could also be readily used in-house by organizations as a research aggregator that could integrate internal and external science and discussion. The infrastructure for the app is currently based upon the Twitter API as a useful proof of concept for a real time source of publicly generated content. This could be extended further by accessing other APIs providing news and data feeds of relevance to a particular area of interest. As the project evolves, social networking features will be developed for organizing participants into teams, with various forms of communication and content management possible.
HubMed – drug

 

Redefining Cheminformatics with Intuitive Collaborative Mobile Apps.

Filed under: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Mol Inform. 2012 Aug; 31(8): 569-584
Clark AM, Ekins S, Williams AJ

The proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers has recently been extended to include a growing ecosystem of increasingly sophisticated chemistry software packages, commonly known as apps. The capabilities that these apps can offer to the practicing chemist are approaching those of conventional desktop-based software, but apps tend to be focused on a relatively small range of tasks. To overcome this, chemistry apps must be able to seamlessly transfer data to other apps, and through the network to other devices, as well as to other platforms, such as desktops and servers, using documented file formats and protocols whenever possible. This article describes the development and state of the art with regard to chemistry-aware apps that make use of facile data interchange, and some of the scenarios in which these apps can be inserted into a chemical information workflow to increase productivity. A selection of contemporary apps is used to demonstrate their relevance to pharmaceutical research. Mobile apps represent a novel approach for delivery of cheminformatics tools to chemists and other scientists, and indications suggest that mobile devices represent a disruptive technology for drug discovery, as they have been to many other industries.
HubMed – drug

 

KU-32, a Novel Drug for Diabetic Neuropathy, Is Safe for Human Islets and Improves In Vitro Insulin Secretion and Viability.

Filed under: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Exp Diabetes Res. 2012; 2012: 671673
Farmer K, Williams SJ, Novikova L, Ramachandran K, Rawal S, Blagg BS, Dobrowsky R, Stehno-Bittel L

KU-32 is a novel, novobiocin-based Hsp90 inhibitor that protects against neuronal glucotoxicity and reverses multiple clinical indices of diabetic peripheral neuropathy in a rodent model. However, any drug with potential for treating diabetic complications must also have no adverse effects on the function of pancreatic islets. Thus, the goal of the current study was to assess the effect of KU-32 on the in vitro viability and function of human islets. Treating human islets with KU-32 for 24 hours showed no toxicity as assessed using the alamarBlue assay. Confocal microscopy confirmed that with a minimum of 2-day exposure, KU-32 improved cellular viability by blocking apoptosis. Functionally, isolated human islets released more glucose-stimulated insulin when preincubated in KU-32. However, diabetic BKS-db/db mice, a model for type 2 diabetes, administered KU-32 for 10 weeks did not show any significant changes in blood glucose and insulin levels, despite having greater insulin staining/beta cell in the pancreas compared to untreated BKS db/db mice. In summary, KU-32 did not harm isolated human islets and may even be protective. However, the effect does not appear significant enough to alter the in vivo metabolic parameters of diabetic mice.
HubMed – drug

 

Seasonal relapsing minimal change disease: a novel strategy for avoiding long-term immunosuppression.

Filed under: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation

Case Rep Nephrol Urol. 2012 Jul; 2(2): 102-7
Lawrence C, Cook HT, Lightstone L

We describe the case of a young woman with seasonal allergic rhinitis who presented with signs of a lower respiratory tract infection, acute renal impairment and the nephrotic syndrome, demonstrated on biopsy to be due to minimal change disease (MCD) with acute tubular injury. Following initiation of high-dose corticosteroids, her respiratory symptoms and renal impairment improved, and the nephrotic syndrome went rapidly into remission, but relapsed, off treatment, in a seasonal fashion.In view of significant side effects related to corticosteroids, relapses were treated with the calcineurin inhibitor tacrolimus with excellent effect, but the patient was keen to avoid the complications of medium-term immunosuppression and so the drug was weaned early. She relapsed for the second time, whilst off tacrolimus, at the same time of year as at her initial presentation. In subsequent years we have successfully managed this patient with seasonal relapsing MCD with seasonal prophylactic tacrolimus therapy.We discuss the natural history of MCD and treatment options and demonstrate the utility of a clear understanding of the natural history of the condition in order to predict disease relapse and tailor therapy to the individual patient.
HubMed – drug

 

Find More Drug And Alcohol Rehabilitation Information…