Features

Statins Protect Kidney !

Balding Risks Heart !

E-Cigarette !

Belly Fat Alert !

Ovarian Cancer Vaccine !

Sildenafil & Adipose Tissue !

New Products of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

EDITORIAL TEAM

OMAR AKRAMUR RAB

MBBS, FCGP, FIAGP,

P G Dip. Business Management

MAHFUZUR RAHMAN

 MBBS, MBA

EDITORIAL

Dear Doctor,

Hope you are enjoying 'e-SQUARE'.

Our current issue focused on some interesting features like -

"Statins protect Kidney !", "Balding Risks Heart !", "E-Cigarette !", "Belly Fat Alert",  "Ovarian Cancer Vaccine !", "Sildenafil & Adipose Tissue !".

In our regular feature, we have some new products information of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd. as well.

We will appreciate your feedback !

Click on to reply mode.

Yours sincerely,

Editorial Team

Reply Mode      : e-square@squaregroup.com

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of its editor or SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

E-Cigarettes Primarily Used To Quit Tobacco: Study

Although the long-term health effects of electronic cigarettes are unknown, a new survey finds people who use the devices think of them as a safer alternative to tobacco and a means to break the smoking habit. Researchers from the UK surveyed about 1,400 e-cigarette users on the Internet, 76 percent of whom said they started using their devices to replace cigarettes entirely. A much smaller percentage said their goal was to quit smoking or to improve their health. One researcher who has studied e-cigarette users said the findings allay fears that people are using the devices to get more nicotine on top of what's already in tobacco cigarettes, instead of for smoking cessation. E-cigarettes were first introduced in China in 2004. The battery-powered devices let users inhale nicotine-infused vapors, which don't contain the harmful tar and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke. Lead author and her colleagues from the University of East London write in the journal Addiction that there are currently over 100 brands of e-cigarettes, and 3.5 million devices were sold in 2012. Despite the devices' growing popularity, the researchers say, little is known about who uses e-cigarettes and why. For the new study, they created an Internet survey that was accessible from the websites of two e-cigarette manufacturers from September 2011 to May 2012. The survey took about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. Overall, 1,123 ex-smokers and 218 current smokers from 33 different countries took the survey. About 16 percent of participants were from the U.S. and another 77 percent were from Europe. Seventy percent were men. About three quarters of respondents said they started using e-cigarettes as a "complete alternative to smoking," and 22 percent said they started using the devices for "other reasons" - including stopping smoking (7 percent), for health reasons (6 percent) and to get around smoking restrictions (3 percent). Some 86 percent said they had either not smoked cigarettes for several weeks or months since using the e-cigarette or that the amount they smoked had decreased dramatically. The researchers also found that the majority of people responding to the surveys felt their health had improved since using the devices. "Most people reported great health benefits. Their cough was reduced and their breathing was improved," said lead author, who added that the benefits are most likely from people smoking fewer cigarettes and not an effect of the devices or vapors. Still, researchers told that more research is needed on the long-term effects of e-cigarettes. Despite the survey participants' feeling that their breathing eased with e-cigarettes, past research suggests the vapor has at least temporary negative effects on airways. The new study also had limitations. For example, the participants who answered the survey were people who visited the manufacturers' websites and may not be representative of all e-cigarette users and their motivations. Research group notes that some answers to the survey are also based on the participants' memory and that could lead to overestimating the devices' benefits. "For the general public, they need to be better informed about what we know, what we don't know, what the advantages to using them are and what the disadvantages are," said lead author, who has received funding from e-cigarette companies to attend conferences in the past.

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Experimental Vaccine Shows Promise For Ovarian Cancer

A novel but preliminary new treatment for ovarian cancer has apparently produced complete remission for one patient with an advanced form of the disease, researchers are reporting. The promising results of a phase 1 clinical trial for the immunotherapy approach also showed that seven other women had no measurable disease at the end of the trial, the researchers added. Ovarian cancer is fairly rare -- an estimated 1.38 percent of females born today will be diagnosed with the condition -- but it's an especially deadly form of cancer because it is usually diagnosed in an advanced stage. The new treatment uses a personalized vaccine to try to teach the body's immune system how to fight off tumors. Researchers took bits of tumor and blood from women with stage 3 or 4 ovarian cancer and created individualized vaccines, said study lead author, director of clinical development and operations at the Ovarian Cancer Research Center in the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. "Each patient's tumor is unique like a fingerprint," she added. "We're trying to rewire the immune system to target the tumor." Once the immune system has learned how to more effectively fight the cancer, the researchers isolate immune cells called dendritic cells, coax them to multiply, then put them back into the body to strengthen it. The research is only in the first of three stages that are required before drugs can be sold in the United States. The first-phase studies aren't designed to determine if the drugs actually work, but are instead supposed to analyze whether they're safe. This study, funded in part by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, found signs of improvement in 19 out of 31 patients. All 19 developed an anti-tumor immune response. Of those, eight had no measurable disease and are on maintenance vaccine therapy. And one of the eight, whose cancer recurred several times, has been in remission for 45 months, the study authors said. The researchers added a further step for 11 patients who responded to the vaccine treatment but still had residual disease. They removed immune cells called T cells from patients' blood, stimulated and expanded the cells in the laboratory, and then reinjected them into the patients. Of the 11 patients, seven had stable disease and one had a complete response, the investigators found. Both treatments were given in conjunction with bevacizumab, a drug that controls blood vessel growth. Side effects were mild, the author said. As for cost, she believes that it will be cheaper than some existing cancer drugs that cost $75,000 to $100,000 for a regimen. The next step is to continue research into the treatment, she added.

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 Sildenafil Helps Turn 'Bad' White Adipose Tissue Into 'Good And Healthy' Brown Adipose Tissue

Although sildenafil is best known for promoting erections, it may also serve as a weight loss aid by coaxing our bodies to store more healthy "brown fat" relative to unhealthy "white fat" than it would otherwise do on its own. According to new research published online in The FASEB Journal, this is because sildenafil inhibits the breakdown of cyclic GMP, which has been well known as a messenger molecule used by the body to control blood pressure and flow, and has now been shown to play an important role determining which type of fat - white or brown - the body stores. "There is a growing need for novel treatments against obesity," said a researcher involved in the work from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Bonn, Biomedical Center in Bonn, Germany. "Finding new positive effects of existing drugs, such as sildenafil, in adipose tissue might help to bridge the period until novel drugs against obesity have been developed."  To make this discovery, researchers used mice to show that cyclic GMP reduced the secretion of pro-inflammatory hormones, which, in turn, shifted the "color code" of fat from white to brown. Mice treated with sildenafil showed browning of the white fat after just a few days of treatment, which is believed to be the result of high cyclic GMP levels. Then the researchers used isolated fat cells and treated the cells directly with cyclic GMP and identified a "browning" effect as well. "Numerous studies show that obesity is a risk factor for virtually every human disease, and that obesity is epidemic. The finding that Sildenafil and similar drugs can change our body fat composition has major implications. These drugs have well defined risk/benefit profiles and are approved for the treatment of erectile disorders. Further research will determine whether they are useful in the treatment of human girth disorders."

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Dexamethasone

5 mg/ml