Older couples who live in Western countries and who enjoy more equality between men and women are most likely to report being satisfied with their sex lives, according to a new study on sexual well-being, aging and health that was conducted in 29 countries by a University of Chicago research team.

In contrast, older people reported less satisfaction with the physical and emotional quality of their sex lives in countries where men have a dominant status over women, such as nations in East Asia, and to a lesser extent, the Middle East, according to the results of the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors.

The study involved surveying about 27,500 people between the ages of 40 and 80, including equal numbers of men and women. The study is the first of its kind to document and compare sexual behavior and related satisfaction among middle-aged and older people worldwide. Across most of the countries surveyed, substantial majorities of people with partners remain sexually active throughout the second half of their lives.

The study found that people reported the greatest sexual satisfaction in four countries, led by Austria, and followed by the United States, Spain and Canada. At the low end of satisfaction were Japan and Taiwan. Countries such as Turkey, Egypt and Algeria were in the middle.

An article on the survey, titled “A Cross-National Study of Subjective Sexual Well-Being Among Older Women and Men: Findings from the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors,” is published in the April issue of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

In relationships based on equality, couples tend to develop sexual habits that are more in keeping with both partners’ interests, said lead author, Edward Laumann, the George Herbert Meade Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology at the University of Chicago. “Male-centered cultures where sexual behavior is more oriented toward procreation tend to discount the importance of sexual pleasure for women,” he said.

The study, which was intended to draw out people’s subjective evaluation of the role of sex in their relationships with partners, included questions about how physically or emotionally satisfying their relationships are and how important sex is to them.

They also were asked about their overall happiness; physical and mental health circumstances, including sexual dysfunction; their attitudes toward sex; and their attitudes toward various social and demographic factors, including age, education, income and religious affiliation.

This is the first large-scale international study to include large numbers of respondents from diverse religious traditions, including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and other Asian religions, and atheists. A particular focus is on the impact of aging, health conditions and socio-cultural context on sexual well-being.

At the beginning of the interview, respondents were asked if they were happy with their lives as a whole. The study found that subjective feelings of sexual well-being are strongly correlated with overall happiness for both men and women across all of the countries studied. Other findings of the study include:

* Across all of the countries studied, there are large gender differences in sexual well-being. On average, men reported at least 10 percentage points to their sexual health and well-being above the percentages that women reported.

* In Western nations, two-thirds of men and women reported their sexual relationships were satisfying, and 80 percent said they were satisfied with their ability to have sex. About half of the men and one third of the women said sex was extremely or very important in their lives.

* In Middle Eastern nations, 50 percent of men and 38 percent of women found their sex lives satisfying. About 70 percent said they were satisfied with their ability to have sex. Sixty percent of men and 37 percent of women said sex is an important part of their overall lives.

* In East Asian countries, only about one quarter of men and women reported physical and emotional pleasure with sex, while two thirds of the men and half of the women reported satisfaction with their ability to have sex. Among men, 28 percent said sex was important to them, while only 12 percent of the women did.

###

Pfizer Inc. funded the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors. Other authors of the paper are Anthony Paik, a sociologist at the University of Iowa; Dale Glasser, a public health epidemiologist for Pfizer Inc.; Joeng-Han Kang, a methodologist at Chicago; Tianfu Wang, a sociologist at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Bernard Levinson, a psychiatrist in Johannesburg, South Africa; Edson Moreira, a medical public health epidemiologist at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Bhaia, Brazil; Alfredo Nicolosi, a physician and epidemiologist at the National Research Council, Milan, Italy; and Clive Gingell, a urologist at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, England.

Contact: William Harms
w-harmsuchicago.edu
University of Chicago

Tomorrow (13.01.07) is St Hilary’s day, the coldest day of the year,
according to folklore. This dates back to 1086 when a great frost
held the country in its grip until late March. It remains true to the
present day that this time of year is often the coldest, leaving
those most vulnerable at risk from the drop in temperature.

The Department of Health and the Home Heat Helpline (0800 33 66 99),
a free telephone advice line funded by Britain’s energy retailers,
are together urging people to protect themselves against the cold,
particularly as January often signals the coldest part of the year.
At least 20,000 people die each year in England and Wales as a result
of the cold weather and in especially cold winters, deaths have risen
to as high as 40,000.

The Department of Health’s Keep Warm Keep Well campaign offers advice
to older people, disabled people, those on low incomes and anyone
else who needs it on keeping warm and staying healthy during the
colder months. A free NHS winter ‘Keep Warm Keep Well’ guide gives
plenty of practical tips as well as information on financial support
that might be available, such as grants for home improvements to help
make houses warmer or help to meet the cost of heating bills.

Callers to the Home Heat Helpline, run by the Energy Retail
Association, talk to specially trained staff who provide advice on
home heating bills, including information on grants available to make
homes more energy efficient, help arrange alternative payment methods
to make bills easier to manage, provide access to a priority service
team of specialist advisors and linking to other support agencies.
The helpline can also take calls from intermediaries, such as
friends, family, carers, social workers or health visitors calling on
behalf of vulnerable people.

Caroline Flint MP, Minister of State for Public Health said:

“It’s
vital to look after yourself and each other to keep warm and well
during the cold winter months. I’m pleased to say that the Department
of Health and Energy Retail Association are joining forces to make
information about winter warmth accessible to all who need it.

“Look after yourself and your neighbours or relatives in the winter
months. My top tips for keeping warm and well are:

- Stop smoking – within eight hours of stopping smoking, blood oxygen
levels increase to normal and your chances of having a heart attack
start to fall

- Eat a healthy balanced diet – take advantage of the winter as an
excuse to eat lovely hot stews plenty of hot drinks

- Keep your hat on and layer up – did you know that several thin
layers of clothing keep you much warmer than one thick layer?”

Duncan Sedgwick, Chief Executive of the Energy Retail Association
said:

“It is essential that vulnerable people know where to turn to for
information and advice about heating their home when the weather gets
cold. The energy industry welcomes this partnership with the
Department of Health and I would urge anyone worried about their fuel
bills to call the Home Heat Helpline (0800 33 66 99) or contact the
Government’s Keep Warm Keep Well campaign in order to keep warm and
healthy this winter.”

A copy of the Keep Warm Keep Well booklet can be obtained by writing
to DH Publications, PO Box 777, London SE1 6XH. The book is published
in a range of languages and in an easy read format. For the hard of
hearing, an audio version of the leaflet is also available.

The Home Heat Helpline number is 0800 33 66 99 and operates from
Monday to Friday 9am-8pm and from 10am-2pm on Saturday. There is a
minicom number (0800 027 2122) and the helpline also has access to
interpreters for those whose first language is not English
homeheathelpline

– Keep Warm Keep Well is a partnership between the Department of
Health, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
The Department for Work and Pensions, Help the Aged, Age Concern,
National Energy Action, Energywatch and WRVS.

- The Home Heat Helpline is a service for all British citizens and is
funded by Britain’s six major energy suppliers and is the only energy
helpline that aims to tackle fuel poverty.

- Source of number of cold weather deaths

Dept of Health, UK

One in five women between the ages of 18 and 24 are smokers, and most say they keep lighting up for fear of gaining weight. But researchers at Temple University have found that when it comes to quitting, a little bit of dialogue and support can be more effective than an exercise plan in helping women not only keep off the weight, but also stay smoke-free.

“A lot of college–age women report smoking to keep their weight down and for body image reasons, and we think that by providing them with the tools to make them feel better about themselves, it alleviates some of those stressors,” said Melissa Napolitano, a clinical psychologist at Temple’s Center for Obesity Research and Education.

In a two-phased study, Napolitano and a team of researchers looked at the smoking habits and weight gain of women aged 18-24. The first phase collected data from focus groups who stated that stress, peer pressure and weight management were the main reasons why they smoked. Participants also felt that group-based programs that provide ongoing social support would be instrumental in helping them quit.

Those results laid the groundwork for the project’s next phase, dubbed Fit to Quit, a small pilot study of 24 women who were randomly assigned to either a supervised group exercise program or body image group counseling sessions. All women were provided with a nicotine patch as well.

After eight weeks, the body image counseling group showed a rate of smoking cessation that was more than double that of the exercise group (18 percent vs. 8 percent). In addition, the body image group lost more than three times the weight of their exercise counterparts (3.3 pounds vs. less than a pound). These findings were presented this week at the Society for Behavioral Medicine’s annual meeting.

“Smoking has psychological and psychosocial implications, especially for young women,” said Napolitano, an associate professor of kinesiology and public health in the College of Health Professions. “We wanted to design a program that would not only address the physical addiction by providing a nicotine patch, but would also address those social and behavioral aspects as well.”

Another aspect of the program relied on technology to reach their population of smokers. Text message and email were used to stay in contact with participants, more so than phone calls, because those were the preferred methods of communication among the young women in the study.

“A lot of times, we would try to call participants to remind them of different sessions, and they would respond back via text or e-mail, so we took that message and used avenues like text messaging and the Internet not just as a means of getting information out, but for support as well.”

Napolitano says that the results derived from this study have laid the groundwork for larger future studies at Temple and nationwide that focus on smoking cessation in college age women. The hope is to see if the results continue to hold true in studies with larger numbers of participants.

Temple’s Student Health Services supported the Fit to Quit program, and Napolitano says it has the potential to be permanently offered as part of the menu of health promotion services on campus.

“Our hope is to make programs like Fit to Quit sustainable on other college campuses, because we know that if we can give young people the tools they need to make better health decisions, it helps them not only improve their health but it also helps them do better academically.”

Other researchers on this study include Joseph Fava, Ph.D., Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson, Ph.D., and Bess Marcus, Ph.D., of the Miriam Hospital/Brown Medical School and Brown University.

The study was funded by a grant to Napolitano from the National Cancer Institute.

Source:
Renee Cree

Temple University

How fast can you run a mile?

If you’re middle-aged, the answer could provide a strong predictor of your risk of heart attack or stroke over the next decade or more.

In two separate studies, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found that how fast a middle-age person can run a mile can help predict the risk of dying of heart attack or stroke decades later for men and could be an early indicator of cardiovascular disease for women.

In one recent study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers analyzed the heart disease risk of 45-, 55- and 65-year-old men based on their fitness level and traditional risk factors, such as age, systolic blood pressure, diabetes, total cholesterol and smoking habits. The scientists found that low levels of midlife fitness are associated with marked differences in the lifetime risk for cardiovascular disease.

For example, a 55-year-old man who needs 15 minutes to run a mile has a 30 percent lifetime risk of developing heart disease. In contrast, a 55-year-old who can run a mile in eight minutes has a lifetime risk of less than 10 percent.

“Heart disease tends to cluster at older ages, but if you want to prevent it, our research suggests that the prescription for prevention needs to occur earlier when a person is in his 40s and 50s,” said Dr. Jarett Berry, assistant professor of internal medicine and a corresponding author on both studies.

Researchers in this study found that a higher fitness level lowered the lifetime risk of heart disease even in people with other risk factors.

In a separate study in Circulation, UT Southwestern researchers found that the same treadmill test predicts how likely a person is to die of heart disease or stroke more accurately than assessing the risk using only typical prediction tools such as blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Heart disease is a leading killer in industrialized nations and the No. 1 killer of women in the U.S. Women younger than 50 are particularly difficult to assess for long-term cardiovascular risk.

“Nearly all women under 50 years of age are at low risk for heart disease,” Dr. Berry said. “However, as women get older, their risk increases dramatically. In our study, we found that low levels of fitness were particularly helpful in identifying women at risk for heart disease over the long term.”

For decades, scientists have tried to improve their ability to determine which patients are at highest cardiovascular disease risk. Blood-based and imaging techniques have been used to try to improve risk prediction, but fitness has not been examined until now, Dr. Berry said.

For both studies, researchers collected information from thousands of participants who underwent a comprehensive clinical exam and a treadmill exercise test at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas between 1970 and 2006.

In the JACC study, researchers evaluated more than 11,000 men tested before 1990 women were excluded because of the low number of participants and cardiovascular death rates and found 1,106 who died of heart attack or stroke during the study period. They measured participant fitness levels and traditional risk factors for heart disease. Within each age group, higher levels of fitness were associated with lower levels of traditional risk factors.

For the Circulation study, researchers examined more than 66,000 participants without cardiovascular disease, ages 20 to 90. They were then followed until death or the end of the study period; follow-up lasted up to 36 years. There were 1,621 cardiovascular deaths during the study. The researchers found that by adding fitness to the traditional risk factors, they significantly improved their ability to classify participants’ short-term (10 years) and long-term (25 years) risk.

Researchers next will try to extend the JACC investigation parameters to women.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center

The Peripheral Arterial Disease (P.A.D.) Coalition presented the Coalition’s second annual Best P.A.D. Research Awards to the top three research papers on P.A.D. published in 2009 at the organization’s Seventh Annual Meeting in Alexandria, VA last week. The Best P.A.D. Research Awards honor the work of investigators and acknowledge the creation of new clinical research relevant to the understanding and/or treatment of peripheral arterial disease.

The Best P.A.D. Research Award in Vascular Medicine was presented to Diane Treat-Jacobson, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing in Minneapolis, MN. She and her colleagues were recognized for their work on the research study, Efficacy of Arm-ergometry versus Treadmill Exercise Training to improve Walking Distance in Patients with Claudication, published in the journal Vascular Medicine (14:203-13, 2009). Previous studies have demonstrated that treadmill exercise training can help people with P.A.D. walk farther and with less pain. Dr. Treat-Jacobson’s study compared traditional treadmill exercise training with a dynamic arm exercise program using an arm ergometer, a table-top device in which the arms move pedals in a circular motion. The study showed that dynamic arm exercise training can improve walking ability in P.A.D. patients similar to treadmill walking programs and may be a good treatment option.

The Best P.A.D. Research Award in Epidemiology/Preventive Medicine went to Professor Curt Diehm. He and his colleagues are recognized for their work on the study, Mortality and Vascular Morbidity in Older Adults with Asymptomatic Versus Symptomatic Peripheral Artery Disease (Circulation. 120:2053-61, 2009).

Professor Diehm is the head of the Department of Internal Medicine/Vascular Medicine at the Academic Teaching Hospital University of Heidelberg in Germany. His study assessed the mortality and vascular morbidity risk of elderly individuals with asymptomatic versus symptomatic P.A.D. in the primary care setting. The study confirmed that mortality risk was similar in both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients with P.A.D. and was significantly higher than those without the disease. He concluded that a P.A.D. diagnosis has important prognostic value in the primary care setting.

Joseph Feinglass, PhD, received the Best P.A.D. Research Award in Vascular Interventions. Dr. Feinglass is a Research Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and the Institute for Healthcare Studies at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. He is a health services researcher with a degree in Public Policy Analysis. Dr. Feinglass and his colleagues were recognized for their study, Perioperative outcomes and amputation-free survival after lower extremity bypass surgery in California hospitals, 1996-1999, with follow-up through 2004 (Journal of Vascular Surgery. 50:776-783, 2009). The study looked at more than 28,000 patients discharged from 345 California hospitals. The study showed that patients from high-volume hospitals had better perioperative and long-term outcomes of lower extremity bypass surgery. Risk factors such as advanced age, comorbidities, gangrene, and emergency or nursing home admission were associated with an increased risk for adverse outcomes. African American and Hispanic patients had much higher amputation rates but did not have higher mortality risk after controlling for baseline factors.

Source:

Vascular Disease Foundation

Discovered in 1976, cryptosporidium lurks worldwide in water, contaminating swimming pools, water parks, and drinking water supplies. Although it has even been featured on the comedy show The Colbert Report, it is no laughing matter-this microscopic pathogen is a leading cause of diarrhea and malnutrition and the most common source of infection in immune-weakened people such as AIDS patients. It is also a potential bioterrorism agent.

“All you need is a cow and a centrifuge to harvest enough oocysts to infect a small city,” says Brandeis University biochemist Liz Hedstrom. Roughly 20 percent of calves are infected by cryptosporidium oocysts, which are found in their feces. In 1993, in the largest waterborne disease outbreak in U.S. history, this nasty protozoan parasite infiltrated Milwaukee’s municipal water supply, killing more than 100 people and sickening some 400,000.

Cryptosporidium invades the small intestine, where it opens fire, typically causing severe gastrointestinal distress and even death in people with weakened immune systems. Cryptosporidium is a hardy foe whose oocysts-a spore-like phase in the parasite life cycle-remain stable outside a host for long periods and are resistant to conventional water treatment such as chlorine disinfection.

The latest research news on this waterborne foe will be the focus of Hedstrom’s talk, titled “Targeting a prokaryotic protein in a eukaryotic parasite,” at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s annual meeting. The talk will be held in the Anaheim Convention Center, Room 304C, on Sunday April 25 at 9:55 am PST. Hedstrom’s promising research could lead to an effective treatment to prevent cryptosporidiosis.

Hedstrom and her collaborators made a critical breakthrough in eroding cryptosporidium defenses when they identified IMPDH, a key enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of RNA and DNA, as a potential drug target. Her research has shown that IMPDH inhibitors block the parasite from proliferating in vitro. Importantly, the Cryptosporidium IMPDH has very different properties from those of the human enzyme counterpart.

Next, Hedstrom and her colleagues identified compounds that blocked the action of the Cryptosporidium IMPDH, but spared human IMPDH. Leading a large-scale screen of a commercial library containing 129,000 compounds, Hedstrom discovered more than fifty compounds that specifically inhibit the parasite enzyme. A number of these compounds display antiparasitic activity. Hedstrom is now working on improving the compounds’ potency, bioavailability and metabolic stability, a first step in the drug development process.

“It’s a difficult problem, but we think that we have some very promising compounds,” says Hedstrom.

The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization with over 12,000 members. Founded in 1906, the Society is based in Bethesda, Maryland, on the campus of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. The Society’s purpose is to advance the science of biochemistry and molecular biology through publication of scientific and educational journals: the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, and the Journal of Lipid Research, organization of scientific meetings, advocacy for funding of basic research and education, support of science education at all levels, and promoting the diversity of individuals entering the scientific workforce.

Source
Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB)

Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) is a highly effective method of malaria control recommended by the World Health Organization, but it is underutilized and under-funded. Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM) maintains that all methods of malaria control must be scaled up – not just insecticide-treated nets – in order to reduce the 1 million deaths caused by deadly mosquitoes annually.

For World Malaria Day 2008 (April 25th), AFM created an interactive Africa map to indicate which countries are conducting IRS along with the main financiers: the US President’s Malaria Initiative, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, the private sector and malarial country governments. AFM also produced a series of reports on IRS covering major public and private sector IRS activities, as well as 46 individual African country briefs.

“World Malaria Day 2008 focuses on malaria across borders – and some of the best cross-border malaria control programs rely heavily on IRS,” said AFM Director Richard Tren. “IRS has saved millions of lives since the 1930s and continues to do so. Yet with unprecedented public resources available for malaria control, donor agencies remain loath to strengthen IRS programs in Africa, train a new cadre of malariologists and medical entomologists to run them, and invest in new insecticides. Some of the insecticides Africa relies on were developed before World War II.”

AFM’s Call to Action to support IRS:

Increase funding for IRS – The President’s Malaria Initiative is a global leader in IRS funding. Other donor agencies must now also start to support IRS providing the insecticides, equipment and funds to train and employ spray personnel. The Global Fund provides relatively little support for IRS. Malaria country governments should apply for IRS support and also invest more of their own health care budgets in IRS.

Invest in new insecticides – Public health programs rely on old insecticides, originally developed for the agricultural sector. There has been scant investment in new public health insecticides and in finding new applications of existing products. Insecticide resistance is spreading in Africa, reducing the efficacy of both IRS and long-lasting insecticidal nets. We cannot allow our main methods of malaria control to be compromised because of inaction and limited investment in public health insecticides.

Invest in malariologists and medical entomologists – Malarial countries need to train and employ a new generation of scientists that can run and maintain effective control programs. Without trained malariologists, medical entomologists, scientists and malaria control personnel, no elimination or eradication of malaria will be possible.

Tren continues, “There is more funding and political will to control malaria today than ever before. We must now have wider support for IRS and for new insecticide development. Without it, malaria will remain a global health disaster.”

Africa Fighting Malaria

“Doubt is our product,” stated a tobacco industry memo from 1969. For half a century, the tobacco industry tried to muddy the link between smoking and cancer. Now, with that effort long since failed, cigarette producers facing dozens of potentially ruinous lawsuits are once again attempting to manufacture doubt.

“The tobacco industry is now trying to win their cases by rewriting history, saying that everyone knew but no one had proof,” said Robert N. Proctor, a professor of history at Stanford. “What they’re saying is that everyone always knew it was bad for you. So if you started smoking in 1962 or 1972 and later got lung cancer, you have only yourself to blame.”

Proctor spoke during a symposium-”The Sociopolitical Manufacturing of Scientific Ignorance”-at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

Proctor claims that by the middle of the 1950s there was a scientific consensus that smoking caused lung cancer. But the tobacco industry fought that finding, both in the public eye and within the scientific community. Tobacco companies funded skeptics, started health reassurance campaigns, ran advertisements in medical journals and researched alternate explanations for lung cancer, such as pollution, asbestos and even the keeping of birds. Denying the case against tobacco was “closed,” they called for more research as a tactic to delay regulation.

Drawing from his experiences as an expert witness in tobacco litigation cases, Proctor says that industry lawyers often claim that “government propaganda,” such as warnings from the Surgeon General, was so overwhelming that the risks of smoking were universally known. But they excuse the industry’s own counter-propaganda by arguing that the scientific community was unable to prove a link between smoking and lung cancer until relatively recently. If true, this lack of proof would absolve the tobacco companies of any blame for deaths caused by smoking and any charges of fraud for their campaign against the link between cancer and cigarettes.

“But if they were lying and if people actually believed their lies,” Proctor said, “then the industry can be held liable because they were manufacturing a defective and fraudulent product.”

Proctor has used poll results stretching back to the 1940s to show that in fact some people were ignorant of the risks. “Millions of people in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s didn’t know that tobacco caused lung cancer or heart disease,” Proctor said. “An increasing number knew, but not everyone knew. And not everyone knew because the industry was manufacturing doubt, fomenting ignorance. Industry executives created a climate of untruth that people bought into and died from.”

Proctor also has delved into the phone logs and correspondence records of tobacco companies to look at what consumers were thinking. “Even in the 1970s and ’80s, lots of people are writing letters to the industry saying, ‘The government is brainwashing me into thinking tobacco is bad, whereas I have a grandmother who lived to be 82 and she smokes, and I’ve smoked for years and I’m still healthy.”‘

In an age when nearly everyone knows that smoking causes cancer, it might not seem important to study the ways the tobacco companies sowed doubt. But Big Tobacco’s methods have since been exported to other industries. At the same symposium, University of California-San Diego history and science studies Professor Naomi Oreskes will discuss a similar topic in a talk titled “Confounding Science: The Tobacco Road to Global Warming,” and journalist Paul Thacker will give a talk titled “Thank You for Polluting: How Campaigns to Create Scientific Confusion Kill Product Regulation.”

How can tactics like these undermine the work of so many scientists? Proctor said: “There’s a saying in the PR business that for every PhD there’s an equal and opposite PhD. And if there’s not one then you can create one through funding. And if you put a lot of money into manufacturing ignorance, it can actually work.

“We saw this in tobacco, and we’ve seen it in polluting industries and global warming,” he added. “There are lots of people out there who’d rather have you not know what’s really going on.”

###

COMMENT:

Robert Proctor, History

Science-writing intern Rahul Kanakia wrote this release.

RELEVANT WEB URLS:

ROBERT N. PROCTOR HOMEPAGE

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

Contact: Dawn Levy

Stanford University

A study showing that gene therapy may
provide some benefit to certain older X-linked severe combined
immunodeficiency (XSCID) patients, who remain significantly immunodeficient
after bone marrow transplantation, will be presented on Saturday, June 3 at
the 9th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) in
Baltimore.

X-linked severe immunodeficiency (XSCID) is a rare genetic disease
caused by defects in an essential immune hormone receptor called the common
gamma chain (yc), found on the surface of lymphocytes and other immune
blood cells. Patients with XSCID have immune cells that lack this receptor
fail to develop and do not function normally to protect patients against
infections.

Patients with XSCID develop fatal infections in infancy unless they
receive a bone marrow transplant from a healthy donor. Most patients lack a
fully tissue-compatible sibling donor and instead receive only a
half-matched transplant from a parent donor. Some of these patients fail to
achieve a satisfactory level of immune correction. Gene therapy has
previously been shown to be successful for XSCID infants.

A research team led by Javier Chinen, MD, PhD, and Jennifer M. Puck,
MD, from the National Human Genome Research Institute, and Harry L. Malech,
MD, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease
investigated the safety and efficacy of gene therapy as salvage treatment
for these older post- transplant XSCID patients.

The team obtained blood-forming cells from 3 patients aged 10, 11 and
14 years old. The blood forming cells were then exposed in culture to
engineered viruses that transferred the correct yc gene into the patient’s
cells. Each patient received their own gene corrected cells by vein.

Over the next few months, the corrected gene appeared in the blood of
all 3 patients. One patient showed a majority of the corrected gene; the
other two showed 3% and 22%. However, all 3 patients reported improvement
in their well- being, with reduced symptoms. In the patient with the
majority of the corrected gene, there was clear evidence of correction of
immune function tests. The treatment has appeared to be safe during the
follow up period that is currently approaching 10 to 27 months.

Foamy viruses for delivering new genes into cells to correct LAD is
Successful

A study reporting the first successful gene therapy using foamy viruses
for delivering new genes into bone marrow stem cells of dogs, and
correcting a leukocyte adhesion deficiency (LAD) will be presented on
Friday, June 2 at the 9th Annual Meeting of the Society of Gene Therapy
(ASGT) in Baltimore.

Children with LAD suffer severe bacterial infections due to the
inability of their white blood cells to stick and travel to sites of
infection. Mutations in the white blood cell CD18 protein are responsible
for LAD.

Dogs with the canine form of LAD, known as CLAD, also have a mutation
in CD18 and don’t survive past 6 months due to severe bacterial infections.

Thomas R. Bauer Jr., PhD, from the National Institutes of Health, and
colleagues, used an engineered foamy virus to deliver a normal copy of the
canine CD18 DNA into the bone marrow stem cells of 5 puppies with CLAD.

Ten to 14 months after the CLAD puppies received the normal copy of
canine CD18 DNA, 4 of the 5 puppies have CD18-positive white blood cell
levels ranging from 4.5% to 7.4%, and all 4 dogs are alive and well one
year after the treatment.

This research demonstrates the safety and effectiveness of foamy
viruses for delivering new genes into bone marrow stem cells and correcting
a genetic disease in dogs that is identical to the same disease in
children.

The American Society of Gene Therapy is a professional non-profit
medical and scientific organization dedicated to the understanding,
development and application of gene and related cell and nucleic acid
therapies and the promotion of professional and public education in the
field. For more information, visit asgt.

American Society of Gene Therapy
asgt

Live kidney donors suffer minimal health problems and 90 per cent would strongly encourage other people to become a donor if a partner or family member needed a transplant, according to a study of more than 300 people published in the December issue of the UK-based urology journal BJU International.

Researchers from Egypt, where live donations are currently the only legal option, carried out detailed evaluations of 339 patients who attended follow-up clinics between January 2002 and January 2007.

Based at a centre which performs about 100 live donor transplants a year, they included patients who had donated kidneys between 1976 and the end of 2001 in their research.

“Living donors remain the main option in developing countries where donations from dead donors have yet to establish roots, because of the lack of infrastructure or the implementation of legal criteria for brain death” explains lead author Dr Amgad E El-Agroudy from the Urology and Nephrology Center at Mansoura University.

“Even in developing countries, the increasing demand for kidneys has resulted in a rapid increase in the number of living donors being used. This had led to concerns about the risk involved in the procedure and its long-term consequences.”

All of the people who took part in the study underwent an extensive physical and psychosocial assessment, which included a full range of laboratory tests and detailed medical history. Any medical problems were then compared with health tables for the general population.

The researchers found that the live donors studied had good kidney function and tended to suffer a lower incidence of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart-related deaths than the general Egyptian population.

However, the authors point out that donors have to have good general health, at the time of the transplant, including normal blood pressure, to even be considered for the procedure and this could account for some of the results.

90 per cent of the donors who took part in the study said that they would make the same decision again if a family member or partner needed a kidney and would strongly encourage others to become donors.

47 donors went on to have 65 babies between them, including 25 who had their first baby after surgery

1,200 kidney transplants using live donors are carried out in Egypt every year, where the incidence of end-stage kidney disease is 200 people in every million.

In the current study, almost two-third of the donors (62 per cent) were women and the sample included people who had donated five to thirty years ago, with an average gap of 11 years between surgery and follow-up.

37 per cent had donated a kidney to their child, 47 per cent to a brother or sister and 16 per cent to a spouse or partner.

60 per cent were working at the time of the donation and 67 per cent had a moderate financial income. No-one reported losing their job as the result of the surgery and only one person said it has put them at a financial disadvantage.

“Our conclusion is that living kidney donation is a safe procedure with minimal long-term complications” says Dr El-Agroudy. “Overall kidney function is well maintained after one kidney has been removed and donor satisfaction is consistent.

“It is important to point out that the donors were all partners, spouses or relatives of the patients they donated their kidney to and that they all underwent comprehensive medical screening before they were accepted onto our transplant programme.

“We believe that making sure that living kidney donors receive long-term follow-ups is very important and we would urge all transplant centres to establish programmes like ours to monitor their ongoing progress.”

“The authors have quite rightly identified a significant increase in live kidney donations in countries that also accept organ donations from deceased donors” says BJU International’s Editor, Professor John Fitzpatrick from University College Dublin, Ireland.

“In the UK for example, NHS figures state that live kidney donations now account for one in four kidney transplants in the UK and 690 were carried out in 2006-7, a 50 per cent increase on 2003-4.

“The Journal was keen to publish this study from a country that relies exclusively on living kidney donors as the authors had the opportunity to follow up a large number of transplants carried out between five and 30 years ago.”

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* Long-term follow-up of living kidney donors: a longitudinal study. El-Agroudy et al. BJU International.100, p1351-1355. (December 2007).

* Further information on UK transplants are available at: uktransplant/.

* Established in 1929, BJU International is published 12 times a year by Wiley-Blackwell and edited by Professor John Fitzpatrick from University College Dublin, Ireland. It provides its international readership with invaluable practical information on all aspects of urology, including original and investigative articles and illustrated surgery. blackwellpublishing/BJU

* About Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley-Blackwell was formed in February 2007 as a result of the acquisition of Blackwell Publishing Ltd. by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and its merger with Wiley’s Scientific, Technical, and Medical business. Together, the companies have created a global publishing business with deep strength in every major academic and professional field. Wiley-Blackwell publishes approximately 1,400 scholarly peer-reviewed journals and an extensive collection of books with global appeal. For more information on Wiley-Blackwell, please visit blackwellpublishing/ or interscience.wiley/.

Source: Annette Whibley
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.