Simvastatin as a Potential Disease-Modifying Therapy for Patients with Parkinson's Disease: Rationale for Clinical Trial, and Current Progress.

Many now believe the holy grail for the next stage of therapeutic advance surrounds the development of disease-modifying approaches aimed at intercepting the year-on-year neurodegenerative decline experienced by most patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Based on recommendations of an international committee of experts who are currently bringing multiple, potentially disease-modifying, PD therapeutics into long-term neuroprotective PD trials, a clinical trial involving 198 patients is underway to determine whether Simvastatin provides protection against chronic neurodegeneration. Statins are widely used to reduce cardiovascular risk, and act as competitive inhibitors of HMG-CoA reductase.

Neglected Bilateral Posterior Shoulder Fracture Dislocation in an Uncontrolled Seizure patient.

Posterior dislocation of the shoulder is a rare injury that occurs secondary to trauma and seizures. Diagnosis is often missed and treatment is challenging. Neglected posterior dislocation is associated with Hill-Sachs lesion which leads to locking of dislocation.

Linked clinical trials--the development of new clinical learning studies in Parkinson's disease using screening of multiple prospective new treatments.

Finding new therapies for Parkinson's disease (PD) is a slow process. We assembled an international committee of experts to examine drugs potentially suitable for repurposing to modify PD progression. This committee evaluated multiple drugs currently used, or being developed, in other therapeutic areas, as well as considering several natural, non-pharmaceutical compounds.

Animal allergy among husbandry personnel in Riyadh.

Background: The importance of specific animal allergy in immunopathology of asthma and atopic diseases remained to be defined.

Methods: We measured total and specific IgE. Western blotting of some allergens was also characterised.

Prevalence of wheat allergy in Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia.

Background: Wheat allergy has been suggested to represent an important allergic disease. This study collates clinical and laboratory aspects in patients with wheat allergy in Al-Kharj city, Saudi Arabia.

Methods: Total and specific IgE were measured in 15 suspected cases of wheat allergy.

Original Article: Investigation of Bcl-2 and PCNA in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Relation to Chronic HCV.

Background And Objective: Bcl-2 family members can be functionally divided into anti-apoptotic and proapoptotic groups. The balance between these two groups may determine the fate of tumor cells. In hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), this balance is often tilted towards the anti-apoptotic members in tumor cells, leading to resistance to cell death and rapid proliferation.

Review: Stem cells and gene therapy.

Both stem cell and gene therapy research are currently the focus of intense research in institutions and companies around the world. Both approaches hold great promise by offering radical new and successful ways of treating debilitating and incurable diseases effectively. Gene therapy is an approach to treat, cure, or ultimately prevent disease by changing the pattern of gene expression.

The role of caspase activation and mitochondrial depolarisation in cultured human apoptotic eosinophils.

Caspases are key intracellular molecules in the control of apoptosis, but little is known concerning their relative contribution to the cascade of events leading to eosinophil apoptosis. We examined caspase-3, -8, and -9 activities in receptor ligation dependent apoptosis induction in the cultured eosinophils (CE). CE cultured alone for 48 hours exhibited constitutive apoptosis (12% ± 1.

The haemopoietic stem cell: between apoptosis and self renewal.

Self renewal and apoptosis of haemopoietic stem cells (HSC) represent major factors that determine the size of the haemopoietic cell mass. Changes in self renewal above or below the steady state value of 0.5 will result in either bone marrow expansion or aplasia, respectively.

Modulation of dendritic cell activation chemokines and cellular injury.

Dendritic cells (DC) are professional antigen presenting cells expressing MHC class II, derived from a common marrow precursor. They are motile, diffused and have a spidery shape with many long cytoplasmic processes. The aim of this project was to test the hypothesis that cellular injury induces the activation and functional maturation of DC.

Apoptosis as a tool for therapeutic agents in haematological diseases.

Apoptosis, an active mechanism of cell death, is an important process in many biological systems. Apoptosis is thought to contribute to many disease processes. This notion has raised expectations that therapeutic opportunities will naturally follow once a better understanding of these processes has been achieved.

Using the STS and multinational cardiac surgical databases to establish risk-adjusted benchmarks for clinical outcomes.

One of the purposes of collecting data on cardiac surgical procedures, at a national level is to enable individual surgeons to improve quality and benchmark their own practice by making more accurate prospective prediction of outcome of each individual patient by using risk stratification based on previous local and national experiences. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the development of national cardiac surgical initiatives in many countries around the world. The size and extent of these databases has successfully allowed their use for patient risk stratification and preoperative risk modeling in four main aspects: patient selection and informed consent, coherent analysis of the determinants of patient outcomes, rationalizing unit management, and negotiations with external agencies.

Validation of European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) in North American cardiac surgery.

Objective: To assess the performance of the European System for Cardiac Operative Risk Evaluation (EuroSCORE) when applied in a North American cardiac surgical population.

Methods: The simple additive EuroSCORE model was applied to predict operative mortality (in-hospital or 30-day) in 401684 patients undergoing coronary or valve surgery in 1998 and 1999 as well as in 188913 patients undergoing surgery in 1995 in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) database.

Results: The proportion of isolated coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) was greater in STS patients (84%) than in Europe (65%).