The safety of transdermal nicotine as an aid to smoking cessation in patients with cardiac disease.

Background: Transdermal nicotine therapy is widely used to aid smoking cessation, but there is uncertainty about its safety in patients with cardiac disease.

Methods: In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial at 10 Veterans Affairs medical centers, we randomly assigned 584 outpatients (of whom 576 were men) with at least one diagnosis of cardiovascular disease to a 10-week course of transdermal nicotine or placebo as an aid to smoking cessation. The subjects were monitored for a total of 14 weeks for the primary end points of the study (death, myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, and admission to the hospital due to increased severity of angina, arrhythmia, or congestive heart failure); the secondary end points (admission to the hospital for other reasons and outpatient visits necessitated by increased severity of heart disease); any side effects of therapy; and abstinence from smoking.

The somatostatin analog angiopeptin does not reduce chronic hypoxic pulmonary hypertension in rats.

Angiopeptin is an analog of somatostatin-14, which has been found to inhibit cellular proliferation in several models of systemic vascular injury. As proliferation plays a major role in pulmonary hypertension, we examined the hypothesis that angiopeptin would inhibit the development of chronic hypoxic pulmonary hypertension in the rat. Angiopeptin was infused intravenously (90-100 microg/kg/day) by minipumps in 10 rats during a 3-week exposure to hypobaric hypoxia and in six normoxic rats.

Myocardial glucose metabolism and ATP levels are decreased two days after global ischemia.

We hypothesized that following reversible myocardial ischemia recovery of glucose metabolism would be prolonged and would parallel recovery of high energy phosphate levels. Normothermic ischemia was achieved in dogs by aortic cross-clamping for 20 min on cardiopulmonary bypass. Glucose uptake was determined by [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose uptake and positron emission tomography (PET) 1 week pre-ischemia and at 2 and 7 days post-ischemia (n = 8).

Reversal of Anorexia by Methylphenidate in Apathetic, Severely Demented Nursing Home Patients.

Low-dose methylphenidate was prescribed in an attempt to reverse the anorexia secondary to the gradual onset of apathetic behavior in three severely demented, long-term institutionalized geriatric patients. The anorexia was alleviated quickly in each case without appreciable side effects, and the benefit lasted for a prolonged period after cessation of the psychostimulant.