A5 Labs receives US provisional patent for production of interferon-based products

A5 Laboratories Inc. (A5 Labs) announced that its previously announced patent application to protect its technology for the production of interferon-based products was accepted by the United States patent office. The company was granted the provisional patent number of US 61/400,719 with a patent filing date of August 2, 2010. The patent application was submitted in order to protect the company's new method for the production of therapeutic proteins and specifically A5 Labs lead product VI-1718 for the treatment of certain cancers, multiple sclerosis and viral infections.

"I am very pleased that the Unites States patent office has accepted our patent application. We believe that the granting of this provisional patent will protect our company's new technology for the production of our interferon-based products such as VI-1718. We look forward to the next steps in advancing our plans towards the development of these products," said Dr. Richard Azani, president and CEO of A5 Labs.

A5 Labs is a contract research based organization servicing the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in North America. The company utilizes its research capabilities to license and acquire novel biotechnology products for development and commercialization. 



Source:Pharmabiz

This priest-doctor cures all with Ayurveda

"YOU can find cures for almost all illnesses in nature, in fruits and in vegetables." Reverend Father Jacob Gnalian says. For Filipinos who have been relying on costly medical treatments and modern methodology, this statement might baffle them. Normally, people go to the nearest drugstore to buy medicines, painkillers and vitamins, or rush to the most sophisticated hospital when they get sick. But Father Jacob–donning a priest’s alb and not a white coat–is an authority in a medical practice that has proven to be effective for more than 5,000 years: Ayurveda. From Sanskrit, Ayurveda translates to "the science of life." Founded in India, Ayurveda became known in the South Asian region, and outlasts the evolution of medical practice for 50 centuries now. As a non-invasive, holistic approach that enables people to live a full, healthy and well-balanced life, Ayurveda might just be the perfect discipline that people should try to live by. More importantly, Ayurveda goes hand-in-hand with a clean lifestyle, which is something that the people should learn to practice."Aside from the healing process, I also teach patients how to eat and what to eat," Father Jacob said. "That is why we also offer cooking lessons here in our Sandhi Ayurveda Clinic/ Panchakarma Center, and we use all-natural flavoring too." As the sole practitioner of Ayurveda in the Philippines, Father Jacob believes that the method can serve as an inexpensive "healthcare program" for the Filipinos. "People generally want everything in an instant," Father Jacob o b s e r v e d . "From instant food to instant cof f e e–eve rything must be "instant", and that is not healthy. People should think of the right thing to do, the right things to eat–and they will live a long and healthy life. Here in Ayurveda we will teach them all about that kind of healthcare."A native of the state Kerala in southwest India, Father Jacob was assigned to the Philippines for his parish work back in 1984. It was also then that he perfected his knowledge on Ayurveda by furthering his studies in theology and philosophy. He also fulfilled a master’s degree in oriental religions and cultures from the only pontifical and catholic university in the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas. "In Ayurveda we treat the root cause and not just the symptom," Father Jacob explained. "For example, you are experiencing a headache. A headache is not a sickness, but a symptom. So instead of suggesting pain killers for you to take, we look at the root cause of this symptom, and that is what we cure." The patients who visit Father Jacob’s wellness center in Mandaluyong have to go through an extensive consultation. The priest-doctor asks a series of questions that will take an hour or more in order for him to give a "personalized" treatment process.

Source:Malaya, PHILIPPINES

What Is the 'Green' Medicine Revolution?

A green medical approach seeks innovation and is open to all healing methodologies, new or old, Western or Eastern, left-brained or right. Green medicine brings together the best of conventional and alternative resources. It is not about eliminating one in favor of the other. It is about achieving a balanced approach that seeks unity but respects diversity. Let's now examine some of the factors that have led to the crisis of confidence in modern medicine's ability to provide for our medical needs.
The Shortcomings of a Symptomatic Approach:

Medicine's symptom-oriented approach is often shortsighted and frequently causes more health problems than it solves. Treating symptoms in isolation, without consideration for their connection to the whole, tends to generate unforeseen consequences that medicine rarely acknowledges. This is largely due to its uniquely fragmented view of illness that fails to connect the dots. In the majority of cases this overly simplistic symptomatic approach does not lead to greater health or well-being. To the contrary, it tends to lead to a downward symptomatic spiral as we begin to use more drugs for the side effects of our drugs, not unlike a dog chasing its own tail.Treatment focused on symptoms has no larger purpose or conscious goal that leads toward greater health. This strategy is emblematic of a war against disease mentality that views symptoms as the enemy rather than as the manifestations of the body's innate healing mechanism. Green healing is not congruent with such a misreading of the nature and intent of symptoms. Real healing seeks to understand the body/heart/mind/soul and its symptomatic expressions in order to work with it rather than against it. Real healing leads to greater health, vitality, maturity and self-awareness.

Green medicine takes into account the whole person and the connections between symptoms even when they occur in seemingly unrelated parts of the body and even when they are separated by time. Perhaps one of the most useful tools employed by green practitioners is the timeline. "This particular event in my life was followed by that symptom, which was treated with this drug, after which these other symptoms emerged," is often the best way to shed light upon connections that are rarely ever acknowledged in the specialized and dissociated world of conventional medicine.

The Purpose of Symptoms in the Healing Process:
When we come to understand that symptoms are almost never random and, in fact, have a purpose, this changes our entire attitude toward illness. The human body has a self-regulating capacity that manifests through the symptoms it generates. In other words, symptoms almost always represent the body's attempt to heal itself. Much of the time it succeeds but sometimes it needs assistance. Our medicalized culture encourages us to pop pills -- pills that are available for virtually any symptom we can imagine -- without any awareness of this self-healing truth. Any shortsighted therapy that simply aims to eliminate the most recent symptom is a therapy that potentially works against the body's own self-healing wisdom.

Movement toward or away from greater health is an unfolding process that takes place over time. One's health history is definitely not a set of isolated events. Like a movie, they must be taken together in order to arrive at an accurate understanding of the whole. Parts cannot be treated in isolation without potential repercussions for the whole. An antibiotic that "cures" a case of bronchitis should not be considered an actual cure if it leads to successive episodes of bronchitis further down the road. When a child's eczema seems to disappear after application of topical cortisone it cannot be considered a cure when it is followed by a string of ear infections. We can no longer arbitrarily dissociate medical events that occur over time simply because medical science has taught us to ignore the connections.

We have also been conditioned by the medical system to lower our expectations regarding outcomes. We have come to expect the complications and risks that come with the benefits. In fact, a so-called "side effect" is one of those deceptive medical terms that we accept without understanding that there is no such thing. A drug either has an effect or it does not. Although side effects may be unwanted, they are nevertheless very real effects that people commonly experience. In some cases, the side effects may be more common than the purported therapeutic effect of a drug. The term simply serves to encourage us to overlook undesirable effects while we focus upon the desired effects. And so we are more likely to accept a boy's newly developed neurologic facial tic when we are focused on the sedating effect of the attention deficit disorder drug he is taking. Those who practice and pursue greener forms of healing do not overlook the connections between such events, and have a different set of expectations in terms of outcomes.

The Dangers of Suppression:
When we indiscriminately combat symptoms we run the risk of suppression. The body in its wisdom often causes a symptom to recur in spite of our attempts to eradicate it. Each dose of migraine medication, for instance, dulls the pain temporarily until the next one occurs. However, when the migraines fail to recur, that is when we may be in for trouble. There is no free medical lunch. When a symptom or condition is successfully squelched, the bioenergetic source of the original disturbance simply seeks the next best avenue of expression. Thus, the migraines may "mutate," for example, into fatigue, arthritis or colitis.

The possibilities are endless and depend upon each individual case. When this happens it becomes clear that the migraines, in this particular case, are not the real issue but an expression of an underlying bioenergetic imbalance. And when symptoms mutate, regular medicine usually fails to connect the dots. The sequelae of suppression are just considered random occurrences that have no connection to the previous history of the patient. Thus, an endless cycle of chronic disease is generated. It's great for business, as long as no one looks too closely at what is happening.

One of the more dramatic examples of suppression involves the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), Vioxx, which was developed to treat arthritis. By the time Vioxx had been taken off the market in 2004, the FDA estimated that it had resulted in 28,000 cardiovascular-related deaths. It is now believed that this was a low estimate and that the true death toll between 1999 and 2004 was somewhere around 90,000 - 140,000. (1) The salient point here is that these deaths were not merely "side effects" of Vioxx. The fact that Vioxx was so effective at suppressing arthritic conditions is the very same reason why so many developed compensatory cardiovascular problems. This mutation from arthritis to heart attacks is a reality that the medical establishment fails to understand.

When we realize that symptoms are the mind/body's best avenue of defense at any given moment in time, we see why suppression can be so dangerous. When we ignore the body's wisdom by drugging its symptoms into submission, we force the hand of the bioenergetic healing mechanism, which must now choose the next best avenue available to it to express its imbalance. Furthermore, the consequences of such inappropriate treatment are not limited to physical maladies. The same migraines can just as easily mutate into insomnia, depression, or an anxiety disorder. This is not mere speculation; it is a phenomenon repeatedly observed by thousands of green healing practitioners. 

Medicine pursues this ill-advised strategy of symptom suppression largely without realizing what it is doing. When we consider that almost all conventional medical treatments are essentially suppressive, the implications are staggering. It is no coincidence, and no wonder then, that we are seeing such dramatic rises in the incidence of many chronic diseases, autoimmune disorders, and psychiatric illness. It is well past the appointed time for us to demand a new standard of care.

That medicine has overstated its value is an unequivocal truth, and the system must own up to its limitations. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes a suppressive measure is necessary, especially in time-limited life-threatening situations. While its strengths clearly lie in diagnostic medicine and emergency and trauma medicine, as a general approach to chronic illness, Western medicine is clearly inadequate. The genuine cure of a chronic disease by conventional means is a very unusual occurrence. At best, medicine "manages" chronic disease with medications that often carry some very serious risks.

Fortunately, many green medical modalities have much to offer in the treatment of chronic disease. Millions of ailing individuals seek medical help from alternative sources, often without the knowledge of their conventional doctors. Many have sought assistance through acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, craniosacral therapy, herbal medicine, shamanic healing, nutrition, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, reflexology, Reiki, healing touch, and spiritual healing, to name just a few. Medical authorities must no longer be permitted to stifle the valuable input that these other fields of health and healing have to offer. If the medical profession is to stay current with the green medical revolution and its evolving understanding of human health and illness, it must begin to willingly open itself to new sources of information and innovation.

References:

(1) Vioxx Deaths, Defective Drugs, adrugrecall.com

Source : The Huffington Post

Office Going Women Hate Being Addressed as Love

According to a website survey, the most hateful nickname for an office going woman was “Love” followed closely by “Darlin”, “Babe” and “Mate”. 
 The online market research firm www.onepoll.com went on to add that most of the women find it unacceptable to be called by a nickname in the office with more than a quarter of the 3,000 odd women who took part in the survey admitting that it makes themvery angry.
Source:Medindia

Researchers Highlight Top 8 Symptoms Linked to Cancer

Researchers have highlighted the eight unexplained symptoms that are most closely linked to cancer. 
The Keele University team also points to the age at which patients should be most concerned by the symptoms, which include blood in urine and anaemia.
The other symptoms are: rectal blood, coughing up blood, breast lump or mass, difficulty swallowing, post-menopausal bleeding and abnormal prostate tests, reports the BBC. 
Cancer Research UK said unusual changes in a person's health should be checked. 
The figure for each symptom was calculated by combining the results of 25 previous studies. 
They found that, if the patient was below the age of 55, there were only two signs, which reached the 'one-in-20' threshold. 
These were a rectal prostate examination, which gave abnormal results, and a breast lump. 
After 55, but only in men, there was evidence that difficulty swallowing could be a sign of oesophageal cancer, while blood in the urine was highlighted as a particular concern for men and women aged over 60.

Source-ANI

 

Doctors Seek Way to Treat Muscle Loss

Bears emerge from months of hibernation with their muscles largely intact. Not so for people, who, if bedridden that long, would lose so much muscle they would have trouble standing.Why muscles wither with age is captivating a growing number of scientists, drug and food companies, let alone aging baby boomers who, despite having spent years sweating in the gym, are confronting the body’s natural loss of muscle tone over time.

Comparisons between age groups underline the muscle disparity: An 80-year-old might have 30 percent less muscle mass than a 20-year-old. And strength declines even more than mass. Weight-lifting records for 60-year-old men are 30 percent lower than for 30-year-olds; for women the drop-off is 50 percent.With interest high among the aging, the market potential for maintaining and rebuilding muscle mass seems boundless. Drug companies already are trying to develop drugs that can build muscles or forestall their weakening without the notoriety of anabolic steroids. Food giants like Nestlé and Danone are exploring nutritional products with the same objective.In addition, geriatric specialists, in particular, are now trying to establish the age-related loss of muscles as a medical condition under the name sarcopenia, from the Greek for loss of flesh. Simply put, sarcopenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone.“In the future, sarcopenia will be known as much as osteoporosis is now,” said Dr. Bruno Vellas, president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics.Researchers involved in the effort say doctors and patients need to be more aware that muscle deterioration is a major reason the elderly lose mobility and cannot live independently.“A doctor sees old people who are shrinking and getting weak, but there is no medical terminology that’s been created and made uniform to allow the doctor to make a diagnosis, look at possible causes, and make a treatment plan,” said Dr. Stephanie A. Studenski, a professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.Of course, commercial interests are at play as well. “If you are trying to sell drugs, you want to have a very clear criterion for diagnosing the problem and for endpoints to treat it,” said Dr. Thomas Lang of the University of California, San Francisco, who is working on techniques for diagnosing sarcopenia.A task force of academic and industry scientists met in Rome last November and in Albuquerque last month and has submitted a proposed definition of sarcopenia for publication in a medical journal. The meeting received financial support from several drug companies and food companies.Underscoring the focus on sarcopenia, four European medical societies proposed a somewhat different definition, and Dr. Studenski is developing yet another.Whatever the definition, experts say, sarcopenia affects about 10 percent of those over 60, with higher rates as age advances. One study estimated that disability caused by sarcopenia accounted for $18.5 billion in direct medical costs in 2000, equivalent to 1.5 percent of the nation’s health care spending that year.Causes of the loss of muscle mass or strength might include hormonal changes, sedentary lifestyles, oxidative damage, infiltration of fat into muscles, inflammation and resistance to insulin. Some problems stem from the brain and nervous system, which activate the muscles.Experts say the best approach to restoring or maintaining muscle mass and strength is exercise, particularly resistance training.The National Institute on Aging is now sponsoring a controlled trial to test whether exercise can prevent disability in largely sedentary people, age 70 to 89. There is also some early evidence that nutrition, like vitamin D or high levels of protein, might help. “At this point, what we can say is that older people are at risk for eating too little protein for adequate muscle preservation,” said Dr. Elena Volpi of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.Pharmaceutical companies are paying more attention to muscles, a part of the body they once largely ignored. A year ago, for instance, GlaxoSmithKline hired William Evans, a leading academic expert on sarcopenia, to run a new muscle research unit.But with sarcopenia still not established as a treatable condition, “there is no real defined regulatory path as to how one would get approved in this area,” said R. Alan Ezekowitz, a research executive at Merck.So for now, many companies are focusing on better defined illnesses like muscular dystrophy and cachexia, the rapid muscle wasting that can accompany cancer or other diseases.One problem is that academic researchers and drug companies initially viewed sarcopenia as primarily a loss of muscle mass, a direct analogy to bone density in osteoporosis. Muscle mass can be measured by the same scans used for bone density.But some studies have shown that strength, such as gripping force, or muscle function, as measured, say, by walking speed, are more important than mass in predicting problems seniors might have.“There’s a lot more to the story than simply having a lot of muscle tissue,” said Brian C. Clark, an expert at Ohio University. “Most of the drug stuff has been targeting muscle mass.”So the definition is shifting to include muscle strength and function. The academic-industry task force recommends testing whether a person can walk four meters, or about 13 feet, in four seconds.That can be tested by any doctor, without the special equipment needed to measure muscle mass or strength, said Roger A. Fielding of Tufts University, a leader of the task force.Experts say that to win approval from regulators and reimbursement from insurers, a drug must do more than merely improve mass or strength. It must, for example, improve walking ability or prevent people from falling.Or perhaps it could restore mobility faster after a person is bedridden. Older people can lose so much muscle during a prolonged hospital stay that they have to move to a nursing home.Demonstrating such benefits and cost savings would help counter criticism that doctors and drug companies are trying to turn a natural consequence of aging into a disease.“If you can get out of a nursing home in three weeks instead of three months, wouldn’t we say it is a useful thing?” said Dr. Studenski, who consults for drug companies.Efforts to develop muscle drugs are still in early stages, and there have been setbacks.But for inspiration, researchers can look to the bears, though scientists have no definitive answer to the animals’ youthful secret.Moreover, a study that has tracked 3,000 people for 50 years found that about 20 of them, now in their 80s, have not lost muscle mass.“Maintaining the muscle is possible,” said Dr. Luigi Ferrucci of the National Institute on Aging, who directs the study, called the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. “We just don’t know the right formula yet.
Source: NewYork Times

Himalayan treatment listed in traditional medicine system

A traditional medicinal system popular in the Himalayan region was Wednesday included in the government's list of medical treatments.

With an amendment made in the Indian Medical Central Council Bill, Sowa-Rigpa, one of the oldest methods practiced by health professionals in the country, will be part of health ministry's AYUSH department.

AYUSH has already recognised Ayurveda, Yunani, Siddha, Homeopathy, Naturopathy and Yoga as traditional branches of medical studies.

Sowa-Rigpa, knowns as 'Amchi', is considered as an effective treatment method in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Darjeeling (West Bengal), Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) and Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

'Sowa-Rigpa is known for treating chronic diseases like arthritis, cancer and neurological disorders,' Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said.

'Its recognition will pave way for its regulation,' he added.