ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: September 26, 2007

• Vaccine-like treatment shows promise for fighting lupus
• Subway dust may trigger lung damage
• Ginger may combat deadly infant diarrhea in developing world
• Lubrication oil pollutes, even in hydrogen-fueled vehicles
• New tactics for trouncing those terrible migraine headaches

Researchers in Indiana have developed a vaccine-like treatment that shows promise for treating lupus, a disease of the immune system that affects about 1.5 million people in the United States. The new treatment, described in the September/October issue of ACS’ Molecular Pharmaceutics, a bi-monthly journal, reduced disease symptoms and extended the lives of laboratory mice that researchers use to study lupus.

In the study, Philip S. Low and colleagues cite the need for better treatments for lupus, an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s immunological defense system attacks healthy cells, damaging muscles, joints, kidneys and other body parts. Current treatments for lupus — also known as SLE — include high doses of steroids and other medications with serious side effects.

The new approach targets abnormal immune cells in a way that marks the rogue cells for destruction by the body’s immune system without affecting healthy cells. Called folate-hapten-targeted immunotherapy, the treatment greatly reduced damage to the kidneys and other tissues and also prolonged the lives of the mice by 10 months in comparison to untreated animals, the researchers say.

“We suggest that this therapy warrants further evaluation as a possible approach for treatment of SLE in humans,” the report states.

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The popular spice ginger shows promise as a treatment for bacteria-induced diarrhea, the leading cause of infant death in developing countries, according to a preliminary study in animals conducted by researchers in Taiwan. If confirmed by further studies, the findings could lead to an inexpensive, easy-to-obtain alternative to drug therapy for the condition, the researchers say. Their study will appear in the Oct. 3 issue of ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a bi-weekly publication.

In studies using laboratory mice, Chien-Yun Hsiang and colleagues showed that an extract of ginger blocked the toxin responsible for diarrhea caused by enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (E. coli), which accounts for 210 million cases of diarrhea worldwide and causes 380,000 deaths yearly. They also showed that zingerone, a component of ginger, is the likely compound responsible for this effect.

“In conclusion, our findings provide evidence that ginger and its derivatives may be effective herbal supplements for the clinical treatment of enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli diarrhea,” the researchers state. Additional studies are needed to determine the effective doses of ginger needed and whether it is safe for infants, who may experience unexpected side effects from large doses.

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Relief from the pain, nausea and other awful symptoms of migraine could become just a sniff away, as researchers develop new drugs — including an inhalable medication — for a condition that affects an estimated 30 million people in the United States, according to an article scheduled for the Oct. 1 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine.

In the article, C&EN assistant editor Carmen Drahl describes potential new migraine medications that may be safer and more effective than existing drugs. A class of compounds called triptans, which target dilation of brain arteries, now are the mainstays for fighting migraines. Although effective, they tend to work slowly and carry risks for individuals with underlying heart disease.

Several pharmaceutical companies are working on new treatments for migraine that target signaling proteins in the brain, including a receptor for a neuropeptide and a type of ion channel. In laboratory studies, these approaches appear to reduce the risk of side effects, the article notes.

One exciting approach currently in clinical trials involves using a cell-phone sized device that is triggered by the airflow from inhaling. The inhaler delivers a migraine drug in a user-friendly way and is faster-acting than conventional treatments, Drahl writes.

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• Science Elements: New ACS Podcast
  The ACS Office of Communications is podcasting PressPac contents in order to make cutting-edge scientific discoveries from ACS journals available to a broad public audience at no charge. Science Elements includes selected content from ACS’s prestigious suite of 36 peer-reviewed scientific journals and Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’s weekly news magazine. Those journals, published by the world’s largest scientific society, contain about 30,000 scientific reports from scientists around the world each year. The reports include discoveries in medicine, health, nutrition, energy, the environment and other fields that span science’s horizons from astronomy to zoology. Podcaster for Science Elements is Steve Showalter, Ph.D., a chemist at the U. S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and ACS member.
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• Press releases and more from ACS' 234th national meeting Aug. 19-23, 2007
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• ACS’ Latest Annual Report
  The 2006 ACS annual report, A New Vision at Work, can be a valuable resource for journalists trying to keep pace with chemistry and the multiple fields of science that involve chemistry. The report features a series of commentaries by chemists, including Nobel Laureate Robert H. Grubbs, on chemistry’s role in working toward better medications, more nutritious food, sources of renewable energy, and other innovations. The newly published report is available for reading and downloading at http://www.acs.org/annualreport.
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