Children are more likely to wake up from sleep and get out of bed and leave their bedrooms when they hear their mother's voice than they would if they were exposed to the din of a smoke alarm siren, say researchers from the Center for Injury Research and Policy, Columbus Children's Hospital, USA.

This study is an example of devices that work for adults, but don't necessarily have the same results with children.

In this study, the researchers looked at 24 children, aged 6-12. Every single child, except one, woke up to his/her mother's recorded voice. The recording uttered the child name, then told him/her to wake up, get out of bed and leave the room - compared to just 14 kids who responded to the tone of a traditional fire alarm. The child who did not respond to the recorded voice of the mother did not respond to the alarm tone either.

The average time the children responded to their mothers' voice was 20 seconds, compared to 180 seconds to the alarm tone. Both sounds, the mothers' recorded voice and the alarm tone, measured 100 decibels (much louder than a normal smoke alarm sound).

The researchers are not sure whether the recorded voice was more effective because the children responded to their own names or their mothers' voice.

Comparison of a Personalized Parent Voice Smoke Alarm With a Conventional Residential Tone Smoke Alarm for Awakening Children
Gary A. Smith, MD, DrPH, Mark Splaingard, MD, John R. Hayes, PhDa and Huiyun Xiang, MD, PhD, MPH
PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 4 October 2006, pp. 1623-1632
(doi:10.1542/peds.2006-0125)
Click here to view abstract

Shire plc (LSE: SHP, NASDAQ: SHPGY), the global specialty biopharmaceutical company, announces that Health Canada has approved VPRIV (velaglucerase alfa), an enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) for long-term use in pediatric and adult type 1 Gaucher disease. This approval was based on data from Shire's velaglucerase alfa clinical development programme which represents the largest and most comprehensive clinical data set supporting registration for an ERT for type 1 Gaucher disease. In total, over 100 Gaucher patients at 24 sites in 10 countries around the world participated in the clinical studies, all of which met their primary endpoints.

"Gaucher disease is a complex disorder which can be very debilitating," said Dr. Dominick Amato, Director of the Centre for Gaucher Disease, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario. "The Canadian approval of VPRIV provides us with an important additional option which helps us further customize patient treatment."

ERT is a treatment approach used for certain genetic disorders, specifically lysosomal storage disorders, in which the patient is treated with the specific enzyme they are lacking. Treating type 1 Gaucher disease requires a specific enzyme that is needed to break down certain fats, which in people with the disease, is either missing, produced in only small amounts, or unable to function properly. The parts of the body most affected include the spleen, liver, and bones.

VPRIV has the same amino acid sequence as the naturally occurring human enzyme glucocerebrosidase and is generated using Shire's proprietary gene-activation technology in a human cell line.

"Gaucher disease symptoms can vary in severity and though not curable, certain symptoms can be treated with enzyme replacement therapy. This gives an alternative choice for people in Canada living with type 1 Gaucher disease," said Christine White, President of The National Gaucher Foundation of Canada. "We are dedicated to ensuring all new treatment options are available to all Canadians living with type 1 Gaucher disease who may benefit from it."

About Gaucher Disease

Gaucher disease is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in the GBA gene which results in a deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme bet glucocerebrosidase. This enzymatic deficiency causes an accumulation of glucocerebroside, primarily in macrophages. In this lysosomal storage disorder (LSD), clinical features are reflective of the distribution of Gaucher cells in the liver, spleen, bone marrow, skeleton and lungs. The accumulation of glucocerebroside in the liver and spleen leads to organomegaly. Presence of Gaucher cells in the bone marrow and spleen can lead to clinically significant anemia and thrombocytopenia.

Gaucher disease is the most prevalent of the lysosomal storage disorders diseases. Gaucher disease has classically been categorized into 3 clinical types. Type 1 Gaucher disease is characterized by variability in signs, symptoms, severity, and progression. Type 1 is the most common and is distinguished from type 2 and type 3 by the lack of early neurological symptoms.

About VPRIV

VPRIV® (velaglucerase alfa) is indicated for long-term enzyme replacement therapy for pediatric and adult patients with Type 1 Gaucher disease. The safety and efficacy of VPRIV (velaglucerase alfa) were assessed in 5 clinical studies in a total of 94 patients with type 1 Gaucher disease who were age 2 years and older. Studies 025, 032, and 039 were conducted in patients naïve to enzyme replacement therapy. Study 025EXT was an extension to Study 025. A treatment naïve patient was defined differently for each study. Study 034 was conducted in patients who were receiving imiglucerase treatment. In these studies, VPRIV was administered intravenously over 60 minutes at doses ranging from 15 Units/kg to 60 Units/kg every other week.

"SAFE HARBOR" STATEMENT UNDER THE PRIVATE SECURITIES LITIGATION REFORM ACT OF 1995

Statements included herein that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time. In the event such risks or uncertainties materialize, the Company's results could be materially adversely affected. The risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks associated with: the inherent uncertainty of research, development, approval, reimbursement, manufacturing and commercialization of the Company's Specialty Pharmaceutical and Human Genetic Therapies products, as well as the ability to secure and integrate new products for commercialization and/or development; government regulation of the Company's products; the Company's ability to manufacture its products in sufficient quantities to meet demand; the impact of competitive therapies on the Company's products; the Company's ability to register, maintain and enforce patents and other intellectual property rights relating to its products; the Company's ability to obtain and maintain government and other third-party reimbursement for its products; and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Source: Shire plc

View drug information on Vpriv.

More drugs? Yes please! It has been found that a combination of two antihypertensive drugs to combat high blood pressure and hypertension from the start is better than using a monotherapy method or adding an additional prescription later in the treatment. These elements combined both decrease renin production, which regulates pressure, while simultaneously smoothing arterial walls for better blood flow.

The combination of aliskiren and amlodipine are the best mix of prescribed treatments according to an ACCELERATE study are reported in an Article Online First and an upcoming Lancet. The Article is by Prof Morris J Brown, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge and University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues from the British Hypertension Society and Novartis.

Many drugs control blood pressure by interfering with angiotensin or aldosterone. However, when these drugs are used chronically, the body increases renin production, which drives blood pressure up again. Therefore, doctors have been looking for a drug to inhibit renin directly. Aliskiren is the first drug to do so.

Amlodipine is a long-acting calcium channel blocker (dihydropyridine class) used as an anti-hypertensive and in the treatment of angina. Like other calcium channel blockers, amlodipine acts by relaxing the smooth muscle in the arterial wall, decreasing total peripheral resistance and hence reducing blood pressure, while in angina it increases blood flow to the heart muscle.

In the study, all patients had high systolic blood pressure between 150 and 180 mm Hg (normal blood pressure is usually below 140 mm Hg systolic). Blood pressure numbers include systolic and diastolic pressures. Systolic blood pressure is the pressure when the heart beats while pumping blood. Diastolic blood pressure is the pressure when the heart is at rest between beats.

The study compared the drugs aliskiren and amlodipine, with 620 patients assigned to monotherapy with either drug or a combination of both for 16 weeks. After those 16 weeks, those on monotherapy switched to combination therapy while those on combination therapy already continued.

The authors state:

"ACCELERATE is the first trial to test the medium-term efficacy and safety of full doses of two antihypertensive drugs as first-line treatment for patients with a systolic blood pressure greater than 150 mm Hg, by comparison with sequential add-on treatment with the same drugs. We believe that routine initial reduction in blood pressure (>150 mm Hg) with a combination such as aliskiren plus amlodipine can be recommended."

Researchers found that patients given initial combination therapy had a mean 6•5 mm Hg greater reduction in mean systolic blood pressure than the monotherapy groups. At 24 weeks, when all patients were on combination treatment, the difference had decreased to 1•4 mm Hg.

Dr. Ivana Lazich, and Dr. George Bakris, University of Chicago Hypertensive Diseases Unit, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, USA conclude:

"ACCELERATE puts into proper context the importance of starting with combination antihypertensives to lower blood pressure towards guideline goals for the general population... A change in guidelines is clearly necessary after the ACCELERATE report."

Prof Morris J Brown, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge and University of Cambridge, UK

Dr George Bakris, University of Chicago Hypertensive Diseases Unit, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, Chicago, USA

For full report from the Lancet, click here: ACCELERATE

Sy Kraft, B.A.

Schering-Plough Corporation (NYSE: SGP) announced that taking an over-the-counter (OTC) cold and flu remedy poses little risk for most people, but for the 65 million Americans with high blood pressure this may not be true. According to the American Heart Association, people with high blood pressure should be aware that the use of decongestants may raise blood pressure and interfere with its treatment. This makes it particularly important that high blood pressure sufferers choose OTC medications wisely this season. Of those people with high blood pressure, nearly one in three, or 20 million, are unaware of their condition.

"The link between high blood pressure and decongestants has taken on new urgency this year as many Americans are concerned about contracting and treating cold and flu viruses, particularly those who were unable to get a flu vaccination as a result of the shortage," said Roger S. Blumenthal, M. D., director of the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease and associate professor of medicine, division of cardiology, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Since patients tend to choose OTC medications without the assistance of their physician or pharmacist, those patients with hypertension need to understand the importance of selecting a medication that does not contain a nasal decongestant."

The U.S. population experiences up to one billion colds annually, with the average adult suffering through two to four colds per year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that five to 20 percent of Americans come down with the flu during each flu season, which typically lasts from November to March.

"It's critical that patients with high blood pressure manage their hypertension with proper medical treatment and certain lifestyle changes," continued Dr. Blumenthal. "Healthcare providers should remind their hypertensive patients about the possible risk of taking decongestants, especially during the cold and flu season."

The Link Between Decongestants and High Blood Pressure

Decongestants work by constricting blood vessels, which in turn shrinks the swelling in the nose and open nasal passages. While this constriction of blood vessels helps alleviate congestion, it may raise high blood pressure temporarily after each dose. Some common decongestants include pseudoephedrine and phenylephrine.

Coricidin HBP(R), the only line of cold and flu medications formulated to be decongestant free for high blood pressure sufferers, is a safe and effective option for treatment of cold and flu when taken as directed. None of the four products in the Coricidin HBP line contain a decongestant, an ingredient that may raise the blood pressure of these patients or interfere with its treatment.

Resources for High Blood Pressure Sufferers and their Caregivers The maker of Coricidin HBP, a proud sponsor of the American Heart Association's hypertension Web site, is helping to educate people with high blood pressure and those who actively participate in their care about the risk associated with decongestants. High blood pressure sufferers and their loved ones can obtain a free Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Weight Tracker by calling the American Heart Association at 1-800-AHA-USA1. For more information, high blood pressure patients can visit the American Heart Association Web site at americanheart/hbp or the Coricidin HBP Web site at coricidinhbp.

Coricidin HBP(R) is a registered trademark of Schering Corporation, a subsidiary of Schering-Plough Corporation of Kenilworth, N.J. Schering-Plough is a global science-based health care company with leading prescription, consumer and animal health products. Through internal research and collaborations with partners, Schering-Plough discovers, develops, manufactures and markets advanced drug therapies to meet important medical needs. Schering-Plough's vision is to earn the trust of the physicians, patients and customers served by its more than 30,000 people around the world. The company is based in Kenilworth, N.J., and its Web site is schering-plough.

CONTACT: Media, Julie Lux, +1-908-298-4774, or Investors, Janet Barth or Alex Kelly, +1-908-298-7436, all of Schering-Plough Corporation

Web site: coricidinhbp

americanheart/hbp

schering-plough.

This is a press release from Scherin-Plough Corporation

Just as we visually map a room by spatially identifying the objects in it, we map our aural world based on the frequencies of sounds. The neurons within the brain's "hearing center" - the auditory cortex - are organized into modules that each respond to sounds within a specific frequency band. But how responses actually emanate from this complex network of neurons is still a mystery.

A team of scientists led by Anthony Zador, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Neuroscience program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has come a step closer to unraveling this puzzle. The scientists probed how the functional connectivity among neurons within the auditory cortex gives rise to a "map" of acoustic space.

"What we learned from this approach has put us in a position to investigate and understand how sound responsiveness arises from the underlying circuitry of the auditory cortex," says Zador. His team's findings appear online, ahead of print, in Nature Neuroscience.

Neuronal organization within the auditory cortex fundamentally differs from the organization within brain regions that process sensory inputs such as sight and sensation. For instance, the relative spatial arrangement of sight receptors in the retina (the eyes' light-sensitive inner surface) is directly represented as a two-dimensional "retinotopic" map in the brain's visual cortex.

In the auditory system, however, the organization of sound receptors in the cochlea - the snail-like structure in the ear - is one-dimensional. Cochlear receptors near the outer edge recognize low-frequency sounds whereas those whereas those near the inside of the cochlea are tuned to higher frequencies. This low-to-high distribution, called 'tonotopy,' is preserved along one dimension in the auditory cortex, with neurons tuned to high and low frequencies arranged in a head-to-tail gradient.

"Because sound is intrinsically a one-dimensional signal, unlike signals for other senses such as sight and sensation which are intrinsically two-dimensional, the map of sound in the auditory cortex is also intrinsically one-dimensional," explains Zador. "This means that there is a functional difference in the cortical map between the low-to-high direction and the direction perpendicular to it. However, no one has been able understand how that difference arises from the underlying neuronal circuitry."

To address this question, Zador and postdoctoral fellow Hysell Oviedo compared neuronal activity in mouse brain slices that were cut to preserve the connectivity along the tonotopic axis vs. activity in slices that were cut perpendicular to it.

To precisely stimulate a single neuron within a slice and record from it, Oviedo and Zador, working in collaboration with former CSHL scientists Karel Svoboda and Ingrid Bureau, used a powerful tool called laser-scanning photostimulation. This method allows the construction of a detailed, high-resolution picture that reveals the position, strength and the number of inputs converging on a single neuron within a slice.

"If you did this experiment in the visual cortex, you would see that the connectivity is the same regardless of which way you cut the slice," explains Oviedo. "But in our experiments in the auditory cortex slices, we found that there was a qualitative difference in the connectivity between slices cut along the tonotopic axis vs. those cut perpendicular to it."

There was an even more striking divergence from the visual cortex - and presumably the other cortical regions. As demonstrated by a Nobel Prize-winning discovery in 1962, in the visual cortex, the neurons that share the same input source (or respond to the same signal) are organized into columns. As Oviedo puts it, "all neurons within a column in the vertical cortex are tuned to the same position in space and are more likely to communicate with other neurons from within the same column."

Analogously, in the auditory cortex, neurons within a column are expected to be tuned to the same frequency. So the scientists were especially surprised to find that for a given neuron in this region, the dominant input signal didn't come from within its column but from outside it.

"It comes from neurons that we think are tuned to higher frequencies," elaborates Zador. "This is the first example of the neuronal organizing principle not following the columnar pattern, but rather an out-of-column pattern." Discovering this unexpected, out-of-column source of information for a neuron in the auditory complex adds a new twist to their research, which is focused on understanding auditory function in terms of the underlying circuitry and how this is altered in disorders such as autism.

"With this study, we've moved beyond having only a conceptual notion of the functional difference between the two axes by actually finding correlates for this difference at the level of the neuronal microcircuits in this region," he explains.

Notes:

This work was supported by grants from the US National Institutes of Health, the Patterson Foundation, the Swartz Foundation and Autism Speaks.

"The functional asymmetry of auditory cortex is reflected in the organization of local cortical circuits," appeared online ahead of print in Nature Neuroscience on October 17th. The full citation is: Hysell V. Oviedo, Ingrid Bureau, Karel Svoboda and Anthony M. Zador.

Source:
Hema Bashyam
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory