Faculty Bibliography

In disclosing on Nov 5, 1994 that he had developed Alzheimer's disease, former President Ronald Reagan said he wanted to make more people aware of the incurable illness, which affects some four million Americans. Many doctors are now applauding the announcement, saying they expect it to lead to greater public awareness. The symptoms and likely progression of the disease are described

Doctors may also be diagnosing toxoplasmosis and other conditions today when they would have called them dementia only a few years ago. 'Five years ago, anybody with altered mental status was labeled as having dementia without much thought about all the other things that could cause that,' Dr. [Justin S. McArthur] said. 'Now people are probably more specific about using that diagnosis,' in part because of wider use of magnetic resonance imaging and other technologies that help earlier detection of brain infections and other damage to the nervous system. 'Dementia may well be overlooked by a standard, even quite careful, physical examination or follow-up visit,' Dr. McArthur said. 'It is really not until you probe cognitive and memory function that you will find deficits. A social, 'How are you today?' will often get a reasonable response in somebody who has AIDS dementia. But the response may not reflect what is really going on.' 'This is the first time H.I.V. has caused AIDS-like syndromes in an animal other than a human,' said Dr. Susan Barnett, a molecular biologist at the Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, Calif. 'The infection in baboons mirrors the progression of the disease in humans, and that's very exciting to us.'

Despite widespread use of drugs to combat the AIDS virus, which earlier studies had shown to protect against infections that affect the brain and central nervous system, the incidence of such damage is increasing among those with the disease, a new study from a federal AIDS project has found. The study, reported in the Oct 1994 issue of Neurology, said that dementia was the only one of six neurological conditions for which the rate did not increase from 1985 to 1992

A new federally financed study has found that women who have abortions increase their risk of breast cancer. The authors of the study cautioned that the overall results should be viewed as hypotheses, because of limitations in the way the study was designed and conducted. The study, which was conducted by Janet R. Daling of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, is scheduled to be reported in the Nov 2, 1994 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute

An experimental new immune therapy for rheumatoid arthritis has shown significant promise in two small short-term studies being reported by researchers in England. The results of the studies, sponsored by Centocor Inc, the drug's manufacturer, were published on Oct 22, 1994 in the Lancet

[Troyen A. Brennan], who holds degrees in medicine, public health and law, said he was outraged that Edelman Medical Communications of New York City, a prominent medical public relations firm, offered to pay him to write an editorial on liability issues that might arise from prescribing drugs with sedative side effects, such as antihistamines. Edelman is now helping a doctor and a lawyer prepare the manuscript that Brennan declined to write. It has not yet been submitted to a journal, and the client drug company declined to be identified, she said. Brennan wrote that Edelman had sent him a packet of material that included an editorial it said it had commissioned, which appeared in 1993 in a weekly journal. Brennan would not identify the journal other than to say it was not the New England Journal of Medicine

Two studies to determine the most effective dose of heparin, a widely used drug for treating heart attack patients, have found that a high dose can unexpectedly prove unacceptably dangerous. Tests of the drug were halted in Apr 1994 because of a high risk of paralyzing and fatal strokes

The drug is heparin, a powerful agent that interferes with the body's normal clotting process. Heparin, along with other drugs, is recommended for heart-attack patients because it inhibits the formation of blood clots that can lead to a second heart attack. Doctors are using heparin in a range of doses on hundreds of thousands of heart-attack patients, the study leaders said. A large study established last year that a low dose of intravenous heparin was reasonably safe and effective when given with clot-dissolving drugs. Two large follow-up trials involving patients in more than 365 hospitals in the United States and 12 other countries were then begun, testing a high dose of heparin and a similar but experimental drug

The Johns Hopkins group developed the test through industry-financed research from which the researchers and the university stand to profit. Today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they are reporting on the use of the new test in saliva, urine and tissue samples from 105 patients, all with three types of cancer (lung, bladder, and head and neck) that had been diagnosed through standard means. The test is being developed by a team at Johns Hopkins headed by Dr. David Sidransky that has just begun the first of a series of larger trials to validate the test's accuracy. The team needs to determine whether its test actually detects cancer earlier than standard methods and, if so, whether earlier diagnosis would improve therapy and survival rates. In May, Sidransky's team reported that it had used the test on frozen tissues saved from Hubert H. Humphrey's bladder and was able to show that the former vice president did have bladder cancer in 1967 when he developed bloody urine