Faculty Bibliography

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. Nifedipine is one of 10 drugs called calcium channel blockers that are taken to control blood pressure and relieve pains from angina

Federal health officials warned Thursday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used ''with great caution, if at all,'' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer and as Adalat by Bayer. As a class, the drugs are the most widely prescribed in the United States, with 87.3 million prescriptions written last year for an estimated six million people. More than two million of the prescriptions were for the short-acting form of nifedipine

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute warned on Aug 31, 1995 that nifedipine, a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease, should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The study is being published in the medical journal Circulation on Sep 1

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used \'with great caution, if at all,\' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. Calcium channel blockers help relax arteries by selectively preventing movement of calcium ions across cell membranes of heart muscles and blood vessels without changing the amount of calcium in the blood

Federal health officials warned yesterday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans was unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applied specifically to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. The heart institute, a unit of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., stopped short of extending the warning to all calcium channel blockers

Federal health officials said Thursday that a drug prescribed to treat high blood pressure and heart disease should be used 'with great caution, if at all,' and that the safety of related drugs taken by millions of Americans is unclear. The warning from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute applies to large doses of the short-acting form of nifedipine, which is marketed as Procardia by Pfizer Inc. and as Adalat by Bayer Co. As a class, the drugs are the most widely prescribed in the United States, with 87.3 million prescriptions written last year for an estimated 6 million people. More than 2 million of the prescriptions were for the short-acting form of nifedipine

The effects of beta-muricholic acid and hyocholic acid on cholesterol cholelithiasis were examined in two animal models. The following experiments were carried out: A) In a gallstone prevention study, prairie dogs were fed the lithogenic diet with or without 0.1% beta-muricholic or 0.1% hyocholic acid for eight weeks. B) In a second prevention study, hamsters were fed the lithogenic diet with or without 0.1% beta-muricholic acid or 0.1% hyocholic acid for six weeks. C) In a gallstone dissolution study, hamsters were fed the lithogenic diet for six weeks to induce stones; stone dissolution was examined during administration of a cholesterol-free purified diet with or without 0.1% beta-muricholic acid or 0.1% hyocholic acid. In the prevention study in prairie dogs (A), both bile acids failed to prevent stone formation, the cholesterol saturation index of bile was 0.89 in the lithogenic controls, remained unchanged with hyocholic acid and increased to 1.52 in the beta-muricholic acid group. In the prevention study in hamsters (B), beta-muricholic acid completely inhibited the cholesterol cholelithiasis (0% stone incidence); the cholesterol saturation index of bile was 1.78 (compared to lithogenic controls, 1.37). Hyocholic acid reduced stone incidence to 16% with a cholesterol saturation index of 0.98. In the dissolution study in hamsters (C), preexisting cholesterol gallstones were not dissolved by either hydrophilic bile acid after feeding these bile acids for an additional six weeks; at the end of the experiment, the cholesterol saturation indices were below unity.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

The synthesis of virulence factors and other exoproteins in Staphylococcus aureus is controlled by the global regulator, agr. Expression of secreted proteins is up-regulated in the postexponential growth phase, whereas expression of surface proteins is down-regulated by agr. The agr locus consists of two divergent operons, transcribed from neighboring but non-overlapping promoters, P2 and P3. The P2 operon sequence, reported here, contains 4 open reading frames, agrA, C, D, and B, of which A and C appear to encode proteins of a classical 2-component signal transduction pathway. The P3 operon specifies a 0.5 kb transcript, RNA III, which is the actual effector of the agr response, and, incidentally, encodes the agr-regulated peptide delta-hemolysin. Transcriptional fusions have shown that both P2 and P3 are agr sensitive (function in an agr+ but not in an agr- background) and deletion analysis has shown that all four of the P2 ORFs are involved; agrA and agrC seem to be absolutely required for the transcriptional activation of the agr locus, whereas agrB and agrD seem to be partially required. Since transcription of P2 requires P2 operon products, the P2 operon is autocatalytic, and is thus admirably suited to the need for rapid production of exoproteins at a time when overall growth is coming to a halt

Smokers in their 30s and 40s suffer five times as many heart attacks as nonsmokers in the same age group, researchers from Britain are reporting in what they say is the largest study of heart attack survivors. The risk of heart attacks for young adult smokers is about double what had previously been believed, said the researchers from Oxford University, who conducted the study in Britain. 'When cigarette smokers have a heart attack in their 30s and 40s, there is an 80 percent chance that tobacco caused it,' said Dr. Rory Collins, a co-author of the report, in Saturday's issue of The British Medical Journal

Smokers in their 30s and 40s suffer five times as many heart attacks as nonsmokers in the same age group, researchers from Britain are reporting in what they say is the largest study of heart attack survivors. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University, is reported in the Aug 19, 1995 issue of The British Medical Journal