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95% of Pharmaceuticals
Locally Produced
Currently 95 percent of Iran’s pharmaceutical requirements are met domestically.
Iranian researchers have helped produce many drugs that were previously imported, saving large sums of money.
The following report by Mehr News Agency pertains to drugs that were locally produced last year:
June 11, 2007
Social Security Organization (SSO) announced that local researchers have produced a drug for treating patients with gastric cancer. The herbal medicine is called Spinal-Z and was produced after 16 years of painstaking efforts by SSO’s drug firm. So far, 700 cancer patients have been treated with the drug.
July 26
A medicine produced for treating thalassemic patients is the edible version of Deferasirox produced under the commercial name of Osveral in Iran.
Deferasirox is injected intravenously for removing excess iron from thalassemia patients.
With the production of Osveral, thalassemic patients can use the edible medicine, which is less painful than the injection.
Sept. 9
Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization began mass production of Molybdenum 99-Technetium 99 (Molybdenum 99 is used as a parent radioisotope to the radioisotope Technetium 99).
The medicine is used for diagnosis of diseases that need a scan of heart muscles, brain, thyroid, lungs, liver and kidneys.
Sept. 21
The mass production of the newest pill for treating Alzheimer’s named Donzepil started upon the Health Ministry’s authorization. Donzepil has been shown to slow the inevitable progression of Alzheimer’s dementia.
Feb. 3, 2008
Researchers produced Angi Pars, the herbal medicine used for healing ulcers on the feet of diabetic patients, for the first time in the world.
The drug can prevent the need for amputation in diabetic patients. Related research was carried out jointly by the medical universities of Tehran, Shiraz, Tabriz and Iran as well as Iran’s Red Crescent Organization and Instructors’ Training University.
Preliminary research shows that the medicine can also be used for treating other types of wounds.
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Currently 95 percent of IranŐs pharmaceutical requirements are met domestically. Iranian researchers have helped produce many drugs that were previously imported.
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March 11
Shahid Beheshti Medical University announced the production of Alloskin for treating acute burns.
Research has shown that Alloskin grafts in the acute phase of burns yield the best clinical results.
April 21
Researchers of Shahid Beheshti Medical University also produced Nanocrystals that are effective for healing tissues. These are also used for treating tuberculosis patients.
July 18
Experts produced pegylated interferon for curing hepatitis C, making Iran the second producer of hepatitis C biotechnological medicine.
The medicine has a more durable effect on hepatitis C patients than other drugs produced so far.
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Nerve Cells Grown
Ordinary skin cells taken from patients with a fatal and incurable nerve disease have been transformed into nerve cells in a first step toward treating them, US researchers reported.
They transformed the cells from two patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, into motor neurons--the cells that waste away and die in ALS.
There is no immediate medical use for the cells taken from two sisters aged 82 and 89, researchers reported in the journal Science.
“Now we can make limitless supplies of the cells that die in this awful disease. This will allow us to study these neurons, and ALS, in a lab dish, and figure out what’s happening in the disease process,“ said Dr. Kevin Eggan of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who helped lead the study.
“We can generate hundreds of millions of motor neurons that are genetically identical to a patient’s own neurons,“ added Chris Henderson of Columbia University in New York, who also worked on the study.
This will be an immense help in uncovering the mechanisms behind this disease and in screening for drugs that can prolong life.
“There is no way we could go to an ALS patient and take a sample of their motor neurons,“ he added, because the affected cells are in the spinal cord.
Eggan and Henderson hope to grow and study these motor neurons and see if they can recreate the disease in a lab dish and then try out various drugs to treat it.
The two patients have a mild form of ALS caused by a single genetic mutation and all of the cells in their body carry that mutation.
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Satiety Shortens Lifespan
Every time you feel full you are shortening your lifespan a little, suggests a study that reveals new insights into how to combat obesity.
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, have found that the brain center that controls appetite uses fat for fuel by involving oxygen free radicals--highly reactive chemical species that are linked with ageing and the death of nerve cells, Telegraph said.
The study in Nature was done by Profs Sabrina Diano and Tamas Horvath.
“The minute-by-minute control of appetite is regulated by free radicals, implying that if you interfere with free radicals, you may affect eating and satiety,“ said Prof. Horvath, referring to how diet and vitamins could do this.
“Each time a feeling of fullness or satiety is reached during a meal, you may be chipping away some time from your maximum lifespan as the most free radicals are produced when satiety-promoting brain cells are active.“
The study looked at the appetite-stimulating gut hormone ghrelin, which makes food look yummier. The hormone is known to rise before meals and then fall afterwards.
Researchers around the world are developing drugs and vaccines to block ghrelin, as a new approach to combat obesity.
The Yale team conducted its study in mice to better understand how the brain responds to ghrelin, a hormone produced in the stomach that is also associated with growth hormone release, learning and memory.
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Dementia Risk Higher Among Singles
Being single when you reach middle age could mean more than having the house to yourself--it could increase your risk of dementia.
Swedish research, presented at a US conference, found that marriage halved the risk of developing dementia, BBC reported.
Scientists believe social interaction between couples may ward off illness.
The Alzheimer’s Research Trust said the results were worrying, given the high divorce rates in the UK.
The study by the Karolinska Institute suggested that the problem might be even greater for some people.
Divorcees who remained single, they noticed, had a trebled risk of dementia, while those widowed at a young age, who stayed single, faced a six times greater chance.
The research looked at 1,449 people from a Finnish database, who were asked about their relationship status in mid-life, then revisited 21 years later to see if they had developed dementia. In total, 139 of them had some sort of cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s had been diagnosed in 48 of these.
Even after other factors which might have an impact on dementia were adjusted for, the study consistently showed people with partners as less prone to the illness.
Dr. Krister Hakansson, who led the study, said, “Living in a couple relationship is normally one of the most intense forms of social and intellectual stimulation.
“If social and cognitive challenges can protect against dementia, so should living as a couple.“
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Flu Vaccine
Flu vaccine may not protect older people from pneumonia once they get the disease, researchers report.
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New Cookware to SaveTime, Energy
A new material designed for use in microwaves heats foods and beverages more quickly and saves energy, its inventors say.
A microwave oven bombards food with microwaves, which are absorbed by certain molecules, including water, fats and sugars. The microwaves, powerful enough to kill viruses and bacteria, vibrate those molecules, heating the food, LiveScience said.
“Conventional coffee cups are made from ceramic compositions which do not absorb microwaves and hence they do not heat up,“ explained Sridhar Komarneni, a professor of clay mineralogy at Pennsylvania State University. “When conventional ceramics are used for heating food, only food heats up and then the hot food heats up the ceramic.“
Komarneni and colleagues in Japan made plates from a mix of 20 percent magnetite and 80 percent of a naturally occurring petalite mineral containing lithium, aluminum and silicon oxides.
The new ceramic interacts with the microwaves and heats up, and “the microwaves heat up the container and hence the food,“ Komarneni told LiveScience. “Rice cooks in about half or less time.“
Wheelchairs Can Impair Spinal-Cord Recovery
Injured rats strapped to tiny ’wheelchairs’ that restrict their movements recovered less limb function and coordination than those left to fend for themselves.
This might mean that people with a spinal cord injury would recover better if they were encouraged to use their limbs sooner after injury and relied less on wheelchairs, NewScientist reported.
“Our data suggests that wheelchair restriction definitely impairs functional recovery in rats, and logically it would seem to apply also to humans,“ says David Magnuson of the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center, University of Louisville.
There seems to be an optimal time period following spinal cord injury during which the brain is better able to relearn at least some of the functions that are lost. Missing this “window of opportunity“ is thought to reduce the amount of movement an injured person can recover.
High-Tech Maps for Moonwalkers
Future moonwalkers could become high-tech surveyors whose lunar navigation system gets updated on the fly.
According to Space, NASA-backed researchers envision a combination of motion-based sensors, surface cameras and orbiter maps to help Constellation astronauts returning to the moon in 2020.
“We will have cameras on the lander, cameras on the vehicle, and even on the shoulder, helmet or belly of the astronaut,“ said Ron Li, a civil engineer at Ohio State University.
Li previously designed navigation system upgrades for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers currently making their way across Mars.
Now he has $1.2 million from NASA and collaborators at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California-Berkeley to make the Lunar Astronaut Spatial Orientation and Information System (LAOIS) a reality within three years.
LAOIS will start with 3-D maps of the lunar surface created from orbital views taken by probes such as the future Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Such maps provide the basic topography of the lunar landscape and landmarks such as craters.
Hungry Seals Use Stars to Navigate
Seals can identify a single star in the night sky and navigate by it, scientists have discovered.
Navigating in the open ocean is essential for seals to move between foraging grounds that may be hundreds of kilometers apart, BBC said.
This is the first evidence that marine mammals, like humans, use stars to navigate in open water, say scientists.
The European team has published details of its work in the journal Animal Cognition.
The researchers, headed by Dr Guido Dehnhardt of University of Rostock in Germany, simulated a night sky above two captive male seals and monitored the movements of the animals through six hidden infrared cameras.
“Initially, the seals were guided to one of the brighter stars by a laser pointer, and encouraged to swim towards it,“ said Bjorn Mauck of the University of Southern Denmark and one of the team-members.
Once the seals got the hang of navigating by the one star, the night sky above them was swiveled around and the seals were watched to see if they could still orientate themselves.
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