(Press-News.org) LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL 5 PM ET on JAN. 5, 2011) – A ground-breaking antibiotic therapy developed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the first potential drug treatment to provide irritable bowel syndrome patients with long-lasting relief of their symptoms even after they stop taking the medication, according to a study published in the Jan. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Unlike in traditional therapies, such as when taking antidepressant and other medications that have benefits only while on the drug, patients in the study reported relief of their symptoms extended for weeks after completing treatment with rifaximin. Rifaximin is a minimally absorbed antibiotic that stays in the gut. Specifically, patients reported relief from bloating, less abdominal pain and improved stool consistency for up to 10 weeks.
While the concept of bacteria playing a key role in this condition was controversial when first unveiled a decade ago, this research confirms that bacteria in the gut, also known as "gut flora," trigger the symptoms of the chronic condition, affecting an estimated 30 million people in the United States.
These findings show that targeted antibiotics provide safe and effective long-lasting relief for this condition, said Mark Pimentel, M.D., GI Motility Program director and principal investigator of the clinical trials at Cedars-Sinai.
"For years, the treatment options for IBS patients have been extremely limited," Pimentel said. "IBS often does not respond well to treatments currently available, such as dietary changes and fiber supplements alone. With this antibiotic treatment, the patients feel better, and they continue to feel better after stopping the drug. This means that we did something to strike at the cause of the disease."
In two, 600-plus patient double-blind trials, IBS patients with mild to moderate diarrhea and bloating were randomly assigned to take a 550 milligram dose of rifaximin or placebo three times daily for two weeks. Study participants were then followed for 10 weeks more. About 40 percent of patients who took the drug reported they had significant relief from bloating, abdominal pain and loose or watery stools. Further, that relief was sustained for weeks after they stopped taking the antibiotic.
Doctors commonly categorize IBS patients with a "constipation predominant" condition, a "diarrhea-predominant" condition, or an alternating pattern of diarrhea and constipation. In addition, patients often experience abdominal pain or cramps, excess gas or bloating, and visible abdominal distension.
Because the cause of the disease had been elusive, treatments for the disease historically have focused on relieving its symptoms with medications that either slow or speed up the digestive process. Earlier research by Pimentel and colleagues documents a link between bloating, the most common symptom, and bacterial fermentation in the gut related to small intestine bacterial overgrowth, or SIBO.
Rifaximin is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat travelers' diarrhea and hepatic encephalopathy.
Besides Cedars-Sinai, other centers participating in the clinical trials included Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Connecticut Gastroenterology Institute in Bristol, Conn.
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Rifaximin is marketed by Salix Pharmaceuticals Inc. Salix also provided funding for the studies. Pimentel discovered the use of rifaximin for IBS, and Cedars-Sinai holds patent rights to this discovery and has licensed rights to the invention to Salix. Dr. Pimentel is a consultant to Salix, Inc, and serves on its scientific advisory board.
END
10-Dec 2010 What happens when galaxies crash together? For years, these cosmic collisions have been blamed for triggering violent outbursts at the hearts of galaxies. Now, a remarkable piece of detective work has given a verdict: galactic mergers do not usually whet the appetite of the black holes that power these active galactic nuclei, meaning other, less dramatic phenomena are responsible.
Most galaxies, including our own, have a huge but well-behaved black hole at their heart, while some have messy eaters that suck in vast amounts of matter which then shines brightly ...
This new infrared image of the Lagoon Nebula was captured as part of a five-year study of the Milky Way using ESO's VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This is a small piece of a much larger image of the region surrounding the nebula, which is, in turn, only one part of a huge survey.
Astronomers are currently using ESO's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) to scour the Milky Way's central regions for variable objects and map its structure in greater detail than ever before. This huge survey is called VISTA Variables in the Via ...
AT A GLANCE
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) released its first-ever guidelines for the treatment of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which will help physicians determine the most appropriate care for infections due to the common bacterium.
MRSA is the most common cause of skin infections that send people to the emergency room. Its invasive form kills about18,000 people a year.
Treatment of MRSA varies widely. The guidelines will help physicians make good treatment decisions, which may mean not prescribing antibiotics for some ...
[EMBARGOED FOR JAN. 5, 2011] Two doses of the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine provide excellent protection in children against this highly contagious and, in some cases, severe disease. To be published in the February 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the findings support the two-dose vaccine regimen recommended in the United States since 2006. (Please see below for a link to the study online.)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began recommending a single dose of varicella vaccine in children aged 1 to 13 years old in 1995. Although the ...
Encouraging new evidence suggests that the bulk of the world's fisheries – including small-scale, often non-industrialized fisheries on which millions of people depend for food – could be sustained using community-based co-management.
"The majority of the world's fisheries are not – and never will be – managed by strong centralized governments with top-down rules and the means to enforce them," according to Nicolas Gutiérrez, a University of Washington doctoral student in aquatic and fishery sciences who is lead author of a paper that goes online Jan. 5 in the journal ...
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The conventional view of the history of the Earth is that the oceans became oxygen-rich to approximately the degree they are today in the Late Ediacaran Period (about 600 million years ago) after staying relatively oxygen-poor for the preceding four billion years. But biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside have found evidence that shows that the ocean went back to being "anoxic" or oxygen-poor around 499 million years ago, soon after the first appearance of animals on the planet, and remained anoxic for 2-4 million years. What's more, ...
Personal motivation may be the biggest factor in determining the length of time it takes for a patient to return to work following a total knee replacement, according to new research published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS).
"Although the physical demands of a patient's job certainly have some influence on their ability to return to work following a primary total knee replacement, the patient's characteristics, particularly motivation, play a more important role," said study author Joseph F. Styron, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University.
According ...
Genetic resistance to antibiotics is not the only trick bacteria use to resist eradication– they also have a second defence strategy known as persistence that can kick in.
Researchers reporting in the Journal of Medical Microbiology have now demonstrated for the first time that interplay occurs between the two mechanisms to aid bacterial survival. The findings could lead to novel, effective approaches to treat multi-drug resistant (MDR) infections.
'Persister' bacterial cells are temporarily hyper-resistant to all antibiotics at once.
They are able to survive (normally) ...
London, UK (January 6, 2011) - For global warming policy, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (Copenhagen Summit) was a major disappointment. Designed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, the Summit concluded without a binding agreement because of deep divisions on the distribution of emissions reductions and costs. In addition, the United States failed to take action on a carbon cap-and-trade bill in 2010. Confronting this policy vacuum, leading climate economist William Nordhaus argues in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ...
Peer into any stream in a South American rainforest and you may well see a small shoal of similar-looking miniature catfish. But don't be fooled into thinking that they are all the same species.
An extensive investigation of South American Corydoras catfish, (reported in Nature 6.1.11), reveals that catfish communities- although containing almost identically coloured and patterned fish, could actually contain three or more different species.
Establishing for the first time that many species are mimetic; that is, they evolve to share the same colour patterns for mutual ...
