GLG News by IBD Gastroenterologists

High blood acetaldehyde levels are associated with more liver and perhaps pancreatic damage and inflammation thus enhancing neoplasia. How would high blood acetaldehyde levels induce colorectal cancer? Also through inflammation. The alcohol dehydrogenase polymorphism is common in Asians yet there is...

Previous 'simple' molecular tests for cancer have ussually not worked out in practice. Although microRNA's have cellular control function for multiple genes it is premature to believe that these tests will be more successful.

The best epidemiologic data states that the incidence of colorectal cancer as well as most other cancers falls drammatically after age 85. Thus screening for a dissappearing disease makes no sense. Also colorectal cancer takes an average of 8-10 years to develop so that screening for average risk individuals...

The authors of this study obtained the data while representing plaintiffs and their lawyers.Surely they come from a biased viewpoint and perhaps more biased than groups of researchers who have performed a study may not have written all of a final manuscript but had the chance to review it.      ...

The value of accounts managed by E-Trade has fallen by 12% despite opening up 16,000 new accounts.  This implies that either a large number of accounts have been lost to E-Trade or there has been a significant decrease in the value per account.  If the overall number of accounts has decreased...

Collaboration between academia and the pharmaceutical industry in genetic studies of common diseases is to be lauded since the pharmaceutical makers have large data banks of human material.It is pertinent that the PI's in the specific studies cited in the article are from academia.

Traveller's diarrhea can be a formidable problem particularly in susceptible(eg older) patients. The invasive E Coli is particularly virulent.

- The FDA is under significant scrutiny and pressure following slow dissemination of new data regarding the safety of COX-2 inhibitors (ie-Vioxx) and the "-glitazones" (Avandia/Actos) - PPIs are among the most widely used medications wordwide (mostly prescribed) with tens on millions of users annually,...

Technique mimics the Nissen fundoplication which is done surgically or by laparoscpy. Three months evaluation is useless. For example there is progressive loss of efficacy of Nissen fundoplication over a few years, so that evaluation of this technique will take at least 2-3 years. 

The current treatment for patients with hepatitis C genotype 1 is not optimal. The standard therapy with Peg interferon and ribavirin has an efficacy rate of 48%. The preliminary efficacy data of the combination therapy by adding telaprivir to peg interferone and ribavirin is outstanding at 88%. Only...