DRUG SIDE EFFECTS - IS YOUR DOCTOR LISTENING?

According to a study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, the number of reports of serious adverse events related to drug treatment has more than doubled in the past decade, rising from just under 35,000 in 1998 to almost 90,000 in 2005 (Moore 2007).

Similarly, the number of deaths recorded as directly attributable to drug treatment almost tripled in the same period.

The data were gathered from the Food and Drug Administration's adverse event reporting system, which relies solely on the voluntary submission of reports by US physicians or drug manufacturers. It is therefore highly probable that these figures, alarming though they are, represent a significant under-estimate of the extent of the problem. For example, another study, published last month in the journal Drug Safety, found that physicians very often downplay, dismiss or ignore their patients' reports of drug side effects (Golomb 2007).

The study focused on 650 patients who were taking statins to lower their cholesterol. Statins are well known to be associated with certain very specific side effects, including muscular aches and pains and (less often) "fuzzy" thinking, lapses in concentration or memory changes. The study's authors found that in almost 50 percent of cases, when patients complained of these specific issues, and asked if the problems they were experiencing could be related to the statins they were taking, physicians dismissed the possibility out of hand.

If physicians do not recognize a problem as being drug-related, they are very unlikely to report it to the FDA. Neither are they likely to be sufficiently watchful for signs of potentially serious or life-threatening drug-induced adverse events.

In an interview with Reuters Health, the study's lead author is quoted as saying that patients whose doctors dismiss their concerns should probably look elsewhere for medical care. "In general, patients should always have physicians that they feel are hearing them," she said.

MUSCADINE GRAPES INHIBIT PROSTATE CANCER CELLS

"We have discovered...grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain, nor Italy hath no greater..." So spoke Governor Ralph Lane in a 1585 letter to Sir Walter Raleigh. He was describing the muscadine, a slip-skin variety of grape that grows in abundance in the southern half of the United States. In fact, one of the "mother vines" discovered by Walter Raleigh's settlers is still alive on Roanoke Island: it has a trunk 2 feet thick and covers half an acre of ground.

Interestingly, muscadine grape skin extract (abbreviated MSKE) does not contain significant amounts of resveratrol, a better known grape skin component which has been shown to prevent the growth of prostate cancer cell cultures. However, just this month, an extract of muscadine grape skins was shown to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells in a National Cancer Institute (NCI) laboratory. The results were published in the September 1, 2007, issue of the journal Cancer Research.

The team of researchers, led by Jeffrey E. Green, showed that MSKE significantly inhibited the growth of cancerous prostate cells, while leaving normal prostate cells unaffected. It did so via apoptosis, or programmed cell death. By contrast, resveratrol seems to work by blocking the cell cycle, which is the sequence of steps that a cell moves through as it grows and divides. It is thought that both mechanisms are normally used by the body in an attempt to rid itself of cancer.

According to Dr. Green, "These results show that MSKE may have potent anti-tumor activities in the lab that differ from the effects of resveratrol. Further studies of MSKE will be necessary to determine if this extract has potential as a chemopreventive or therapeutic agent."

One interesting fact is that the scientists tested MSKE in cells that represent the various stages of prostate cancer tumor growth. All stages responded to MSKE, suggesting that the active compounds found in this muscadine extract could inhibit tumor development even at very early stages.