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esearchers have long wondered why placebos — fake medications — sometimes help sick patients get better.

Now, a new study says placebos can help psoriasis patients get by on smaller doses of a steroid drug that dampens their immune systems.

The study authors, from the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, think they may be able to develop other treatments that rely on the placebo effect to boost the power of lower doses of existing drugs.

“Our study provides evidence that the placebo effect can make possible the treatment of psoriasis with an amount of drug that should be too small to work,” lead investigator Dr. Robert Ader, a professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry, said in a news release from the school. “While these results are preliminary, we believe the medical establishment needs to recognize the mind’s reaction to medication as a powerful part of many drug effects, and start taking advantage of it.”

There are limitations, however. Placebos can’t help people who are unconscious or stimulate the release of substances in the body, such as insulin, Ader said.

The researchers tested creams on 46 patients with mild and moderate cases of psoriasis. One group got fully medicated creams, while others got mixtures that were partially medicated or received full doses only part of the time.

In some cases, the patients seemed to do well despite not getting the full dose, suggesting a psychosomatic effect.

Elevated levels of three proteins show ovarian cancer is starting to grow years before women are diagnosed, but they do not increase soon enough to be an early indicator of the disease, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from a large clinical trial and identified 34 women with ovarian cancer along with a control group of 70 women who did not have cancer. Their blood samples were used to evaluate six proteins identified as potential indicators of ovarian cancers.

Levels of three of the proteins began to increase slightly in ovarian cancer patients three years before diagnosis but did not reach a level that could be detected in a screening program, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

“Even though an elevation appears to start in women with cancer maybe three years before her symptoms lead her to the doctor the levels aren’t really what we’d probably define as abnormal until within the last year before diagnosis,” wrote lead author Garnet Anderson of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

There is no simple and reliable screening program to test for ovarian cancer in women who do not have symptoms.

Ovarian cancer, which mainly strikes older women, causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. Women diagnosed in the earliest stages have a five-year survival rate of nearly 93 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.

SEEKING EARLY DETECTION

Researchers seeking to a screening program to detect ovarian cancer are looking for something similar to the PSA for prostate cancer, Anderson said.

PSA, or Prostate-specific antigen, is a protein monitored for early detection of prostate cancer in men.

“We’d like that for ovarian cancer because it’s clear that women who are detected at the stage where the disease is still confined to the ovaries do very well. Their prognosis is excellent,” Anderson said.

“CA125, which is one of the markers we looked at, is the best biomarker that’s been identified to date and our study confirms that and this prediagnostic period as well. But it’s not sufficiently accurate.”

In an accompanying editorial, Patricia Hartge of the National Cancer Institute said the authors had taken research at step closer to a successful screening design.

“The careful evaluation technique applied in the current study fits into a staged approach necessary for testing performance of early markers of disease,” Hartge wrote.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than $2.2 billion is spent on the treatment of ovarian cancer per year in the United States.

Confirming that it really is never too late to quit smoking, a new study finds that heart attack survivors who kick the habit live longer than those who keep puffing away.

The study, which followed more than 1,500 heart attack survivors for 13 years, also found a survival advantage for smokers who did not quit but managed to cut down on cigarettes.

Israeli researchers found that compared with first-time heart attack sufferers who continued to smoke, those who quit were 37 percent less likely to die during the study period. That was close to the risk reduction seen among heart attack survivors who had never smoked — who had a 43 percent lower risk of dying during the study than persistent smokers.

Meanwhile, patients who had quit smoking sometime before their heart attack were half as likely to die during the study period as smokers who kept up the habit.

The findings, reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, bolster the case for routinely offering heart attack patients smoking-cessation counseling — which other studies have suggested can lower the risk of further complications.

“Smokers who have had a heart attack should be provided with appropriate interventions to help them quit,” write Dr. Yariv Gerber and colleagues from Tel Aviv University.

The study included 1,521 adults age 65 and older who were treated at one of eight Israeli hospitals for a first-time heart attack in 1992 or 1993. At the time, 27 percent had never smoked, 20 percent were former smokers, and more than half were current smokers. After hospital discharge, a majority of smokers tried to quit; 35 percent managed to remain continuously abstinent over the next 10 to 13 years.

A total of 427 patients died during the 13-year study period. The risk was greatest among those who had continued to smoke, even with factors like obesity, exercise habits, education and income, and overall health taken into account.

And while quitting altogether was best, smokers who cut back after their heart attack also improved their outlook, Gerber’s team found.

Among the 381 patients who continued to smoke, the risk of dying during the study period declined by 11 percent for every five daily cigarettes they cut out.

The researchers point out that the quit rates in this study — with more than one-third continuously abstinent for at least a decade — were high as compared with the norm for smokers, but consistent with what’s been seen for heart attack survivors.

They also note that the benefits of quitting, either before or after a heart attack, are at least as great as those of other common therapies to prevent further heart problems — including cholesterol lowering, and use of aspirin and beta-blocker medications, which lower the risk of death by anywhere from 15 percent to 29 percent.