New hope for sufferers of Lyme disease

Settlement Announced in Landmark Investigation of Lyme Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Guidelines

Patients' rights groups applaud Connecticut's Attorney General Blumenthal's Settlement in anti-trust case against powerful medical society

Hartford, CT Patients' rights groups today hailed Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal's announcement of a settlement in a landmark antitrust investigation into the Lyme treatment guidelines of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

"My office uncovered undisclosed financial interests held by several of the most powerful IDSA panelists," said Blumenthal. "The IDSA's guideline panel improperly ignored, or minimized, consideration of alternative medical opinion and evidence regarding chronic Lyme disease, potentially raising serious questions about whether the recommendations reflected all relevant science."

The groundbreaking settlement announced today forces a complete review of the IDSA guidelines by a new panel free from conflicts of interest, specifically excluding previous panel members. This panel will consider a range of scientific evidence in a public forum broadcast live over the internet and will be overseen by a specialist in financial conflicts of interest in medicine.

1: Nutr Health. 2007;19(1-2):9-19.From homicide to happiness--a commentary on omega-3 fatty acids in human society. Cleave Award Lecture.Hibbeln JR.

Section on Nutritional Neurosciences, Laboratory of Membrane Biochenmistr and Biophysics, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Bethesda, MD 20892-2088, USA. jhibbeln@mail.nih.gov

The field of omega-3 fatty acid deficiencies as reversible risk factors in major psychiatric disorders has flourished in the last decade. Treatment recommendations of the American Psychiatric Association may be considered for application to more normative states of psychiatric health. Considered here is the proposition that an increased risk of personality disorders, and an increased sense of despair in normative populations, might be considered as symptoms of deficiencies of omega-3 fatty acids. The major changes in the essential fatty acid composition of the food supply, including increased availability of the omega-6 linoleic acid, may be correlated not only with increased risks of homicide, but also increased risks of suicide and suboptimal social cohesion.

PMID: 18309762

Cross-talk of vitamin D and glucocorticoids in hippocampal cells.Obradovic D, Gronemeyer H, Lutz B, Rein T.
Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany. darja@mpipsykl.mpg.de

There is growing evidence for a role of vitamin D3 signalling in the brain. In this study, we investigated the influence of vitamin D3, in combination with glucocorticoids, on differentiation of the hippocampal progenitor line HIB5, as well as survival of rat primary hippocampal cells. In HIB5, pre-treatment with dexamethasone (Dex) alone inhibited neurite outgrowth and abolished activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway during platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-induced differentiation, consistent with previous findings. Interestingly, pre-treating HIB5 with vitamin D3 significantly reduced these effects of Dex and, in addition, lowered the transactivational function of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) in transient reporter gene assays. A further impact of vitamin D3 on glucocorticoid effects was observed in a rat primary hippocampal culture known to be particularly sensitive to prolonged GR activation. In this model, Dex induced considerable cell death after 72 h of exposure in vitro. However, 24 h of pre-treatment with low doses of vitamin D3 substantially reduced the degree of Dex-induced apoptosis in primary hippocampal cells. Taken together, our experiments demonstrate a cross-talk between vitamin D3 and glucocorticoids in two hippocampal models, a feature that may have important implications in disorders with dysregulated glucocorticoid signalling, including major depression.

PMID: 16336217