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Thursday, May 1, 2003

Infant pneumonia vaccine may cut families' illness

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES

A new pneumonia vaccine for infants dramatically reduces serious illness in young children and could prevent the spread of the bacteria to adults, researchers report.

The first pneumonia vaccine for babies was approved in 2000 and is now recommended for all children younger than 2. It fights infections caused by pneumococcus bacteria, including pneumonia, blood poisoning, meningitis and ear infections.

Researchers say they believe the vaccine, Prevnar, reduced the rate of blood infections and meningitis in children younger than 2 by nearly 70 percent.

"The vaccine is working. It is not only preventing diseases in high-risk children but also in their families," said Dr. Cynthia Whitney, who led the study for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

How many infants have been immunized isn't known yet, but the vaccine has been widely adopted.

The findings appear in today's New England Journal of Medicine, along with a three-year study of an older pneumonia vaccine recommended for everyone older than 65. In that study of 47,365 people, the vaccine cut the risk of serious blood infections almost in half, but offered no protection against pneumonia.

"There's a benefit of the vaccine. It's just the benefit doesn't extend to prevention of pneumonia from what we can tell," said Dr. Lisa Jackson, who led the CDC-funded research at the Group Health Cooperative, an HMO based in Seattle.

Better anthrax treatments

Scientists say they've found potential new targets for drugs and vaccines against the anthrax germ by deciphering and analyzing the bacterium's complete genetic makeup.

Studying the 5.2 million "letters" of the germ's DNA code, researchers identified several genes that might play key roles in anthrax infections. Such genes might prove to be good leads for developing new treatments.

Anthrax infections respond to antibiotics if administered early enough, and a vaccine is already available. But scientists are always looking for clues to devising better medicines and vaccines by learning about the inner workings of a germ.

The analysis is presented in today's issue of the journal Nature.

Nobel winners get Albany Prize

Two doctors, whose Nobel Prize-winning studies led to the development of cholesterol-lowering drugs, were awarded the nation's richest prize for medicine and biomedical research yesterday.

Michael Brown, 62, and Joseph Goldstein, 63, both of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, received the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize, second only in monetary value to the Nobel Prize, worth more than $900,000.

Brown and Goldstein discovered human body cells have receptors that determine how much cholesterol circulates in the blood. Their research earned them the 1985 Nobel Prize in medicine and laid the groundwork for other scientists to develop cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins.

The prize recognized their work on how a family of proteins regulates the amount of cholesterol and their discovery of an insulin-sensitive regulator that holds promise in treating a rare form of diabetes.

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