The News Review:

- Doctor Tonmoy Sharma faces the sack for unethical tests on patients
- Drug-Eluting Stents Safe After Heart Attack
- Complexities f Genetic Susceptibility To Tuberculosis Revealed

Doctor Tonmoy Sharma faces the sack for unethical tests on patients
Times nline – Mar 29, 2008
html”–>A report by the GMC’s Fitness To Practise panel concluded this week that DrSharma had put mentally unwell patients at risk and ethical rules had beenwilfully flouted. “The findings of the panel indicate serious failings of personal integrity andhonesty of good clinical research practice as regards to potential welfareof patients and participants in ethical research. which risks bringingthe reputation of the medical profession into disrepute. “The panel has found that the facts proved against you would not be insufficientto support a finding of serious professional misconduct” it reads.

Drug-Eluting Stents Safe After Heart Attack
Forbes – Mar 29, 2008
"This study confirms that the same benefits thatdrug-eluting stents offer other patients in preventing restenosis[re-narrowing] of the coronary arteries are still there forpatients with MI and there doesn't appear to be any trade-offin increased risk of repeat MI or death" Dr. Laura Mauri thestudy's lead researcher said in a prepared statement. "I would feel comfortable considering drug-eluting stentson the basis of these results — with the caveats that treatedpatients must be able to take antiplatelet therapy and that wedefinitely want to see even longer-term follow-up" addedMauri who is chief scientific officer at the Harvard ClinicalResearch Institute as well as a Brigham and Womens Hospitalcardiologist and an assistant professor of medicine at HarvardMedical School. More informationThe U. government has more information on.

Complexities f Genetic Susceptibility To Tuberculosis Revealed
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Mar 29, 2008
A small number will develop an active TB infection usually in their lungs occasionally progressing to "disseminated TB" — a condition in which failure of the immune system to control the infection allows its spread to other parts of the body. Some of the risk factors that determine whether individuals develop active TB following exposure are well known; these include HIV infection malnutrition and smoking. Sarah Dunstan and colleagues from the Wellcome Trust Major verseas Programme based at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the xford University Clinical Research Unit (UCRU) Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam previously identified the link between TB susceptibility and the role of a gene involved in the immune system known as TLR2 which is important for recognising and initiating the defensive response when the bacterium enters the body. People with a particular variant of TLR2 commonly found in the Vietnamese population are particularly susceptible to developing the most severe form of TB in which the infection spreads to the meninges the membranes that envelope the brain and the spinal cord. ne in three people who develop TB meningitis die even amongst those who receive hospital treatment. Now Caws and her colleagues have shown that the predisposition to developing TB meningitis appears to be strongest in people who carry the variant of TLR2 and who are infected with the specific Beijing strain of TB. "We are seeing an increasing number of cases of the Beijing strain worldwide a strain that is becoming more and more resistant to drugs" says Dr Caws.