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California Gov. Schwarzenegger's State Budget Plan Includes Cuts To County HIV/AIDS Services
The Santa Maria Times examines how California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger"s (R) plan to reduce state spending by more than $5 billion over the next two fiscal years, which includes millions of dollars in funding cuts to HIV prevention, education and treatment programs, could affect county residents (Womack, Santa Maria Times, 5/31). According to the Times, hundreds of residents in Santa Barbara County -- including more than 100 AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) clients -- would potentially be affected by the funding cuts (Santa Maria Times, 5/31). The proposal also would result in $1.8 million in cuts to programs for low-income residents living with HIV in Riverside County, the Desert Sun reports (Brambila, Desert Sun, 5/29). The plan, issued by Schwarzenegger last week, includes $55.5 million in cuts to California"s ADAP and other state Office of AIDS programs (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 5/27).

Cegedim Dendrite Launches Innovative COUNTERxFEIT DETECT Program
Cegedim Dendrite announced the launch of COUNTERxFEIT DETECT, a new offering that will assist pharmaceutical companies in identifying counterfeit product and determining where it entered their United States supply chains. Cegedim Dendrite is the leading provider of compliance technology solutions and services in the pharmaceutical industry.
News of the day
Fate Of Tiller's Clinic Expected To Be Decided This Week
The family of murdered Kansas abortion provider George Tiller is expected to decide this week whether his Wichita clinic will reopen, NPR"s "Morning Edition" reports. Tiller"s clinic is one of the few in the U.S. that performs abortions later in pregnancy, and many abortion-rights advocates are concerned whether women in need of abortions in the second and third trimester would be able to obtain care if it were not reopened. LeRoy Carhart, a Nebraska abortion provider who worked with Tiller at his clinic for four years, said that although it is a difficult time for abortion providers, he hopes that the family will reopen the clinic. "This is a job that we took, and we were well-aware of the risks when we started, as was Dr. Tiller," he said. Providing abortion services in the second and third trimester is "a service that"s so needed that it"s worth the risks," he added (Lohr, "Morning Edition," NPR, 6/9). Carhart also said that although no decision on Tiller"s clinic has been made, he "want[s] to assure the press and the women of America ... that we will somehow, somewhere continue to provide abortions later in gestation" (Duin, Washington Times, 6/9).According to Carhart, there are only about 10 providers in the U.S. who perform abortions in the second and third trimesters, including a few hospitals that do not advertise the services. "Morning Edition" reports that most women"s health care providers either are not trained or do not want to receive training to perform the procedure later in pregnancy. Providers who do tend to be older and face extreme pressure from antiabortion-rights advocates. Data from the Guttmacher Institute show that about 1% of all abortions performed in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks" gestation. Elizabeth Nash of Guttmacher said that 37 states have laws that limit access to abortion after a certain point in pregnancy, "usually around 24 weeks, which is at the end of the second trimester." She added that most of those states only allow abortions to save the life of the woman or if her physical health is in jeopardy. Pratima Gupta, an ob-gyn in California, said that she is concerned about what will happen to Tiller"s patients. Gupta said Tiller "had patients that were scheduled for Monday morning. What happened to those patients for the rest of the week, the rest of the month? Those patients are the ones who need us" ("Morning Edition," NPR, 6/9).
Endocrinology

Scientists Locate Disease Switches

New perspectives in the treatment of disease The team, led by Professor Matthias Mann of Novo Nordisk Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany, have detected 3,600 acetylation switches in 1,750 different proteins. These switches, which regulate protein functions, may prove to be a crucial factor in human ageing and the onset and treatment of diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer"s disease and Parkinson"s disease. The results of the team"s work have been published in the current edition of the journal Science. "This is more than just a technological achievement, it has also expanded the number of known acetylation switches by a factor of six, and it gives us for the first time a comprehensive insight into this type of protein modification," says Professor Mann. A given protein can perform more than one task, and how it behaves is regulated by adding a small molecule that acts as a "switch" which can turn on the different tasks. Acetylation is essential for cells" ability to function normally. Defective protein regulation plays a role in ageing and the development of diseases such as cancer, Parkinson"s and Alzheimer"s. "With the new mapping, we can now begin to study and describe how acetylation switches respond to medications that could repair the defects on them. It can have a major impact on medical care," says Professor Mann, adding that medications to repair the damaged protein regulation are already showing promising in the treatment of cancer. Cooperating proteins The team also discovered that acetylation modification occurs primarily on proteins that work together, and that these switches have much greater consequences for the organism"s function than previously thought. In one example, the function of Cdc28, an important growth protein in yeast, can be disrupted by the addition of an acetylation button, ultimately affecting the organism"s ability to survive. The results of the team"s research were published in the 17 July 2009 edition of Science. University of Copenhagen


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