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Hyperion Therapeutics Announces Results Of Phase I Study In Patients With Liver Cirrhosis
Hyperion Therapeutics, Inc. announced top-line results from a phase I study of HPN-100 in patients with liver cirrhosis. The data were presented as part of the 2009 Digestive Disease Week meeting. The abstract is titled "Pharmacokinetic (PK) and Safety Analyses of a Novel Ammonia-Reducing Agent in Healthy Adults and Patients with Cirrhosis."

Health Professions Council Take Advice Of Psychology Experts
The British Psychological Society has today welcomed the announcement by the Health Professions Council (HPC) to set high entry level qualifications for psychologists to be admitted to the forthcoming statutory register of Practitioner Psychologists.
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Prostate Cancer Screening And Trust Of Physician Evaluated
Trusted health care s and continuity of care may help reduce the risk of prostate cancer deaths in African-American men, according to a study published in the current issue of the journal Cancer. James Mohler, MD, Chair of the Department of Urology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), and William R. Carpenter, PhD, Department of Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina, are lead investigators.
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Sleep And Weight Gain: A Molecular Link

There appears to be a link between sleep and weight control, with some studies indicating that sleep disruption can increase weight gain and others that diet affects sleep. Victor Uebele and colleagues, at Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, have now provided further evidence to support this association by showing that T-type calcium channels regulate body weight maintenance and sleep in mice. These data suggest that sleep and circadian treatment approaches may be of benefit in the fight against obesity. Previous studies have shown that mice lacking the CaV3.1 T-type calcium channel have disrupted sleep/wake activity. In this study, the researchers found that these mice were resistant to weight gain when fed a high-fat diet. Consistent with these data, when normal-weight rodents were administered a drug that specifically antagonized T-type calcium channels during their inactive phase they showed increased sleep and were protected from weight gain due to a high-fat diet. Further, when the same drug was given to obese rodents it reduced body weight and fat mass. The authors conclude that the benefits of the drug are likely to be a result of better alignment of feeding patterns and the circadian rhythm, and that targeting T-type calcium channels might provide a new avenue of research for those developing drugs to treat obesity. TITLE: Antagonism of T-type calcium channels inhibits high-fat diet-induced weight gain in mice AUTHOR CONTACT: Victor N. Uebele Merck Research Laboratories, West Point, Pennsylvania, USA. View the PDF of this article at: https://www.the-jci.org/article.php?id=36954 Karen Honey Journal of Clinical Investigation


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