...Thalidomide’s history is one of the darkest in pharmaceutical history. Today, Thalidomide is still used in the treatment of leprosy and multiple myeloma. Till date Thalidomide’s exact mode of action, essential to its efficacy is unclear and research in the last decade has led to the proposal of 16 possible mechanisms. Details of Thalidomide’s molecular mechanism and its molecular targets can help to reveal analogues lacking the teratogenic effects. This report will particularly focus on some of the recent studies into Thalidomide’s teratogenic mode of action on malignant MM cells; specifically its mode of action on cereblon (CRBN) in MM. Results Studies have revealed that Thalidomide directly binds with CRBN, a protein that forms a complex...
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...Thalidomide was developed in the 1950’s to treat seizures for patients with epilepsy. However, the drug was not successful in treating the seizures and soon after the drug became popular for its effectiveness as a sedative, sleep aid and to prevent morning sickness in pregnant women. Thalidomide was on the market worldwide, and pregnant women everywhere were taking the drug to combat emesis, or vomiting. Due to concerns of neurotoxicity, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not approve thalidomide for use in the United States. In the early 1960’s an estimated 10,000 babies were born with similar deformities worldwide. Researchers found that thalidomide might be the causative agent, and the drug was quickly taken off the market. Even...
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...Thalidomide is a drug used as a sedative, and is great use for treating prostate cancer and induction of drowsiness and sleep. Thalidomide had a trade name, which was called contergan. It was first introduced in 1957 by a West German pharmaceutical company called Chemie Grunenthal. In 1957, thalidomide has no information about the side effects, so people used it freely. In 1958, the drug was licensed to other countries, so it was becoming a popular drug in solving morning sickness. By 1961, researchers found a correlation between thalidomide and birth defects in children. Then in 1964, an israeli Professor was interested in the positive side effects of thalidomide. They eventually found that thalidomide has positive effects in treating other diseases, and that when the FDA approved it. Around the same time, scientists discovered the immunomodulatory properties when testing thalidomide with leprosy patients. In 2006, it was discovered that thalidomide is useful in treating Multiple Myeloma. In the past, Thalidomide was used for nausea in pregnant woman, but over time scientists...
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...mother that she didn’t have to keep her. Mandy was one of over 10,000 babies born globally with a disability caused by the drug Thalidomide. Born without arms, she was given a life expectancy of no more than 19 years; now at age 54, Mandy is starting to feel the painful effects of her life-long compensation for her disability (Cawley, 2013). Thalidomide was originally produced by the German pharmaceutical company Grunenthal, as an anticonvulsant. Early tests showed that the drug was inadequate for this purpose but had sedative properties. The drug was later used as a sleeping pill and prescribed to pregnant women to treat morning sickness. When the damage...
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...MULTIPEL MYELOOM : Prof. Dr. Michel Delforge Hematologie Universitaire Ziekenhuizen Leuven Samenvatting De perspectieven voor patiënten met multipel myeloom zijn de voorbije jaren sterk verbeterd. Gedurende de voorbije jaren is de behandeling geëvolueerd naar een geïntegreerde aanpak, gebaseerd op beter ziekte-inzicht en nieuwe geneesmiddelen. Een eerste revolutie was er begin van de jaren negentig door de introductie van de hoge dosis chemotherapie gevolgd door autologe stamceltransplantatie. De voorbije jaren heeft de opkomst van de immunomodulatoren thalidomide en lenalidomide, en de proteasoomremmer bortezomib een bijkomende en krachtige impuls gegeven aan de therapeutische mogelijkheden. Door een optimaal sekwentieel of gecombineerd gebruik van de meer traditionele en deze nieuwere behandelingen komt de gemiddelde levensverwachting van myeloompatiënten erg dicht bij de tien jaar. Een optimaal gebruik van deze behandelingen vergt uiteraard naast een grondige kennis van de ziekte ook ervaring in de preventie en behandeling van de belangrijkste ziektesymptomen en therapie-gereleerde nevenwerkingen. Inleiding Multipel myeloom (MM) of ziekte van Kahler is een kwaadaardige hematologische aandoening die gekenmerkt wordt door een ongecontroleerde groei van plasmacellen in het beenmerg. Vrijwel steeds secreteren deze plasmacellen een monoklonaal eiwit (M-proteïne of paraproteïne) dat kan worden opgespoord in serum en/of urine. Dit paraproteïne is meestal een IgG, minder frequent...
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...Marxist Approach: This approach strongly believes that health and social care services provided in society only serve the interest of the more presiding social classes rather than those of the patients. This is because doctors and other health professionals are viewed as the agents of the ruling class hence, they ensure the labour force or proletariat are healthy by treating them from their illness as soon possible. Their main role is to provide company owners with a healthy workforce. In addition to all this, the government allows unhealthy products such as junk food and tobacco to be produced and sold in order for companies to make profits when in actual facts the ruling class is benefitting from the issues of illness. Large firms, factories and large cars pollute the atmosphere and environment as they as they continue to produce toxic waste creating the same problem of ill health as being concerned with the differences in social class. People in poor areas, who have a high level of unemployment and whose environments have been polluted face a higher level of illness and a lower life expectancy. The government does little to tackle the issues of the root causes of health and change situations as it will cost a lot of money. Interactionist approach: This approach looks at society in 3 levels. 1. The subjective (based on interpretation) experience of health and illness: this process is about people’s different meanings of health and how they define themselves as ill. For...
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...has helped the human race become more advanced in sciences and technology. Could the human medicine be as advanced if animal testing not allowed? Animal testing has opened many doors for medicine and helped so many people with tragic illnesses like cancer and AIDS. Animal experiments and testing is a good thing because it makes safe drugs, safe cosmetics, and helps people with deadly illness. Animal research has played a major part in the development of medicine to make it safer for people to take. First, testing new medications on animals is very important before releasing it to the public. For example, a drug called Thalidomide was prescribed to pregnant women in Europe to reduce nausea. The Thalidomide medication caused 10,000 babies to have birth defects. “It was largely avoided in North America because federal health and drug agencies believed Thalidomide had not been adequately tested on animals” (Research). Another reason why it is important to test drugs on animals before giving it to humans is because back in 1937 an antibacterial drug was released and killed 107 people. Manufacturers at the time did not have to prove if drugs were safe to take before being sold. Drug testing on animals goes to prove how important it is for drugs to be experimented on animals before being released to the public. Second, since people are so much like animals, we can use animal experiments to develop new products such as cosmetics. Cosmetic is a product used by many people all over...
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...Imagine taking medicine to try and heal your sore throat. But the medicine later kills you and 99 others because a chemical inside turned out to be poisonous. This medicine wasn’t tested on animals. Animal testing is needed to help prevent deaths like this from occurring. Medicines that were not tested on animals have caused human lives to be damaged or lost. For example, in the article “Animal Testing: Lifesaving Research Vs. Animal Welfare” Lois Sepahban states,“...doctors prescribed thalidomide to people to treat colds, headaches, and nausea during pregnancy. More than 10,000 children whose pregnant mothers took it for nausea were born with birth defects, including missing arms and legs. Thalidomide had not been tested on pregnant animals first.”. This is significant because, those ten thousand children could have been born as normal human beings. But, thalidomide wasn’t tested on animals so, any side effects were unknown. That untaken action caused innocent newborns to live broken and distorted lives. Therefore, testing on animals could’ve saved thousands of children....
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...I think that a movie, Rosemary’s Baby, directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, depicts the anxiety and fear of pregnancy which was based on actual social issues in the 1960s. Through this movie, I would like to talk about three remarkable subjects: Ira Levin, a hallucination scene, and Mia Farrow. Ira Levin is an American novelist who wrote a story of Rosemary’s Baby. He tends to write his novel based on an actual incident and social issue. For example, one of his works, the Stepford Wives in 1972, was based on Women's Liberation, the Counterculture of the 1960s in America. A story of this novel is that husbands, living in Stepford, are afraid of their wives to be assertive, so husbands kill their actual wives and create their own ideal obedient...
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...Cancer comes in many different types. The main focus in this video was blood cancer; the diseases that was talked about was multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Before the video discussed how the diseases took control of the body, they went into detail about blood. Blood is vital to our body because it contains liquid plasma and blood cells. Red blood cells have a very important job to carry oxygen throughout our body, and white blood cells fight infections. All blood cells are made in the bone marrow, which is where blood cancers do the most damage. The next part of the video discussed multiple myeloma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Multiple myeloma affects the ability of bone marrow to produce normal functioning cells....
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...Teratogens are substances in the environment that cross the placenta to damage the fetus. Mothers are usually exposed to them during pregnancy. They cause major damage during the embryonic stage. Teratogens also affect the still developing brain. The damage done depends on the amount of dosage taken in toxic substances. They damage unpredictably. There are many different types of teratogens. Medications, recreational drugs, stress and infectious disease are some examples of teratogens. Medications such as antibiotics, thalidomide, anti-seizure drugs, anti-psychotic drugs and antidepressants are very harmful for fetus development. Streptomycin is an antibiotic most commonly used to treat tuberculosis, was linked to causing hearing loss in children. According to about kids’ health website, thalidomide was discovered in the 1960s to treat morning sickness, when taken by pregnant women, it caused total or partial absence of the arms or legs in babies. Furthermore, anti-seizure medication have been linked to delayed development in infancy. Anti-psychotic drugs raise the risk of the baby developing heart problems. Lastly, anti-depressants in the third trimester of pregnancy can cause temporary jitteriness, excessive crying and eating difficulties in newborns. Antibiotics should be avoided during the sensitive stage of fetal development. Mothers should have a very thorough conversation with their physicians on effects of antibiotics, prescribed to them, on their babies. Recreational...
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...products to and for whom the product is essentially developed for. While my belief is that in any business there is the need to make a profit and constantly grow not only the assets but also the stakeholder’s investment, one has to analyze up to what point it is fine to stop benefiting the company’s financial health and maintain the ethical responsibility to the public. It does not seem ethical to price gouge customers simply for the benefit of the stakeholders; especially when the cost to manufacture the product has not increased with the rate of the price increase, and the best answer that can be provided when questioned on the rise of the cost of medicine is that the competitor costs more, but at the same the point can be made that thalidomide costs 40% less than the competitor and the company has invested the company’s profits in research and development to continuously better the product...
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...testing go through pain and suffering at the hands of researchers during testing. These animals are poked, burned, poisoned, and deprived of basic needs, infected with lethal diseases, addicted to drugs and brain damaged all in the name of scientific research. Discriminating against animals because they don’t have the cognitive ability, moral judgment, or language that we do is not any more justifiable than discriminating against someone (a human being) with severe mental disabilities. In addition, the drugs that pass animal tests are not always safe. For example, thalidomide, a sleeping pill from the 1950s, was tested on animals prior to its release caused an estimate of 10,000 babies to be born with severe birth deformities. They tested the drugs on pregnant mice, cats, rats, guinea pigs, and hamsters and the tests didn’t result in birth defects unless the drug was injected at extremely high doses ("Thalidomide," sciencemuseum.org.uk). Another example involves an arthritis drug, Vioxx. Vioxx, when tested on mice, showed that it had a protective effect on the hearts of mice, yet the drugs, when released, caused more the 27,000 heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before it was taken out of the market (“Vioxx Tragedy Spotlights Failure of Animal Research," pcrm.org). Today there are alternative testing methods that exist that can replace the need for animals during experiments. There’s artificial human skin, which is created from sheets of human cells that were grown in test...
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...indicate immaturity. The grasping reflex includes a baby grabbing things that touching their hands. Another type of reflex is a stepping reflex. This type of reflex can be indicated by a baby placing one foot in front of the other when in an upward position. The last two reflexes are Babinski reflexes and tonic- neck reflexes. Babinski reflexes are the spreading of the toes when the foot is touched, and tonic- neck reflexes is the change in the position of the head and arms when laid on the stomach (Rathus, 2016, pg.67) The last topic I found interesting was how the usage of drugs while pregnant affects the baby. Thalidomide, heroin, methadone, marijuana, cocaine, cigarettes and alcohol all have negative effects on a baby. The use of these types of drugs can cause babies to be born premature, have low birth weights, mental problems, and health problems. Thalidomide can cause a baby to be born without certain limbs. Heroin usage can cause motor delays and low birth weight. Birth defects and motor delays can occur due to cocaine. Alcohol can lead to fetal alcohol syndrome and cigarettes can cause babies to develop cardiovascular problems. Other items to avoid while pregnant are caffeine and certain vitamins (Rathus, 2016, pg 48). ...
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...One good example is thalidomide. Thalidomide was released in 1956 as a mild sedative used to treat nausea in pregnant women. One of it enantiomer was very good for nausea while the other caused dangerous birth defects in very low doses. Due to this it was taken off the market as many newborns were born deformed. Enantiomers of each other usually show different chemical reactions with other substances that are also enantiomers. Since most biological molecules are enantiomers themselves, there is usually a difference in the effects of two enantiomers on people. For example in pharmacology, often only one of a drug's enantiomers is responsible for the desired physiologic effects, while the other enantiomer is less active, inactive, or sometimes even responsible for adverse...
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