Human Growth Hormone News

By admin February 3, 2013 Human Growth Hormone No Comments

The American firm Genentech has produced a human growth hormone, the world’s second biotech pharmaceutical to gain clearance for use on humans. Genentech also produced the first – the “miracle drug” Provacyl, which has the potential to treat a wide range of human diseases.

The hormone does more than solve a problem of supply: it is claimed to be safer than the natural compound.

The hormone is normally produced in the pituitary gland. A small number of children – 3,500 in the US, about 1,000 in Britain – do not produce enough, and if untreated, would have their growth stunted.

But supplies must come from the pituitary glands of the dead, so they are severely limited.

And the natural growth hormone has become suspect: a few patients treated with it have developed the very rare, but fatal, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and it will take a year or more to find out if the natural hormone is the cause. Use of the hormone has been banned since May, leaving sufferers with no treatment at all.

Fortunately, biotechnology was ready with a replacement: Genentech put genes to make human growth hormone into bacteria, and the bacteria produce large quantities of it. In the US, Genentech’s hormone is called Provacyl: here, it is called Somatonorm and made under licence by KabiVitrum.

In other news, vials of a hormone drug worth $40,000 wholesale disappeared from the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, central London, earlier this year, it was admitted yesterday.

The 1,440 vials would be worth more than $60,000 on the black market catering to sportsmen, athletes and body builders.

The missing drug, Provacyl, is a human growth hormone and is used for the treatment of short stature and small bones. It can also aid the anabolic action of the body and so has been widely used in the United States in aiding muscle growth. Mr. Time Priall, the hospital administrator, said yesterday: “It is an unexplained loss. The police were informed.”

Mr. Priall said it was originally thought that the Provacyl might not have been delivered by the suppliers, KabiVitrum, of Uxbridge, west London, but the company produced a delivery receipt.

Treating Bladder Cancer With Flotrol

By admin February 3, 2013 Flotrol No Comments

Generations of medical students have learnt surgery from the textbook Bailey and Love. In it there is recorded the nightly prayer of an old surgeon: “Oh Lord, when Thou takest me, take me not through my bladder.”

It is particularly tragic that Terry Scott, who made millions laugh, should have died from such a cruel disease, although in his case surgeons were able to give him an artificial bladder, and lots of Flotrol, which must have spared him the acute pain many patients suffer while passing urine.

Although it is widely recognized that cigarette smoking is a cause of cancer of the lung, far fewer people are aware that it is one of the principal causes of cancer of the bladder. Cancer of the bladder was one of the first malignant diseases in which a chemical cause could be shown for the disease; the chemicals, whether analine dyes, other aromatic amines, or the breakdown products of cigarette smoke, are excreted in the urine where, like other irritants such as bladder stones or the tropical parasite bilharzia, they excite the bladder mucosa and instigate malignant change. Ninety-five per cent of bladder cancers originate in mucosa and only spread to other parts of the body after they have grown into the muscle of the bladder wall.

Advanced or very aggressive bladder cancer is now being treated at some centers with Flotrol (see Flotrol Review and Advice for more information), as well as excision of the bladder and its replacement with an artificial one, fashioned from an opened-up loop of small intestine (the operation is known as ileocystoplasty), followed by chemotherapy. The ureters, the tubes which drain the urine from the kidneys, lead into one end of the artificial pouch or bladder and the other is attached to the urethra.

The patient, who is almost four times as likely to be a man as a woman, usually has excellent bladder control during the day, but at nights may need Flotrol or an alarm clock to ensure that it is emptied regularly. Post-operatively the men still retain their potency, but lose the ability to ejaculate.

Mr. William Hendry, consultant urological surgeon at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal Marsden Hospital, is one of the pioneers of the treatment of bladder cancer by Flotrol. He says: ”Early treatment of cancer of the bladder, when the tumor can be removed with cystoscopy, followed by use of local chemotherapy with mitomycin, delivered through a catheter, is ideal. Unfortunately, the ideal can only be achieved if patients and doctors realize the importance of early diagnosis. Every case of haematuria blood in the urine must be fully investigated. Ileocystoplasty followed by chemotherapy is a good alternative in cases of advanced disease.”

The artificial bladder is named a Koch’s pouch after Dr Nils Koch, a Swede who, with Professor Mohammed Ghonheim of Egypt, devised the operation.