Interesting news for 1st week of 2019

B. Pharm, S.P.E.R, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi Race With Dreams! © 2015-2016 

Talcum powder can cause cancer! 

CANADA IS planning to restrict the use of talc in cosmetics, natural health products and nonprescription drugs. A draft report released by Health Canada, the government department looking after public health, on December 5, 2018, said it found that inhaling loose talc powders can damage the lungs. Using products containing talc in the female genital area, like baby powder, diaper creams and bath bombs is a possible cause of ovarian cancer, the report said. It added that the assessment did not find that ingesting talc in food or drugs or using it in pressed powder cosmetics like eyeshadows and blushes was harmful. The department has asked for comments over the draft findings. In fact, in July 2018, cosmetics manufacturer Johnson & Johnson paid 22 women in the US nearly $4.7 billion in a lawsuit linking baby powder to ovarian cancer.

Africa will be setting  up its first agency to check the spread of spurious drugs

ON DECEMBER 10, 2018, drug regulators and health experts from 55 African Union (AU) nations came together in Rwanda’s Kigali to rein in a giant killer: fake medicines in the continent. Sub-Saharan Africa received almost half of the world’s “fake and low-quality” medicines between 2013 and 2017, says the World Health Organization’s (who) report titled The Global Surveillance and Monitoring System of Substandard and Falsified Medical Products. It adds that fake drugs alone kill more than 0.16 million people suffering from malaria every year in the region. This  costs $38.5 million to patients and health providers for further care due to failure of treatment. 

In August 2017, AU member nations had floated the idea of setting up the continent’s first-ever drug harmonisation programme, under which a medicine entering Africa will be tested using  common regulatory guidelines. In May 2018, the idea was given shape when health ministers from member nations met in Geneva and adopted a treaty to set up the nodal African Medicines Agency (ama), under AU’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (nepad), by January 2019 “to harmonise medical regulations of member countries”. The December 10 meeting, attended by 80 participants, including representatives from AU nations and experts from who, East African Community, an intergovernmental organisation composed of six eastern African countries,  and nepad, was called “to discuss how ama will operate, before the heads of states approve it”, says Diane Gashumba, health minister, Rwanda.  It was decided that nepad’s regional economic committees will be used to “ensure the coordination and strengthening of continental initiatives”. It also identified that spurious drugs flourished in the continent due to “weak legislative framework, sluggish medicine registration processes, delayed approval decision and limited technical capacity, among others”. 

Chronic problem 

Rwanda’s Food and Drugs Authority issued a warning to doctors and pharmacists on December 7, 2018, about the availability of fake medicines used to prevent post-partum haemorrhage. It said two medicines, Misoprostol (manufactured by India-based Bio-generic and Remedies Private Limited) and Oxytocin (manufactured by China-based Jiangxi Xierkangtai Pharmaceutical), imported between 2017 and mid-2018 were “fake” and should not be administered. The statement added that fake drugs had already been distributed to district government hospitals and faith-based health centres across the country. The drugs are extremely important to Rwanda as post-partum haemorrhage is one of the main causes behind the country’s high maternal mortality rate (210 per 100,000 live births in 2015). In fact, Rwanda set up the Food and Drugs Authority in July 2018 to check the growing market of spurious drugs and vaccines.  The problem is equally acute in Sierra Leonne that imports all
 its medicines, bulk of which come from illegal channels, says Alphan Tejam Kelle, a medical professional at the meeting in Kigali. “Our bordering countries Liberia and Guinea have different regulatory systems. So many of our people travel to these countries and try to illegally get the medicines,” he adds. In Burkina Faso, non- registered medicines are openly sold on the roads of its capital Ouagadougou despite the fact that the country has policies against fake medicine, says Oula Ibrahim Olivier Traore, a medical practitioner. Over nine per cent of medical products sold in the country are fake, says a 2015 study published in Plos One.
Positive Africa 

Exorbitant drug prices are one of the main reasons why fake medicines flourish in the continent. Experts believe ama will immediately bring down drug prices as country-specific testing and registration of drugs would become redundant. “This will make high quality medicine affordable to all people,” says Christophe Bazivamo, deputy secretary general of East African Community.  

Andrea Julsing Keyter, deputy
 director, medical devices, South
 Africa Health Products Regulation Authority, highlights another advantage of ama when she says that if a country finds an issue with a medicine, it will inform other African countries, allowing for quick action. This is important as the 2017 who report says complex supply chains make detecting spurious drugs difficult. “A tablet taken in Germany may be made in Egypt from ingredients imported from India, Brazil and Spain, packaged in foil that came from China, inserted into a box designed for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and shipped to Liverpool by way of Dubai,” says the report. A September 2017 study by the World Customs Organization and the International Institute for Research against Counterfeit Medicines in 16 African countries found that India and China accounted for more than 96 per cent of the spurious drug imports. Gashumba says along with ama, countries should start manufacturing medicines to reduce their dependency on imports, which currently stands at 70 per cent.  South Africa and Morocco are the only African countries that manufacture medicines in a big way. In December 2017, Rwanda allowed Moroccan firm Cooper Pharma to start constructing the country’s first manufacturing plant. It should be operational by 2019.

Word of the Week:

Oryngham: means thank you for listening in the language of the plants.

Scientists are working on induced human hibernation, as
 seen naturally in animals, to treat a range of diseases

How close are we to replicating hibernation in humans? 

What we know about the animals is becoming more and more clear because we measure everything through a process called OMICS. This has helped us realise what we don't know and what we have to change. Being able to study an Arctic ground squirrel is good because it has given us enough knowledge to know how to cool down organs so that  it can be transplanted to another patient and gradually warm them. But we have reached the human limit with regards to cooling of tissues. At present, warm hibernation seen in animals like bears and lemurs is an area of research that is picking up and is potentially much more applicable as far as humans are concerned.
Do different organisms have similar pathways and triggers that can be replicated in humans? 

There are some similarities, but more differences. There are about 25,000 functioning genes that produce about 50,000 different proteins which function in a coordinated manner during hibernation. Similarly, there is no single environmental trigger or magic molecule within animals that is solely responsible for hibernation. Nature has had four billion years to perfect this and we are just at the beginning of unravelling it.
Can we develop targeted applications which work on specific organs and tissue types? 

There are some compounds like H2S which have been shown to induce hibernation-like states in rodents. However, this has failed in larger organisms. But at a smaller level, we have managed to figure out ways to switch certain organs on and off the way it happens during hibernation. At present, there is greater promise in organ-specific applications like organ transplants, in which processes of hibernation are already in use to increase usability of organs and targeted treatments which may work on the protective processes within cells. But we are still far away from replicating the whole process in humans.
What is the next likely big breakthrough? 

Commercial interest especially in the pharmaceutical industry has been picking up, especially with advances in warm hibernation understanding. Machines already exist to mimic hibernation for specific organs, and testing on animals and human tissues are underway for several treatments. It will still take time to move through to full-fledged human treatment, but it is definitely on the cards.

With respect to GPAT 

Gaithi, a tuber variety that grows in the hills of Uttarakhand, has both nutritive and medicinal properties. 

Biological source: Dioscorea bulbifera is a species of yam family Dioscoreaceae

Chemical constituents:

It contains higher amount of fat, protein, fibre and minerals than cultivated tubers. Every 100g of the wild tuber contains fat (0.54g), protein (3.75g), fibre (2.52g) in crude form, besides high amounts of calcium, phosphorous, iron, starch, and sodium along with natural steroid "Disogenine"

Uses: Its medicinal and nutritive properties have been studied widely. It is used in folk remedy to treat conjunctivitis, diarrhoea, dysentery and other ailments. Even Uttarakhand’s indigenous tribe Raji or Van Rawats (king of forests), who inhabit forested pockets of Champawat, Pitthoragarh and Udham Singh Nagar districts, use the tuber to cure various ailments. According to a 2017 ethno-botany study of wild plants in Bageshwar district, local communities roast it in hot ash and consume it with salt to cure cold and cough. The findings were later published in the Journal of Medicinal Plants Studies. Dehradun-based homemaker Vimala Rawat recalls that as a child she saw old ladies boil it with ash.

Ending Quote:

Celebrating India's 75th year of Independence is a matter of pride,  but achieving a "New India" needs more than a textual articulation.

Reference:
Down To Earth: 1 to 15 January Edition, 2019
C. K. Kokate: Textbook of Pharmacognosy