SCOTTISH HOSPITAL NEWS


THREE NEW MEDICINES FOR ROUTINE USE BY NHS SCOTLAND


The Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) has accepted three new medicines for routine use by NHS Scotland.


Idebenone (Raxone) was accepted following consideration through SMC’s Patient and Clinician Engagement (PACE) process, for medicines used at the end of life and for very rare conditions. Idebenone is used to treat Leber’s


Hereditary Optic Neuropathy (LHON), a severely disabling and extremely rare genetic disease of the eye which can cause sudden blindness. In the PACE meeting, patient groups and clinicians highlighted how LHON mainly affects young men in their late teens or early adulthood and that dealing with the condition can have a high psychological impact on patients and their families. There are


HEART FAILURE MORE FATAL THAN MOST COMMON CANCERS


Heart failure carries with it a higher risk of death than most common types of cancer according to new research from the University of Aberdeen in collaboration with the Universities of Keele, Manchester and East Anglia.


The database study, which was published recently in the European Journal of Heart Failure today found that five years post diagnosis, men diagnosed with heart failure had 64 per cent greater risk of dying than men diagnosed with prostate cancer and fourteen per cent greater risk of dying than those diagnosed with bladder cancer. In women, those diagnosed with heart failure had 82 per cent greater risk of dying than those women diagnosed with breast cancer.


Data was collected from more than 56 thousand people between 2000 and 2011 from 393 general practices in Scotland and this is the first study of its kind to compare the effects of heart failure and cancer in the primary care setting for men and women separately.


‘Patients with heart failure also have other co-morbid diseases,’ said Professor Phyo Kyaw Myint,


University of Aberdeen, ‘and therefore understanding of outcome in this patient group is important for clinicians. This study also reminds us that observational studies are important in clinical research because clinical trials do not include the typical older people we manage in day to day clinical practice.’


‘The findings of this study are important,’ said Professor Mamas Mamas, Professor of Cardiology at Keele University. ‘Our study shows that, despite advances in the treatment of heart failure with newer drugs and devices, mortality rates remain significant and heart failure remains as malignant as many of the common cancers.’


currently no other treatment options for LHON. Idebenone offers the potential for improvement of sight in a proportion of patients with this condition who are not yet blind.


Belimumab (Benlysta) was accepted for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks a person’s body causing inflammation and organ


damage which can result in life- threatening complications for some patients. Patient group submissions highlighted that the most challenging aspects of living with the condition were the symptoms patients experience, including fatigue, joint and muscle pain in addition to a loss of independence. Belimumab offers an improvement in control of the disease in patients who fail to respond to standard treatments, with the potential to reduce symptoms.


Also accepted was micronised progesterone (Utrogestan), which can be used to support embryo implantation and pregnancy as part of fertility treatment.


QUEST CONTINUES TO FIND NEW DRUGS FOR NEGLECTED DISEASES


The University of Dundee has been awarded £7.9 million by the Wellcome Trust for a joint project with GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) to boost efforts to find new drugs to treat some of the world’s most devastating parasitic diseases including visceral and cutaneous leishmaniasis, and Chagas’ disease.


These neglected diseases cause substantial suffering and an estimated 60,000 deaths annually world-wide.


The funding will enable the established Dundee/GSK team to continue their work to develop novel drugs to treat these diseases over the next five years. It follows the announcement of £13.6 million from Wellcome in December 2016 to establish the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at Dundee to tackle some of the world’s most devastating diseases.


‘The development of effective and safe drugs for leishmaniasis and Chagas’ disease will save many lives and improve the quality of life and economies within the developing world,’ said Professor Paul Wyatt, Director of the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the


university. ‘The continuing unmet medical need is caused by the current therapies being not fit for purpose, recent clinical trials failures, sparse drug discovery pipelines across the world and there is general agreement that treatment with a combination of drugs is required for these diseases.


‘This funding from Wellcome is a vital boost to us achieving our five- year goal of producing three new drug candidates suitable for clinical trials in leishmaniasis and Chagas’ disease. We are already making very strong progress in finding possible drugs to treat visceral leishmaniasis, with two candidates funded under a previous Wellcome award currently in the pre-clinical stage of testing which we hope will prove successful.’


These investments build on the world-leading work at the Drug Discovery Unit at Dundee’s School of Life Sciences to find new drugs to treat major diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and leishmaniasis.


Last year researchers in the Drug Discovery Unit announced the discovery of a new antimalarial with the potential to treat malaria patients in a single dose. It is now in clinical development.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56