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Nursing Shortage Eases With Recession's Help
"The nation"s deep recession is helping to alleviate the decade-long nursing shortage, as workers who had left the field in better times are returning in droves," the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper quotes a study, one of six papers on the nursing workforce published today in the journal Health Affairs, that found "nearly a quarter-million nurses entered the work force in 2007-08, an 18% surge that was the largest two-year increase in at least three decades." Many of them had left nursing, but "re-entered the work force to compensate for a spouse"s lost income or health benefits, the study said." The increase is "particularly remarkable at a time when the U.S. economy has shed more than six million jobs, helping to solidify the profession"s "recession-proof" image." The study found that the surge in new nurses is due to "efforts to expand nursing schools, attract more young people into the field and improve working conditions," along with an increase in the number of foreign-born nurses.

PARI Pharma Reports Successful Phase Ib Clinical Results For Inhaled Liposomal Cyclosporine A
This month"s Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery features positive Phase Ib clinical trial results for PARI Pharma"s L-CsA, inhaled liposomal cyclosporine A. In May, PARI Pharma received Orphan Drug Designation from the Food and Drug Administration for L-CsA, delivered via an Investigational eFlow Nebulizer System, for the prevention and treatment of bronchiolitis obliterans, a devastating, incurable disease of the small airways affecting approximately 60,000 patients worldwide.
News of the day
Positive Preclinical Data On 2 Product Candidates At ENDO 09 Presented By Versartis
Versartis, Inc., an emerging company developing novel biologics with enhanced properties for patients with metabolic diseases, presented data for its long-acting product candidates, VRS-317 (hGH-rPEG) for treatment of growth hormone deficiency and for VRS-826 (IL-1ra-rPEG) for treatment of type 1 and type 2 diabetes, at the Endocrine Society"s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.
Public Health

Yale Researchers Find New Trigger For Seasonal Allergies

In research that could open new avenues of treatment for seasonal allergies, a team of Yale University scientists has discovered how a poorly understood component of the human immune system triggers - and sometimes worsens - allergic reactions. The research appears in the May 24 Advance Online Publication of Nature Immunology. Scientists wanted to better understand how the immune system recognizes and responds to allergens. Lead researcher Ruslan Medzhitov of the Yale School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute said, "The current paradigms of how the immune response is activated did not seem to apply to allergic reactions." The Yale team focused on basophils, immune cells whose true function was obscure. Their research showed the first examples of how basophils can trigger an allergic immune response. Medzhitov explained, "Common allergens act on basophils, which in turn activate T cells (white blood cells that orchestrate the immune process) to trigger an allergic response." Medzhitov"s team was surprised to find the extent of the basophils" role. Until now, the scientific community believed that different immune cells (dendritic cells) that fight off other foreign invaders were also responsible for allergic reactions. The Yale team found the opposite: Basophils are the cells that leap into action at the earliest stages of exposure to allergens, signaling the body"s defense system to repel the invader. They also may exaggerate the allergic reaction to the point where symptoms become difficult to control and extremely bothersome to the allergy sufferer. The team"s research on basophils could provide a new target for pharmaceutical therapies aimed at interfering with, or stopping the allergic response. Others who contributed to the paper are Caroline L. Sokol, Ngoc-Quynh Chu, Shuang Yu and Simone A. Nish of the Yale School of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Terri M. Laufer of the University of Pennsylvania. Their research was supported by the National Institutes of Health Medical Scientist Training Program, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Sandler Program in Asthma Research. Yale University


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