By Nancy Lapid
(Reuters) - Hello Health Rounds Readers! We know a lot of you struggle with arthritis knee pain and today we feature a report that could mean long lasting relief is on the way. We also cover two studies with potentially important implications for breast cancer patients.
Long-acting steroid shot eases knee pain for months
A single injection of an experimental long-acting steroid developed by Canadian biotech Eupraxia Pharmaceuticals eased pain from arthritis of the knee for months in a mid-stage trial, researchers reported.
Currently available steroid injections only relieve pain for a week or two at most, earlier studies have shown.
In a trial of 318 adults with knee osteoarthritis, patients received either one injection into the joint of 25 milligrams of Eupraxia's EP-104IAR, which is an extended-release form of fluticasone propionate, or a placebo.
Twelve weeks later, those who got the drug had significantly greater pain relief and improvements in knee function than the placebo group, according to a report of the study published in The Lancet Rheumatology.
The improvements had persisted at 14 weeks, and some were still evident at week 24, the researchers said.
The drug’s effects on blood sugar and hormone levels were minimal, they said.
Eupraxia, which develops locally delivered, extended-release alternatives to currently approved drugs, said a larger, Phase III trial of EP-104IAR is already underway.
Statins may protect the heart during radiotherapy
For breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy after surgery, statin drugs may significantly reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, heart failure and heart related death, a new study suggests.
Researchers tracked 1,481 women who underwent breast‐conserving surgery followed by a course of radiotherapy, including 442 who had been prescribed cholesterol-lowering statins. The average age in the study was 55 years, and everyone had left-breast early-stage tumors with low mortality rates.
At five years, the rate of major adverse heart events was 12.24% in statin users, compared with 31.70% in non-users.
When the researchers compared 360 women taking statins with a closely matched group of 360 who were not, the odds of heart failure, heart attack, stroke or other major adverse cardiovascular event were 66% lower among the statin users, according to a report in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The greatest effect was seen in users of rosuvastatin, the generic name for AstraZeneca's Crestor, and pravastatin, originally sold under the brand name Pravachol by Bristol Myers Squibb.
The higher a patient's daily statin dose, the lower their risk for the major adverse events, the researchers also found.
While this study cannot prove that statin use completely explains the results, "these findings suggest a potential role for statins in mitigating cardiovascular complications in... survivors of breast cancer undergoing radiotherapy,” the researchers concluded.
Experimental drug eliminates bone metastases in mice
An experimental treatment for breast cancer that has spread to the bones appeared to vanquish the bone lesions in an early study of the drug in mice, researchers reported.
If the results can be replicated in humans, this could become a very important treatment for patients with few options.
The drug, RK-33, has previously been shown to target and inhibit the protein DDX3, which promotes growth of cancer cells and the spread of the disease.
After determining that breast cancer bone metastasis cells from human patients have high levels of DDX3, the research team administered RK-33 to mice with breast cancer that had spread to the bones.
Imaging of the mice following the treatment showed that RK-33 appeared to eliminate all evidence of bone metastases, while also preventing the cancer cells in the bone from spreading to other sites in the body, which is common with bone metastases.
RK-33 also showed promise in preventing breast cancer bone metastasis from occurring in the first place.
Mice with breast cancer that had not spread to bone received the drug, and the cancer never developed into bone metastases, the researchers reported in Cancer Letters.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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