Vol. 38, No. 18

2-15-2006
By: onCampus staff

Discoveries briefs 2/16/06

Take meds as directed, reduce health care costs
Spend the money on medications now and save close to $4,000 in annual health care costs. So says a new study of older adults who regularly refilled prescriptions to treat overactive bladder syndrome. These patients were less likely to incur more costly health-related expenses, such as doctor visits, even if they were also taking medications for other, unrelated health conditions, said Rajesh Balkrishnan, the study's lead author and the Merrell Dow professor of pharmacy.

With every 10 percent increase in the number of overactive bladder medication prescriptions filled, the researchers saw a 5.6 percent decrease in annual health care costs. During the final year of the three-year study, the people who routinely took their medication saved about $3,700 in overall health care costs.

The study's findings may have important implications for people enrolled in Medicare's new drug benefit program. "In the new plan, more prominence and financial support may be allotted to medications that treat prevalent, well-known conditions like diabetes and hypertension," he said. "Although a condition like overactive bladder affects millions of people, it generally isn't considered as important to treat as those other diseases."
www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/oabcomp.htm

Partner proteins may help estrogen foster breast cancer
A new study suggests that the hormone estrogen works with other proteins to activate or suppress gene activity in breast cancer cells. Surprisingly, one of the partner proteins is known as c-MYC, a gene activator that has long been associated with cancer development but was not known to interact with estrogen during tumor progression. The study, by researchers at the Comprehensive Cancer Center Ð Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, answers the puzzling question of how estrogen can turn on some genes and turn off others during cancer progression.

"Our results indicate that the interaction of estrogen with one of seven different partner proteins determines whether the gene is activated or suppressed," said co-author Ramana Davuluri, assistant professor of bioinformatics and computational biology. The findings could also reveal potential new drug targets and lead to a test to identify breast cancer patients with tumors that are likely to become resistant to hormonal therapies such as tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors.

www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/erpath.htm

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