Digestive Diseases News
Summer 2006
Research News
After receiving a low dose of naltrexone, 89 percent of study
participants said their symptoms improved, while 67 percent experienced a remission of symptoms.
Substance Abuse Drug Shows Promise for Crohn’s Sufferers
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug to ease substance abuse withdrawal symptoms might also relieve Crohn’s disease symptoms, according to a Penn State College of Medicine pilot study.
After receiving a low dose of naltrexone, 89 percent of study participants said their symptoms improved, while 67 percent experienced a remission of symptoms, according to Jill P. Smith, a study researcher who presented the findings during Digestive Disease Week in May. The only reported side effect was sleep
disturbance.
The drug is far less expensive than the typical treatment for Crohn’s disease—steroids or
corticosteroids, which suppress the immune system and can have other toxic side effects. Crohn’s disease, which causes chronic intestinal inflammation, affects an estimated half million Americans.
The National Institutes of Health awarded Penn State $500,000 to continue the study.
Study Challenges Thinking on Hormone-Receptor Bond Relationship
New study findings challenge the widely held notion that the stronger the link between a hormone and receptor, the more effective its cellular signaling. Researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders have
discovered that a looser connection between target receptors and chemical knockoffs resembling thyrotropin-releasing hormone produced more effective cellular signaling than a tight one. The
findings, published in the May 12, 2006, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could change the design of drug therapies for a number of health problems.
Therapies Relieve IBS Symptoms, Studies Show
Research presented at Digestive Disease Week in May supported the use of cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnotherapy to improve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and other digestive problems.
Following up on research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) showing that behavioral therapy could effectively treat IBS symptoms that are unresponsive to standard medication and dietary agents,
researchers at the University of Buffalo, State University of New York, condensed a 10-week, clinic-based behavior treatment program into a four-session, patient-administered format with minimal therapist contact. The intent was to reduce patients’ costs and time commitment, which the NIH identified as potential
treatment barriers.
Researchers found the four-session program was as effective as the longer program in relieving the range of IBS gastrointestinal (GI) tract symptoms and five times as cost efficient.
In two other trials, scientists from the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden administered gut-directed hypnotherapy for 1 hour per week for 12 weeks to patients at a local hospital and a university
hospital specializing in functional GI disorders. In both studies, a large number of patients showed a clinically significant improvement in GI symptoms compared with the control group. The improvements
for both groups were sustained, and in some cases enhanced, a year later. Hypnotherapy patients in the second study group also reported improvements in anxiety and depression.
Registration and a full meeting agenda are available at
www.niddk.nih.gov/fund/other/Biliary.
Meeting to Explore Biliary Atresia Screening
Scientists from seven countries will meet in Bethesda, MD, September 11 to 12, to discuss the role and effectiveness of screening for biliary atresia in newborns and infants, including current and innovative methods of early identification of this life-threatening condition.
The day-and-a-half-long meeting, organized by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the Office of Rare Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Health Services Resource Administration, the American Liver Foundation, and the Biliary Atresia Clinical Research
Consortium, also will examine
the epidemiology and clinical aspects of biliary atresia surgical and clinical outcomes of treatment specific outcome measures of screening and treatment developmental biology, genomics, genetics, immunologic and virologic factors, and the use of gene arrays and proteomic techniques to investigate the disease
Meeting organizers welcome abstracts about the etiology, screening, natural history, and outcomes
of biliary atresia. Registration and a full meeting agenda are available at
www.niddk.nih.gov/fund/other/Biliary.
HCC Increase Linked to Hepatitis C Virus in
North America
The slow, 10- to 15-year increase in the frequency of and mortality from hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in North America is largely attributable to the hepatitis C virus infection and possibly obesity and the
accompanying problem of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, according to a study by the Liver Disease Research Branch, Division of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases.
While there is some evidence that the increase in the United States has slowed, it is unclear whether this is a passing or more definite trend. Experts currently expect the incidence of HCC to continue rising
in Western countries for at least another decade and then begin to decline because of the decreasing number of new hepatitis C cases. HCC ranks among the 10 most common cancers worldwide. The study, “Epidemiology of hepatocellular carcinoma in areas of low hepatitis B and hepatitis C endemicity,” appeared in the June 26, 2006, issue of Oncogene.
Biliary Atresia Outcome in U.S. Study Centers Equivalent to Other Countries
Contemporary management of biliary atresia in nine U.S. Biliary Atresia Research Consortium (BARC) centers yields the same outcomes as those reported from Western Europe and Japan, despite significant differences in diagnosis and management among the BARC centers and different approaches with respect to other countries, according to a recent study. Data from the retrospective study found there was
no standard approach to the diagnosis of biliary atresia and that postsurgical management varied
considerably among the BARC centers. Despite this, all center outcomes at 2 years of age were
comparable to the best outcome data published from other countries and in large single-center
reports. “A Multicenter Study of the Outcome of Biliary Atresia in the United States, 1997 to
2000,” appeared in the April 2006 issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.
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NIH Publication No. 06–4552
August 2006
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