From EurekAlert!:

Researchers in Germany have discovered that methadone, an agent used to break addiction to opioid drugs, has surprising killing power against leukemia cells, including treatment resistant forms of the cancer.

Their laboratory study, published in the August 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests that methadone holds promise as a new therapy for leukemia, especially in patients whose cancer no longer responds to chemotherapy and radiation.

"Methadone kills sensitive leukemia cells and also breaks treatment resistance, but without any toxic effects on non-leukemic blood cells," said the study's senior author, Claudia Friesen, Ph.D., of the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University Ulm. "We find this very exciting, because once conventional treatments have failed a patient, which occurs in old and also in young patients, they have no other options."

Methadone, developed in Germany in the 1930s, is a low cost agent that acts on opioid receptors, and thus is used as an opioid substitute to treat addiction. Scientists have found that opioid receptors also exist on the surface of some cancer cells for reasons that are not understood. One research group tested the agent in human lung cancer cell lines and found that it can induce cell death.

In this study, Friesen and her colleagues tested methadone in leukemia cells in laboratory culture because this cancer also expresses the opioid receptor. Theirs is the first study to look at use of the agent in leukemia, specifically in lymphoblastic leukemia T-cell lines and human myeloid leukemia cell lines.

They found that methadone was as effective as standard chemotherapies and radiation treatments against non-resistant leukemia cells, and that non-leukemic peripheral blood lymphocytes survived after methadone treatment.

To their surprise, they found that methadone also effectively killed leukemia that was resistant to multiple chemotherapies and to radiation. Probing the mechanism of methadone's action, the researchers found that it activates the mitochondrial pathway within leukemia cells, which activates enzymes called caspases that prompt a cell into apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death. Chemotherapy drugs use the same approach, but methadone activated caspases in sensitive leukemia cells, and also reversed deficient activation of caspases in resistant leukemia cells.

Friesen said the research team is beginning to study methadone treatment in animal models of human leukemia, and she also says that other cancers might be suitable for treatment with the agent.

In this study, the single doses used to kill leukemia cells were greater than doses used to treat opioid addiction, but the researchers have since found that they can use a daily low dose of methadone to achieve the same effect. Friesen adds that while methadone can, itself, become addictive, that addiction is much easier to break compared to addiction to true opioids. "Addiction shouldn't be an unsolvable problem if methadone is ever used as an anti-cancer therapy," she said.

From Newspost Online:

Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have identified two new medications that may help heavy drinkers modify their consumption, reduce alcohol withdrawal symptoms, and prevent relapse.

In the first study, MUSC researchers along with a team from the University of Virginia Health System have found that topiramate, an effective therapeutic medication, not only decreases heavy drinking, but also cuts risk factors associated with heavy drinking.  The medication effectively lowers all liver enzymes, plasma cholesterol, body mass index (BMI), and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, thus reducing heart disease risk.

“These findings add growing data indicating that heavy drinkers who modify their drinking with the help of medication and supportive counseling may see an improvement in health and well-being, as well as a potential reduction of risk for the development of heart and liver diseases,” said Raymond Anton, M.D., distinguished university professor.

“This shows that treatment of alcoholism has potential health benefits beyond the immediate behavioural and emotional improvement caused by a reduction in drinking,” he added.

In addition to decreasing liver enzymes and cholesterol levels, topiramate can also cut fatty liver disease risk, which leads to cirrhosis - a common consequence to end-stage liver disease leading to death in some alcoholics.

Topiramate significantly contributed to a decline in obsessive thoughts and compulsions, components of alcohol craving, and also had a greater improvement in their “overall quality of life,”

Another study by Anton showed that PROMETA alcoholism treatment program, a combination of generic medications, led to significant reductions in cravings and alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

It promoted abstinence, and improved mood and sleep only in those who had symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. The results were presented at Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA) conference in Washington D.C. (ANI)