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New Horizons An Opportunity To Build A Healthier, Happier Nation, UK
The government launches New Horizons, a major new consultation on how we should care for the mental health of the nation for the next ten years. As the current mental health strategy the National Service Framework draws to a close this autumn, New Horizons is a pivotal opportunity to move on from a model of mental health care based solely on delivering medical services, to a cross-government plan that approaches everyone"s mental wellbeing holistically, and considers the impact of social factors such as unemployment and debt.
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An Examination Of California's Proposed Budget Cuts
The New York Times reports on a series of deep budget cuts to help California, which is some $24 billion in the red, deal with its" ongoing financial woes.
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Majority Of U.S. Residents Support Confirming Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor, Poll Finds
Sixty-two percent of U.S. residents want Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to be confirmed, and 55% say she is "about right" on a liberal-to-conservative scale, according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the Post reports. For the survey, pollsters randomly surveyed a national sample of 1,001 adults by telephone between June 18 and June 21. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.The poll found that about three-fourths of abortion-rights supporters want Sotomayor to be confirmed, compared with less than half of abortion-rights opponents. According to the poll, six in 10 U.S. residents would want the new Supreme Court justice to vote to uphold Roe v. Wade. Most Republican men would want the next Supreme Court justice to vote to overturn Roe, while Republican women were split about evenly on the issue, the poll found. The poll also found that support for Sotomayor"s confirmation was equal between men and women. In addition, nearly eight in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of independents said they supported Sotomayor"s confirmation, compared with 36% of Republicans. The poll found that most Republicans deemed Sotomayor a "more liberal" nominee than they would prefer. Among Republicans, those self-identifying as conservative Republicans were largely opposed to Sotomayor"s confirmation, with more than seven in 10 conservative Republicans saying she is too liberal. Sotomayor received support from Republicans self-identifying as moderate or liberal, with fewer than four in 10 saying she is too liberal. However, about one in five who opposed Sotomayor"s confirmation said that she is not liberal enough. The poll also found that among the 33% of U.S. residents who said that Sotomayor"s gender plays a role, more than twice as many said that is a positive attribute as opposed to a negative attribute (Cohen/Barnes, Washington Post, 6/28).Sessions Requests More InformationSenate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions (Ala.) on Friday sent a letter to the White House requesting additional information on Sotomayor, the New York Times" "The Caucus" reports. According to Sessions, the Obama administration has yet to provide members of the committee with information about a number of cases that Sotomayor brought to trial while working as a district attorney in New York. In addition, Sessions requested information regarding a case that Sotomayor argued on appeal. He also requested information about her work with Latino Justice PRLDEF, formerly known as the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Sotomayor"s confirmation hearing is scheduled to begin July 13. Republicans have criticized the schedule, saying it gives them insufficient time to review Sotomayor"s record. Democrats have said that Republicans are seeking to create unnecessary delays and noted that the timeline is similar to that of past nominees (Herszenhorn, "The Caucus," New York Times, 6/26).
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Toxic Immune-Suppressing Drugs Replaced By Post-Transplant Combo In Monkeys

Transplant patients rely on drugs to prevent graft rejection, but at the cost of serious side effects. The class of immunosuppressive drugs known as calcineurin inhibitors (examples are cyclosporine and tacrolimus) can damage patients" kidneys and lead to high blood pressure, among other problems. A combination of treatments can effectively replace calcineurin inhibitors in preventing graft rejection when kidney transplants are performed on monkeys, scientists at the Emory Transplant Center have shown. The non-human primate research was conducted at the National Institutes of Health and Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University. The results are published in the July issue of Nature Medicine. The finding opens the door to less-toxic post-transplant treatment that could be administered once a week rather than a dizzying mound of pills every day, says senior author Allan Kirk, MD, PhD, scientific director of the Emory Transplant Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. "Both of the drugs used in this regimen are already used separately in humans, thus a clinical trial could be developed quickly," Kirk notes. One key ingredient in the combination is an experimental therapy called a costimulation blocker, designed to interfere with the T cells that cause graft rejection without affecting other organs. Costimulation refers to one of two signals T cells need from other cells (antigen presenting cells) to become fully activated. The other key ingredient -- a protein called alefacept -- subdues memory T cells, a variety of T cells that allow the immune system to respond faster and stronger to an infectious agent or vaccine upon second exposure. Costimulation blockers are sufficient for allowing mice to tolerate a transplanted kidney, but not monkeys or people, Kirk says. Memory cells appear to prevent costimulation blockers from working as well in monkeys as they do in mice. "One of the big differences we"ve found between mice and both monkeys and people is that we primates have more exposure to infections that require us to develop immunological memory," he says. "Memory cells are quicker to become activated and don"t need costimulation as much, so blocking costimulation doesn"t slow them down." By themselves, neither costimulation blockers (in this case, a molecule called CTLA4-Ig) or alefacept could prevent rejection in monkeys after the eight week treatment period, Kirk and his colleagues found. They had more success by combining costimulation blockers, alefacept and the transplant drug sirolimus. Under this regimen, monkeys could last for months after treatment ended without developing rejection or self-reactive antibodies. CTLA4-Ig mimics a molecule found on T cells (CTLA4) and acts as a decoy. CTLA4-Ig is now used as an FDA-approved therapy for rheumatoid arthritis. A similar drug called belatacept is now in phase III kidney transplant clinical trials, but current studies use it in combination with conventional immunosuppressive drugs. Alefacept targets memory T cells via a molecule on their surfaces called CD2, the authors found. Alefacept was approved by the FDA for treatment of psoriasis in 2003. It is also being tested in a kidney transplant clinical trial in combination with conventional drugs. Both CTLA4-Ig and alefacept are proteins and must be administered intravenously or possibly subcutaneously. However, their stability means they don"t need to be taken every day - once a week is enough, Kirk says. Notes: The paper"s first author is Tim A. Weaver, and other co-authors are Ali H. Charafeddine, Avinash Agarwal, Alexandra P. Turner, Maria Russel, Frank V. Leopardi, Robert L. Kampen, Linda Stempora, Mingging Song and Christian P. Larsen. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health. Reference: T.A. Weaver et al. Alefacept promotes costimulation blockade-based allograft survival in primates. Nature Medicine. 15, 746-749 (2009) Holly Korschun Emory University


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