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For patients with recurrent bleeding due to small-intestinal angiodysplasia (SIA), thalidomide treatment results in a reduction in bleeding, according to a study. Huimin Chen, M.D. and colleagues examined the efficacy and safety of thalidomide for the treatment of recurrent bleeding due to SIA in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. A total of 150 patients with recurrent bleeding due to SIA were randomly assigned to thalidomide at an oral daily dose of 100 mg (51 patients) or 50 mg (49 patients) or placebo (50 patients) for four months. The researchers found that the percentages of patients with an effective response, defined as...

Canadian doctor who kept thalidomide out of U.S. dies Frances Kelsey, the Canadian doctor who spared the United States from one of the worst drug disasters in history, died on Friday morning. She was 101. As Ingrid Peritz reports, Dr. Kelsey is regarded as a heroine for her role in the early 1960s opposing thalidomide, a drug then generally promoted as a safe sedative for pregnant women, but which caused an epidemic of birth defects around the world, including Canada. Dr. Kelsey died less than 24 hours after receiving the Order of Canada for her role in stopping thalidomide.

One of the curcumin–thalidomide hybridsCancer researchers in the US and China have combined the turmeric spice pigment curcumin and the drug thalidomide to create hybrid compounds that can kill multiple myeloma cells.Multiple myeloma is the second most common type of blood cancer, killing 20% of affected patients each year. The drug thalidomide, banned after causing birth defects when given during pregnancy in the 1950s, was recently rediscovered and approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Thalidomide works by disturbing the microenvironment of tumour cells in bone marrow. However, it disintegrates in the body. Curcumin, a yellow pigment from the common...

An Australian woman has won a multi-million dollar payout from UK company Diageo PLC, the local distributor of the drug Thalidomide that caused birth defects in thousand of babies around the world in the 1960s, her lawyers said on Wednesday. Lynette Rowe, 50, was born without arms and legs after her mother Wendy took Thalidomide for a month while pregnant. At the time the drug was prescribed as a treatment for morning sickness. The settlement with Rowe could pave the way for more than 100 other Thalidomide victims in Australia and New Zealand to receive compensation through a class action,...

Drug's effects on embryonic blood-vessel growth may be the source of malformed limbs. Thalidomide's effect on growing blood vessels may have caused birth defects in thousands of children.National Cancer Institute More than 50 years after the drug thalidomide hit the market as a remedy for nausea in pregnant women, researchers may finally have pinned down how it causes severe birth defects. Their results show that the drug's ability to block the development of new blood vessels may be behind the deformed limbs of children born to women who took thalidomide early in pregnancy. The finding could contribute to the development...

It's 50 years since Thalidomide was first prescribed to pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. It was then found that the drug caused serious birth defects: 500 babies suffered varying degrees of disability as a result. Here, three generations of women tell their story. June Hornsby, 71, has six children with her husband Len, 76. Their daughter Mandy was born in 1962 with no arms.

A Transcendent Voice By ARTHUR LUBOW Thomas Quasthoff titled both his autobiography and a recent CD compilation “The Voice,” underscoring the bass-baritone vocal instrument that has made him an internationally acclaimed singer. But it is safe to say that the main thing an audience notices when Quasthoff takes the stage is the body in which that instrument is housed. He stands just over 4 feet 4 inches tall, on stumpy legs without knee joints or much thigh. His hands (missing two fingers on the left and one on the right) emerge from his shoulders like flippers. He lurches and sways...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Doctors were just hoping to treat symptoms when they gave people with a deadly blood disorder a drug to reduce the need for transfusions. To their astonishment, signs of the disease itself disappeared in nearly half of them. Specialists said the experimental drug, Revlimid, now looks like a breakthrough and the first effective treatment for many people with myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS, which is even more common than leukemia. "It may be, if not eradicating the disease, putting it into what I would call deep remission," said Dr. David Johnson, a cancer specialist at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer...

NEW YORK -- A limbless woman sued Air France Friday, saying she was prevented from boarding a flight four years ago by an airline employee who insulted her, saying "a head, one bottom and a torso cannot possibly fly on its own." Adele Price, 42, of Mansfield, England, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, seeking unspecified damages and including the quote in her claim. Price said she suffered emotionally, psychologically and endured large expenses as she tried to complete a trip from Manchester, England to New York on Aug. 8, 2000. She said she paid someone else...