hope for new skin-disorder drug

A radical new drug used to treat patients suffering painful sensitivity to sunlight could prevent skin cancer or be copied by the tanning industry.

The breakthrough drug Afamelanotide, developed by a Melbourne company, has been successfully tested for 12 months on 101 people worldwide, including six Melburnians, all with the incurable genetic skin disorder EPP.

The illness leaves suffers with painful, bleeding blisters and burns when exposed to normal levels of sunlight.

Pharmaceutical company Clinuvel has been developing the drug - given as a repeated injection to stimulate skin pigmentation - over the past 19 years.

Royal Children's Hospital and Royal Melbourne head of dermatology, Dr George Varigos, led the Melbourne drug trial on his EPP patients.

"After our patients were treated, they could venture out, and do things as a family that they couldn't do before," he said.

"The effect is incredibly good for their behaviour and lifestyle.

"We are not telling these people to go out and sunbake, but now they can have a normal life."

Dr Varigos is testing the drug on transplant patients taking immune supressants, which increases their risk of developing skin cancer within five years of having a transplant.

He said the tanning industry would probably seek to replicate the drug, which makes the user slightly darker by activating pigmentation.

read more» Read more...

Best Skin Care Product Review

To choose the best skin care product. However, it is a question that every individual would like to know.

The skin is a very visible part of the body and often is associated with attractiveness and health. A beautiful skin and a glowing one is the greatest gift to possess. It is no wonder that finding a skin care product that performs as advertised is important, whether it is to cure a skin problem or disease or simply for daily skin maintenance.

Manufacturers of skin care products will always advertise that they have the best skin care product, the most effective product, the product with the best ingredients, etc. Can you blame them? The skin care industry is a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. With the aging baby boomer population, the skin care industry is experiencing additional growth in many areas. There is a lot of money to be made.

In light of this, can manufacturer’s claims of having the best skin care product be trusted? For the most part, the answer is yes. A producer of skin care products wants the repeat business, and so they strive for a good quality product that is supposed to do. What is meant to do? However, there is a definite difference in quality between products. As a general rule, more expensive products are better, but this is not always the case. The best skin care product may still be reasonably priced and contain effective ingredients.

The best advice for consumers of skin care products is to follow a regime of trial and error. Focus on a product line that you require, for example, products for dry skin. Within that product line, choose a reasonably priced product. Try it for a couple of weeks or up to a month. If it performs well then you can continue to use it or try something else. Too often we become familiar or comfortable with a product and refuse to try an alternative. We are too fearful of changing products and risking a relapse of the skin care problem. Because of this fear, we often do not find the best skin care product and settle for average results at best.

Below are submissions from visitors to this website that are posted in order to help alleviate the fear of change. The submissions are intended to help individuals make intelligent choices for finding the best skin care product and help reduce some of the uncertainty in skin product selection. These submissions can also confirm what a manufacturer is saying about their product. Recommendations and the experiences from people who have actually used certain skin care products are very helpful and compliment manufacturer’s advertising literature well.

Source : www.articlesbase.com

read more» Read more...