Search for a Panacea Continues

A replacement for warfarin: the search continues.

Vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) such as warfarin are the only oral anticoagulants currently available for clinical use. Warfarin has numerous limitations, including slow onset and offset of action, a narrow therapeutic window, and a metabolism that is affected by diet, drugs, and genetic polymorphisms.1 Because of its unpredictable dose response, warfarin requires careful coagulation monitoring to...

Biomarkers for bladder cancer: The search continues!

Cystoscopy has remained the gold standard for the detection of bladder cancer for decades. Although many new fancy molecular markers have been developed and are widely applied in the diagnosis and management of various cancers today, no single marker has dethroned cystoscopy as " the tool " in the detection of bladder cancer. Although advances in technology have provided fluorescence and narrow...

The search continues for a tool to evaluate dietary quality.

Pharmacologic neuroprotection: the search continues.

Dozens of drugs have been studied in an attempt to mitigate the adverse cerebral consequences of cardiac surgery. The targets for these drugs have focused on pathways identified through the cascade of events that occurs once cerebral ischemia is initiated. In addition, inflammatory targets specific to cardiopulmonary bypass have also been addressed. Although no drugs are yet approved as specifi...

Targeting Myocardial Reperfusion Injury--The Search Continues.

Timely reperfusion by means of primary percu­ taneous coronary intervention (PCI) is the most effective therapy for limiting myocardial infarct size in patients with ST­segment elevation myo­ cardial infarction (STEMI). Although mortality in this patient population is falling, the number of patients in whom heart failure develops is increasing. As such, new treatments are needed to reduce myoca...