Nitric Oxide

Inhaled nitric oxide can significantly reduce lung and brain damage in many premature infants, allowing them to be taken off respirators sooner and sent home earlier, two studies report today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The treatment may not help the most premature and sickest babies, but it can provide long-lasting benefits for many others, according to the clinical trials involving more than 1,400 premature infants.

Treating premature babies with nitric oxide gas improved their cognitive function at age 2 and lowered their risk of developing neurological complications such as cerebral palsy, according to a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. But a separate study concurrently published in the journal reported that the therapy did not help survival in a group of smaller and sicker premature babies and may have even worsened it in the sickest infants.

Mr. Louis J. Ignarro can't wait. The guy who used to blast over the asphalt in flame-spewing dragsters and frenzy his pulse with competitive speed skating can't wait to walk to his office at the UCLA School of Medicine at 5 each morning. He can't wait to read about new drugs being developed in an explosion of research that he helped set off (does the name Viagra ring a bell?). And he can't wait--he really can't wait--to build a heart institute where scientists and physicians can catch up with his vision for the new millennium: driving America's most voracious killer into a hasty retreat.

Three Americans, including a UCLA pharmacologist, were awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for their discovery that nitric oxide--a common gas better known as an air pollutant--transmits signals within the human body. That discovery led to the development of the anti-impotence drug Viagra, to a new treatment for newborns with dangerously high blood pressure in their lungs and to drugs for the treatment of shock.

Nitric oxide, an ingredient in smog that is also used by the body to control blood pressure, kill tumor cells and boost erections, may help newborn babies with lung problems breathe more easily. Two studies in the Feb. 27 New England Journal of Medicine show that newborn babies with breathing difficulties did not need drastic treatment if they inhaled small amounts of the gas.

An experimental therapy that increases the flow of oxygen to the lungs of critically ill newborns was used for the first time at UCI Medical Center this week to save the life of a Mission Viejo infant. Brennen J. Turbow Marino was the first infant in Southern California to undergo the new, non-invasive treatment that uses nitric oxide to dilate blood vessels in the lungs, and was back in the arms of his parents Friday, UCI doctors said.

Los Angeles researchers have discovered a new clue to the cause of some forms of impotence, a sexual dysfunction that afflicts millions of adult men. The researchers at the UCLA School of Medicine and Harbor-UCLA Medical Center suspect that impotence may sometimes be related to insufficient amounts of a chemical, nitric oxide, in the penis. Their findings are being published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday established a stringent new automobile emissions standard that would reduce nitrogen oxides by an estimated 144 tons a day, or a statewide reduction of nearly 15%. The action was vehemently opposed by the auto industry and supported by environmental groups. Car manufacturers said they may not be able to meet the new nitrogen oxides standard by the final 1994 deadline if other types of emissions standards are imposed, as is planned.

A new state study, with potentially far-reaching public health and economic ramifications, challenges a long-held assumption that has shaped Southern California's air pollution battle for the past 20 years. The study by the Air Resources Board suggests that regulators have been acting on flawed data and that smog can be further reduced by a broader strategy that would require tough new controls on motor vehicles and industrial emissions.