The Hindu : New Delhi News : Briefly

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Dec 20, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Briefly

Doctors' warning

NEW DELHI DEC. 19. Older women with hypertension on the two-drug combination should question their doctors about its safety if the combination involves a diuretic (which causes increased urination) and a calcium channel blocker like amlodipine.

The warning by issued by the Heart Care Foundation of India in view of a government-sponsored study of more than 30,000 women published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Giving details K.K. Aggarwal, president of the Foundation, said according to the study women, who combine these two popular blood pressure drugs, might be raising their risk of death. The risk involves twice as many fatal heart attacks and other cardiovascular deaths when compared with women on diuretics plus beta blockers or ACE inhibitors.

However, Dr Aggarwal said the research may have flaws as the number of heart-related deaths was relatively small: 31 out of 1,223 women taking the calcium channel blocker combination versus 18 out of 1,380 on the beta blocker combination and 17 out of 1,413 on the ACE inhibitor duo. Also, it was an observational study and not randomised.

Students felicitated

NEW DELHI DEC. 19. NIIT and the Supercomputing Facility of IIT, Delhi, felicitated the first batch of students passing out of the Certificate Programme in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at a special event held in New Delhi this past week. The programme, a brainchild of IIT Delhi's Supercomputing Facility and NIIT is being offered under the aegis of the Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT) at IIT, Delhi.

The Supercomputing Facility for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (SCFBio) was created in 2002, with funding from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT). It aims to promote Indian contributions to advances in genomics, proteomics and drug design through research and training programs and indigenous software development. The facility has already developed a comprehensive indigenous computational protocol for in silico drug design ("Sanjeevini") and novel methodologies for protein structure prediction and genome analysis.

`Tarang' concludes

NEW DELHI DEC. 19. The three-day annual cultural festival "Tarang'' concluded at Lady Sri Ram College on Sunday. Tarang is unique for the variety of events and the diversity of its participants. A food festival was also hosted this year offering some of the finest cuisines of the city. The cultural festival was made memorable as the College would celebrate its golden jubilee next year.

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