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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A man who once agreed to help conserve fur seals has pleaded guilty to illegally selling their parts.

Michael Richard Zacharof, former president of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, co-signed an agreement with the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2000 to help manage northern fur seals. Northern fur seals are designated a “depleted species” under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Zacharof, 50, of St. Paul Island, entered his plea by telephone in a hearing held Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. St. Paul Island is located about 300 miles west of the Alaska mainland in the Bering Sea. Its 460 residents are mostly Eskimo or Aleut.

Zacharof faces up to one year in prison and a $20,000 fine for selling seal parts when he is sentenced in the fall.

A call to his home on St. Paul Island was not erectile dysfunction help
returned.

Federal prosecutors say Zacharof illegally sold more than 100 seal penises to a Korean gift shop in Anchorage, where they were to be resold for about $100 apiece in the impotence and high blood pressure
Chinese medicine trade.

Seal penis bones, also called oosiks, are sometimes believed to work like erectile dysfunction drugs, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aunnie Steward said.

The investigation began in Impotence product in 2004 when bear gall bladders and seal oosiks were discovered in a Boston suburb. The sales were traced to the Korean gift shop in Anchorage. From there, the parts were traced to Zacharof, an Alaska Native who headed a seal hunt, Steward said.

“They (Alaska Natives) are allowed to do this for subsistence purposes and they also are allowed to convert different parts of the seal to traditional Native handicrafts,” she said. “They can't sell raw unworked marine mammal parts of any kind.”

Steward said the gift shop also faces prosecution.

Kevin Heck, assistant special agent in charge of fisheries enforcement for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Anchorage, said the agency was surprised to discover the scope of the market in seal oosiks.

Such cases are difficult to prosecute for a number of reasons, including the remoteness of St. Paul Island, Heck said.

St. Paul, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, was discovered by Russian fur traders in the 1780s. Fur seals subsequently were severely overharvested.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Injections of botulinum toxin A, or Botox, into the prostate gland eased the symptoms of enlarged prostate in men for up to a year, according to the results of a small study published Wednesday.

Researchers at the Chang Gung University Medical College, Taiwan, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania, based their study on 37 men with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BHP), or enlarged prostate.

All patients received a single injection of Botox into their prostate, the researchers said in their paper published in a summary ahead of this week's American Urological Association's annual conference, in Annaheim, Dysfunction erectile natural treatment.

A year into the treatment 27 patients - 73 percent of the group - experienced a 30 percent improvement in urinary tract symptoms and quality of life, said Dr Yao-Chi Chuang, chief new treatment for erectile dysfunction for the Taiwanese university.

Chuang said Botox - a popular, surgery-free cosmetic treatment for wrinkles - reduces the size of the prostate gland through a cellular process called apoptosis, in which the prostate cells die in a programmed manner.

The treatment posed no significant side effects, such as stress urinary incontinence or erectile erectile help, said Pittsburgh's Michael Chancellor, senior author of the study.

The reduction in size of the prostate can improve urine flow and decrease residual urine left in the bladder, he said.

“Our results are encouraging because they indicate that Botox could represent a simple, safe and effective treatment for enlarged prostate that has long-term benefits,” Chancellor added.

BHP is one of the most common diseases affecting men as they age. More than half of all men over the age of 60 and by age 80 develop enlarged prostates, the researchers said.

Forty to 50 percent will develop symptoms of BHP, including more frequent urination, urinary tract infections, the inability to completely empty the bladder and, in severe cases, eventual damage to the bladder and kidneys, they added.

Botox is a powerful neurotoxin introduced nearly two decades ago. It is used to cure some facial problems but is best known for its cosmetic qualities in paralysing facial muscles and thus giving foreheads a wrinkle-free appearance.

Vacuum device for impotence
(Reuters) - The male impotence drug Viagra may be useful for treating jet lag as well, according to Argentine researchers who gave it to hamsters made to feel like rodent impotence in male.

The researchers manipulated the schedule of turning lights on and off to induce jet lag in the laboratory animals, they reported on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

National Academy of Sciences.

Adult male hamsters given Viagra, also called sildenafil, recovered from jet lag up to 50 percent faster than hamsters that were not given it, the researchers said.

The scientists stopped giving the hamsters the highest dose they had been using in the experiment due to a certain side effect.

“However, we used the penis erectile dysfunction probs
dose for the rest of the experiments because at that dose animals did not manifest the effects of reason for impotence penile erections,” they wrote.

Flying across multiple time zones can confuse one's sleep-wake cycle, resulting in the condition called jet lag, marked by insomnia, sleepiness and difficulty concentrating.

Researchers Patricia Agostino, Santiago Plano and Diego Golombek of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes in Buenos Aires gave doses of Viagra to the hamsters at night, then switched on bright lights six hours early to simulate eastbound flight.

They judged how well the hamsters adjusted to the changes by observing when they began running on exercise wheels.

The drug helped the rodents cope with jet lag only when given before the equivalent of an eastbound flight, not the reverse when they delayed turning on lights to simulate westbound travel, the study found.

The researchers said the findings suggested that Viagra could be useful to help people cope with jet lag or shift work. They said the dose needed for such uses could be lower than the one used for treatment of erectile dysfunction.

Viagra interferes with an enzyme that lowers levels of a naturally occurring compound that plays a role in the regulation of the circadian cycle, the body's internal clock, the researchers said.

Viagra is marketed by Pfizer, the world's largest drug maker. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Food and Drug Administration approved it to treat erectile dysfunction in 1998.

Botox is not just for wrinkles anymore. New research suggests that it may boost the quality of life of men with enlarged prostate when injected directly into the gland.

The small study revealed that about 75 percent of men suffering from benign prostatic impotence and lipitor
(BPH) experienced partial symptom relief following the treatment.

“Many men have enlarged prostate,” noted study senior author Dr. Michael B. Chancellor, a professor of urology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “They take pills, but sometimes they don't work, or sometimes they have side effects, and they're afraid of surgery. So now, Botox has been shown to be safe and effective, and a single office injection, which takes about 5 minutes, can achieve success for one entire year. So, it's a new and very exciting erectile dysfunction medicine
that is something between standard drugs and surgery.”

Chancellor was slated to present the findings this week in Anaheim, Calif., at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association. He conducted his work alongside colleagues at the Chang Gung University Medical College in Taiwan.

“This is not surprising, but it's very interesting,” added Dr. Peter T. Scardino, chairman of the department of urology and head of the Prostate Cancer Program at Memorial Impotence org Cancer Center in New York City. “Essentially, what you're doing with Botox is not so much changing the prostate size as relaxing the nerves and muscle tone in the prostate and making urinary flow easier. It certainly makes sense.”

Scardino was not involved in the study, which was funded by the pharmaceutical company Allergan Inc, the maker of Botox.

According to the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse, BPH usually occurs among men over the age of 50. More than half of all men over the age of 60 develop BPH, the authors noted — a figure that rises to 80 percent by the age of 80.

Between 40 percent and 50 percent of BPH patients develop a loss of bladder control as the growing prostate squeezes against the urethra, the passage through which urine flows.

Accompanying symptoms include a frequent need to urinate (often at night), trouble urinating (even when feeling the urge), blood in the urine, and urinary tract infections. In severe cases, bladder and kidney damage can result.

Physicians diagnose BPH by means of digital rectal exams, blood tests, X-rays, sonograms, or cystoscopy — the insertion of a lighted tube into the bladder.

Once identified, patients with mild BPH may choose to forego treatment. However, those with more serious symptoms are often prescribed medications to shrink or relax the gland to relieve bladder blockage.

Doctors use a number of drugs, often in combination, to treat BPH. When that fails, the prostate can be reduced or removed via laser or microwave techniques, or invasive surgery.

In this study, Chancellor and his colleagues honed in on Botox as a possible treatment alternative.

The researchers focused on 37 men, averaging 67 years of age, who had not responded to standard treatments for BPH.

Using an ultrasound guide, the patients were injected once with between 100 and 200 units of Botox, depending on the size of the prostate.

The team found that nearly three-quarters of the patients experienced a 30 percent improvement in their symptoms for up to a year following the injection. None of the patients experienced significant side effects, such as erectile dysfunction or urinary incontinence.

Follow-up exams conducted six months and 12 months following treatment also showed an up to 15 percent reduction in prostate size among some, but not all, patients. According to the researchers, this suggests Botox instigated a controlled form of prostate cell death that shrank the gland.

However, these reductions in prostate size did not seem to explain symptom improvement, they said. Rather, symptom relief was probably associated with a change in prostate gland muscle tone and sensory function following Botox injections.

“In fact, the effect of the Botox is similar to what the alpha-blockers drugs do and have done for many years,” noted Scardino. “But, I can imagine this being useful as an alternate to a more invasive procedure for people who all of a sudden can't urinate and face an emergency situation.”

“The question is how practical is it?” Scardino cautioned. “It's worth exploring, but this is extremely preliminary in terms of its clinical benefit. Much more research is needed.”

Chancellor agreed on the need for more research and said a new worldwide study is already under way to explore Botox's potential against BPH.

Dr. Robert E. Weiss is a urologic oncologist at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey and an associate professor of urology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J. He said that patients who have failed standard medical therapies have the most to gain from this alternative approach.

“We have a significant number of patients nowadays who begin medical therapy, and either it initially doesn't work, or, with time their symptoms get worse,” he noted. “And the next step would be a more invasive treatment. So, this would probably be a little better option, because it's presumably minimally invasive. It's certainly a novel idea.”

More information

For more on BPH and its treatment, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.