April 19, 2010, 7:05 AM CT

Vitamin and calcium supplements may reduce breast cancer risk

Vitamins and calcium supplements appear to reduce the risk of breast cancer, as per findings presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010.

"It is not an immediate effect. You don't take a vitamin today and your breast cancer risk is reduced tomorrow," said Jaime Matta, Ph.D., professor in the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico. "However, we did see a long-term effect in terms of breast cancer reduction".

Matta said the findings suggest that the calcium supplements are acting to enhance DNA repair capacity, a complex biological process involving more than 200 proteins that, if disrupted, can lead to cancer.

"This process involves at least five separate pathways and is critical for maintaining genomic stability," said Matta. "When the DNA is not repaired, it leads to mutation that leads to cancer".

The study included 268 women with breast cancer and 457 healthy controls. Women were more likely to have breast cancer if they were older, had a family history of breast cancer, had no history of breastfeeding and had lower DNA repair capacity.

Vitamin supplements appeared to reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 30 percent. Calcium supplements reduced the risk of breast cancer by 40 percent. After controlling for the level of DNA repair capacity, calcium supplements were no longer as protective, but the link between vitamin supplements and breast cancer reduction remained......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 19, 2010, 7:03 AM CT

A brain-recording device that melts into place

Researchers have developed a brain implant that essentially melts into place, snugly fitting to the brain's surface. The technology could pave the way for better devices to monitor and control seizures, and to transmit signals from the brain past damaged parts of the spinal cord.

"These implants have the potential to maximize the contact between electrodes and brain tissue, while minimizing damage to the brain. They could provide a platform for a range of devices with applications in epilepsy, spinal cord injuries and other neurological disorders," said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.

The study, published in Nature Materials, shows that the ultrathin flexible implants, made partly from silk, can record brain activity more faithfully than thicker implants embedded with similar electronics.

The simplest devices for recording from the brain are needle-like electrodes that can penetrate deep into brain tissue. More state-of-the-art devices, called micro-electrode arrays, consist of dozens of semi-flexible wire electrodes, commonly fixed to rigid silicon grids that do not conform to the brain's shape.

In people with epilepsy, the arrays could be used to detect when seizures first begin, and deliver pulses to shut the seizures down. In people with spinal cord injuries, the technology has promise for reading complex signals in the brain that direct movement, and routing those signals to healthy muscles or prosthetic devices......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

April 19, 2010, 7:01 AM CT

When 'sick' children are unnecessarily sent home

In a newly released study, scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, working with Community Coordinated Child Care (4C's), have observed that a number of metropolitan Milwaukee child care directors would unnecessarily send children with mild illnesses home.

Andrew N. Hashikawa, M.D., and his colleagues surveyed 305 child care centers in metropolitan Milwaukee to see how closely directors followed national guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Public Health Association (APHA) and to identify characteristics linked to unnecessary exclusion decisions. Their findings "Unnecessary Child Care Exclusions in a State That Endorses National Exclusion Guidelines," would be reported in the recent issue of Pediatrics (published online April 19).

Dr. Hashikawa is an instructor in pediatrics and a third year fellow in pediatric emergency medicine at the Medical College and practices at Children's Hospital.

In 2005, more than two-thirds of children in the United States who were under five mandatory nonparental child care, a vast majority of whom received care in a child care setting. "Children who are excluded from child care place a significant economic burden on parents, businesses, and health care resources." Dr. Hashikawa points out......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

April 14, 2010, 11:04 PM CT

Childhood body size affects future breast cancer

Thinner girls appears to be at higher risk of breast cancer. Scientists writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research observed that girls who were leaner at age seven were at higher risk of cancer during the later part of life.

Jingmei Li worked with a team of scientists from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, to study the relationships between childhood body size and tumour characteristics in a group of 2,818 Swedish patients with breast cancer and 3,111 controls. She said, "Our main finding was that a large body type at age seven years was linked to a decreased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Eventhough strongly linked to other known risk factors such as age of menarche, adult BMI and breast density, size at age seven years remained a significant protective factor after adjustment for these other issues".

Size at age seven was also found to determine tumour characteristics, in particular, estrogen receptor status. A large body size at age seven was particularly protective against estrogen receptor negative tumours, which generally fare worse in terms of prognosis. The researchers' classification of childhood body size was derived from nine numbered pictograms ranging from very skinny (S1) to very fat (S9). Subjects assessed their own body type at present and how they remembered themselves at seven years old. These selections were then used to group them as lean (S1 to S2), medium (S3 to S4) and large (S5 to S9). Li said, "It appears counterintuitive that a large body size during childhood can reduce breast cancer risk, because a large birth weight and a high adult BMI have been shown to otherwise elevate breast cancer risk. There remain unanswered questions on mechanisms driving this protective effect"......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 14, 2010, 11:02 PM CT

Newly discovered RNA steers brain development

How does the brain work? This question is one of the greatest scientific mysteries, and neurobiologists have only recently begun to piece together the molecular building blocks that enable human beings to be "thinking" animals.

One fundamental property of the mammalian brain is that it continues to develop after birth, and one of the biggest drivers of the formation of new links between neurons is experience. Every time a baby sticks her finger on a pin or laughs in response to an adult's embellished gestures, a cascade of genetic activity is triggered in her brain that results in new, and perhaps even lifelong, synaptic connections.

New research from the lab of Michael Greenberg, Nathan Marsh Pusey professor and chair of neurobiology at HMS, in collaboration with bioinformatics specialist and neuroscientist Gabriel Kreiman, assistant professor of ophthalmology at Children's Hospital, Boston, has observed that a particular set of RNA molecules widely considered to be no more than a genomic oddity are actually major players in brain developmentand are essential for regulating the process by which neurons absorb the outside world into their genetic machinery.

"This discovery may inform disorders of cognition such as autism spectrum disorders," says Greenberg. "It's incredibly important to know all about the brain's genetic regulatory mechanisms in order to think more deeply about how to develop therapies for treating these sorts of conditions"......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

April 14, 2010, 11:01 PM CT

Personalized medicine for cancer patients

Published online today in Nature, a paper authored by over 200 members of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) describes the beginnings of a Brave New World, a new era of personalised medicine for cancer patients.

Formed in 2008, the consortium brings together leading cancer scientists from around the world, working together to catalogue the genetic changes of the 50 most common cancers - 500 genomes from each cancer type and make the results freely available on the internet.

"Given the tremendous potential for relatively low-cost genomic sequencing to reveal clinically useful information, we anticipate that in the not so distant future, partial or full cancer genomes will routinely be sequenced as part of the clinical assessment of cancer patients," say the authors in the paper.

Their statement is fairly low-key, given the staggering scale of progress over the last couple of decades. The first human genome project, which sequenced half a dozen people, cost 1.5 billion dollars and took 15 years. The same amount of data can now be processed in a week at a fraction of the cost.

"This is already revolutionising the way we do cancer research," said Professor Andrew Biankin, member of the Nature paper's writing team, researcher at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, surgeon at Sydney's Bankstown Hospital and co-leader of the Australian Pancreatic Cancer Genome Initiative, the Australian project arm of the ICGC......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 14, 2010, 10:59 PM CT

Reducing teenage smoking

Dr James White from Cardiff University's School of Medicine undertook a three-year-study, involving some 3,500 11 to 15 year-olds, as part of the British Youth Panel Survey a self report survey of children in the British Household Panel survey.

Results indicated that one of the strongest protective factors for reducing the risk of experimenting with smoking in early adolescence was how often fathers talked with their children, both boys and girls, about 'things that mattered'.

Dr White, who presents his findings to the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference today (Thursday 15th April) said: "This study suggests that a greater awareness of parents' and particularly fathers' potential impact upon their teenagers' choices about whether to smoke is needed. Fathers should be encouraged and supported to improve the quality and frequency of communication with their children during adolescence.

"The impact of teenager parenting is relatively un-researched and further research is very much needed."

Only children who had never smoked at the time the study began took part. As well as their smoking, the children were also asked about the frequency of parental communication, arguments with family members and the frequency of family meals......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 12, 2010, 10:46 PM CT

Health insurance and migraine care

People with no health insurance are less likely than the privately insured to receive proper therapy for their migraines, as per a research studyreported in the April 13, 2010, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Migraines, often characterized by excruciating headache and nausea, can cause significant distress. They can cause people affected by them to lose an average of four to six days of work each year. Study authors say migraine sufferers who lack private health insurance are twice as likely to get inadequate therapy for their condition as their insured counterparts. Migraine patients insured through Medicaid are one and a half times as likely to receive substandard therapy.

"The tragedy is that we know how to treat this disabling condition. But because they are uninsured or inadequately insured, millions of Americans suffer needlessly," said study author Rachel Nardin, MD, of Harvard Medical School and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. "Optimizing migraine care requires improvement in our health care systems as well as educating physicians to prescribe the best available drug and behavioral therapys".

Neurologists commonly recommend one of two types of drugs when a moderate-to-severe migraine strikes: "triptans" (such as sumatriptan) or dihydroergotamine. For the majority of people with migraine whose headaches are frequent or severe, neurologists also recommend a daily dose of one of several preventive medications. The scientists used these recommendations from the American Academy of Neurology to define standard migraine therapy......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

April 12, 2010, 10:40 PM CT

Radiation therapy for terminal cancer patients

A new analysis has observed that a considerable proportion of patients with end-stage or terminal cancer do not benefit from palliative radiation treatment (radiotherapy) despite spending most of their remaining life undergoing therapys. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-evaluated journal of the American Cancer Society, the study indicates that greater efforts are needed to tailor appropriately palliative radiotherapy to patients with end-stage cancer.

Palliative radiotherapy for end-stage cancer patients is intended to control cancer-related pain and other symptoms and to help patients maintain a good quality of life when long-term cancer control is not possible. By reducing the number of cancer cells, palliative radiotherapy can ease pain, stop bleeding, and relieve pressure, even when the cancer cannot be controlled. However, for a number of patients, the therapys are not effective. In addition, if patients are close to death, they may wish to stop therapys if they would like to die at home.

To investigate the adequacy of palliative radiotherapy in end-stage cancer patients, Stephan Gripp, MD, of the University Hospital Duesseldorf in Gera number of and his colleagues reviewed the therapy of patients who were referred for palliative radiotherapy at their hospital from December 2003 to July 2004 and who died within 30 days. The researchers identified 33 such patients......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

April 12, 2010, 10:35 PM CT

Women who eat foods with high glycemic index

Consuming carbohydrates with high glycemic indexan indicator of how quickly a food affects blood glucose levelsmay be linked to the risk of coronary heart disease in women but not men, as per a report in the April 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

High-carbohydrate diets increase the levels of blood glucose and of harmful blood fats known as triglycerides while reducing levels of protective HDL or "good" cholesterol, thereby increasing heart disease risk, as per background information in the article. However, not all carbohydrates have the same effect on blood glucose levels. The glycemic index is a measure of how much a food raises blood glucose levels compared with the same amount of glucose or white bread. A related measure, the glycemic load, is calculated based on the glycemic index of a given food and also on the total amount of carbohydrates it contains.

Sabina Sieri, Ph.D., of Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy, and his colleagues studied 47,749 Italian adults15,171 men and 32,578 womenwho completed dietary questionnaires. Based on their responses, the scientists calculated their overall carbohydrate intakes as well as the average glycemic index of the foods they consumed and the glycemic loads of their diets. During a median (midpoint) of 7.9 years of follow-up, 463 participants (158 women and 305 men) developed coronary heart disease......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source