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Hormone-Depleting Drug Shows Promise Against Localized High-Risk Prostate Tumors - A hormone-depleting drug approved last year for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer can help eliminate or nearly eliminate tumors in many patients with aggressive cancers that have yet to spread beyond the prostate, according to a clinical study to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), June 1-5, in Chicago ...

Distraction As Pain Relief - Mental distractions make pain easier to take, and those pain-relieving effects aren't just in your head, according to a report published online in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings based on high-resolution spinal fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) as people experienced painful levels of heat show that mental distractions actually inhibit the response to incoming pain signals at the earliest stage of central pain processing ...

It's Not Just What You Eat, When You Eat Matters Too - When it comes to weight gain, when you eat might be at least as important as what you eat. That's the conclusion of a study reported in the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism published early online. When mice on a high-fat diet are restricted to eating for eight hours per day, they eat just as much as those who can eat around the clock, yet they are protected against obesity and other metabolic ills, the new study shows. The discovery suggests that the health consequences of a poor diet might result in part from a mismatch between our body clocks and our eating schedules ...

Genetic Discovery Will Revolutionize Understanding Of Gene Expression - Over the past decade, research in the field of epigenetics has revealed that chemically modified bases are abundant components of the human genome and has forced us to abandon the notion we've had since high school genetics that DNA consists of only four bases. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have made a discovery that once again forces us to rewrite our textbooks. This time, however, the findings pertain to RNA, which like DNA carries information about our genes and how they are expressed ...

OSHA Regulations Can Be Good For Workers' Health, Save Lives - Research published in Science sheds light on a hot-button political issue: the role and effectiveness of government regulation. Does it kill jobs or protect the public? The new study, co-authored by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Toffel, Professor David Levine of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and Boston University doctoral student Matthew Johnson, examines workplace safety inspections conducted by California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) ...

Renal Denervation Lowers Blood Pressure In Kidney Disease Patients - Disrupting certain nerves in the kidneys can safely and effectively lower blood pressure in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and hypertension, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings indicate that the procedure might improve CKD patients' heart health. Overactivity of neurons in the sympathetic - or fight or flight - nervous system is very common in patients with CKD ...

For Chronic Kidney Disease Patients, One Type Of Open Heart Surgery Is Safer Than The Other - One type of open heart surgery is likely safer than the other for chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Open heart, or coronary artery bypass, surgery can be done two ways: on-pump or off-pump, depending on whether the patient is put on a heart-lung machine. Off-pump surgery allows a surgeon to perform a bypass without stopping the heart. This may help cut down on kidney injuries that can arise after heart surgery, which can deprive the kidneys of normal blood flow ...

Controlling Bacterial Population Density Within Infections - Scientists at The University of Nottingham have opened the way for more accurate research into new ways to fight dangerous bacterial infections by proving a long-held theory about how bacteria communicate with each other. Researchers in the University's School of Molecular Medical Sciences have shown for the first time that the effectiveness of the bacteria's communication method, a process called 'quorum sensing', directly depends on the density of the bacterial population ...

Identifying Autism Risk In High Risk Siblings Of Children With ASD - By focusing on the identification of common genetic variants, researchers have identified 57 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that predict - with a high degree of certainty - the risk that siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will also develop the condition. The findings were presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research. ASD is among the most common form of severe developmental disability with prevalence rates up to 1 in 88 children ...

New National Guidelines For Treatment Of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage - People with bleeding brain aneurysms have the best chance of survival and full recovery if they receive aggressive emergency treatment from a specialized team at a hospital that treats a large number of patients like them every year, according to new guidelines just published by the American Stroke Association ...

Dieting During Pregnancy Is Safe And Helpful - ��A study in BMJ reports that the risk for serious complications, such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes and premature birth can be safely reduced even in overweight and obese pregnant women by following a healthy calorie controlled diet during pregnancy. Over half of the UK's female population of reproductive ages is overweight or obese, and up to 40% of European and American women gain more than the recommended weight in pregnancy, which has been associated with numerous serious health problems ...

Anxiety Disorders And Cellular Metabolism Linked - Researchers at the University of Chicago have found an association between anxiety disorders and the gene that encodes Glyoxylase 1 (GLO1). However, the mechanism underlying this association is unclear. The most prevalent psychiatric diseases in the United States are anxiety disorders, which range from post-traumatic stress disorder to social phobia. Using a mouse model, Margaret Distler and her team set out to determine whether the primary substrate of GlO1, methylglyoxal, might have unproven neurological effects ...

Hunger Among Seniors In The USA Rose 78% In Ten Years - 8.3 million (14.85%) seniors in the United States face the threat of hunger, say researchers at the University of Illinois. From 2001 to 2010, the incidence of hunger among seniors has risen by 78%, and by 34% since the onset of the recession in 2007. Craig Gundersen, University of Illinois associate professor of agricultural and consumer economics and executive director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory, said: "In 2005, we reported that one in nine seniors faced the threat of hunger ...

Athlete's High Pain Threshold May Help Pain Management Research - Athletes are often seen to put on a 'brave face and carry on' when they sustain an injury, which supports the theory that they have a higher pain threshold than non-athletes, regardless of inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory evidence from previous studies on pain perception in athletes ...

Drug Approval Faster In US FDA Than Its European Or Canadian Counterparts - Although the drug approval process in the U.S. has been perceived as too slow, the nation approves new drug treatments faster and earlier than Europe and Canada, according to researchers at Yale School of Medicine. The study, conducted by Nicholas Downing, a second-year medical student and Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, found that the median total time to review was: 322 days at The U.S ...

Running Marathons - Death Risk Low, Higher Among Men - In recent years, the popularity of marathons has grown significantly and although the risk of dying during a marathon or soon after is extremely low - about 0.75 per 100,000 - men are two times more likely to die than women, say researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine. In addition, the number of individuals to complete grueling 26.2 mile marathons in the United States increased dramatically between 2000 and 2009, from 299,018 to 473,354. The study is published online in The American Journal of Sports Medicine. Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D ...

Reducing Booze Consumption Better For Public Health And Economy, Australia - According to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health, Australia could yield economic and health benefits by reducing its overall national yearly alcohol consumption. In 2008, researchers estimated the economic benefits Australia could achieve in health, production and leisure, if the annual per capita consumption of alcohol would be reduced to a designated average yearly target of 6.4 liters per capita. They discovered that reducing the annual per capita alcohol consumption by just 3.4 liters would save Australia's health sector $789 million ...

Diabetes Population May Rise To 53 Million Within 13 Years In USA - By the year 2025, researchers predict that 53.1 million individuals in the United States will have diabetes (mainly type 2 diabetes) - a 64% increase from 2010. The study is published in Population Health Management Diabetes is a life long disease in which there are high levels of glucose in the blood. In type 1 diabetes the body does not produce insulin and in type 2 diabetes the body either produces insufficient amounts of insulin or ignores it. William Rowley, M.D., and Clement Bezold, Ph.D ...

Fighting Multidrug-Resistant Bugs - Last Resort Drugs Being Used Increasingly - A study published in the open access journal PloS ONE reveals that the use of "last resort" antibiotics is on the rise due to the increasing prevalence of multidrug-resistant pathogens. Makoto Jones, of the Veterans Affairs Salt Lake City Health Care System, and colleagues conducted the study in order to investigate the use of two such antibiotics, tigecycline and polymyxins, in 127 Veterans Affairs Medical centers between 2005 and 2010. The researchers found that 26 centers accounted for 75% of all tigecycline use, and just 8 centers accounted for 75% of all polymyxin use ...

Strict School Physical Education Laws Improve Children's Health - As childhood obesity and diabetes rates are skyrocketing in the US, many schools are eliminating physical education classes. A national study in the American Journal of Public Health reports that specific and required state legislation with regard to PE times could be a crucial tool to ensure that children meet the daily recommendations of physical activity ...

Heart Healthier Oat Variety Developed - Plant breeders of the Wisconsin-Madison University have developed a new oat variety called BetaGene, which is 2% higher in beta glucan and therefore even more cardio-friendly than other oat varieties on the market. John Mochon, program manager of the Small Grains Breeding Program in UW-Madison's agronomy department explains: "The biggest thing that stands out about this new variety, BetaGene, is that it's both a high yielding variety and high in beta glucan. Beta glucan is a heart-healthy chemical that is exclusive to oats ...

Weight Management And Dieting During Pregnancy Is Beneficial - A woman who is both over weight and pregnant faces double challenges, not least because many women who are not overweight struggle not to gain weight over the course of the nine month gestation period. Pregnant women who are overweight or obese can have serious health risks including high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, diabetes and premature birth, but there is good news. A study published today on bmj.com shows that these risks can be mitigated by following a healthy calorie controlled diet over the course of the pregnancy ...

The Influence Of Genes On Psychological Well-Being - Genes play a greater role in forming character traits - such as self-control, decision making or sociability - than was previously thought, new research suggests. A study of more than 800 sets of twins found that genetics were more influential in shaping key traits than a person's home environment and surroundings. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh who carried out the study, say that genetically influenced characteristics could well be the key to how successful a person is in life ...

Women At Risk Of Post Natal Depression May Be Identified By Blood Test - Researchers at Warwick Medical School have discovered a way of identifying which women are most at risk of postnatal depression (PND) by checking for specific genetic variants. The findings could lead to the development of a simple, accurate blood test which checks for the likelihood of developing the condition ...

Animal Sampling For Ebola Should Focus On Carcasses - Response efforts to outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Africa can benefit from a standardized sampling strategy that focuses on the carcasses of gorillas, chimpanzees and other species known to succumb to the virus, according to a consortium of wildlife health experts. In a recently published study of 14 previous human Ebola outbreaks and the responses of wildlife teams collecting animal samples, the authors of the new study conclude that most efforts to collect samples from live animals (i.e. rodents, bats, primates, birds) failed to isolate Ebola virus or antibodies ...

Gene Therapy Helps Children With Rare, Incurable Brain Disease - Using gene transfer techniques pioneered by University of Florida faculty, Taiwanese doctors have restored some movement in four children bedridden with a rare, life-threatening neurological disease. The first-in-humans achievement may also be helpful for more common diseases such as Parkinson's that involve nerve cell damage caused by lack of a crucial molecule in brain tissue. The results are reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine ...

Surgical Vs. Nonsurgical Treatment For Cervical Spine Fracture - For older adults with "C2" fractures of the upper (cervical) spine, surgery and nonsurgical treatment provide similar short- and long-term outcomes, reports a study in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Although the patients were at significant risk of complications and death in the year or two after C2 fracture, these risks are similar with surgical and nonsurgical treatment ...

Glioblastoma Classification Revision Should Improve Patient Care - Radiation oncology researchers have revised the system used by doctors since the 1990s to determine the prognosis of people with glioblastoma, which is the most devastating of malignant brain tumors. The outdated system was devised for glioblastoma and related brain tumors that were treated by radiation therapy only, and it relied on clinical signs and symptoms. It divided patients into six prognostic groups ...

Older People With Chronic Leukemia May Benefit From Experimental Agent - The experimental drug ibrutinib (PCI-32765) shows great promise for the treatment of elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to interim findings from a clinical trial. The phase I/II trial, co-led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) and MD Anderson Cancer Center, indicates that the oral agent has few side effects and a high one-year survival rate in older patients ...

Molecule That Prevents Heart Damage is Also Proving Its Worth In Diabetic Patients - ACE2, a molecule that has been shown to prevent damage in the heart, is now proving to be protective of the major organs that are often damaged in diabetic patients. Gavin Oudit, a researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and his colleagues at the University of Florida, found that lab models that lacked ACE2 had worse cardiovascular complications related to diabetes. "We show that if you take ACE2 away, they [lab models of diabetes] do very poorly," said Oudit. "It worsened their heart function and their vascular function ...

Trial Of ALK Inhibitor In Neuroblastoma, Lymphoma - A pill designed to zero in on abnormal genes that drive specific cancers has produced encouraging early results in children with an uncommon but aggressive type of lymphoma, as well as in children with a rare form of neuroblastoma. A phase 1 clinical trial of the drug crizotinib achieved remissions, with minimal side effects, for 10 of the children participating in a clinical study carried out by the multicenter Children's Oncology Group (COG). The results were "an exciting proof-of-principle" for the targeted treatment, said the study leader, Yaël P. Mossé, M.D ...

Potential New Drugs For Fox Tapeworm Infection In Humans - Scientists are reporting development and testing of a new series of drugs that could finally stop the fox tapeworm - which causes a rare but life-threatening disease in humans - dead in its tracks. The report, which appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, shows that specific organometallic substances that help combat cancer are also the surprising best new hope for a treatment against tapeworm infection. Carsten Vock, Andrew Hemphill and colleagues explain that alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a parasitic disease caused by the fox tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis ...

Cheap New Paper-Based Diagnostic Test For Diabetes - With epidemics of Type 2 diabetes looming in rural India, China and other areas of the world where poverty limits the availability of health care, scientists are reporting development of an inexpensive and easy-to-use urine test ideally suited for such areas. The report describing the paper-based device, which also could be adapted for the diagnosis and monitoring of other conditions and the environment, appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry. Jan Lankelma and colleagues point out that monitoring glucose levels is important ...

Herbal Extract May Curb Binge Drinking - An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu dramatically reduces drinking and may be useful in the treatment of alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers. "Our study is further evidence that components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption and do so without adverse side effects," said David Penetar, PhD, of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study ...

Personalized Treatment Advances: Testing For Mutations Identified In Squamous Cell Lung Cancer Tumors - Screening lung cancer tumor samples for cancer-causing, or "driver," genetic mutations can help physicians tailor patients' treatments to target those specific mutations. While scientists have identified cancer-causing mutations for the majority of lung adenocarcinomas - the most common type of non-small cell lung cancer - and have developed drugs that can successfully address them, scientists have not yet identified targeted therapies for another type of non-small cell lung cancer known as squamous cell carcinoma ...

Patients With Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Benefit From Accelerated Chemotherapy Given Before Surgery - For some patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, treatment may begin before they undergo cystectomy, or surgical removal of the bladder. They may be advised by oncologists to receive chemotherapy before surgery. A large randomized clinical trial published in 2003 demonstrated a survival benefit for neoadjuvant, or pre-surgical, MVAC (methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin and cisplatin) using a standard dose and schedule. However, in an effort to improve toxicity, standard MVAC has been essentially abandoned in favor of other regimens ...

Famous 1848 Case Of A Man Who Survived A Terrible Brain Injury Has Modern Parallel - Poor Phineas Gage. In 1848, the supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. As reported at the time, the rod was later found, "smeared with blood and brains ...

For Medication Disposal, New Advice Is Trash Beats Take-Back - Returning extra medicine to the pharmacy for disposal might not be worth the extra time, money or greenhouse gas emissions, according to a University of Michigan study that is the first to look at the net effects of so-called take-back programs. The new evidence suggests that discarding unused drugs in the trash is a better option to limit the risk of poisoning and at the same time curb pollution of both water and air. To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers compared the total emissions created by take-back, trash and toilet disposal methods ...

Smartphones A Big Help To Visually Impaired - iPhones and other smartphones can be a huge help to the visually impaired, but few vision doctors are recommending them to patients, according to a study co-authored by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine ophthalmologist. Researchers surveyed 46 low-vision adults from The Chicago Lighthouse and the Spectrios Institute for Low Vision in Wheaton, Ill. Participants' best-corrected vision ranged from 20/70 to complete blindness ...

Simple Task For 6-Month-Olds May Predict Risk Of Autism - A new prospective study of six-month-old infants at high genetic risk for autism identified weak head and neck control as a red flag for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and language and/or social developmental delays. Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute concluded that a simple "pull-to-sit" task could be added to existing developmental screenings at pediatric well visits to improve early detection of developmental delays. "Research aimed at improving early detection of autism has largely focused on measurement of social and communication development," said Dr ...

Using Brain Computer Interface, Paralysed Patients Control Robotic Arms To Reach And Grasp - On April 12, 2011, nearly fifteen years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, a woman controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her arm and hand to lift a bottle of coffee to her mouth and take a drink. That achievement is one of the advances in brain-computer interfaces restorative neurotechnology and assistive robot technology described in the journal Nature by the BrainGate2 collaboration of researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School., and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) ...

First Case Of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy In Blast-Exposed Military Personnel - Investigators from Boston University (BU) and the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System have shown evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in brain tissue from blast-exposed military service personnel. Laboratory experiments conducted by the investigators demonstrated that exposure to a single blast equivalent to a typical improvised explosive device (IED) results in CTE and long-term brain impairments that accompany the disease ...

The Risks Of Running Marathons - Even though hundreds of thousands more people finished grueling 26.2 mile marathons in the United States in 2009 compared to a decade earlier, a runner's risk of dying during or soon after the race has remained very low - about .75 per 100,000, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. Men, however, were twice as likely to die as women. "It's very dramatic when someone dies on the course, but it's not common," says Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D ...

Dialysis Patients Benefit From 5-Minute Chat - The constant health education that dialysis patients receive can lead to boredom and noncompliance. But a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that brief, casual chats can be a significant benefit to patients. The technique is called "talking control support therapy." As patients were undergoing dialysis, researchers stopped by for informal chats. A typical conversation began with small talk, before moving on to general conversation about healthy dialysis lifestyles. Unlike conventional dialysis education, no specific education goals were set ...

US FDA Ahead Of Canada, Europe In Drug-Approval Race - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) generally approves drug therapies faster and earlier than its counterparts in Canada and Europe, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers. The study counters perceptions that the drug approval process in the United States is especially slow. Led by second-year medical student Nicholas Downing and senior author Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, the study was published online by the New England Journal of Medicine ...

In-Patient Suicides Reduced In Psychiatric Units - Suicides by psychiatric in-patients have fallen to a new low, research just published has found. The study by the University of Manchester's National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, one of very few to look at trends over time, shows the rate of suicide among psychiatric in-patients fell by between 29% and 31% between 1997 and 2008 with nearly 100 fewer deaths per year. The falls were seen across most groups of patients with the biggest falls in young patients and those with schizophrenia. On wards, deaths by hanging fell by nearly 60% ...

Improving Palliative Care For Heart Failure Patients - Palliative care for cancer patients in the UK is well established - but the situation is starkly different for those suffering from heart failure. A recent service evaluation led by the University of Hull and Hull York Medical School (HYMS) shows this doesn't have to be the case - particularly if clinicians have the courage to talk about death with their patients. The study - published in the British Journal of Cardiology - describes data from two areas in Yorkshire where palliative care and heart failure services are fully integrated - Bradford & Airedale and Scarborough ...

The Cause Identified Of LGL Leukemia - LGL leukemia is a relatively rare, malignant blood disease of the mature T-cells and, in many cases, it is related to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. The pathogenetic mechanism of the disease has been unknown and it has previously been unclear if the disease is an overreaction of the normal defense system or a malignant hematological disease. One of the key symptoms of LGL disease is a low count of white blood cells (neutrophils), which may predispose the patients to life-threatening infections ...

Experts Recommend Overhaul Of Psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual - The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current "field guide" form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "A generation ago it served useful purposes, but now it needs clear alterations," says Paul R. McHugh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the paper with Phillip R. Slavney, M.D ...

Established Cancer Vaccine Works Better In Tandem With FDA-Approved Kidney Transplant Drug - A team from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania found that the FDA-approved drug daclizumab improved the survival of breast cancer patients taking a cancer vaccine by 30 percent, compared to those patients not taking daclizumab. This proof-of-concept study is published this week in Science Translational Medicine. Senior authors of the study are Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, associate professor of Medicine, and James Riley, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology ...

Gene Related To Autism, Schizophrenia And Obesity Isolated By Zebrafish Study - What can a fish tell us about human brain development? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth. Head size in human babies is a feature that is related to autism, a condition that recent figures have shown to be more common than previously reported, 1 in 88 children in a March 2012 study ...

New Clues On How ApoE4 Affects Alzheimer's Risk - Common variants of the ApoE gene are strongly associated with the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease, but the gene's role in the disease has been unclear. Now, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that in mice, having the most risky variant of ApoE damages the blood vessels that feed the brain. The researchers found that the high-risk variant, ApoE4, triggers an inflammatory reaction that weakens the blood-brain barrier, a network of cells and other components that lines brain's brain vessels ...

Minimal Residual Disease Detected In Nearly Double The Number Of Leukemia Patients Using High-Throughput Sequencing - A study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that a next-generation, high-speed DNA-decoding technology called high-throughput sequencing can detect the earliest signs of potential relapse in nearly twice the number of leukemia patients as compared to flow cytometry, the current gold standard for detecting minimal residual disease. The results of the study, led by Hutchinson Center computational biologist Harlan Robins, Ph.D., are reported in Science Translational Medicine ...

More Genes Discovered In The Fight Against Breast Cancer - In a study published in Nature, researchers describe nine new genes that drive the development of breast cancer. This takes the tally of all genes associated with breast cancer development to 40. The team examined all the genes in the genomes of 100 cases of breast cancer. The mutated cancer-causing genes were different in different cancer samples, indicating that breast cancer is genetically very diverse. Understanding the consequences of this diversity will be important in progressing towards more rational treatment. Changes to DNA lie behind all cases of cancer ...

Positive Survival Trend Seen In Phase I Study Of Temsirolimus, Capecitabine - A phase I clinical trial examining the safety of combining temsirolimus and capecitabine in advanced malignancies suggests the two agents can be given safely to patients. In addition, the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers conducting the study in cancer patients whose tumors have resisted multiple treatments say the combination demonstrates "promising evidence" of disease control and should be studied in a phase II trial ...

Lapatinib Combined With Cetuximab Overcomes Resistance In EGFR-Driven Tumors - Targeted therapies have been studied for years, but recent laboratory research is providing robust clues about drugs that might work better in combination, particularly in treating cancers that have become resistant to therapy. That kind of information is behind a novel clinical trial at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center that combines cetuximab and lapatinib. Findings from this phase I study will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, June 1st through 5th ...

Shared Risk Factors For Child Behavior Problems Revealed For U.S., Great Britain - New research from North Carolina State University shows that the United States and Great Britain share common risk factors that increase the likelihood of behavioral problems in children - and that Britain's broader social welfare programs don't appear to mitigate those risks. The researchers - from NC State, California State University Northridge and the University of Illinois (UI) - evaluated data from a 1994 study of children between the ages of five and 13 in the U.S. and a 1991 study of children in the same age range from England, Scotland and Wales ...

A Competent, Virtual Exercise Partner Can Boost Motivation And Improve Team Performance - A new study, testing the benefits of a virtual exercise partner, shows that the presence of a moderately more capable cycling partner boosts motivation to stick to an exercise program. The work by Brandon Irwin and colleagues, from Michigan State University in the US, is published online in Springer's journal, Annals of Behavioral Medicine. For many people, lack of motivation is a barrier to achieving both the recommended amount and intensity of exercise ...

Make Or Break For Cellular Tissues - Models developed to study liquids are used to investigate the mechanics of cellular tissues, which could further our understanding of embryonic development and cancer In a study about to be published in EPJ E¹, French physicists from the Curie Institute in Paris have demonstrated that the behaviour of a thin layer of cells in contact with an unfavourable substrate is akin to that of thin fluid or elastic films ...

Unravelling How Locomotion Starts - Scientists at the University of Bristol have shed new light on one of the great unanswered questions of neuroscience: how the brain initiates rhythmic movements like walking, running and swimming. While experiments in the 1970s using electrical brain stimulation identified areas of the brain responsible for starting locomotion, the precise neuron-by-neuron pathway has not been described in any vertebrate - until now. To find this pathway, Dr Edgar Buhl and colleagues in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences studied a small, simple vertebrate: the Xenopus frog tadpole ...