September 27, 2006, 6:49 PM CT

IMRT Cures Prostate Cancer

Results from the largest study of men with prostate cancer treated with high-dose, intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) show that the majority of patients remain alive with no evidence of disease after an average follow-up period of eight years. The 561 prostate cancer patients treated with IMRT at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center were classified into prognostic risk groups. After an average of eight years, 89 percent of the men in the favorable risk group were disease-free and none of the men in any group developed secondary cancers as a result of the radiation therapy. This report, published in the October 2006 issue of The Journal of Urology, is the first description of long-term outcomes for prostate cancer patients using IMRT.

"Our results suggest that IMRT should be the treatment of choice for delivering high-dose, external beam radiotherapy for patients with localized prostate cancer," said Dr. Michael J. Zelefsky, Chief of the Brachytherapy Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. "We were able to show long-term safety and long-term efficacy in a very diverse group of prostate cancer patients that we followed many for as long as ten years. Despite the fact that some patients had an aggressive form of their disease with high Gleason scores and PSA (prostate specific antigen) levels, the overwhelming majority of patients had good tumor control with neither recurrence of their original cancer nor development of second cancers, which one might have expected from the high doses of radiation," he added.........

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September 25, 2006, 10:16 PM CT

Most Complex Protein Knot Ever Seen

An MIT team has discovered the most complicated knot ever seen in a protein, and they believe it may be associated with the protein's function as a rescue agent for proteins marked for destruction.

"In proteins, the three-dimensional structure is very important to the function, and this is just one example," said Peter Virnau, a postdoctoral fellow in physics and an author of a paper on the work that appears in the Sept. 15 issue of the Public Library of Science, Computational Biology.

Knots are rare in proteins - less than 1 percent of all proteins have any knots, and most are fairly simple. The scientists analyzed 32,853 proteins, using a computational technique never before applied to proteins at this scale.

Of those that had knots, all were enzymes. Most had a simple three-crossing, or trefoil knot, a few had four crossings, and the most complicated, a five-crossing knot, was initially found in only one protein - ubiquitin hydrolase.

That complex knot may hold some protective value for ubiquitin hydrolase, whose function is to rescue other proteins from being destroyed - a dangerous job.

When a protein in a cell needs to be destroyed, it gets labeled with another protein called ubiquitin. "It's a death mark for the protein," said Leonid Mirny, an author of the paper and an associate professor in the MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology.........

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September 25, 2006, 9:55 PM CT

The Obesity Pandemic

Obesity is a serious health problem in North America and several European countries. Recently over half of the total population living in the United States is believed to be having either overweigt or obesity. Rate of occurence of obesity continue to increase in both males and females. Among all American women twenty years and older, about 64 million can be considered as overweight and more than 34 million could be considered as obese.

Excessive weight is linked to significant health hazards and increase death rates. Overweight individuals are more suseptible to suffer from coronory artary disease, diabetes, hypertension, cerebrovascular events and a veriety of other medical conditions. It is imperative that we all eat healhy food and routinely maintain a program of physical activity througout our life. To control weight and keep it off over time, try making long-term modifications in your dietery and physical activity habits.

Estimating the exact amount of a person's body fat level is not easy. Most accurate ways to measure the amount of body fat include weighing a person underwater or inside a chamber that uses the principle of air displacement to estimate body volume, or to use an X-ray technique called DEXA. Mesaurements of body fat content need not be so complex. There are simpler methods available to estimate fat content of the body. One such method is to measure the thickness of the fat layer just under the skin in various parts of the body. Another method involves passing a small amount of electricity through a person's body to measure conductivity. Results obtained from these methods, can however be, less than accurate particularly if done by an inexperienced person or on someone with high level of obesity.........

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September 25, 2006, 9:36 PM CT

Fampridine-sr Study For Multiple Sclerosis

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. today announced positive results from its Phase 3 clinical trial of Fampridine-SR on walking in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Statistical significance was achieved on all three efficacy criteria defined in the Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A significantly greater proportion of people taking Fampridine-SR had a consistent improvement in walking speed, the study's primary outcome, compared to people taking placebo (34.8 percent vs. 8.3 percent) as measured by the Timed 25-Foot Walk (p less than 0.001). In addition, the effect was maintained in this study throughout the 14-week treatment period (p less than 0.001) and there was a statistically significant improvement in the 12-Item MS Walking Scale (MSWS-12) for walking responders vs. non-responders (p less than0.001).

The average increase in walking speed over the treatment period compared to baseline was 25.2 percent for the drug group vs. 4.7 percent for the placebo group. Increased response rate on the Timed 25-Foot Walk was seen across all four major types of MS. In addition, statistically significant increases in leg strength were seen in both the Fampridine-SR Timed Walk responders (p<0.001) and the Fampridine-SR Timed Walk non-responders (p=0.046) compared to placebo. The Company intends to present comprehensive data at an upcoming medical meeting.........

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September 25, 2006, 4:55 PM CT

A Drop Of Blood Tells The Whole Story

Stomach cancer is the fifth-most common cancer in Taiwan. A team of scientists at National Taiwan University Hospital have improved our abilities to detect stomach cancer earlier. After years of hard work, they discovered a toxic factor "GroES" that causes stomach cancer. In the future, a simple blood test will give a positive or negative result for the presence of this substance, allowing immediate access to endoscopic examinations for patients for whom this is indicated. In this way, cancers can be detected and treated earlier.

World Health Organization statistics show that stomach cancer attacks some 800,000 people worldwide each year. The cancer usually attacks people in their 50s and 60s, and is the most frequently-occurring cancerous tumor type. Since the disease shows no symptoms in its early stages, commonly the cancer is already in Stage III before it is detected. Consequently, Zhou Lupin, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at National Taiwan University, is now heading up a team that is using immunological analysis to detect the cancer-causing "GroES" factor. The test has already achieved a 65 percent accuracy rate.

Zhou says that if the human body is infected with GroES, it produces antibodies to the factor. This can cause chronic inflammation of the stomach, causing the endothelial cells to rupture and proliferate. This long-term inflammation can also cause stomach cancer. As a result, in the future it will be necessary only to test for the presence of "GroES" to identify patients in a high-risk group for developing stomach cancer. Patients who test positive can be counseled to have an endoscopic examination as soon as possible, and if cancer is found, early therapy can begin.........

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September 24, 2006, 10:19 PM CT

How Much Parents Know Aboutteenage Alcoholism?

Prior assessments of child psychopathology have shown that parents can be helpful in reporting symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). A new study examines just how helpful parents are in assessing their children's alcohol and/or drug use and abuse. The answer? Not much.

Results are reported in the recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research

"'Externalizing' disorders such as ADHD and ODD have behaviors linked to them that are obvious and affect others," explained Laura Jean Bierut, associate professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine. "For example, a child who cannot sit still or focus on his or her work at school and is disruptive in the classroom, or a child who argues with his or her parents or refuses to do the things that they ask. However, the symptoms linked to 'internalizing' disorders such as depression can be much more subtle and not as easily recognized. Things like feelings of worthlessness or loss of interest in favorite activities can be very troubling to a child, but they don't necessarily impact others and might go unnoticed unless the child chooses to talk about them." Bierut is also the corresponding author for the study.

In terms of psychiatric disorders in general, added Sherri Fisher, project coordinator of the St. Louis site of the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) as well as co-author, this "disconnect" points out the importance of talking to both parents and children about the child's behavior and symptoms. "In terms of a child's substance use or substance-related problems, however, parents may be unaware of what's going on with their children, or simply repeat information that has already been reported by their child," she said.........

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September 24, 2006, 10:11 PM CT

Alcoholics With Coexisting Personality Disorders

People make decisions all the time: they form preferences, take action, and evaluate outcomes, whether rewarding or aversive. Impaired decision making is regarded as one of the neurobehavioral hallmarks of addiction. New research has observed that alcoholics with certain coexisting personality disorders (PDs) have decision-making abilities that are especially impaired.

Results are reported in the recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research

"Normally, we make choices by weighing immediate benefits of different options relative to possible negative consequences in the longer term," said Geert Dom, head of therapy at the Alexian Brothers Psychiatric Centre in Boechout, Belgium. "When these abilities are impaired, people are less able to cognitively evaluate the longer-term consequences of their choices. This is reflected in real life by choices that are socially inadequate and/or correlation to overtly negative outcomes. Substance or polydrug use/abuse is one example".

On a neuronal level, added Dom, decision making is believed to involve multiple brain structures in the limbic region. "These brain regions are very important in the processing of emotions, motivational processes and the processing of rewards and punishments," he said. "Earlier studies have indicated that individuals with lesions in these regions lose the ability to make advantageous decisions, reflected by severe social behavioral problems and impaired performance on decision-making tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task, which was originally designed to study decision-making in neurological patients with brain lesions."........

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September 22, 2006, 4:36 PM CT

Obesity and diverticulitis

This used to be a disease of older people who are more than 50 years old. Now this this is appearing in younger adults, who are obese. A research study from the University of Maryland Medical Center showed that diverticulitis is now occurring in younger adults who are obese.

"Over the last ten years, I noted that a number of patients coming into the emergency room with CT findings of acute diverticulitis seemed younger than traditional teaching suggested, and often were obese," said Barry Daly, MD, an author of the study partner in research. "We were seeing patients as young as their early twenties, though textbooks typically describe this condition as a disease of the over-fifty age group," he said.

Elderly adults often develop acute diverticulitis, and this is considered to be one of the most frequent acute diseases of the colon. This disease is thoughtful occur because of inadequate amount of fiber in the diet. A diet which is deficient in fiber causes numerous thin-walled out-pouches called diverticula to develop in the bowel wall. This is actually a chronic condition known as diverticulosis. With passage of time bacterial infection of these diverticula can occur and this would cause inflammation that may lead to a perforation in the wall of the intestine and other serious complications.........

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September 20, 2006, 9:41 PM CT

White Blood Cells And Transplanted Kidneys

In an example of biological irony, the same white blood cell chemistry known to damage kidneys used for transplants may also help prevent such damage, according to a federally funded study in genetically engineered mice at Johns Hopkins.

Researchers have long known that when blood flow is cut off and then returned to transplanted kidneys or other organs, immune system cells called T lymphocytes produce toxic natural chemicals that contribute to ischemic reperfusion injury (IRI). Nature cannot distinguish between deliberate surgical wounds needed to remove and re-implant a donor kidney and other kinds of organ damage in which certain toxic chemicals are needed to clean up or remove bad tissue.

But in the new study published in the recent issue of The Journal of Immunology, the Hopkins team reports that that T cells can also play a role in reducing cellular damage in IRI kidneys, according to Hamid Rabb, M.D., medical director of kidney and pancreas transplantation at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

IRI occurs in 30 percent to 40 percent of kidneys removed from dead donors, resulting in lower kidney survival rates, shortened kidney life and a cost increase of approximately &&&#35;35;36;20,000 per patient from the initial hospital stay and treatment alone, according to Rabb. Scientists therefore are interested in identifying means of preventing or rapidly treating IRI, but one barrier to greater understanding has been the inability to detect the lymphocytes in the kidney during the first critical six hours after blood flow is returned.........

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September 20, 2006, 8:43 PM CT

Thrive After Breast Cancer

Beyond: Live & Thrive After Breast Cancer, a new semi-annual publication from Meredith Special Interest Media, part of the Meredith Corporation (NYSE:MDP) will debut with the Fall/Winter 2006 issue.

The magazine, which provides women who have or had breast cancer the support and latest information on therapy and recovery, hits newsstands September 19, 2006, with a &&&&&#35;35;35;35;36;5.99 cover price.

"Since more than two million American women live with breast cancer, we wanted to provide this community a resource of support, inspiration and hope," says Kelly Kegans, editor of Beyond.

An advisory board of leading experts in the breast cancer field contributed to the premiere issue of Beyond. They include: Susan Brown, the health manager at Susan G. Komen Foundation; Carolyn M. Kaelin, director of Comprehensive Breast Health Center and breast cancer survivor; and Lillie Shockney, Administrative Director at Johns Hopkins Breast Cancer.........

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