A New Tool Against Skin Cancer
Scientists say that this new technique is capable of clearing up severe acne and can also stop certain types of skin cancer in the earliest stages.........
Posted by: Sean Permalink
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Scientists say that this new technique is capable of clearing up severe acne and can also stop certain types of skin cancer in the earliest stages......... Posted by: Sean Permalink How Multiple Copies Of A Gene Affect Metastasis?
As per a research findings published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the gene, called uPAR, offers a promising target for therapeutic drugs to stop or slow the progression of the disease and could serve as a screening tool for assessing which types of drugs a patient will respond to. The gene launches a biochemical process in which a molecule called plasmin perforates the membranes of tissues, causing the membranes to break down and allowing the cancer cells to escape into the bloodstream and to adjacent tissues. The result is metastasizing breast cancer. About 20 percent to 25 percent of breast-cancer patients were shown to have uPAR gene amplification, which means they carry too a number of copies of the gene. "The uPAR system probably plays a role in metastases in a number of of the common solid tumors," said Dr. Jonathan Uhr, professor in the Cancer Immunobiology Center and of microbiology and the study's senior author. While analyzing slides of individual tumor cells - either from the primary tumor or circulating tumor cells - of 72 patients with advanced recurrent breast carcinoma, the UT Southwestern research team discovered how uPAR may work in concert with another known breast cancer gene, HER-2......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Racial discrimination against African-American in Healthcare
Repeated responses to such discrimination -- which include elevated blood pressure and heart rate -- can cause enormous stress on a person's mental and physical health, according to research scheduled to be published in Volume 58 of the Annual Review of Psychology. Race-based discrimination may help explain why African Americans, despite gains in civil rights and targeted health programs, continue to have the highest rates of diabetes, cardiovascular heart disease, hypertension and stroke as compared to all other racial or ethnic groups in the United States. "This is not to say that every African American has poor health," said Vickie Mays, the report's lead author, a UCLA professor of psychology and health services and director of the Center for Research, Education, Training and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities. "However, African Americans -- as a group of people -- have not been able to gain as much ground as other ethnic groups. That's when you need to worry and look at missing factors that can explain these health disparities"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Women With Mental Disorders And Mammograms
the nature of the mental illness does play a role, according to a large study published by Indiana University School of Medicine and Richard Roudebush VA Health Services Center for Excellence researchers in the recent issue of Journal of General Internal Medicine. Prior to this study, little was known about whether the type or severity of mental illness influences receipt of preventive services such as mammograms. "Although women with mental disorders are less likely to receive mammography than women who do not have mental disorders, we found that both the type and severity of mental illness does influence the receipt of mammograms. Women with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia are significantly less likely to receive mammograms than women in the general population. However, women with mild depression do not differ markedly. But, as depression severity increases, so does the likelihood that women will not receive needed screening," said senior author Caroline Carney Doebbeling, M.D., M.Sc., associate professor of psychiatry and medicine at the I.U. School of Medicine. She is also a Regenstrief Institute, Inc. research scientist and director of the IU......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Gene Target Against Crohn's Disease And Ulcerative Colitis
Inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, describes two similar yet distinct conditions called Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. These diseases affect the digestive system and cause the intestinal tissue to become inflamed, form sores and bleed easily. Symptoms include abdominal pain, cramping, fatigue and diarrhea. Crohn's disease may affect the gastrointestinal tract, from the mouth to the anus, and while Crohn's disease can not be cured by drugs or surgery, either may relieve symptoms. In Canada, an estimated 170,000 Canadian men and women suffer from IBD, most frequently between the ages of 15-25, or 45-55. It is especially difficult for children and young adults since it often affects a person's self-concept. IBD is found throughout the world. However, it appears to be most common in North America and northern Europe; Canada having one of the highest incidence rates of IBD in the world. (1) In the U.S., more than 1 million Americans have Crohn's or colitis......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Moderate Drinking May Boost Memory
Researchers found that moderate amounts of alcohol - amounts equivalent to a couple of drinks a day for a human - improved the memories of laboratory rats. Such a finding may have implications for serious neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, said Matthew During, the study's senior author and a professor of molecular virology, immunology and cancer genetics at Ohio State University. "There is some evidence suggesting that mild to moderate alcohol consumption can protect against diseases like Alzheimer's in humans," said During. "But it's not apparent how this happens". He and his colleague, Margaret Kalev-Zylinska, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Auckland, in New Zealand, uncovered a neuronal mechanism that may help explain the link between alcohol and improved memory. "We saw a noticeable change on the surface of certain neurons in rats that were given alcohol," During said. "This change may have something to do with the positive effects of alcohol on memory". The researchers presented their findings at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in Atlanta. During and Kalev-Zylinska designed a special liquid diet for the rats. One formulation included a low dose of alcohol, comparable to two or three drinks a day for a human, while the other diet included a much higher dose of alcohol, comparable to six or seven drinks a day for a human. A third group of rats was given a liquid diet without alcohol. All animals were given their respective diets daily for about four weeks......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Linking Emotions And Memories
Emotions--whether positive or negative--in play offer important information to people working with children about how able they will be at expressing the emotional side of their memories. Accessing emotional memories is important for adjusting to traumas experienced. Many children are unable to start talking about their emotions or memories with someone new, but watching children play can help child therapists and others working with children gauge how open children might be to talking about the emotions associated with past memories, according to Sandra Russ, Case professor of psychology. She has been studying the emotional side of play and how play benefits children for more than 20 years. Russ, with Ethan D. Schafer, discusses this discovery in the Creativity Research Journal article, "Affect in Fantasy Play, Emotion in Memories, and Divergent Thinking." In the past, this link between emotions in play therapy and emotions in memories was observed but had not been formally studied in children......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source HIV-positive individuals with inadequate care
Previous studies had shown minorities, the poor and substance users who were receiving routine medical care for the HIV infection, and whose data could therefore be easily captured in healthcare studies, were likelier to be medically underserved and to die more quickly. But Dr. William Cunningham, and the study's lead author, said UCLA researchers tracked HIV-infected people who were not receiving regular care -- and thus more difficult to find. Often this segment showed up in the medical system in emergency situations. "As we expected, they are much less likely to get routine outpatient care but more likely to get acute care, when they are at their sickest," said Cunningham, who is professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. "This is just the group that needs to get grassroots outreach service". For this study, would be published in the recent issue of the journal Medical Care, the researchers compared socio-demographic, clinical and health care utilization characteristics of HIV-infected adults from two samples: 1,286 people from the 2001-02 Targeted HIV Outreach and Intervention Initiative (Outreach) and 2,267 who were interviewed in 1998 for the HIV Costs and Services Utilization Study (HCSUS)......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source Skin Tone Influences Perception Of Beauty
The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, used three-dimensional imaging and morphing software to remove wrinkles and furrows from pictures of women, leaving skin tone as the only variable. Researchers were then able to determine exactly what impact facial skin tone has on how young, healthy and attractive people perceive the women to be. Faces with more even skin tone were judged to be younger. "Until now, behavioral scientists have mostly ignored the overall homogeneity and color saturation of a person's skin," says lead researcher Dr. Karl Grammer. "This study points out that wrinkles aren't the only visual cue to a woman's age. "Skin tone and luminosity may be a major signal to suitors of a woman's attractiveness, as well as of her assumed age," said Grammer, who is founder and scientific director of the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology at the University of Vienna, Austria. The researchers took digital photographs of 169 Caucasian women between the ages of 10 and 70. Then they used specialized morphing software to "drape" each subject's facial skin over a standardized model, in effect, taking 169 different skin tones and applying them to a common canvas......... Posted by: Tom Permalink Source Predicting Risk for Recurrent Stroke
Published in the Oct. 23 Archives of Internal Medicine, results of the new study indicate that these inflammatory markers are associated with long-term prognosis after a first stroke, and may help guide clinical care for people who have suffered a first stroke. A biomarker called lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), which has been FDA-approved to predict the risk of first stroke, was found to be a strong predictor of recurrent stroke risk. Researchers also found that elevated levels of another biomarker called high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), a test commonly used to predict risk of heart disease, was associated with more severe strokes and an increased risk of mortality. "A better understanding of biomarkers for stroke risk may lead to the use of prophylactic treatments to reduce risk of people suffering debilitating strokes," said lead author Mitchell S. V. Elkind, M.D., M.S., associate professor of Neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and neurologist at NewYork-Presbyterian. "For example, statins appear to lower these biomarker levels, so our next step may be to study the clinical benefit of prescribing statins to reduce the risk of stroke in people with elevated biomarkers, and also to treat people who have suffered a stroke so that they do not have another serious event"......... Posted by: Sean Permalink Source |
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