Tag Archives: college

Even healthy-looking smokers have early cell damage which destroys necessary genetic programming

The study, published today in the journal Stem Cells, compared cells that line the airway from healthy nonsmokers with those from smokers with no detectable lung disease. The smokers’ cells showed early signs of impairment, similar to that found in lung cancer — providing evidence that smoking causes harm, even when there is no clinical evidence that anything is wrong. "The study doesn’t say these people have cancer, but that the cells are already starting to lose control and become disordered," says the study’s senior investigator, Dr. …

Gene therapy using lentivirus to treat Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome promising

The new research, led by researchers at the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, Italy was published in Science Express. The disorder that weakens the body’s immune system is caused by a mutation in a gene that encodes the protein WASP. The most often used therapy is a bone marrow or stem cell transplant from a matching donor — often a sibling or relative…

Location of body fat can elevate heart disease, cancer risk

Death and disease risk associated with excess body weight can vary among individuals with similar BMI. Ectopic fat, or fat located where it is not supposed to be, in this case being visible in the abdominal area, could be the cause of this difference in risk. It’s widely known that abdominal fat can be more dangerous than fat in other areas, but this study is the first to use CT scan to study specifically located fat depots for direct associations with disease risk…

Large UK population study finds no increased cancer risk in children born after assisted conception

Results of the study were presented today at the annual meeting of ESHRE by Dr Carrie Williams from the Institute of Child Health, University College London, UK. This was a large population-based linkage study between the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA, the UK’s regulatory authority for ART clinics) and the UK’s National Registry of Childhood Tumours (NRCT).(1) The HFEA records of all 106,381 children born after assisted conception in the UK from 1992 to 2008 were linked to NRCT records to calculate the number of children who subsequently developed cancer. Once the databases were linked, cancer rates in the ART cohort were compared with population rates, whilst stratifying for potential mediating factors including birth weight, multiple births, treatment type and infertility cause. …

Adding chemotherapy to surgery improves survival in advanced gastric cancer, study confirms

At the meeting Prof Sung Hoon Noh, a gastric surgeon from Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea, presented 5-year follow-up from the phase III CLASSIC trial, which added combination chemotherapy to a standard surgical procedure called D2 gastrectomy. The chemotherapy regimen studied in the trial is called XELOX, which is a combination of the drugs capecitabine and oxaliplatin. …

Heart failure survivors at greater risk for cancer, study shows

"Heart failure patients are not only at an increased risk for developing cancer, but the occurrence of cancer increases mortality in these patients," explained Dr. Veronique Roger, MD, director of the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery and co-author of the study. …

Men who can’t produce sperm face increased cancer risk

"An azoospermic man’s risk for developing cancer is similar to that for a typical man 10 years older," said Michael Eisenberg, MD, PhD, assistant professor of urology at the medical school and director of male reproductive medicine and surgery at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Eisenberg is lead author of the study, published online June 20 in Fertility and Sterility. …