Tag Archives: disease

Cultural differences explain non-completion of HPV vaccination in girls in low-income families

In the study, Spanish-speaking parents whose daughters were not fully vaccinated said their providers either did not encourage the vaccine or didn’t explain that three shots were necessary for full protection. Parents also noted that the vaccine undermined the "no sex before marriage" message they were trying to convey. …

Cutting off all points of escape for melanoma cells

They found that resistant melanomas acquired a mutation in the MEK2 gene and multiple copies of the mutant BRAF oncogene, simultaneously decreasing the sensitivity to both drug targets. Their findings also uncovered a new potential target for melanoma therapy, a protein called S6K. Additionally, early studies in a laboratory model for melanoma show that a triple combination of drug inhibitors halted the growth of resistant tumors. "Melanoma tumors are particularly adept at rewiring themselves so that anticancer drugs lose their effectiveness, and we must continue to outthink the disease in order to block off all points at which it can evade therapy," said Jessie Villanueva, Ph.D., assistant professor in Wistar’s NCI-designated Cancer Center and member of The Wistar Institute Melanoma Research Center. …

Broccoli to fight skin cancer?

A diet heavy in cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli sprouts, has shown potential risk-reduction properties for colorectal, prostate and various other forms of cancer. Dr. Dickinson’s research currently focuses on how sulforaphane — a naturally occurring compound in broccoli with established chemopreventive properties — could possibly be used to help patients reduce their risk for skin cancer. What sets Dr. …

Peru: Liver cancer like no other

Very young patients To make up for the lack of knowledge on liver cancer in Latin America, the researchers performed a statistical analysis of clinical cases of the disease in Peru, the country reputed to have the highest incidence on the continent. They sifted through the demographic characteristics, risk factors and causes for more than 1,500 patients from throughout the country, admitted between 1997 and 2010 at the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplásicas (Inen ) in Lima. Their results were unexpected: 50% of the people affected do not at all match the profile of those at risk. They are young people with an average age of 25, some even children, who for the most part do not have the hepatitis B or C virus nor do they suffer from cirrhosis. …

New MR analysis technique reveals brain tumor response to anti-angiogenesis therapy

"Until now the only ways of obtaining similar data on the blood vessels in patients’ tumors were either taking a biopsy, which is a surgical procedure that can harm the patients and often cannot be repeated, or PET scanning, which provides limited information and exposes patients to a dose of radiation," says Kyrre Emblem, PhD, of the Martinos Center, lead and corresponding author of the report. "VAI can acquire all of this information in a single MR exam that takes less than two minutes and can be safely repeated many times." Previous studies in animals and in human patients have shown that the ability of anti-angiogenesis drugs to improve survival in cancer therapy stems from their ability to "normalize" the abnormal, leaky blood vessels that usually develop in a tumor, improving the perfusion of blood throughout a tumor and the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiation. …

Study shows who survives Burkitt lymphoma

A new study in the journal Cancer that tracked survival during the last decade of more than 2,200 adults with a highly aggressive form of lymphoma finds that with notable exceptions, medicine has made substantial progress in treating them successfully. To help doctors and researchers better understand who responds well to treatment and who doesn’t, the study authors used their findings to create a stratified risk score of patient prognosis. Burkitt lymphoma is not a common lymphoma but it is especially aggressive. …