Tag Archives: major

Can you think yourself well?

What if you had the ability to heal your body just by changing how you think and feel? I know it sounds radical, coming from a doctor. When people are doing everything “right”—eating veggies, avoiding red meat and processed foods, exercising, sleeping well and so forth—we should expect them to live long, prosperous lives and die of old age while peacefully slumbering, right? So why is it that so many health nuts are sicker than other people who pig out, guzzle beer and park in front of the TV…

Study brings greater understanding of tumor growth mechanism

The study is published in Brain: A Journal of Neurology. Tumour suppressors exist in cells to prevent abnormal cell division in our bodies. The loss of a tumour suppressor called Merlin leads to tumours in many cell types within our nervous systems. There are two copies of a tumour suppressor, one on each chromosome that we inherit from our parents…

Small restaurants serving big calories, salt, studies find

Despite public health progress in cutting calories, as well as salt and fat from fast foods and supermarket products, neighborhood restaurants are still packing big helpings of each into their meals, a trio of studies suggests. Small independent eateries are not required to display nutritional information for consumers - if they did, the researchers report, patrons would routinely see single meals containing nearly a full day's worth of calories and fat plus one and half times the daily recommended intake for salt. “It's really a disgrace. Every day the newspapers say things about the obesity epidemic… To a large extent, you can trace that to too many calories,” said Susan Roberts, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Energy Metabolism Lab and professor of nutrition at Tufts University, in Boston. About two thirds of Americans are considered overweight or obese, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. And as American waistlines continue to expand, public health policy has focused on the quality of food available in supermarkets and restaurants. President Barack Obama's 2010 Affordable Care Act, for example, contains a requirement that restaurants with at least 20 outlets in the U.S. make their nutritional information available to customers. But one of three new studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday points out that policy only applies to about half of the nation's restaurants. The other half is made up of smaller chains or independent restaurants exempt from the requirement. For their analysis, Roberts and her colleagues measured the calories in 157 meals at small Mexican, American, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Thai restaurants in and near Boston between June and August 2011. Overall, the researchers found the average meal at those restaurants contained 1,327 calories. That's about 66 percent of the 2,000 daily calories recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. About 8 percent of the meals exceeded 2,000 calories. The meals from small restaurants also contained up to 18 percent more calories than comparable dishes from larger chains - suggesting the requirement to display nutritional information is keeping the large-chain restaurant meals healthier, according to the researchers. In another of the studies published Monday, Canadian researchers led by Mary Scourboutakos from the University of Toronto found similarly high calorie counts in more than 3,500 meals from Ontario restaurants they analyzed. What's more, Scourboutakos and her fellow researchers found that individual meals contained an average of 89 percent of the daily recommended amount of fat and 151 percent of the daily recommended amount of salt. A third study also zeroed-in on salt as a major area of concern. Several organizations, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization have all called for reductions in the amount of sodium people consume. The Institute of Medicine recommends that most healthy people get 1,500 milligrams (mg) of sodium per day, with an upper limit of 2,300 mg. But the average American eats closer to 3,600 mg each day, largely in processed foods. For their new study, Dr. Stephen Havas of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and his colleagues analyzed 402 processed foods and 78 fast-food products to see if their salt content had changed between 2005 and 2011. They found a small decrease in the amount of salt in processed foods over that period but also a similarly-sized increase in the amount of salt in fast-food products. The differences in each category, however, were small enough that they could have been due to chance. Havas said the results show that the calls for voluntary reductions in salt have been a “total failure.” “The only thing that will solve this problem is for the amount of salt in our food to be regulated,” he added. But regulating food and what goes into it has been a controversial topic, according to Dr. Mitchell Katz, from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services in California. Instead, he suggests in a commentary accompanying the three studies that doctors should advocate for their patients' right to know what they're eating. “As we debate the controversial role of government in stemming the interrelated endemics of obesity, diabetes mellitus, and heart disease, we must insist on the right of our patients (as well as ourselves) to know what we are eating, whether fast food or slow, whether large chain, small chain, or individual restaurant,” he wrote. One encouraging finding from the study of Toronto restaurant meals highlighted by Scourboutakos and her colleagues is that entrees identified on the restaurant menus as “healthy” were generally at least healthier - with about 474 calories, 20 percent of the day's value of fat and 50 percent of the recommended daily intake of sodium. Roberts told Reuters Health she'd like to see restaurants add a few healthy choice options to their menu to at least give people an alternative. “That would mean the restaurant doesn't have to calculate the whole menu and that would give people choices,” she said.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/small-restaurants-serving-big-calories-salt-studies-find/

New approaches give women more options for breast cancer surgery

CHICAGO – & Treating breast cancer almost always involves surgery, and for years the choice was just having the lump or the whole breast removed. Now, new approaches are dramatically changing the way these operations are done, giving women more options, faster treatment, smaller scars, fewer long-term side effects and better cosmetic results. It has led to a new specialty -- “oncoplastic” surgery -- combining oncology, which focuses on cancer treatment, and plastic surgery to restore appearance. “Cosmetics is very important” and can help a woman recover psychologically as well as physically, said Dr. Deanna Attai, a Burbank, Calif., surgeon who is on the board of directors of the American Society of Breast Surgeons. Its annual meeting in Chicago earlier this month featured many of these new approaches. More women are getting chemotherapy or hormone therapy before surgery to shrink large tumors enough to let them have a breast-conserving operation instead of a mastectomy. Fewer lymph nodes are being removed to check for cancer's spread, sparing women painful arm swelling for years afterward. Newer ways to rebuild breasts have made mastectomy a more appealing option for some women. More of them are getting immediate reconstruction with an implant at the same time the cancer is removed rather than several operations that have been standard for many years. Skin and nipples increasingly are being preserved for more natural results. Some doctors are experimenting with operating on breast tumors through incisions in the armpit to avoid breast scars. There's even a “Goldilocks” mastectomy for large-breasted women -- not too much or too little removed, and using excess skin to create a “just right” natural implant. Finally, doctors are testing a way to avoid surgery altogether, destroying small tumors by freezing them with a probe through the skin. “Breast surgery has become more minimalistic,” said Dr. Shawna Willey of Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Women have more options. It's much more complex decision-making.” Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women around the world. In the U.S. alone, about 230,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. Most can be treated by just having the lump removed, but that requires radiation for weeks afterward to kill any stray cancer cells in the breast, plus frequent mammograms to watch for a recurrence. Many women don't want the worry or the radiation, and choose mastectomy even though they could have less drastic surgery. Mastectomy rates have been rising. Federal law requires insurers to cover reconstruction for mastectomy patients, and many of the improvements in surgery are aimed at making it less disfiguring. Here are some of the major trends: IMMEDIATE RECONSTRUCTION Doctors used to think it wasn't good to start reconstruction until cancer treatment had ended -- surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. Women would have a mastectomy, which usually involves taking the skin and the nipple along with all the breast tissue, followed by operations months later to rebuild the breast. Reconstruction can use tissue from the back or belly, or an implant. The first operation often is to place a tissue expander, a balloon-like device that's gradually inflated to stretch the remaining skin and make room for the implant. A few months later, a second surgery is done to remove the expander and place the implant. Once that heals, a third operation is done to make a new nipple, followed by tattooing to make an areola, the darkened ring around it. The new trend is immediate reconstruction, with the first steps started at the time of the mastectomy, either to place a tissue expander or an implant. In some cases, the whole thing can be done in one operation. Nationally, about 25 to 30 percent of women get immediate reconstruction. At the Mayo Clinic, about half do, and at Georgetown, it's about 80 percent. SPARING SKIN, NIPPLES Doctors usually take the skin when they do a mastectomy to make sure they leave no cancer behind. But in the last decade they increasingly have left the skin in certain women with favorable tumor characteristics. Attai compares it to removing the inside of an orange while leaving the peel intact. “We have learned over time that you can save skin” in many patients, Willey said. “Every single study has shown that it's safe.” Now they're going the next step: preserving the nipple, which is even more at risk of being involved in cancer than the skin is. Only about 5 percent of women get this now, but eligibility could be expanded if it proves safe. The breast surgery society has a registry on nipple-sparing mastectomies that will track such women for 10 years. “You really have to pick patients carefully,” because no one wants to compromise cancer control for cosmetic reasons, Attai said. “The preliminary data are that nipple-sparing is quite good,” but studies haven't been long enough to know for sure, Willey said. “It makes a huge difference in the cosmetic outcome. That makes the woman's breast recognizable to her.” Dr. Judy Boughey, a breast surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, said the new approach even has swayed patients' treatment choices. “We're seeing women choosing the more invasive surgery, choosing the mastectomy,” because of doctors' willingness to spare skin and nipples, she said. It helped persuade Rose Ragona, a 51-year-old operations supervisor at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. She had both breasts removed on April 19 with the most modern approach: Immediate reconstruction, with preservation of her skin and nipples. “To wake up and just see your breasts there helped me immensely,” she said. She chose to have both breasts removed to avoid radiation and future worry. “I felt it was a safer road to go,” she said. “I can't live the rest of my life in fear. Every time there's a lump I'm going to worry.” FREEZING TUMORS Attai, the California breast surgeon, is one of the researchers in a national study testing cryoablation. The technique uses a probe cooled with liquid nitrogen that turns tumors into ice balls of dead tissue that's gradually absorbed by the body. This has been done since 2004 for benign breast tumors and the clinical trial is aimed at seeing if it's safe for cancer treatment. “The technology is amazing. This is done in the office under local anesthesia, a little skin puncture,” Attai said. In the study, women still have surgery at some point after the freezing treatment to make sure all the cancer is destroyed. If it proves safe and effective, it could eliminate surgery for certain cancer patients. “I'd love to see the day when we can offer women with small breast tumors a completely non-operative approach, and I do think that's coming soon,” Attai said.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/new-approaches-give-women-more-options-for-breast-cancer-surgery/

Mapping the embryonic epigenome: How genes are turned on and off during early human development

After an egg has been fertilized, it divides repeatedly to give rise to every cell in the human body — from the patrolling immune cell to the pulsing neuron. Each functionally distinct generation of cells subsequently differentiates itself from its predecessors in the developing embryo by expressing only a selection of its full complement of genes, while actively suppressing others…

How nerve wiring self-destructs

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found a way the body can remove injured axons, identifying a potential target for new drugs that could prevent the inappropriate loss of axons and maintain nerve function. "Treating axonal degeneration could potentially help a lot of patients because there are so many diseases and conditions where axons are inappropriately lost," says Aaron DiAntonio, MD, PhD, professor of developmental biology. "While this would not be a cure for any of them, the hope is that we could slow the progression of a whole range of diseases by keeping axons healthy." DiAntonio is senior author of the study that appears online May 9 in the journal Cell Reports. …

Genetic variations associated with susceptibility to bacteria linked to stomach disorders

"[H pylori] is the major cause of gastritis (80 percent) and gastroduodenal ulcer disease (15 percent-20 percent) and the only bacterial pathogen believed to cause cancer," according to background information in the article. "H pylori prevalence is as high as 90 percent in some developing countries but 10 percent of a given population is never colonized, regardless of exposure. Genetic factors are hypothesized to confer H pylori susceptibility." Julia Mayerle, M.D., of University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, and colleagues conducted a study to identify genetic loci associated with H pylori seroprevalence…

Gene offers clues to new treatments for a harmful blood clotting disorder

The research, which was led by Yanming Wang, a Penn State University associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Denisa Wagner, senior author with decades of research on thrombosis at the Boston Children’s Hospital and the Harvard University Medical School, will be published in in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week ending 10 May 2013. The team’s new findings are an extension of previous research by Wang and other scientists. In earlier studies, Wang and his colleagues had revealed that a gene in mice called Pad4 (peptidylarginine deiminase 4) produces an enzyme that plays an important role in protecting the body from infection. The researchers discovered that cells with a functioning PAD4 enzyme are able to build around themselves a protective, bacteria-killing web that is dubbed a NET (neutrophil extracellular trap)…

Activity of cancer inducing genes can be controlled by the cell’s skeleton

In the latest issue of the journal Oncogene, Florence Janody and her team at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC, Portugal), identified a novel mechanism by which the activity of Src is limited by the cell’s skeleton (cytoskeleton) limiting the development of tumours. Using the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, as a model, Florence Janody and her team were able to stop the tumour development induced by the high activity of Src through the genetic manipulation of the cytoskeleton in fly tissues. A major component of the cytoskeleton, the actin protein, form cables that crisscross the cell, creating a network, where molecules can move, inside the cell. …

Adult cells transformed into early-stage nerve cells, bypassing the pluripotent stem cell stage

Bypassing the ultra-flexible iPSC stage was a key advantage, says senior author Su-Chun Zhang, a professor of neuroscience and neurology. "IPSC cells can generate any cell type, which could be a problem for cell-based therapy to repair damage due to disease or injury in the nervous system." In particular, the absence of iPSC cells rules out the formation of tumors by pluripotent cells in the recipient, a major concern involving stem cell therapy. A second advance comes from the virus that delivers genes to reprogram the adult skin cells into a different and more flexible form…