Tag Archives: society

Enzyme controlling metastasis of breast cancer identified — ScienceDaily

“The take-home message of the study is that we have found a way to target breast cancer metastasis through a pathway regulated by an enzyme,” said lead author Xuefeng Wu, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego. The enzyme, called UBC13, was found to be present in breast cancer cells at two to three times the levels of normal healthy cells. …

Medicaid reimbursements may affect cancer screening rates among beneficiaries

Although Medicaid is a joint state-federal government health insurance program, each state sets the policies for its own Medicaid program within requirements set by the federal government. This includes setting how much providers are paid for health care services and who is allowed to enroll in Medicaid. To determine whether state Medicaid eligibility and reimbursement policies affect receipt of breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening among Medicaid beneficiaries, Michael Halpern, MD, PhD, MPH, of RTI International, and his colleagues analyzed 2007 Medicaid data from 46 states and Washington DC…

New mouse model points to therapy for liver disease

Development of effective new therapies for preventing or treating NASH has been stymied by limited small animal models for the disease. In a paper published online in Cancer Cell, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine describe a novel mouse model that closely resembles human NASH and use it to demonstrate that interference with a key inflammatory protein inhibits both the development of NASH and its progression to liver cancer. “These findings strongly call for clinical testing of relevant drugs in human NASH and its complications,” said senior author Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology in UC San Diego’s Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction. “Our research has shown that, at least in this mouse model, chemical compounds that include already clinically approved drugs that inhibit protein aggregation can also be used to prevent NASH caused by a high fat diet.” The increasing prevalence of NAFLD is linked to the nation’s on-going obesity epidemic. …

Previous pulmonary disease linked to increased lung cancer risk in large study

“Associations between various respiratory diseases and lung cancer have been shown in earlier studies, but few of these studies considered multiple respiratory diseases simultaneously,” said researcher Ann Olsson, PhD, of the International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyon, France. …

Overweight and obesity linked to 10 common cancers, over 12,000 cases every year in UK

UK researchers at the London School of Hygiene &Tropical Medicine and the Farr Institute of Health Informatics estimate that over 12,000 cases of these 10 cancers each year are attributable to being overweight or obese, and calculate that if average BMI in the population continues to increase, there could be over 3500 extra cancers every year as a result. “The number of people who are overweight or obese is rapidly increasing both in the UK and worldwide. It is well recognised that this is likely to cause more diabetes and cardiovascular disease. …

New way to more accurately detect cervical cancer in women

The American Cancer Society predicts that this year in the United States, more than 12,100 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer, and roughly 4,220 women will die of the disease. Newer Pap tests and HPV screening more accurately identify pre-cancerous cellular changes that potentially develop into cervical cancer…