Tag Archives: union

Sea sponge drug could boost advanced breast cancer survival by five extra months — ScienceDaily

Researchers led by Professor Chris Twelves, based at the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, looked at two major clinical trials of more than 1,800 women with breast cancer that had started to spread to other parts of the body. The phase III trials — the final stage of testing before deciding whether a drug can be prescribed to patients — compared the survival of women treated with eribulin to those given standard treatment…

Discrepancies in access to new cancer drugs revealed

Researchers say the results demonstrate the need for better collaboration between doctors and health authorities on an international scale, to ensure patients have access to the best treatments. Coordinated action is needed at an international level to ensure new cancer-fighting drugs are approved in a timely manner, oncologists said at the Congress. Their call came after a survey revealed that patients in some regions sometimes wait years longer than their counterparts elsewhere for new drugs to be approved. The drug approval process is important to ensure that safe and effective therapies are made available for patients, explains study senior author Dr Sunil Verma from Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Center, Toronto, Canada. …

Eating resistant starch may help reduce red meat-related colorectal cancer risk

“Red meat and resistant starch have opposite effects on the colorectal cancer-promoting miRNAs, the miR-17-92 cluster,” said Karen J. Humphreys, PhD, a research associate at the Flinders Center for Innovation in Cancer at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. “This finding supports consumption of resistant starch as a means of reducing the risk associated with a high red meat diet.” “Total meat consumption in the USA, European Union, and the developed world has continued to increase from the 1960s, and in some cases has nearly doubled,” added Humphreys…

Kill-switch controls immune-suppressing cells, scientists discover

The discovery of the cell death processes that determine the number of ‘regulatory T cells’ an individual has could one day lead to better treatments for immune disorders. Regulatory T cells are members of a group of immune cells called T cells. Most T cells actively respond to clear the body of infections. …

Bosnians mourn baby who died for lack of ID number

Thousands of Bosnians gathered in front of parliament on Sunday evening to mourn a three-month-old baby who died after failing to get timely surgery because a parliamentary wrangle prevented her getting a passport. Berina Hamidovic was the first victim of politicking over identity numbers, which has united Bosnians in protests against the institutional paralysis that has blocked post-conflict reforms and the country's path towards the European Union. The somber gathering followed days of protests in Sarajevo and other towns over lawmakers' failure to agree new legislation on citizens' identity numbers. The row has left babies born since February unregistered, and therefore denied passports or medical cards. The protesters this time did not carry banners or posters, but encircled parliament with a ring of candles placed on the ground, and stood or walked in silence. The baby's parents said the time they had wasted persuading Serbian border police to let her in without a passport to go to a hospital in Belgrade for surgery had cost her her chance of life. The baby was diagnosed with tracheoesophageal fistula - a hole between her gullet and windpipe - and had already had an unsuccessful operation in Sarajevo. “We practically had to take the child across the border illegally, although she was legally allowed to travel for urgent health reasons,” the baby's father Emir Hamidovic said. When the baby was finally admitted to hospital in Belgrade, Bosnian authorities refused to pay for the surgery. Though the Serbian doctors agreed to carry out the procedure, the baby contracted an infection and died. “She perhaps had a chance to stay alive, but this is an obvious example how the state does not take care of its citizens,” said Hamidovic, 31, who is unemployed. The protests over ID numbers started two weeks ago after another 3-month-old baby was unable to leave for urgent surgery abroad because lawmakers could not agree how to redraw the districts that determine the 13-digit identification number assigned to each citizen. Similar ethnic wrangles have plagued Bosnia since the end of its 1992-95 war, which left it divided along ethnic lines with a weak central government and a system of ethnic quotas that has stifled development. The Serbs are pressing for a new registration arrangement along territorial lines. Muslims, known as Bosniaks, say that would only cement the ethnic divide.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/17/bosnians-mourn-baby-who-died-for-lack-id-number/