“The new study lays the groundwork for developing treatments for diseases such as asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis and even certain cancers,” said senior author Thomas J. Brett, PhD, assistant professor of medicine. “It also solves a 20-year mystery about the role of a protein that has long been associated with these diseases.” The study appears March 17 in the journal eLife. …
While these mutations were known for quite a long time, the question as to why they cause cancer or make some drugs ineffective was still not answered. The study, called “Molecular Determinants of Drug-Specific Sensitivity for Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) Exon 19 and 20 Mutants in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer,” and published online in the journal Oncotarget, demonstrates how computer modeling of EGFR mutations found in lung cancer can elucidate their molecular mechanism of action and consequently optimize the selection of therapeutic agents to treat patients…
It’s an emerging topic in health, one that UConn Health (University of Connecticut, Farmington, Conn.) cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens has been studying for three decades. “It’s become clear that typical lighting is affecting our physiology,” Stevens says. “But lighting can be improved…
A new study suggests there may be ways to reduce these dangerous side effects. Collaborators from the University of Michigan, the National Cancer Institute and the University of Alabama looked at naproxen, which is known to have a lower cardiovascular risk than other NSAIDs. Naproxen, like most NSAIDs and aspirin, does increase the risk for gastric ulcers or bleeding…
The findings, which appear in the March 11 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, contradict previous reports from Indian health officials that the strain has not changed from the version of H1N1 that emerged in 2009 and has been circulating around the world ever since. With very little scientific data available about the new strain, the MIT researchers stress the need for better surveillance to track the outbreak and to help scientists to determine how to respond to this influenza variant. …
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death in the US with 159,000 deaths and 224,000 diagnoses each year, with NSCLC accounting for 85% of the cases. The stage of lung cancer is determined based on the size of the tumor, the extent and location of lymph node involvement, and whether or not the tumor has metastasized to distant regions. Approximately one quarter of NSCLC cases are diagnosed at stage III, with only 25% of those patients surviving at least 5 years. …
In the future, these findings may prove significant for the assessment of breast cancer prognosis and treatment planning. The study involved 270 breast cancer patients at Kuopio University Hospital, aged between 32 and 86 years. Breast tissue density was analysed on the basis of mammographic images obtained at the time of diagnosis…
Historically, the most common surgical method of treatment for liver cancer was a major hepatectomy in which a lobe (hemi-liver) is removed in order to remove the tumor. …
Researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, in a new retrospective study publishing online March 12th in JAMA Oncology, conclude that patients with low-risk prostate or breast cancer were more or less likely to receive inappropriate imaging during treatment, depending on the region of the country in which they received medical care. They examined medical records from 2004-2007 of 9,219 men with low-risk prostate cancer and 30,398 women with low-risk breast cancer, across 84 separate hospital referral regions (HRRs). …
Colorectal cancer (commonly called colon cancer) is the third leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in the United States, and the second leading cause for both sexes combined. An estimated 132,700 new cases and 49,700 deaths are expected in 2015 in the U.S. Data from the past decade show that both incidence and mortality from colon cancer are decreasing at rate of about 3% per year, largely due to the increased use of screening. Still, fewer than six in ten U.S. …