Cannabis destroys cancer cells
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Researchers investigating the role of cannabis in cancer therapy reveal it has the potential to destroy leukaemia cells, in a paper published in the March 2006 edition of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery.
Led by Dr Wai Man Liu, at Barts and the London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, the team has followed up on their findings of 2005 which showed that the main active ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has the potential to be used effectively against some forms of cancer. Dr Liu has since moved to the Institute of Cancer in Sutton where he continues his work into investigating the potential therapeutic benefit of new anti-cancer agents.
Lab confirms first Swiss bird flu case was H5N1
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Laboratory tests have confirmed that a duck that died of bird flu last week in Geneva, Switzerland’s first case, had the H5N1 strain, the Swiss Veterinary Office said on Wednesday.
The tests were carried out by the European reference laboratory in Britain, the Veterinary Laboratories Agency, which announced the result on its website.
“VLA confirms highly pathogenic avian influenza of H5N1 subtype in a common merganser (a variety of duck) from Switzerland,” the laboratory said.
Fibulins inhibit both tumor growth and blood-vessel formation
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Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center report in the March issue of Cancer Research that a pair of promising proteins, known as fibulins 3 and 5, slow the growth of cancer tumors in mice by preventing blood vessels from sprouting. The proteins are promising candidates for use in cancer therapy.
“Healthy humans produce fibulin proteins, which regulate cell proliferation, migration and invasion. In the past, we have seen that they are depleted in numerous metastatic cancers, and that they inhibit the formation of new blood vessels in cell culture,” said William Schiemann, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Program in Cell Biology at National Jewish. “Our current findings show that fibulins can inhibit both tumor growth and blood-vessel formation in mice.”
Family docs fine for breast cancer follow-up
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Women who have been treated for early-stage breast cancer can safely rely on their family physicians for their follow-up care, according to a new report.
“I think the most important message is that patients should be told frankly about what the limitations and potential benefits of follow-up are,” Dr. Eva Grunfeld from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, told Reuters Health.
“They should be informed that follow-up can be provided by their family physician so that they can make an informed choice about their follow-up arrangements,” she explained.
MRI rules out appendicitis during pregnancy
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Pregnant women are prone to a number of conditions that can mimic appendicitis, so diagnosis of acute abdominal pain can be tricky in this situation. Now a team of physicians has shown that magnetic resonance imaging is accurate for excluding appendicitis in pregnant women.
Dr. Ivan Pedrosa and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston note that while ultrasound is the preferred imaging method in pregnancy, it often fails to visualize the appendix.
Pedrosa’s team took a look back at the diagnostic performance of MRI in 51 pregnant patients with suspected acute appendicitis who were seen between 1999 and 2004.
Poverty, not race, lowers prostate cancer survival
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The racial gap seen in the outcome of prostate cancer among older men is primarily due to differences in socioeconomic status, according to the results of a large community-based study.
The exception is Hispanic men, who have the highest rates of survival, but a socioeconomic status on par with African American men.
“Lower socioeconomic status appeared to be one of the major barriers to achieving comparable outcomes for men with prostate carcinoma,” Dr. Xianglin L.
