Chinese baby stable after doctors remove third arm
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Doctors successfully removed a third arm from a two-month-old Chinese boy on Tuesday and said he should make a full recovery, state media said.
“Thank you to everyone who has shown concern for us,” the baby’s mother was quoted as saying on state television after the three-hour surgery.
Older sperm becomes more defective: study
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Sperm declines in quality as men age, swimming more slowly and becoming more genetically defective, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
The finding adds to some recent studies that have found that, even though men make fresh sperm every day and can father children well into old age, they become less fertile and also tend to have more children with birth defects.
“This study shows that men who wait until they’re older to have children are not only risking difficulties conceiving, they could also be increasing the risk of having children with genetic problems,” Andrew Wyrobek of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said in a statement.
Premature babies three times as likely to get hyperkinetic disorder
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According to a Danish research team premature or low birth weight babies are up to three times as likely to become hyperactive, with low attention spans.
The researchers say that hyperkinetic disorder (HKD) is one of the most common mental disorders diagnosed among children.
The disorder is characterised by hyperactivity, low attention span, and impulsive behaviour.
Gene therapy stops diabetic nerve damage, in rats
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One of the serious complications of diabetes is nerve damage that, because of lack of sensation, can lead to foot injuries, infection and even amputation. Now, researchers raise the hope that gene therapy might prevent this happening.
They have shown in experiments with rats that transferring a gene for a protein that promotes expression of a growth factor, VEGF-A, protects against diabetic neuropathy, as the condition is called.
About 50 percent of people with diabetes develop this complication within 25 years after being diagnosed, the researchers note in the research journal Diabetes, but there is currently no effective treatment for diabetic neuropathy.
Increased Cancer Awareness Among Holocaust Survivors Recommended
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The death rate from cancer among Holocaust survivors who live in Israel is higher than among their contemporaries who made aliyah before WWII. So asserts a new University of Haifa study, the first of its kind, which examined the incidence of cancer among Holocaust survivors in Israel.
The study was conducted by the University’s School of Public Health. Survivors who were in their childhood during the Holocaust were found to be at a higher risk for cancer than those who were at an older age during the war. Additionally survival from cancer among Holocaust survivors was slightly lower than among cancer patients who did not go through the Holocaust.
The study, the most comprehensive of its kind that has been carried out in Israel, was conducted by Nani Vine Raviv under the guidance of Dr. Micah Brachne and Prof. Shai Linn from the School of Public Health at the University of Haifa and Irena Lifschitz of the Health Ministry’s National Cancer Registry. Funded by the Israel Cancer Society, it was based on data on about two million Israelis of European origin.
Family Care Givers of Stroke Patients Get Little Information, Support
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Stroke and brain injury patients living at home receive the bulk of their care from family members, but these volunteer care givers get little preparation, information or support from health care professionals and home health agencies, according to a new study.
Home services are often terminated with little warning, leaving families on their own to care for patients with limited mobility, speech problems or both, the study in the latest issue of the Milbank Quarterly also revealed.
Researchers interviewed 99 family care givers of stroke and brain injury patients in New York City while they received care from a certified home health agency and after these services were stopped. Even during the time when formal care was being given, patients received three-quarters of their care from family members.
Breast-Sparing Surgery an Option for Women with Breast Cancer Gene Mutation
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Women diagnosed with breast cancer who carry a certain genetic mutation can have breast-sparing surgery but should consider hormonal treatments to reduce their risk of cancer returning.
Those are the findings of a 10-year study led by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The study authors found that women with the genetic mutation who had their ovaries removed or took the anti-estrogen drug tamoxifen had lower rates of breast cancer recurrence or new breast cancers in the other breast.
Women who carry a mutation on the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene are at an increased risk of breast cancer compared to women without the mutation. And once diagnosed with breast cancer, they face a higher rate of a second tumor occurring. Because of this, questions remain about whether these women should undergo breast-conserving surgery instead of mastectomy, which removes the entire breast.
H5N1 infection ruled out in latest Indonesian cases
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For the past four days, Indonesian health authorities and WHO have been monitoring cases of influenza-like illness in four nurses who were involved in the care of confirmed H5N1 patients.
Test results have now convincingly ruled out H5N1 infection in all four nurses.
Two of the nurses cared for siblings, a 10-year-old girl and her 18-year-old brother, who were hospitalized in Bandung, West Java, on 22 May and died the following day. Test results for both nurses are negative for H5N1 infection. One nurse was shown to be infected with a seasonal influenza A (H1N1) virus, which is now circulating widely throughout Indonesia. The second nurse experienced only mild and transient symptoms, but was tested urgently as a precautionary measure. Her test results were also negative for H5N1 infection.
Glaxo says lung cancer vaccine study encouraging
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An experimental GlaxoSmithKline Plc vaccine showed promise in a mid-stage trial for preventing a recurrence of lung cancer and will be tested in larger studies starting early in 2007, the company said on Sunday.
Dozens of drug makers are trying to develop vaccines for patients who already have developed cancer, rather than preventing illness as traditional vaccines do.
Sometimes called “therapeutic vaccines,” most still are in early stages of research and several have suffered setbacks.
Combination “smart bombs” future of cancer therapy
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Using combinations of “smart bomb” cancer drugs that target specific proteins and avoid the indiscriminate cell destruction of chemotherapy may be the wave of the future for cancer patients, experts say.
Early studies show that combining targeted treatments such as Genentech Inc.‘s breast cancer drug Herceptin with GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s experimental treatment Tykerb, may be helpful in patients who do not respond to Herceptin alone, said Dr. Jose Baselga, chief of medical oncology service at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.
Targeted therapies act as smart bombs by crippling or knocking out deadly cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact, unlike the scorched-earth approach of chemotherapy, which kills both healthy and unhealthy cells.
Premature Or Low Birthweight Babies at Increased Risk of Hyperactivity Disorder
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Premature or low birthweight babies are up to three times as likely to become hyperactive, with low attention spans, suggests research published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Hyperactivity, low attention span, and impulsive behaviour characterise the syndrome known as hyperkinetic disorder, or HKD for short. It is one of the most common mental disorders diagnosed among children, say the authors.
The Danish research team compared the birth records of 834 children with confirmed HKD with those of 20,100 children with no mental disorders. All the children were born between 1980 and 1994.
Writing a Roadmap to the Future for Cancer Survivors
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Christina Bigelow knows she needs to keep her heart healthy and avoid smoking and drinking. It’s more important for her than it is for a typical 19-year-old.
After surviving cancer twice, Bigelow now works hard to monitor for or prevent a third round with the disease.
“The second cancer was actually thought to be caused by the treatment of the first cancer, so because I’ve had two primary cancers, they’re kind of worried about a third one starting from the treatment of the second one,” says Bigelow, who was 9 when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Four years later, at age 13, she was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of bone cancer.
Results Good for HER-2 Positive Breast Cancer Patients Using Trastuzumab
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Researchers in the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) have shown that patients who receive trastuzumab at the same time as post-chemotherapy radiation treatments for HER-2 positive breast cancer have no more risk for major side effects or complications than those who do not receive the drug. Mayo Clinic’s Michele Halyard, M.D., presented these findings today, June 5, at the 2006 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Atlanta.
This study resulted from NCCTG clinical trial N9831, from which breakthrough treatment findings were presented at ASCO 2005. “The original N9831 study showed that trastuzumab reduced the recurrence of HER-2 positive breast cancer about 50 percent,” says Dr. Halyard, a radiation oncologist at Mayo Clinic Arizona and lead author of today’s study. “We hoped also to show that trastuzumab did not add complications to radiation treatment, and the current study has certainly proven that, providing good news for many women.”
About 25 percent to 30 percent of breast cancers produce an overabundance of a growth-promoting protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER-2). These tumors tend to grow faster and are generally more likely to recur than tumors that do not overproduce HER-2. Trastuzumab is the first identified monoclonal antibody designed specifically to attack this overexpressed protein, and is used as a follow-on treatment to chemotherapy. A monoclonal antibody is a laboratory-engineered protein that helps the body’s immune system fight foreign invaders such as cancer.
Heel prick test can cause unnecessary parental stress
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Virtually all babies in the U.S. have their heels pricked soon after birth to get a blood sample for genetic testing.
These “heel stick” tests identify rare metabolic disorders before they cause irreversible damage, but as more disorders are added to the screening - many states now test for 30 or more - false-positive results are on the rise. In the June issue of Pediatrics, researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston report that false-positive results cause considerable parental stress, even when the baby proves negative on retesting, and that the stress could be alleviated by better education for parents and pediatricians.
Psychologist Susan Waisbren, PhD and Elizabeth Gurian, MS in Children’s Division of Genetics interviewed 173 families who had received false-positive screening results and a comparison group of 67 families with normal newborn screening results.
Heart Drug Side Effects More Common in Minority Patients
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Nonwhite patients are more likely than white patients to have troublesome side effects from two common types of drugs used to fight high blood pressure, stroke and heart attack, British researchers report.
But the finding has to be viewed with caution, because experts say it’s not clear whether race or other factors, such as more limited access to health care, may be to blame.
“It is impossible to know how much of the observed differences could be accounted for by factors such as these vs. underlying genetics,” said Carlotta M. Arthur, a psychologist and an Andrew J. Mellon fellow at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.
