Genetics of aging and cancer resistance
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In the November 15th issue of G&D, Dr. Kenneth Dorshkind and colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA) have identified two genes – p16(Ink4a) and Arf – that sensitize lymphoid progenitor cells to the effects of aging, and confer resistance to leukemogenesis.
Hematopoiesis (the development of blood cells) entails two main pathways: myelopoiesis (the formation of the red and white myeloid cells) and lymphopoiesis (the formation of B- and T-cells). While myelopoiesis remains constant throughout life, lymphopoiesis declines with age.
Dr. Dorshkind and colleagues demonstrated that older B lymphoid progenitor cells preferentially express p16(Ink4a) and Arf, which regulate cell cycle progression to effectively mediate senescence and tumor suppression in these aged cells. In contrast, myeloid progenitor cells consistently expressed much lower levels of these proteins.
Consent form developed for infertility therapy
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The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) has developed a comprehensive document for doctors to use when obtaining informed consent from patients seeking infertility treatment.
“This is our compilation of the important elements of informed consent that should be reviewed with patients,” incoming SART president Dr. Elizabeth Ginsburg said in an interview with Reuters Health. “It’s designed to be used ‘as is,’ or it can be used by clinics to adjust their own consent forms.”
As presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in San Francisco, the form explains the different options available to patients, including, among others, in vitro fertilization and embryo frozen storage or “cryopreservation”.
COPD deaths increase among women
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Between 2000 and 2005, the number of annual deaths in the United States due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) rose by 8 percent, an increase driven primarily by climbing mortality rates among women with the disease, according to a report in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Data were related in advance of World COPD Day on November 19, the goal of which is to raise awareness of this growing global public health problem.
COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, is a progressive disease that makes it hard to breathe. COPD can cause coughing that produces large amounts of mucus, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and other symptoms.
Thanksgiving food cost up 6 percent: farm group
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U.S. consumers won’t be thankful for low food prices this year, as shoppers will pay 6 percent more for a traditional Thanksgiving meal that includes turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, the largest U.S. farm group said on Thursday.
The American Farm Bureau Federation grocery list of 12 items estimated the average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving feast for a family of 10 will cost $44.61, an increase of $2.35 from last year’s average of $42.26.
“Food prices rode the energy price roller coaster up during the first half of 2008, and as the year winds down, energy prices have moderated somewhat but food prices have not come down,” said Jim Sartwelle, a Farm Bureau economist.
Older adults should be part of treatment decisions
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Older adults with multiple health problems have their own opinions when it comes to stopping or continuing a particular treatment, and doctors should encourage them to speak up, according to researchers.
In focus-group discussions with older adults on multiple medications, Yale University researchers found that most had experience with the concept of “competing outcomes”—the dilemma patients face when treating one health condition may worsen another.
For example, an older adult taking a cholesterol medication that causes leg cramps may have to decide whether the lower cholesterol number—and potentially reduced risk of heart attack—is worth the painful side effect. The decision is more complicated when that person also has arthritis and the leg cramps keep him from exercising to reduce his arthritis symptoms.
Cascading effect of even minor early problems may explain serious teen violence
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How do minor behavior problems and experiences early in life lead to serious acts of violence in teenagers? A group of researchers has found that the answer may lie in a cascading effect in which early life experiences lead to behaviors and new experiences that lead to yet other experiences that culminate in serious violent behavior.
The researchers found that children who had social and academic problems in elementary school were more likely to have parents who withdrew from supervision and monitoring when the children entered middle school. When this happened, children were more likely to make friends with other children who had deviant behavior, and this ultimately was more likely to lead teens to engage in serious and sometimes costly acts of violence. Interestingly, violent outcomes in girls followed largely the same developmental path as those for boys.
“The findings indicate that these trajectories are not inevitable but can be deflected at each subsequent era in development, through interactions with peers, school, and parents along the way,” notes Kenneth A. Dodge, William McDougall Professor of Public Policy and psychology and neuroscience, director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, and the study’s lead author. “Successful early intervention could redirect paths of antisocial development to prevent serious violent behavior in adolescence.”
Families, friends, schools and neighborhoods contribute to adolescent alcohol misuse
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Characteristics present in the four social environments in which young people live—families, peers, schools, and neighborhoods—contribute both positively and negatively to whether teens misuse alcohol, with risk from one area possibly being magnified or decreased by attributes of another.
That’s the finding of a new longitudinal study conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of California at Davis, and the University of California at Irvine. The study appears in the November/December 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.
Previous research on teen drinking has focused mostly on individuals’ ties to friends and family members. This study suggests the need for a more inclusive view of the social world of adolescents and highlights the importance of examining the connections between all of the social environments in which they live.
New European guidelines on heart attack management put emphasis on speed of action
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New European guidelines issued today on the management of heart attack emphasise speed of action and the importance of “reperfusion” therapy to restore blood flow to the heart and improve survival rates. “A well-functioning regional system of care… and fast transport to the most appropriate facility is key to the success of the treatment,” state the guidelines, which have been developed by a Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
Professor Frans Van de Werf (Leuven, Belgium), chairman of the Task Force, describes the guidelines as “important” and says their broad uptake and adoption would make a “huge difference” to heart attack survival rates.
The new guidelines cover management of a common type of classical heart attack known as STEMI (ST-segment elevation acute myocardial infarction), a reference to its appearance on an ECG. Around one-third of all acute coronary events are diagnosed as STEMI.
Personal rehab helpful for multiple sclerosis
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Results of a study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry suggest that an individualized rehabilitation program effectively reduces disability in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS).
“Persons with MS are expected to have a normal lifespan and live for many decades with a range of problems,” Dr. Fary Khan, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues write.
In order to assess the effectiveness of rehabilitation in MS patients, the researchers conducted a study with 101 patients who were randomly assigned to an individualized program or standard care.
More US women are surviving heart attack
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While men still fare better, fewer younger women are dying in the hospital after an acute heart attack than in the recent past, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
Earlier studies had found women under 55 died at about twice the rate of men of the same age who had an acute heart attack.
But those differences have narrowed, falling about 80 percent in the past 10 years, said Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta, who presented her findings at a meeting of the American Heart Association in New Orleans.
“There is still a gap, but it is closing,” Vaccarino said in a telephone interview.
Risks seen in opposite-sex heart transplants
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Men and women who get heart transplants are more likely to die when the donor was of the opposite sex, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
The cause is not clear but could be due to size differences in the heart—men’s tend to be larger—or certain hormonal and immunological factors, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Patients who got a heart transplant from a donor of the opposite sex had a 15 percent higher risk of death compared to those whose donor was the same sex, they told an American Heart Association meeting in New Orleans.
Scientists unravel breast cancer drug resistance
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British scientists have figured out why some women develop resistance to the most commonly used breast cancer drug, something that raises the risk their tumours will return, according to a study published on Wednesday.
The findings could lead to new tests to determine which women are not likely to benefit from tamoxifen and who should be given other drugs, said Jason Carroll of Cancer Research UK in Cambridge, who led the study published in the journal Nature.
“We can use this information to predict which patients will respond to tamoxifen and more importantly which ones won’t,” Carroll told reporters in a telephone briefing.
“More importantly it gives us an idea of what we should be making drugs against.”
Indonesian teenager dies of bird flu
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A 15-year-old Indonesian girl has died of bird flu in central Java, a health official said on Wednesday, bringing the country’s death toll from the disease to 113.
The girl died last week after being treated at the Doctor Karyadi hospital in Semarang.
“It has been confirmed by health ministry labs,” said Agus Suryanto, the head of the medical team treating the girl.
Hardest-to-treat form of TB rare in U.S. -study
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The hardest-to-treat form of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a growing threat in many parts of the world, but remains quite rare in the United States, U.S. government health researchers said on Tuesday.
From 1993 through 2007, there were 83 cases of extensively drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB, reported in the United States, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
XDR-TB defies nearly all drugs used to treat tuberculosis, the top cause of infectious disease death among adults worldwide. It is more difficult to treat than the more common multidrug resistant TB, or MDR-TB, which does not respond to the treatment by two or more of the primary drugs used for TB.
The Relative Risk of Brain Cancer
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Doctors know that you’re at a higher risk for breast, colon and prostate cancers if they’ve been found in your family. Brain cancer can now be placed on that same list, says a new study by Tel Aviv University and the University of Utah.
Dr. Deborah Blumenthal, co-director of Tel Aviv University’s Neuro-oncology Service at the Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, says that a family history of brain cancer, like those of other cancers, should be reported to the family doctor during a routine medical checkup.
The new study, using data from the Utah Population Data Base (UPDB) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, was unique in the large number of cases examined, which tracked back at least three generations and as far as ten generations in some families. The brain tumors studied by the researchers include glioblastoma, the same tumor afflicting Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has been undergoing treatment since June.
