Why African-Americans Fare Worse with Some Cancers
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An analysis of almost 20,000 patient records from the Southwest Oncology Group’s database of clinical trials finds, for the first time, that African-American breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer patients tend to die earlier than patients of other races even when they get identical medical treatment and other confounding socioeconomic factors are controlled for. The finding points to biological or host genetic factors as the potential source of the survival gap.
“When you look at the dialogue about the issue of race and cancer survival that’s gone on over the years,” says the paper’s lead author, Kathy Albain, M.D., a breast and lung cancer specialist at Loyola University’s Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center, “it always seems to come down to general conclusions that African-Americans may in part have poorer access to quality treatment, may be diagnosed in later stages, and may not have the same standard of care delivered as Caucasian patients, leading to a disparity in survival.”
The study, which will be published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) on July 7, found that when treatment was uniform and differences in tumor prognostic factors, demographics, and socioeconomic status were controlled, there was in fact no statistically significant difference in survival based on race for a number of other cancers—lung, colon, lymphoma, leukemia, and multiple myeloma.
New heart disease risk score outperforms existing test
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An independent external validation of QRISK® — a new score for predicting a person’s risk of heart disease — has shown that it performs better than the existing test and should be recommended for use in the United Kingdom by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
The University of Nottingham and leading healthcare systems supplier EMIS worked together, through the not-for-profit partnership QResearch, to develop the ground-breaking formula which has been strongly endorsed in new research published in the British Medical Journal.
Researchers from the University of Oxford have recommended its widespread use across the UK in place of the more commonly-used Framingham equation.
Obama administration takes action on food safety
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The Obama administration on Tuesday ordered tougher steps to curb Salmonella and Escherichia coli contamination in U.S. food processing plants and created a new deputy food commissioner post to coordinate safety in the wake of a Salmonella outbreak.
The administration, concerned by delays in identifying the source of the salmonella contamination that sickened more than 700 people in 46 states earlier this year, also moved to create a better tracing system for identifying the origin of foodborne illnesses.
The actions, to be unveiled by the administration at an event on Tuesday, were based on recommendations from a Food Safety Working Group created by President Barack Obama in March after a Salmonella outbreak in peanut products forced the largest food recall in U.S. history.
Die-hard Cypriot smokers must stub out by Jan 1
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Die-hard smokers in Cyprus will finally have to curb the habit when one of the last EU smoking havens imposes a Jan. 1 ban on puffing in public places.
Lawmakers are poised to pass tough new regulations banning smoking in public places, replacing an existing law which is regularly flouted.
Come Jan. 1, smoking will be prohibited in restaurants, bars, nightclubs and workplaces, with planned hefty fines for those caught having a puff.
Age not linked to Achilles pain in older athletes
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Age does not seem to play a role in the development of Achilles tendon problems among older athletes, nor do training and participation in walking, jumping, sprinting, running, or hurdling competitions, findings from a European study suggest.
Achilles tendon pain results from swelling or tiny tears in the tendon that connects the calf muscle to the heel bone. The exact cause of this “overuse” injury, characterized by swelling or mild to severe pain when rising onto the toes or pushing off when walking, is unknown.
The current study, reported in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, involved 110 men and 68 women who were highly trained, competitive track and field athletes participating in the European Veterans Athletics Championships held in Poland in July 2006.
New culprit behind obesity’s ill metabolic consequences
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Obesity very often leads to insulin resistance, and now researchers reporting in the July 8 issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, have uncovered another factor behind that ill consequence. The newly discovered culprit—a protein known as pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF for short)—is secreted by fat cells. They also report evidence to suggest that specifically blocking that protein’s action may reverse some of the health complications that come with obesity.
“With obesity, PEDF release is increased from fat, leading to higher levels of PEDF in the bloodstream,” said Matthew Watt of Monash University in Australia. “PEDF sends a signal to other body tissues, causing insulin resistance in muscle and liver, a major defect that leads to the development of type 2 diabetes.”
Elevated PEDF is also associated with increased release of fatty acids from fat stores, which causes blood lipid levels to rise. That “dyslipidemia” may be associated with other complications including cardiovascular disease.
Severe COPD may lead to cognitive impairment
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Severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is associated with lower cognitive function in older adults, according to research from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Researchers compared cognitive performance in over 4,150 adults with and without COPD and found that individuals with severe COPD had significantly lower cognitive function than those without, even after controlling for confounding factors such as comorbidities.
The results were published in the July 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
“Our findings should raise awareness that adults with severe COPD are at greater risk for developing cognitive impairment, which may make managing their COPD more challenging, and will likely further worsen their general health and quality of life,” wrote lead author of the study, William W. Hung, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Researchers find genetic key to breast cancer’s ability to survive and spread
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New research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) sheds light on a genetic function that gives breast cancer cells the ability to survive and spread to the bone years after treatment has been administered. The findings support the study of therapies that target this survival capacity and force the death of latent breast cancer cells before they get a chance to metastasize, or spread – a problem that accounts for a majority of breast cancer–related deaths. The research will be published in the July 7 issue of Cancer Cell.
Using gene-expression profiling techniques, researchers found that breast cancer cells that infiltrate the bone marrow can survive over time if they contain the gene product Src, which has known effects on cell mobility, invasion, and survival. The investigators discovered that genetically disabling Src activity in human breast cancer cells inhibits these cells from surviving in the bone marrow and forming metastases in mice. They also observed that treatment with the drug dasatinib inhibits the formation of bone metastasis by human breast cancer cells inoculated into mice.
“Our results should encourage oncologists to consider the study of Src inhibitors to attack reservoirs of disseminated, latent cancer cells and prevent metastasis in breast cancer patients after their tumor has been removed,” said the study’s senior author, Joan Massagué, PhD, Chair of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program at MSKCC and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
Clinical Trial Shows Tongue Drive System Assists Disabled
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An assistive technology that enables individuals to maneuver a powered wheelchair or control a mouse cursor using simple tongue movements can be operated by individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries, according to the results of a recently completed clinical trial.
“This clinical trial has validated that the Tongue Drive system is intuitive and quite simple for individuals with high-level spinal cord injuries to use,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Trial participants were able to easily remember and correctly issue tongue commands to play computer games and drive a powered wheelchair around an obstacle course with very little prior training.”
At the annual conference of the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) on June 26, the researchers reported the results of the first five clinical trial subjects to use the Tongue Drive system. The trial was conducted at the Shepherd Center, an Atlanta-based catastrophic care hospital, and funded by the National Science Foundation and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.
Early telemedicine try didn’t cut Medicare costs
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A telemedicine program designed to help Medicare beneficiaries with type 2 diabetes take care of their health didn’t cut costs, and had only a “modest” effect on patients’ health, researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care.
But that doesn’t mean that similar interventions can’t help patients and reduce health care spending, according to Dr. Lorenzo Moreno of Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey, who led the research.
“Increased home-based tele-visits from nurses and self-tracking of progress could improve patients’ self care behaviors,” Moreno noted in a statement. “These improvements could help participants avoid long-term health complications, which in turn would reduce use of acute care services, hospitalizations, and Medicare costs.”
Glaucoma patients overrate their eyedrop skills
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Although more than 90 percent of patients taking ocular medication reported feeling confident about their eyedrop instillation technique, less than one third actually demonstrated adequate skills, researchers report in the Archives of Ophthalmology.
“A large component of adherence to a medical regimen,” investigator Dr. Alan L. Robin told Reuters Health, “is the ability to adequately execute the proper ingestion or instillation of a medication. Physicians often do not dwell on this aspect as they think that one does not have to educate a patient on how to take a pill. However, the proper instillation of an eye drop into the eye is far different than taking a pill.”
Robin went on to point out that apart from it being essential to get a drop into the eye, it’s also important to avoid release of multiple drops, which leads to waste, increased costs and possible inadequate dosing should the medication run out prematurely.
Natural Compound Stops Diabetic Retinopathy
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Oklahoma City, OK—Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center have found a way to use a natural compound to stop one of the leading causes of blindness in the United States. The research appears online this month in the journal Diabetes, a publication of the American Diabetes Association.
The discovery of the compound’s function in inflammation and blood vessel formation related to eye disease means scientists can now develop new therapies –including eye drops – to stop diabetic retinopathy, a disease which affects as many as five million Americans with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
“There is no good treatment for retinopathy, which is why we are so excited about this work. This opens an entirely new area for pharmaceutical companies to target,” said Jay Ma, the principal investigator on the project and a research partner at the OU Health Sciences Center, Dean A. McGee Eye Institute and the Harold Hamm Oklahoma Diabetes Center.
Lap-Band Weight-Loss Surgery Can Reverse Metabolic Syndrome in Obese Teens
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A new study of obese adolescents has shown that laparoscopic gastric banding surgery—the “Lap-Band” procedure—not only helps them achieve significant weight loss but can also improve and even reverse metabolic syndrome, reducing their risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
Metabolic syndrome is defined as a cluster of risk factors—high blood pressure; low levels of HDL or “good” cholesterol; excessive abdominal fat; and elevated levels of blood sugar, C-reactive protein and triglycerides—that increase a person’s chances of developing cardiovascular disease or diabetes later in life. The single biggest risk factor is obesity, and metabolic syndrome usually improves when a person loses weight.
The study was led by Drs. Ilene Fennoy, Jeffrey Zitsman and colleagues at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center and presented at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in Washington, D.C.
Device shows promise for type of cerebral palsy
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Treatment in the brain with a mild electrical current appears to help patients with a difficult-to-treat form of cerebral palsy, French researchers said on Wednesday.
Patients in the study were implanted with pacemaker-like devices, known as deep-brain stimulators, made by Medtronic Inc, which helped fund the study.
A team lead by Marie Vidailhet of Salpetriere University Hospital in Paris implanted the devices in 13 people who had cerebral palsy with dystonia-choreoathetosis, a common and progressively disabling movement disorder.
Say no to vodka, president tells Russians
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President Dmitry Medvedev has told Russians they must kick the alcohol habit.
“We drink more now than in the 1990s, although those were difficult times,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Medvedev as saying on Tuesday.
Health Minister Tatyana Golikova has been ordered to devise an anti-alcohol strategy. “We need to prepare a corresponding programme and take appropriate measures,” Medvedev said.
A report by The Lancet medical journal last week said alcohol-related diseases caused around half of all deaths of Russians between the ages of 15 and 54.
