Many advanced breast cancer patients do not receive recommended treatment
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Radiation after a mastectomy for women with advanced breast cancer saves lives, but almost half of these patients do not receive it. That is the conclusion of a new study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study’s results indicate that treatments that have proven their life-saving potential in clinical trials may not be available to many patients.
After clinical trials in the 1990s revealed the benefits of radiation after mastectomy in advanced breast cancer patients, several major treatment guidelines were published that recommended radiation for these women after their surgery. To investigate whether these recommendations are being followed, Shervin Shirvani, MD, and Benjamin Smith, MD, of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, led a team that analyzed information from 38,322 women aged ≥ 66 years treated with mastectomy for invasive breast cancer between 1992 and 2005. (The researchers obtained data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results [SEER]-Medicare database, which links cancer registry data to a master file of Medicare enrollment.)
While radiation use increased from 36.5 percent to 57.7 percent between 1996 and 1998 with the publication of landmark clinical trials, no further increase in use was observed between 1999 and 2005 despite the publication of multiple guidelines endorsing it.
UCI, French researchers find master switch for adult epilepsy
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UC Irvine and French researchers have identified a central switch responsible for the transformation of healthy brain cells into epileptic ones, opening the way to both treat and prevent temporal lobe epilepsy.
Epilepsy affects 1 to 2 percent of the world’s population, and TLE is the most common form of the disorder in adults. Among adult neurologic conditions, only migraine headaches are more prevalent. TLE is resistant to treatment in 30 percent of cases.
UCI neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Tallie Z. Baram and her colleagues found that TLE manifests after a major reorganization of the molecules governing the behavior of neurons, the cells that communicate within the brain. These alterations often stem from prolonged febrile seizures, brain infections or trauma.
New study: Even in flies, enriched learning drives need for sleep
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Just like human teenagers, fruit flies that spend a day buzzing around the “fly mall” with their companions need more sleep. That’s because the environment makes their brain circuits grow dense new synapses and they need sleep to dial back the energy needs of their stimulated brains, according to a new study by UW- Madison sleep researchers.
Researchers saw this increase in the number of synapses—the junctions between nerve cells where electrical or chemical signals pass to the next cell—in three neuronal circuits they studied. The richer “wake experience” resulted in both larger synaptic growth and greater sleep need.
The study, published today in the journal Science, provides structural evidence for the theory that “synaptic homeostasis” is one of the key reasons all animals need sleep. Researchers Dr. Daniel Bushey, Dr. Giulio Tononi and Dr. Chiara Cirelli of the Wisconsin Center for Sleep and Consciousness also looked at the role the gene implicated in Fragile X syndrome plays in re-normalizing the brain during sleep.
Effects of stress can be inherited, and here’s how
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None of us are strangers to stress of various kinds. It turns out the effects of all those stresses can change the fate of future generation, influencing our very DNA without any change to the underlying sequence of As, Gs, Ts and Cs. Now, researchers reporting in the June 24th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication, have new evidence that helps to explain just how these epigenetic changes really happen.
“There has been a big discussion about whether the stress effect can be transmitted to the next generation without DNA sequence change,” said Shunsuke Ishii of RIKEN Tsukuba Institute. “Many people were doubtful about such phenomena because the mechanism was unknown. Our finding has now demonstrated that such phenomena really can occur.”
Our genes encode proteins, but whether and how those genetic instructions are ultimately read and expressed depends on how those genes are chemically modified and “packaged” into a more complex structure known as chromatin. Some portions of the genome are more tightly wound into what’s known as heterochromatin. Heterochromatin is maintained from one generation to the next and typically doesn’t contain active genes, Ishii explains.
Who goes there? Novel complex senses viral infection
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Double-stranded (ds) RNA viruses are a diverse group of viruses that include rotaviruses, a common cause of gastroenteritis. The ability of the immune system to detect and destroy viruses is critical for human health and survival. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the June 23rd issue of the journal Immunity identifies a novel sensor that is necessary to activate the immune response to viral infection. The research enhances our understanding of the complex and overlapping mechanisms our immune cells use to thwart infection.
Viruses are infectious agents composed of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) and a protective protein coating. Viruses infect all types of organisms and can hijack host cell machinery to replicate (make many copies of themselves). The innate immune system is the body’s first line of defense against viruses and detects infection by sensing viral nucleic acids. Detection of a virus leads to activation of the type 1 interferon (IFN) response, a powerful weapon that is named for its ability to “interfere” with viral replication.
“During the past decade, major efforts using genetic approaches have identified three major classes of innate immune receptors for sensing microbial nucleic acids,” says senior study author, Dr. Yong-Jun Liu from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
‘My dishwasher is trying to kill me’
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A potentially pathogenic fungus has found a home living in extreme conditions in some of the most common household appliances, researchers have found. A new paper published in the British Mycological Society journal, Fungal Biology, published by Elsevier, shows that these sites make perfect habitats for extremotolerant fungi (which includes black yeasts). Some of these are potentially dangerous to human health.
Modern living comes with an increasing need for electrical household equipment such as dishwashers, washing machines and coffee machines. A characteristic of these appliances is a moist and hot environment. In the case of dishwashers, high temperatures between 60º to 80ºC are intermittently produced and aggressive detergents and high concentrations of salt are used in each washing cycle.
The article focuses on the occurrence of potentially pathogenic fungal flora located in dishwashers, over a sample of private homes from 101 cities on 6 continents. 62% of the dishwashers contained fungi on the rubber band in door, 56% of which accommodated the polyextremotolerant black yeasts Exophiala dermatitidis and E. phaeomuriformis. Both Exophiala species showed remarkable tolerance to heat, high salt concentrations, aggressive detergents, and to both acid and alkaline water. This is a combination of extreme properties not previously observed in fungi.
Food safety programs suffer in budget battles
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When a salmonella outbreak sickened at least 79 people and killed two this past spring in Rhode Island, the state had only seven food safety inspectors.
During the month it took health officials to track the outbreak to a small bakery in Johnston, Rhode Island, the state’s other 8,000 licensed food establishments remained virtually uninspected.
Though Rhode Island plans to hire one additional inspector soon, Health Department spokeswoman Annemarie Beardsworth said it won’t be enough to fully protect the state’s food supply.
American Cancer Society report finds continued progress in reducing cancer mortality
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A steady reduction in overall cancer death rates translates to the avoidance of about 898,000 deaths from cancer between 1990 and 2007, according to the latest statistics from the American Cancer Society. However, the report, Cancer Statistics 2011, and its companion consumer publication Cancer Facts & Figures 2011 find that progress has not benefitted all segments of the population equally. A special section of the report finds cancer death rates for individuals with the least education are more than twice those of the most educated and that closing that gap could have prevented 37%—or 60,370—of the premature cancer deaths that occurred in 2007 in people ages 25-64 years.
Each year, the American Cancer Society estimates the numbers of new cancer cases and deaths expected in the United States in the current year and compiles the most recent data on cancer incidence, mortality, and survival based on incidence data from the National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, and mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
A total of 1,596,670 new cancer cases and 571,950 deaths from cancer are projected to occur in the U.S. in 2011. Overall cancer incidence rates were stable in men in the most recent time period after decreasing by 1.9% per year from 2001 to 2005; in women, incidence rates have been declining by 0.6% annually since 1998. Overall cancer death rates, which have been dropping since the early 1990s, continued to decrease in all racial/ethnic groups in both men and women since 1998 with the exception of American Indian/Alaska Native women, among whom rates were stable. African American and Hispanic men showed the largest annual decreases in cancer death rates during this time period, 2.6% and 2.5%, respectively. Lung cancer death rates showed a significant decline in women after continuously increasing since the 1930s.
A better way to remember
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Scientists and educators alike have long known that cramming is not an effective way to remember things. With their latest findings, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan, studying eye movement response in trained mice, have elucidated the neurological mechanism explaining why this is so. Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, their results suggest that protein synthesis in the cerebellum plays a key role in memory consolidation, shedding light on the fundamental neurological processes governing how we remember.
The “spacing effect”, first discovered over a century ago, describes the observation that humans and animals are able to remember things more effectively if learning is distributed over a long period of time rather than performed all at once. The effect is believed to be closely connected to the process of memory consolidation, whereby short-term memories are stabilized into long-term ones, yet the underlying neural mechanism involved has long remained unclear.
To clarify this mechanism, the researchers developed a technique based around the phenomenon of horizontal optokinetic response (HOKR), a compensatory eye movement which can be used to quantify the effects of motor learning. Studying HOKR in mice, they found that the long-term effects of learning are strongly dependent on whether training is performed all at once (“massed training”), or in spaced intervals (“spaced training”): whereas gains incurred in massed training disappeared within 24 hours, those gained in spaced training were sustained longer.
Low fertility in Europe—is there still reason to worry?
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The post-war trend of falling birth rates has been reversed across Europe, according to a new study. However, despite an increasing emphasis on family and fertility policies in Europe, this recent development involves social, cultural and economic factors more than individual policy interventions.
For some decades, couples have been having children later in life. But birth-rates among younger women have stabilised and the long-term trend towards lower fertility rates has been reversed.
Politicians are still left to grapple with problems associated with an ageing population as Europeans live longer and birth rates remain below the level needed to dramatically change the balance between young and older people.
Does driving a Porsche make a man more desirable to women?
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New research by faculty at Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota finds that men’s conspicuous spending is driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. And, gentlemen, women can see right through it.
The series of studies, “Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System,” was conducted with nearly 1,000 test subjects and published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“This research suggests that conspicuous products, such as Porsches, can serve the same function for some men that large and brilliant feathers serve for peacocks,” said Jill Sundie, assistant professor of marketing at UTSA and lead author of the paper.
Sleep can boost classroom performance of college students
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Sleep can help college students retain and integrate new information to solve problems on a classroom exam, suggests a research abstract that will be presented Tuesday, June 14, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).
Results show that performance by university undergraduates on a microeconomics test was preserved after a 12-hour period that included sleep, especially for cognitively-taxing integration problems. In contrast, performance declined after 12 hours of wakefulness and after a longer delay of one week.
According to the authors, recent sleep research has demonstrated that learned information is often replayed during sleep. This reactivation of learned information may help to consolidate, or stabilize, memories. The present study uniquely extends this area of research to a realistic task that students would encounter in a university classroom.
Sleep type predicts day and night batting averages of Major League Baseball players
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A Major League Baseball player’s natural sleep preference might affect his batting average in day and night games, according to a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS).
Results indicate that players who were “morning types” had a higher batting average (.267) than players who were “evening types” (.259) in early games that started before 2 p.m. However, evening types had a higher batting average (.261) than morning types (.252) in mid-day games that started between 2 p.m. and 7:59 p.m. This advantage for evening types persisted and was strongest in late games that began at 8 p.m. or later, when evening types had a .306 batting average and morning types maintained a .252 average.
“Our data, though not statistically significant due to low subject numbers, clearly shows a trend toward morning-type batters hitting progressively worse as the day becomes later, and the evening-types showing the opposite trend,” said principal investigator and lead author Dr. W. Christopher Winter, medical director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Sleep Medicine Center in Charlottesville, Va.
New 3-D tumor model
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A team of scientists has developed a way to coax tumor cells in the lab to grow into 3-D spheres. Their discovery takes advantage of an earlier technique of producing spherical cavities in a common polymer and promises more accurate tests of new cancer therapies.
As team leader Michael R. King, Ph.D., of Cornell University explains, “Sometimes engineering research tends to be a case of a hammer looking for a nail. We knew our previous discovery was new and it was cool. And now we know it’s useful.”
Three years ago, the team—in collaboration with Lisa DeLouise, Ph.D., MPD, of Rochester, N.Y.—perfected a low-cost, easy fabrication technique to make spherical cavities in PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane), a widely used silicon organic polymer. More recently, the Cornell team discovered that these cavities could be used as a scaffolding to grow numerous tumor spheroids, which could serve as realistic models for cancer cells. The Cornell team’s work appears in the current issue of Biomicrofluidics, a publication of the American Institute of Physics.
Researchers discover potential cause of chronic painful skin
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A new study may explain why only 50% of patients experiencing chronic nerve pain achieve even partial relief from existing therapeutics. The study, published in the June 6 online version of the international research journal PAIN, reveals that certain types of chronic pain may be caused by signals from the skin itself, rather than damage to nerves within the skin, as previously thought.
A Medical Mystery
For years, researchers have known that increased amounts of a molecule called Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP) is found in the skin of chronic pain patients. The source of the increased CGRP was thought to be certain types of sensory nerve fibers in the skin that normally make and release a type or “isoform” called CGRP-alpha. Curiously, however, the authors of the current study found that nerve fibers containing CGRP-alpha are actually reduced under painful conditions – leading them to investigate where the increased CGRP in the skin came from.
The answer, surprisingly, was that the skin cells themselves generate increased amounts of a lesser-known “beta” isoform of CGRP. This skin cell-derived CGRP-beta is increased in painful conditions and may be sending pain signals to remaining sensory nerve fibers in the skin. The discovery of CGRP-beta as a therapeutic target presents a potentially important new treatment approach.
