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Mar 10, 2010 Health, Medical Research & Study
An experimental approach that looks for the DNA leaking out from dead and dying cells may provide a route to a blood test for breast cancer, U.S. researchers reported on Tuesday.
An initial study showed the test detected 70 percent of breast cancer cases, and correctly cleared 100 percent of women who did not have breast cancer, the team at Chronix Biomedical, a privately-owned company in San Jose, California, said.
The experimental test is not ready to develop into a product but provides a basis for further research, they wrote in the journal Molecular Cancer Research.
“It is based on finding the unique DNA fingerprints from dead and dying cells,” Chronix CEO Howard Urnovitz said in a telephone interview.
Technological advances in DNA sequencing made the test possible, Urnovitz said. His team sequenced the entire genomes of 26 breast cancer patients and of 67 apparently healthy women.
They were looking for extra DNA in the blood of the breast cancer patients that would come from cells dying because of the tumors.
“If a breast cell is injured, it will over express the genes that make it a breast cell,” Urnovitz said. In theory, if a patient has excess DNA from breast cells that are dying, there is something going on that is killing breast cells.
The search is not easy. “The entire genome can be found in the blood,” Urnovitz said. And billions of cells die every day in the human body.
But eventually the Chronix team found what they believe is tell-tale DNA from dying breast cells.
“This study supports the potential of an entirely new approach to identifying cancer at its earliest stages when therapies may be most effective,” Dr. William Mitchell of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee, who worked on the study, said in a statement.
SCREENING AND MONITORING
“Laboratory tests using this approach may have the potential both to screen large populations for cancer before symptoms appear and to monitor patients for the recurrence of cancer once treated,” Mitchell added.
Much more testing needs to be done, Urnovitz said. But so far the test seems to specifically home in on breast cells. Unpublished data shows, for instance, that the DNA signature is not found in men with prostate cancer.
The cost of genetic sequencing will have to come down more before the test would be practical, Urnovitz added.
His team used Roche AG’s 454 sequencer at a cost of thousands of dollars per person, but companies are working to speed up sequencing and get the costs down.
The tests might be used to screen women for breast cancer and to tailor treatments, Urnovitz said.
“Imagine we can come in and say ‘you have damage to the protein kinase gene that would preclude you from these 10 cancer drugs, but here are 20 others that should work’,” he said.
“You would be selecting drug treatment based on each person’s lesions. This would be a really good example of personalized medicine.”
Urnovitz also hopes such a test could monitor patients who have completed treatment for cancer. Instead of coming to a cancer center to undergo a PET scan to check for tumors that may have returned, patients could get a blood test at their convenience and have it sent in for analysis.
“You could have one blood test for everything that is going on,” he said. Fox News
Recent Entries
Mar 9, 2010 Business, Economy
Gold prices retreated Monday as the dollar gained against other currencies.
Other commodities were mixed. Crude oil inched up while natural gas fell on concerns about huge supplies and warmer weather in the offing.
The ICE Futures US dollar index, a closely watched gauge of the dollar against other currencies, was at 80.1 in the morning and rose as high as 80.5 during the day.
Commodities tend to move opposite to the dollar. A rising U.S. currency makes dollar-denominated commodity contracts less appealing to foreign investors.
Gold for April delivery fell 1 percent to settle at $1,124 an ounce after hovering in the $1,100-an-ounce range since Feb. 25.
“We’re getting a little bit of profit taking,” Lind-Waldock commodities analyst Rich Ilczyszyn said. “We’ve had quite a rise here in the last two to three weeks.”
Energy prices were mixed. Natural gas fell 6.6 cents to settle at $4.527 per 1,000 cubic feet on the New York Mercantile Exchange after some weather forecasts predicted warmer weather in the next several days, said Richard Feltes, MF Global commodity research director.
In other April contracts, benchmark crude for April delivery rose 37 cents to settle at $81.87 a barrel on the Nymex and heating oil rose 0.81 cent to settle at $2.1055 a gallon.
Silver for May delivery fell 11 cents to $17.272 an ounce while copper fell .007 cent to $3.4105 a pound.
In March contracts, platinum rose $21 to $1,600.10 while palladium fell $5.05 to settle at $470.35 an ounce.
Elsewhere, grains were mixed as traders await a government report due Wednesday that will update supply and demand for grains.
Wheat for May delivery gained 1.50 cents to settle at $4.95 a bushel; soybeans added 5.25 cents to $9.48 a bushel and corn fell 0.5 cent to $3.75 a bushel. By Sandy Shore , Star Tribune
Mar 8, 2010 Art, Games
Knowing where to go for your gaming needs is a key element to a positive gaming experience. If you want an uninterrupted play and unlimited fun, all you have to do is play at the comfort of your home. But first, you have to open an account with any online casinos. Anyway, these gaming sites have put together a customer service team that is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. They can be reached by phone, email or even live chat to help questions regarding their online casino slot machines.
As you may know, there’s more to gaming than just playing games, like browsing cool websites and reading about games, watching game trailers, talking to other gamers and reading the latest game reviews. The online casino slots are also one of the newest online casinos to be open to all western players as well as players across the globe. And so, if you are looking for a new experience then this casino may just have what you are looking for.
Further, another known casino game that attracts thousands of bettors in playing at different internet casinos throughout the world is the online roulette. And what makes it outstanding and extraordinary is that it adds more pleasure and excitement than the usual roulette being played in real casinos. So, if you really want a cool site where you can create your own game trailers, besides being the best place to download premium games, then everything is within your reach.
Mar 7, 2010 Health & Fitness
Midday naps have long been touted as a good thing, lowering blood pressure and driving down the risk of heart attack. And if you snooze long enough, researchers have now found, they also permit your memory banks to do their filing, leaving your brain cleared and ready to learn in the latter half of the day.
University of California at Berkeley researchers put 39 young adults through a demanding learning task and tested on it at noon. At 2 p.m., they divided the students into two groups and invited half of them to take a siesta for 90 minutes while asking the remainder to stay awake. At 6 p.m., both groups were returned to the day’s learning task and tested again.
The siesta group went into the 6 p.m. task readier to learn and performed 10 percent better on the test than they had earlier. The no-nap group’s performance declined by 10 percent, researchers reported.
Flu shots broadened
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended recently that all Americans over 6 months — except those who are allergic to eggs — should receive a seasonal flu shot every year, beginning this fall. The CDC has been slowly broadening the recommendations for flu shots over the past few years to the point where about 85 percent of the population is now covered. The primary exception now is adults 19 to 49 who do not have underlying medical conditions.
Little on lactose woes
The National Institutes of Health recently convened a panel of experts to reach a consensus on what is known about lactose intolerance. Their consensus: There is no consensus. It is a real condition, but there are no good numbers for its incidence, little is known about its effects on health and even less is known about potential treatments.
Lactose is the primary sugar in all mammalian milk, including human milk. Virtually all babies are born with enzymes, called lactases, in their intestines that digest lactose, turning it into a form that can be used by the body. But beginning at about 5 or 6, many children, particularly those of African and Asian ancestry, begin to lose the ability to digest the sugar. If they continue drinking milk and eating dairy products afterward, bacteria in the gut often ferment the sugar, producing diarrhea, abdominal pain, flatulence and bloating.
Surprisingly, there are no good estimates of how many people have the problem, and the panel didn’t try to make one.
“A lot of people who think they have lactose intolerance don’t,” said Dr. Frederick Suchy of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, chair of the panel. Star Tribune
Mar 6, 2010 Business, Economy, Investments
Almost all consumers around the world today have noticed that prices for goods and services have been skyrocketed. And as such, there is a misconception about it, but the truth of the matter is that prices have remained nearly the same in precious metals terms. It is the value of the dollar in the gold market that has declined and because of such; it now simply takes more dollars to buy the same products as compared before.
Nevertheless, most of us if not all have been experiencing unfortunate condition as the state of the world economy is so uncertain now. Though some people don’t care of what is going on in the market today, but you shouldn’t be one of them. Instead, take a closer look of how much interest does your money earn when switching it with gold money rather than having it deposited in a bank.
In a nutshell, it is on this context that lots of people were now looking forward to assimilate things because of the safety factors with the rarity value of gold ounce that ends up being one of the most important, and becomes even more important. Well after all, anticipating things in a way that would be beneficial to you and your family is an investment-wise. And having such would be favorable on your part in case a monetary breakdown happens. So better act now and got a solid asset that you don’t have in paper. After all, they are a wise purchase.
Mar 6, 2010 Food, Research & Study, diet
Researchers at Kansas State University recently published an academic journal article discussing the potential for nutrigenomics, a field that studies the effects of food on gene expression. The researchers discussed the possibility of using food to prevent an individual’s genes from expressing disease. The researchers said nutrigenomics could completely change the future of public health and the food and culinary industries.
“Nutrigenomics involves tailoring diets to someone’s genetic makeup,” said Koushik Adhikari, K-State assistant professor of sensory analysis. “I speculate that in five to 10 years, you would go to a genetic counselor or a physician who could help you understand your genetic makeup, and then a nutritional professional could customize your diet accordingly.”
Adhikari collaborated with Denis Medeiros, professor and department head of human nutrition, and Jean Getz, former K-State graduate student in human nutrition, for an article on nutrigenomics that was published in the January issue of Food Technology. Getz, now a student at the School of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University, wrote the article while at K-State.
Nutrigenomics is a fast-moving field of research that combines molecular biology, genetics and nutrition to regulate gene expression through specific nutrients. Nutrients have been shown to affect gene expression through transcription factors, which are biochemical entities that bind to DNA and either promote or inhibit transcription of genes. By understanding the roles of specific nutrients and how they might cause diseases, scientists could recommend specific foods for an individual based on his or her genetics.
“Scientists are looking at the molecular mechanisms in the body,” Adhikari said. “At the molecular level, you can look at what specific nutrients can do to your body that would trigger genes to act properly, in a healthy way.”
Medeiros said K-State researchers in human nutrition are doing these kinds of studies. Some are studying the impact plant chemicals have on different types of cancers in terms of their potential prevention effects. Other researchers are looking at how wolfberry, a Chinese fruit, could be used to improve vision.
“These studies not only answer whether the concerned nutrients prevent a disease, but also how they exert their health benefits,” Medeiros said.
Current health recommendations for people in the United States are general for the overall population. However, with nutrigenomics research, health recommendations could be better modified to individuals.
“That is where I think the main focus of nutrigenomics is going to be in the future,” Adhikari said. “It could tell you that you have the propensity for certain chronic diseases so that you could modify your diet accordingly. With a better understanding of how nutrients alter gene expression, there is a potential that food could be used instead of medication to combat problems like high cholesterol.”
Adhikari said this kind of personalized health care is in the near future since the human genome has been mapped. Now scientists are focusing on identifying single-nucleotide polymorphisms, which are a small change in a person’s DNA sequence like sensitivity to bitterness. Polymorphisms could determine if a person has a propensity for different chronic diseases. At K-State, Adhikari and Mark Haub, associate professor of human nutrition, are leading a study of the genotypes of diabetic and non-diabetic individuals to determine if there is a link between the risk for type-2 diabetes and bitter-taste sensitivity.
Nutrigenomics would require a collaborative effort from people in genetics and the industries of public health, food science and culinary. Adhikari said more options should be available so that consumers can make the healthiest choice. He said the food industry should collaborate with the culinary industry to create more healthful and appealing foods.
“This is one of the major issues with the food industry,” he said. “It’s very easy to make good-tasting food. Put some lard or butter in it, and it’s going to taste good. The challenge is how to take the fat out and create healthful but also good-tasting food.”
Consumer education also will be an important factor for the future of nutrigenomics and public health. Adhikari said consumers are often skeptical of genetically modified foods, where scientists modify a food’s DNA by splicing and adding genes. However, this practice is different from nutrigenomics, which focuses on using foods’ natural components to promote better health.
The researchers said a shift in public health is greatly needed, and with an increasing incidence of obesity and chronic diseases such as types 2 diabetes, nutrigenomics might prove to be the panacea in the future. redOrbit
Mar 5, 2010 Food, Health & Fitness
Eating plenty of potassium-rich foods such as leafy greens, potatoes and bananas may reduce the risk of stroke and coronary artery disease, according to Italian researchers.
The new analysis was based on 10 studies published between 1966 and 2009 that included almost 280,000 adults. During follow-ups that ranged from five to 19 years, there were over 5,500 strokes and almost 3,100 coronary heart disease events, the investigators found.
Higher potassium intake was associated with a 19 percent lower risk of stroke and an 8 percent lower risk of coronary heart disease. The findings support global recommendations for people to increase their consumption of potassium-rich foods in order to prevent vascular disease, said Dr. Pasquale Strazzullo, of the University of Naples, and colleagues.
Other foods high in potassium include soybeans, apricots, avocados, plain non-fat yogurt, prune juice, and dried beans and peas.
The findings were presented Wednesday at the American Heart Association’s Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism conference in San Francisco.
Another study presented at the meeting found that a diet high in raw fruits and vegetables may help protect against stroke.
Mar 4, 2010 Business, Frames, Lifestyle
One afternoon during a coffee break, an office mate of mine had confided that for the past few days, he has been suffering with headaches whenever he’s working on a computer. And so looking back on my experience, I told him that it was a sign he already needs an eye wear for any computer work. Wearing eyeglasses has become something many people need to do but are not aware of the fact as to why they need the glasses or the benefits of it. Well, it is really tiresome working on computers especially during wee hours as it causes eyestrains from the glare of screen and the straining of the eyes to focus on the information at the screen.
As a matter of fact, some of the common symptoms for computer vision syndrome are headaches and muscle strain. Also, improper lighting and dusts in the computer usage area are among of the contributing factors for computer users. Now, choosing the right pair of glasses is really important, whether you wear it full time for vision correction or only for protection from the sun. Thus, making the correct choice can simply make your look memorable either in good or a bad way, after all what looks horrendous on one person may looks great on another.
Mar 3, 2010 Environment, Wildlife
A group of wayward dolphins has been spotted in a northern New Jersey river.
About 8 to 15 dolphins were first reported in the chilly Hackensack River on Wednesday. They’ve been swimming near the towns of Hackensack, Teaneck and Bogota (ba-GOH’-tah).
Bill Sheehan of the Hackensack Riverkeeper group fears there’s not enough food in the river in the winter to sustain the dolphins.
The Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine has been contacted. The center says it can’t act until the dolphins are in distress.
Dolphins have wandered into New Jersey rivers in the past, including a pod that caused a stir in the Shrewsbury River in the summer of 2008, and stayed in the area for over 7 months. Several of them were believed to have died as temperatures dropped. The News & Observer
