A microbe that has caused trouble in human stomachs for around 60,000 years may also play a role in preventing children from developing asthma and other allergies. In a new study, researchers say that a current campaign to wipe out the bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, may be having the unintended consequence of boosting asthma rates in kids.
A longtime resident of the human stomach, H. pylori went largely undetected until Australian scientists discovered it in 1979 and went on to show that it can cause stomach ulcers. Further work has linked it to stomach cancer. It’s now treated with antibiotics whenever detected [Science News]. But researchers say that when they studied health records of over 7,000 kids between the ages of 3 and 13, they found that children with H. pylori in their stomachs were less than half as likely to develop asthma. Those children were also less likely to suffer from eczema and hay fever.
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Australia’s Tasmanian devils are breeding at younger ages in response to a strange form of infectious cancer that is spreading rapidly through devil populations. The feisty marsupials are now reproducing before the lethal cancer strikes them down—a response that may be the species’ only chance to avoid extinction.
Researcher Shelly Lachish explains: “In a normal, healthy devil population the females would rarely breed before the age of two, but now 60 per cent of one-year-olds in diseased populations have produced young…. They are teenagers in human terms. It’s a remarkable change given early breeding was once very, very rare” [Sydney Morning Herald]. While some researchers believe this to be an example of rapid evolution, skeptics say the case is not yet closed.
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A hormone therapy sometimes called “medical castration” that’s used to treat prostate cancer is of no help to patients in the early stages of the disease, according to a new study. What’s more, the treatment’s side effects far outweigh any potential benefit for most patients [Los Angeles Times].
The treatment, which cuts off the production of male hormones, has been found to be effective in treating aggressive prostate cancer that is spreading through the body; this prompted doctors to begin prescribing the hormone therapy to patients with early stage, localized tumors as well. But the results of this new study are likely to reverse that trend. Hormone therapy’s most obvious side effect is sexual dysfunction. Of greater concern are several recent studies linking [these] therapies to diabetes, heart disease, bone fractures, and reduced muscle mass [WebMD].
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Sometimes good things come in small packages. Researchers say they’ve developed a nanoparticle that can deliver cancer-fighting drugs to a tumor’s blood vessels with laser-like precision, and that studies in mice show that this system could stop tumors from metastasizing, or spreading through the body.
Researchers say that packaging a toxic chemotherapy drug in nanoparticles for specific delivery to cancer cells, rather than a larger, wide-acting dose, could make for safer and more potent cancer treatments. “There are many drugs that companies have made that have fallen by the wayside or been shelved due to toxicity,” says [study author] David Cheresh [New Scientist].
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Researchers have developed a test that may soon allow doctors to track the progress of lung cancer tumors in “real time.” A sophisticated device allows doctors to detect and isolate the few circulating tumor cells that travel through the blood stream, which can then provide information about the main tumor’s growth and its response to medication.
As tumors grow, a handful of cancer cells may peel away and slip into the blood, [study author Daniel] Haber says. While few in number — with about one cancer cell for every 1 billion blood cells — these cells can be deadly if they settle in other parts of the body and form new tumors, a process called metastasis. Until now, doctors have never been able to easily analyze them [USA Today]. Now doctors will be able to conduct a genetic analysis of the free-floating tumor cells, allowing doctors to tailor their treatment to the individual patient and taking an important step towards “personalized medicine.”
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In a few years, young women may be offered a genetic test that would gauge their probability of developing breast cancer decades later. The test, which could be a simple mouth swab, could make women who are at high risk more vigilant and could lead them to detect the disease earlier, researchers say. But some doctors warn the results could cause serious psychological stress and would not identify all women at risk [Sydney Morning Herald].
Researchers know that a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer is based on both genetics and lifestyle. Currently, women with a strong family history of breast cancer are offered genetic screenings, but those tests only look for the rare genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, which have long been known to carry a high risk of the disease. The proposed tests, which researchers say are just a few years away, would also look at seven genetic variants… which have been discovered to increase a woman’s risk of breast cancer, particularly if she has certain combinations of them [The Guardian].
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Gastric bypass surgery may seem a drastic option for someone battling obesity, but good results keep coming in: It works, and it appears to bring a host of health benefits. Last August, two studies showed that patients who tried the surgery had a reduced risk of dying from cancer; now a more specific study has demonstrated that the surgery cuts the risk of breast and colon cancer, the two most common forms.
Bariatric surgery is the only effective treatment for morbid obesity, according to the World Health Organization, and is usually performed using one of two different techniques. One focuses on reducing the size of the patient’s stomach alone, leading to decreased food intake. The second also reroutes food through the intestines, allowing fewer calories to be absorbed [Globe and Mail]. The surgery has already been shown to reduce risks of heart disease and diabetes, and the U.S. Medicare program is currently considering paying for the expensive surgery as a diabetes treatment.
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When “Patient Number Four” came to a cancer research center in Seattle to receive experimental treatment for his advanced melanoma, he already looked like a goner. The 52-year-old man’s skin cancer had already spread to his lungs and throughout his lymph nodes, and the tumors had not responded to other therapies. But something about the man’s biology made him the lucky one. Two months later, scans showed the tumours had disappeared, and after two years, the man remained disease-free [BBC News].
In the ground-breaking treatment, the Seattle researchers focused on a type of white blood cell that is programmed to attack tumor cells. They drew one single immune cell from Patient Four’s blood and cloned it in the laboratory, making 5 billion copies over three months. Finally, the researchers gave Patient Four an infusion of the cloned cancer-fighting cells, which appear to have rallied the man’s immune system, fighting back the tumors and sending his cancer into remission.
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Fresh veggies and a healthy lifestyle are striking a blow against “genetic destiny.” When a handful of patients with early-stage prostate cancer made dramatic changes to their lifestyles, switching broccoli for red meat and exercising diligently, they made equally dramatic changes to the behavior of their genes.
In a new study, researchers took biopsies before and after the three-month experiment in healthy living, and found that the patients’ lifestyle changes had switched on or off over 500 genes. Some of the changes positively affect genes that help fight cancer, while others help turn off genes that promote cancer development [HealthDay News].
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Children and adolescents suffering from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis or Crohn’s Disease got a dose of troubling news yesterday. The Food and Drug Administration announced a review of whether the drugs used to treat these conditions increase the risk of childhood cancer.
The blockbuster drugs under investigation (Enbrel, Remicade, Humira and Cimzia) are also used by adults, and the increased cancer risk for adult patients has been known for some time.
But the threat to patients under the age of 18 is only now been considered, after the accumulation of 30 reported cases of childhood cancer in the 10 years since the drugs went on the market.
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It’s been a big news week for nuclear waste, with most of the attention going to the Department of Energy’s announcement that it has at long last submitted an application to open a nuclear waste repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
After two decades of planning, the application nudges the project a little closer to reality, but there’s a long way to go yet. Nevada officials remain violently opposed to the “nuclear dump,” and lawsuits are inevitable. The Department of Energy says that the repository won’t be ready to open until 2020, at the earliest.
Meanwhile, in a laboratory in Tennessee, the Energy Department is trying to clean up an aging nuclear waste cache left over from the Cold War, only to have its own inspector general declared the waste a “national resource” because of its potential use in cancer treatments.
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The next revolution in health care may be the dawn of “personalized medicine,” where a patient’s genetic makeup is taken into account when prescribing drugs and dosages. A sign of that coming era came over the weekend at an important oncology meeting, where the biotech company ImClone Systems announced that its colon cancer drug was not effective on about 40 percent of patients who have a mutated form of a cell-growth gene.
The trend towards personalized medicine will have repercussions for pharmaceutical companies, who are used to searching for the next blockbuster cancer drug that can benefit a vast number of patients.
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A week after the announcement that he has brain cancer, Senator Ted Kennedy will undergo surgery this morning in an attempt to remove the malignant tumor.
There had been speculation that Kennedy might avoid surgery since the tumor is in a sensitive part of the brain that controls language, a crucial chunk of gray matter for a politician and orator. Bolstering that impression, early releases from Kennedy’s doctors discussed a treatment plan of radiation and chemotherapy, but didn’t mention surgery.
But after a weekend meeting with cancer experts from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute, Kennedy apparently decided to take his chances with the scalpel. Now, as the nation waits for news, attention has shifted to the surgery’s risks and possible outcomes.
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