"EARLY October brought two developments in the world of cancer screening: the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, with its calls for regular mammograms for women, and a new recommendation from the United States Preventive Services Task Force that healthy men not undergo screening for prostate cancer.

It’s a stark juxtaposition: screening is good for women and bad for men. But just how different are these two cancer screening tests?

The answer is: not very. Neither is like the decision of whether or not to be treated for really high blood pressure. That’s an easy one — do it. Instead, both breast and prostate cancer screening are really difficult calls, and the statistical differences between them are only of degrees. Reasonable individuals, in the same situation, could make different decisions based on their valuation of the benefits and harms of screening...."

"British scientists have identified a gene responsible for regulating chronic pain, called HCN2, and say their discovery should help drug researchers in their search for more effective, targeted pain-killing medicines.

Scientists from Cambridge University said that if drugs could be designed to block the protein produced by the gene, they could treat a type of pain known as neuropathic pain, which is linked to nerve damage and often very difficult to control with currently available drugs..."

...They've found that turmeric's active ingredient, curcumin, works in the lab to fight skin, breast and other tumor cells. In fact, human clinical trials employing curcumin have already been launched.
Now, working with cell cultures in a laboratory, scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) have discovered that curcumin blocks the activity of a gastrointestinal hormone implicated in the development of colorectal cancer, the country's second leading cancer killer with nearly 60,000 deaths annually. In a paper published in the current issue of Clinical Cancer Research, the UTMB researchers link the gastrointestinal hormone neurotensin, which is generated in response to fat consumption, to the production of IL-8, a potent inflammatory protein that accelerates the growth and spread of a variety of human cancer cells, including colorectal and pancreatic tumor cells.

Toward the first nose drops to treat brain cancer

Patents on genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer are invalid, ruled a New York federal court today. The precedent-setting ruling marks the first time a court has found patents on genes unlawful and calls into question the validity of patents now held on approximately 2,000 human genes. The ruling follows a lawsuit brought by a group of patients and scientists represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), a not-for-profit organization affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Hitting PPAR on the course of cystic fibrosis: correcting PPAR-gamma signaling defect limits CF severity in mouse model

Turning tables on prostate cancer's drug resistance

Stop patents on diagnostic genes, says US panel - and do it now #genepatents #medicine

Mayo researchers find obesity key: he energy-saving mechanism is controlled by ATP-sensitive potassium (KATP) chan... http://bit.ly/7EPksA

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AIDS vaccine surprises scientists, proves partially successful: In an early-morning announcement today, researc.. http://bit.ly/3N5mTW

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A group of nanoengineers, biologists and physicists have used innovative approaches to deduce the internal structure of chromatin, a key player in DNA regulation, to reconcile a longstanding controversy in this field. This new finding could unlock the mystery behind the origin of many diseases such as cancer.

researchers at the School of Medicine have turned normal skin cells into cancer stem cells, a step that will make these naturally rare cells easier to study.

The new drug protects animals' bone marrow and gut cells from being destroyed by radiation therapy, without reducing radiation's effectiveness against tumour cells, say today's studies.

Scientists believe they have made a potential breakthrough in the treatment of serious disease by creating a human embryo with three separate parents.

High-dose ascorbic acid increases intercourse frequency and improves mood: a randomized controlled clinical trial.

...notes on the writers’ advice about how to cope with one. It seems reductive to sum up these profound experiences in a tips list, but the writers themselves seemed eager to try to help others learn from what they went through.

If a new drug were as effective at saving lives as Peter Pronovost’s checklist, there would be a nationwide marketing campaign urging doctors to use it.

Researchers at Aurora Flight Sciences have developed a pouch that can be put inside a large, open wound to halt life-threatening bleeding within minutes.

The purpose of the SENS conference series, like all the SENS initiatives, is to expedite the development of truly effective therapies to postpone and treat human aging by tackling tackling it as an engineering problem...

The federal government has told New York State health officials that chemotherapy, which had been covered for illegal immigrants under a government-financed program for emergency medical care, does not qualify for coverage. The decision sets the stage for

An experimental stem cell treatment that has proved successful in rats could lead to an off-the-shelf heart repair therapy for heart attack patients.

A promising device uses electric fields to destroy cancer cells in the brain.

Grapefruit Eating grapefruit every day could raise the risk of developing breast cancer by almost a third, US scientists say.

Cancer experts have identified a set of health problems that may be symptoms of ovarian cancer, and they are urging women who have the symptoms for more than a few weeks to see their doctors

Reopening a long-running debate, the American College of Physicians, which represents 120,000 internists, issued new guidelines today that instead urge women in their 40s to consult with their doctors about whether to have the breast X-rays

A Chinese herb called danshen could one day be the foundation of a new treatment for high blood pressure, scientists say.In a new study, researchers report that an active ingredient in the herb reduces hypertension in hamsters and appears to work by widen

... a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

Researchers say they have created an antibody which could block the production of brain chemicals linked to the debilitating disease.

British researchers say that higher levels of procyanidins -- a compound found in red wine -- have potent protective effects on blood vessels.

resveratrol, already shown to reverse the effects of obesity in mice and make them live longer, has now been shown to increase their endurance as well.

A woman in a vegetative state is to be given a "miracle" sleeping pill said to have caused others in her condition to "wake up" after England's senior family court judge overruled the objections of her family in the first case of its kind.

Extract of a spice used in curry could help prevent rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, US research suggests.

Research with British and US offenders suggests nutritional deficiencies may play a key role in aggressive bevaviour

for 'RNA interference'

Steven Rose feels as if he has just come off the set of ER after reading neurosurgeon Katrina S Firlik's "Brain Matters"

Mice studies show that nanoparticles filled with tumor-destroying drugs have promise as a way to effectively target and kill ovarian cancer cells.