Body

WASHINGTON (June 25, 2013) — Heart failure patients are surviving more often with the heart condition but they are increasingly more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, a trend that could be attributed to increased surveillance, side effects of treatments, or other causes, according to a study published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Male twin Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were more than twice as likely as those without PTSD to develop heart disease during a 13-year period, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health.

This is the first long-term study to measure the association between PTSD and heart disease using objective clinical diagnoses combined with cardiac imaging techniques.

LOS ANGELES — Researchers at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered a promising new way to treat a rare and aggressive blood cancer most commonly found in people infected with HIV.

The USC team shows that a class of drugs called BET bromodomain inhibitors effectively targets primary effusion lymphoma (PEL), a type of cancer for which those drugs were not expected to be effective.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Humans and their pet dogs are close, so close that they both develop a type of cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. In humans it's the most common lymphoma subtype while in dogs, it's one of the most common cancers in veterinary oncology.

Tobacco smoke, diesel exhaust and oil combustion carry polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – PAHs that are known to cause cancer. But of these PAHs, the obviously dangerous high-molecular-weight PAHs like benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) have received the vast majority of research attention. Their low-molecular-weight cousins have been largely overlooked, in part because studies have shown that these compounds alone aren't very successful at mutating genes in cancer-causing ways.

A Johns Hopkins study of more than 1,800 men ages 52 to 62 suggests that African-Americans diagnosed with very-low-risk prostate cancers are much more likely than white men to actually have aggressive disease that goes unrecognized with current diagnostic approaches. Although prior studies have found it safe to delay treatment and monitor some presumably slow-growing or low-risk prostate cancers, such "active surveillance" (AS) does not appear to be a good idea for black men, the study concludes.

DENVER – ALK rearrangement has been demonstrated to be a potent oncogenic driver and a promising therapeutic target in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It defines a distinct molecular subset of NSCLC, in particular adenocarcinoma that can benefit by the treatment of ALK-inhibitors. Development of robust and reliable laboratory tests for predictive biomarkers is essential to select appropriate patients for targeted therapy.

DENVER – The incidence of lung cancer in women affects an estimated 516,000 women worldwide, of which 100,000 are in the United States and 70,000 in Europe. Until now, lung cancers occurring in women have been treated similarly to lung cancers in men. However, numerous studies have highlighted different characteristics of lung cancer in women.

DENVER – Each year, 13 percent of all newly diagnosed lung cancer patients are diagnosed with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). Approximately 39 percent of patients with SCLC are diagnosed with limited-stage disease, meaning the cancer is only present in one lung, but may have spread to lymph nodes or tissue between the lungs. These patients are often treated with chemotherapy and definitive radiation therapy.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute and Agilent Laboratories have found that Prader-Willi syndrome — a genetic disorder best known for causing an insatiable appetite that can lead to morbid obesity — is associated with the loss of non-coding RNAs, resulting in the dysregulation of circadian and metabolic genes, accelerated energy expenditure and metabolic differences during sleep.

The largest investigation to date has found a dramatic increase in the number of hospitalizations for children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) during the past decade in the United States.

The new study, published online and scheduled for the August 2013 print issue of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, found a 65 percent increase in IBD hospital discharges from 2000 to 2009. The number increased from 11,928 discharges in 2000 to 19,568 discharges in 2009.

Improving care for depression in low-income communities -- places where such help is frequently unavailable or hard to find -- provides greater benefits to those in need when community groups such as churches and even barber shops help lead the planning process, according to a new study.

Students who consistently receive individualized reading instruction from first through third grade become better readers than those who don't, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

These findings come after a three-year study that followed several hundred Floridian students, who received varying amounts of individualized instruction, from first to third grade.

Jamie K. Teer, Ph.D., assistant member of the Cancer Biology and Evolution Program at Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues have developed a new streamlined method to rapidly identify the genetic changes in small protein fragments unique to melanoma cancer cells. These fragments can be used as targets for tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes that have been shown to reduce cancerous lesions.

The new approach is outlined in an article published online by Nature Medicine in May.

A formation mechanism of nanocrystalline cerium dioxide (CeO2), a versatile nanomaterial, has been unveiled by scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The research results were published in the scientific journal Chemistry – A European Journal (DOI: 10.1002/chem.201204101). This finding potentially simplifies and alleviates the existing synthetic processes of nanocrystalline CeO2 production.