Body

Johns Hopkins scientists have created a free, Web-based tool to help patients decide whether it's best to accept an immediately available, but less-than-ideal deceased donor kidney for transplant, or wait for a healthier one in the future.

WASHINGTON — Two studies funded by NASA and presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 help explain why space radiation may increase the risk of colorectal cancer in humans.

The researchers, from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, found that cosmic radiation impairs the ability of cells in the intestines of mice to eliminate oncogenic proteins, thus substantially increasing development of colorectal tumors.

WASHINGTON — Excess estrogen levels during pregnancy can disable, in their daughters, a powerful breast cancer tumor suppressor gene, say researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. They found the DNA repair gene BRCA1 to be silenced in one year-old girls exposed to a high hormonal fetal environment.

WASHINGTON, DC (April 9, 2013)—A variety of mutations may give rise to breast cancer, but scientists generally assume that it starts off with just a few. That's because later-stage breast cancers tend to have more mutations—they are more heterogeneous—than early stage cancers. Now, new findings by scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center demonstrate heterogeneity is prevalent even within legions of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common, earliest stage non-invasive breast cancer (stage 0).

WASHINGTON, DC (April 9, 2013)—Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have identified a host of small molecules critical to metabolism in cells of triple-negative breast cancer—one of the least understood groups of breast cancer. These molecules, called metabolites, include key players in energy regulation and lipid synthesis. They could help pave the way for helping researchers differentiate among different forms of the disease and ultimately point to new targets for treatment.

WASHINGTON, DC (April 9, 2013)—A new preclinical technology enables researchers to quickly determine if a particular treatment is effective against gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), providing a boost to animal research and possibly patient care, according to new findings presented by Fox Chase Cancer Center at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013 on Tuesday, April 9.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — April 9, 2013 — The nanoparticle drug BIND-014 is effective against multiple solid tumors, according to results generated by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Scottsdale Healthcare, and presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2013.

Data for the study was generated at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials, a partnership of TGen and Scottsdale Healthcare.

There is no single sexy chin.

That's the conclusion of a new Dartmouth College global study of male and female preferences for facial characteristics of the opposite sex. The results, which contradict the notion that human beauty is universal, are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2013—One of the main obstacles that stands in the way of using human hematopoietic stem cells (hHSCs) to treat a variety of diseases is the difficulty growing them in culture—they quickly die or differentiate into other cell types.

Scientists from UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health led by Julia Heck, an assistant researcher in the school's epidemiology department and a member of UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, have found a possible link between exposure to traffic-related air pollution and several childhood cancers.

The results of their study — the first to examine air pollution from traffic and a number of rarer childhood cancers — were presented on April 9 in an abstract at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington, D.C.

A study that began as a class project among graduate students at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is now a peer–reviewed research article in Ecology, the flagship journal of the Ecological Society of America.

The article, "Physiological effects of diet mixing on consumer fitness: a meta-analysis," is co-authored by VIMS graduate students Jonathan Lefcheck, Matt Whalen, Theresa Davenport, and Josh Stone, along with VIMS Professor J. Emmett Duffy.

Wetlands serve as the Earth's kidneys. They filter and clean people's water supplies while serving as important habitat for many species, including iconic species like cattails, cranes and alligators. Conventional ecosystem health assessments have focused on populations of these larger species. However, the tiny, unseen creatures in the wetlands provided crucial indicators of the ecosystems' health in a study by University of Missouri Associate Professor of Engineering Zhiqiang Hu and his team.

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2013–The decision to perform an invasive procedure to open clogged arteries in the heart instead of first trying medication and lifestyle changes may not reduce a patient's risk of death or of a major cardiac event. Unnecessary procedures to treat chronic, stable heart disease contribute to rising health care costs. A targeted approach to avoiding this kind of overutilization by instead relying on evidence-based decision-making is presented in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

High blood pressure and obesity are no longer confined to wealthy countries, a new study has found.

These health risks have traditionally been associated with affluence, and in 1980, they were more prevalent in countries with a higher income.

The new research, published in Circulation, shows that the average body mass index of the population is now just as high or higher in middle-income countries. For blood pressure, the situation has reversed among women, with a tendency for blood pressure to be higher in poorer countries.

We all desire self-control — the resolve to skip happy hour and go to the gym instead, to finish a report before checking Facebook, to say no to the last piece of chocolate cake. Though many struggle to resist those temptations, new research suggests that people with low self-control prefer and depend on people with high self-control, possibly as a way to make up for the skills they themselves lack.