Body

What can DNA from the skeleton of a man who lived 2,330 years ago in the southernmost tip of Africa tell us about ourselves as humans? A great deal when his DNA profile is one of the 'earliest diverged' – oldest in genetic terms – found to-date in a region where modern humans are believed to have originated roughly 200,000 years ago.

This news release is available in French.

Montreal, September 29th, 2014 - The number of days an expectant mother was deprived of electricity during Quebec's Ice Storm (1998) predicts the epigenetic profile of her child, a new study finds.

Solving global challenges in food security, emerging diseases and biodiversity loss requires evolutionary thinking, argues a new study published online in Science Express that was co-authored by Bruce Tabashnik of the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

For the first time, an international team of nine scientists has reviewed progress in addressing a broad set of challenges in agriculture, medicine and environmental management using approaches that consider evolutionary histories and the likelihood of rapid adaptation to human activities.

Patients whose lung cancer has developed resistance to the drug gefitinib experience no statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival from continued treatment with the drug in addition to chemotherapy, a phase III trial presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress has shown.

The IMPRESS trial is a randomised phase III study that compared continuation of gefitinib in addition to chemotherapy against chemotherapy alone in patients with lung cancer that carried mutations in the EGFR cell surface receptor.

Patients with HER2-positive breast cancer that has spread to other parts of their body live around 16 months longer if treated with a combination of pertuzumab, trastuzumab and chemotherapy compared to those treated with trastuzumab and chemotherapy alone, updated results from the CLEOPATRA study reveal.

For patients with cervical cancer that has recurred after treatment or has spread elsewhere in the body, adding the experimental drug cediranib to standard chemotherapy improves tumour shrinkage and adds a modest improvement in progression-free survival, researchers report at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid.

More than three quarters of oncology specialists in Europe, South America and Asia believe their patients are not always well enough informed about the treatment options available to them, survey results have revealed at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain.

The results come from an online survey of 895 doctors from 12 countries in Europe, South America and Asia. All were practicing oncology specialists, with more than three years' experience, treating more than fifteen patients a month.

A growing number of oncologists in Greece are female, but women continue to be under-represented in leadership positions, according to a survey reported at the ESMO 2014 Congress.

"In Greece, and across Europe, women oncologists still find it hard to access leadership or academic positions," said Dr Helena Linardou, Associate Director of the 1st Department of Oncology at the Metropolitan Hospital, Athens, Greece, who presented the survey results at the congress.

Treating patients with high-dose radiotherapy after chemotherapy and surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma does not achieve improvements in local relapse and overall survival, according to data from a prospective randomized phase II trial presented at ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid.

Yerkes National Primate Research Center researchers are the first to show that an irradiation plus transplantation combination approach in nonhuman primates can be used to treat or even possibly cure HIV/AIDS, and this new model is providing some answers about the "Berlin patient," the only human thought cured of AIDS. The study is published in the September 25 issue of PLOS Pathogens.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 29, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN) today announced that its Tumor BRACAnalysis CDx™ companion diagnostic test significantly improved the detection of cancer-causing BRCA1/2 mutations by 44 percent in women with ovarian cancer. Data from this new study were presented at the 2014 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) annual meeting in Madrid, Spain.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which estrogen prepares cells to divide, grow and, in the case of estrogen-positive breast cancers, resist cancer drugs. The researchers say the work reveals new targets for breast cancer therapy and will help doctors predict which patients need the most aggressive treatment.

The University of Illinois team reports its findings in the journal Oncogene.

People tend to perceive their dominant hand as staying relatively the same size even when it's magnified, lending support to the idea that we use our hand as a constant perceptual "ruler" to measure the world around us. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

More children than ever are being admitted to intensive care units in England and Wales but there are fewer staff per bed available to cope with the increase, according to a new report published jointly by the University of Leeds and University of Leicester.

The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) report showed that there was a 15% increase in admissions over a 10-year period between 2004 and 2013, but this included an increase of 4% that was not due to changes in the childhood population.

BOSTON –– Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other institutions have discovered a sign of the early development of pancreatic cancer – an upsurge in certain amino acids that occurs before the disease is diagnosed and symptoms appear. The research is being published online today by the journal Nature Medicine.