Body

NEW YORK, September 4, 2013 — Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center study shows that the use of MRI before or immediately after surgery in women with DCIS was not associated with reduced local recurrence or contralateral breast cancer rates. The findings are being presented on Saturday, September 7, 2013, at the 2013 Breast Cancer Symposium.

A team of University of Texas at Arlington biologists working with the U.S. Geological Survey has found that watershed wetlands can serve as a natural source for the improvement of streams polluted by acid rain.

The group, led by associate professor of biology Sophia Passy, also contends that recent increases in the level of organic matter in surface waters in regions of North America and Europe – also known as "brownification" – holds benefits for aquatic ecosystems.

The research team's work appeared in the September issue of the journal Global Change Biology.

A University of Iowa physiologist has a new technique to measure the stiffness of the aorta, a common risk factor for heart disease. And it can be as simple as measuring the pulse in your finger.

The new procedure developed by Gary Pierce, assistant professor in the Department of Health and Human Physiology, works by placing an instrument called a transducer on the finger or over the brachial artery, located inside the arm just beneath the elbow. The readout, combined with a person's age and body mass index, lets physicians know whether the aorta has stiffened.

A study at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that head and neck cancer patients receiving radiation as part of their treatment were less likely to need a feeding tube or suffer unwanted side effects such as worsening of diet or narrowing of the throat passage if they performed a set of prescribed swallowing exercises — called a "swallow preservation protocol" — during therapy.

DENVER – Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in Ontario. Screening for lung cancer using low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has been the subject of many research studies since the 1990s. The National Lung Screening Trial compared LDCT with chest radiograph in high-risk populations and found a 20 percent reduction in lung cancer mortality at 6 years with LDCT after an initial scan and two annual rounds of screening.

DENVER – Radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy is increasingly being used in the curative treatment for un-resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). But, until now, researchers had not looked at the cost-effectiveness of the treatment. In the October issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's journal, the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), researchers compared the cost-effectiveness of different modified radiotherapy schemes and conventional fractional radiotherapy in the curative treatment of un-resected NSCLC patients.

DENVER – Although numerous randomized clinical trials have demonstrated a benefit of chemotherapy for patients with small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), these trials have predominantly compared different chemotherapy regimens rather than comparing chemotherapy to best supportive care. Some of them included chest radiation or prophylactic cranial irradiation. Moreover, many trials excluded elderly patients.

DENVER – According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 160,340 lung cancer deaths occurred in the United States in 2012, accounting for 28 percent of all cancer deaths. While survival from lung cancer has improved since the early 1990s, racial differences in lung cancer survival persist such that blacks experience poorer 5-year survival for lung cancer compared to whites.

Case Western Reserve researchers have identified a genetic factor that blocks the blood vessel inflammation that can lead to heart attacks, strokes and other potentially life-threatening events.

The breakthrough involving Kruppel-like factor (KLF) 15 is the latest in a string of discoveries from the laboratory of professor of medicine Mukesh K. Jain that involves a remarkable genetic family. Kruppel-like factors appear to play prominent roles in everything from cardiac health and obesity to metabolism and childhood muscular dystrophy.

The evolution of similar traits in different species, a process known as convergent evolution, is widespread not only at the physical level, but also at the genetic level, according to new research led by scientists at Queen Mary University of London and published in Nature this week.

The scientists investigated the genomic basis for echolocation, one of the most well-known examples of convergent evolution to examine the frequency of the process at a genomic level.

A protein at the center of Parkinson’s disease research now also has been found to play a key role in causing the destruction of bacteria that cause tuberculosis, according to scientists led by UC San Francisco microbiologist and tuberculosis expert Jeffery Cox, PhD.

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have identified a new component of the cellular mechanism by which humans and animals automatically check the quality of their nerve cells to assure they're working properly during development.

In a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Neuron, the scientists report the discovery in the laboratory roundworm C. elegans of a "quality check" system for neurons that uses two proteins to squelch the signals from defective neurons and marks them for either repair or destruction.

PITTSBURGH—Examining the varying personality types of multiple animal species at once—in addition to common single-species studies—could help biologists better predict ecological outcomes, according to a recent University of Pittsburgh study.

Reston, Va. (September 4, 2013) – For patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy, imaging with 18F-FDG positron emission tomography (PET) could act as a marker for a potentially reversible phase of the disease in which substantial clinical improvement can be achieved. According to research published in the September issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, patients who exhibited hypermetabolism at the point of compression in their spine experienced improved outcomes after undergoing decompressive surgery.

A new systematic review published in the British Journal of Nutrition*, is one of the first to focus on patterns of vitamin D status worldwide and in key population subgroups, using continuous values for 25(OH)D to improve comparisons.