Body

A Swedish research team partly consisting of researchers from Uppsala University followed a group of prostate cancer patients in the Nordic region for 15 years. The study found, among other things, that surgery reduces the risk that men with prostate cancer (even those with low-risk tumours) will die within 15 years. The results were published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The recent nuclear accident in Fukushima Daiichi in Japan has brought the nuclear debate to the forefront of controversy. While Japan is trying to avert further disaster, many nations are reconsidering the future of nuclear power in their regions. A study by Behnam Taebi from the Delft University of Technology, published online in the Springer journal Philosophy & Technology, reflects on the various possible nuclear power production methods from an ethical perspective: If we intend to continue with nuclear power production, which technology is most morally desirable?

Scientists have discovered why some people may be protected from harmful parasitic worms naturally while others cannot in what could lead to new therapies for up to one billion people worldwide.

Parasitic worms are a major cause of mortality and morbidity affecting up to a billion people, particularly in the Third World, as well as domestic pets and livestock across the globe.

Now, University of Manchester researchers have, for the first time, identified a key component of mucus found in the guts of humans and animals that is toxic to worms.

An international team of researchers studied the parareptiles, a diverse group of bizarre-looking terrestrial vertebrates which varied in shape and size. Some were small, slender, agile and lizard-like creatures, while others attained the size of rhinos; many had knobbly ornaments, fringes, and bony spikes on their skulls.

The researchers found that, surprisingly, parareptiles were not hit much harder by the end-Permian extinction than at any other point in their 90 million-year history.

Familiar blueberries and their lesser-known wild relatives are safeguarded by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and curators at America's official blueberry genebank. The plants, collected from throughout the United States and more than two dozen foreign countries, are growing at the USDA Agricultural Research Service National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis, Ore.

Montreal May 5, 2011 – Children whose mother or father is affected by bipolar disorder may need to keep their stress levels in check. A new international study, led by Concordia University, suggests the stress hormone cortisol is a key player in the mood disorder. The findings published in Psychological Medicine, are the first to show that cortisol is elevated more readily in these children in response to the stressors of normal everyday life.

French researchers have reported the strongest proof yet that evidence of 'circulating tumor cells' found in samples of a patient's blood is strongly linked to poor outcomes such as a short time to disease progression.

At the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Dr François-Clement Bidard and colleagues from Institut Curie in Paris say their new findings set the scene for interventional trials designed to see if improved outcomes can be achieved by modifying treatment based on circulating tumor cell counts.

The most comprehensive analysis yet of the epigenetic modifications present in breast cancer has revealed potentially important new ways to detect and treat the disease, Belgian researchers have reported.

Epigenetics is a term used to describe modifications to the DNA molecule that affect way its code is translated into proteins. These changes include methylation, a form of chemical modification.

German researchers have identified an unexpected molecular marker that predicts how sensitive hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancers are to chemotherapy.

Triple-negative breast cancers --which do not express the genes for estrogen receptor, or progesterone receptor and do not have Her2/neu overexpression or amplification-- are more aggressive than other forms of the disease and cannot be treated with endocrine or Her2 targeted therapies.

Two multi-gene tests designed to predict the risk of disease progression and response to chemotherapy in breast cancer produce broadly similar results for high- and low-risk patients, but do not always agree in their predictions for those at intermediate risk, a new analysis shows.

Measuring the transfer of tiny amounts of energy from one protein to another on breast cancer cells has given scientists a detailed view of molecular interactions that could help predict how breast cancer patients will respond to particular therapies.

At the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Dr Gargi Patel from the Richard Dimbleby Department, King's College London, described cutting-edge research in which she and colleagues captured detailed information about protein interactions on cancer cells, and correlated that with established genetic markers for cancer spread.

The anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib may be a useful additional treatment for people with breast cancer, Dutch researchers report at the IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels.

The results of a randomized trial in 45 patients with primary invasive breast cancer showed that the drug --which is currently used to treat arthritis and other painful conditions-- clearly induced an anti-tumor response at the molecular level.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – In a rare and medically remarkable operation, a multi-disciplinary team of surgeons at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) removed the left leg, hip and pelvis of a cancer patient, and used the healthy, living bones from his amputated leg to completely rebuild the connection between his spine and remaining right pelvis to support a high-tech prosthetic leg.

OAKLAND, Calif., May 5, 2011-- Parental exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) during pregnancy is associated with decreased birth weight of offspring, compared with offspring from families without parental BPA exposure in the workplace, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers.

The observational study is published in the current online issue Reproductive Toxicology.