Body

PHILADELPHIA – New study results strengthen the evidence that people who smoke cigarettes over a long period of time have an increased risk for developing colorectal cancer, even after adjusting for other risk factors.

"This provides one more reason not to smoke, or to quit as soon as possible," said senior author Michael J. Thun, M.D., M.S., vice president emeritus, epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. "Colorectal cancer should be added to the list of cancers caused by smoking."

PHILADELPHIA – Cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption before head and neck cancer diagnosis strongly predicts the patient's future risk of death, according to published studies. Now, results of a new study show a similar effect among those who continued these habits after cancer diagnosis.

PHILADELPHIA – People who smoke their first cigarette within minutes after waking up have much higher levels of cotinine, a by-product of nicotine when processed by the body, than those who wait to smoke, regardless of the number of cigarettes smoked.

PHILADELPHIA – Exposure to secondhand smoke for a prolonged period of time and in high quantity may increase the risk of breast cancer, even in women who never smoked cigarettes themselves.

PHILADELPHIA – Assurance of a cancer-free status did not prompt people participating in a long-term computerized tomography (CT) lung-cancer screening program to pick up their cigarettes again, researchers wrote in a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. The December issue contains a special focus on tobacco.

Washington, DC – The study of tobacco has been the life-long focus of his research and now, Peter Shields, MD, deputy director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center, has led the effort to edit a special-edition of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention (CEBP) dedicated to best research practices in tobacco science from researchers the world over.

SPRINGHOUSE, PA (December 3, 2009): A non-absorbed, oral co-polymer therapy under development by Midway Pharmaceuticals demonstrated the ability to protect against damage to healthy gastrointestinal tissues and to prevent lethal bacterial infections in animal models of radiation damage. The results suggest the compound, a high molecular weight co-polymer of polyethylene glycol (PEG), may provide a new way to prevent serious GI side effects of radiation in patients receiving fractionated radiotherapy for abdominal cancers or in accidental exposures to harmful radiation.

It has been thought that men with non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), a lack of sperm in the semen not caused by an obstruction within the reproductive system, are poor candidates for IVF. Now, researchers writing in the open access journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology have shown that sperm from men with NOA and obstructive azoospermia (OA) are equally capable of producing embryos.

Chemical identifiers secreted from the genital glands of lemurs, allow them to avoid incest and also to engage in nepotism. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology have identified the smells used by both male and female ring-tailed lemurs to advertize their family ties.

The largest known mass extinction in Earth's history, about 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Period, may have been caused by global warming. A new fossil species suggests that some land animals may have survived the end-Permian extinction by living in cooler climates in Antarctica. Jörg Fröbisch and Kenneth D. Angielczyk of The Field Museum together with Christian A. Sidor from the University of Washington have identified a distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, that apparently survived the mass extinction by living in Antarctica.

(CHICAGO) – Adult stem cells may help repair heart tissue damaged by heart attack according to the findings of a new study to be published in the December 8 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Results from the Phase I study show stem cells from donor bone marrow appear to help heart attack patients recover better by growing new blood vessels to bring more oxygen to the heart.

Ann Arbor, Mich. — If obesity trends continue, the negative effect on the health of the U.S. population will overtake the benefits gained from declining smoking rates, according to a study by U-M and Harvard researchers published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Healthcare professionals using new time-saving strategies to coordinate care for patients having a heart attack saw dramatic improvement in "door-to-balloon" (D2B) times—the time from when a patient enters the hospital to the time blood flow is restored to the heart by opening a blockage with angioplasty. The faster patients are treated, the more likely they are to survive. The results are published by Yale researchers and their colleagues in the December 15 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

RICHMOND, Va. (Dec. 2, 2009) – Smoking tobacco through a waterpipe exposes the user to the same toxicants – carbon monoxide and nicotine – as puffing on a cigarette, which could lead to nicotine addiction and heart disease, according to a study led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher published in the December issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The chance of surviving an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has not improved since the 1950s, according to a report by the University of Michigan Health System.

The analysis shows only 7.6 percent of victims survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, a number that has not changed significantly in almost 30 years.

It's a dismal trend considering enormous spending on heart research, new emergency care protocols, and the advent of new drugs and devices such as defibrillators.