After men become fathers for the first time, they show significant decreases in crime, tobacco and alcohol use, according to a new, 19-year study.

Researchers assessed more than 200 at-risk boys annually from the age of 12 to 31, and examined how men´s crime, tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use changed over time. While previous studies showed that marriage can change a man´s negative behavior, they had not isolated the additional effects of fatherhood.

“These decreases were in addition to the general tendency of boys to engage less in these types of behaviors as they approach and enter adulthood,” said David Kerr, assistant professor of psychology at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. “Controlling for the aging process, fatherhood was an independent factor in predicting decreases in crime, alcohol and tobacco use.”

The study was published in the current issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Collaborators included the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Ore., and the University of Houston.

The researchers also found that men who were well into their 20s and early 30s when they became fathers showed greater decreases in crime and alcohol use, compared to those who had their first child in their teens or early 20s. Men who had children at a more developmentally-expected time could have been more able or willing to embrace fatherhood and shed negative lifestyle choices, Kerr said.

“It is hopeful that for both older and younger men, tobacco use tended to decrease following the birth of a first child,” Kerr said. “This kind of change could have important health consequences for men and for their families.”

The study adds to a body of research pointing to key periods when men from disadvantaged backgrounds may be ripe for intervention, Kerr said.

“This research suggests that fatherhood can be a transformative experience, even for men engaging in high risk behavior,” he said. “This presents a unique window of opportunity for intervention, because new fathers might be especially willing and ready to hear a more positive message and make behavioral changes.”

Deborah Capaldi, Lee Owen and Katherine Pears with the Oregon Social Learning Center and Margit Wiesner with the University of Houston contributed to the study. The research was supported by awards to the Oregon Social Learning Center from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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On the Net:

• Oregon State University
• David Kerr
• Oregon Social Learning Center
• Journal of Marriage and Family

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the proportion of young adults living at home with their parents increased between 2005 and 2011.

The report said that the percentage of men age 25 to 34 living in the home of their parents jumped from 14 percent in 2004 to 19 percent in 2011.

The “The increase in 25 to 34 year olds living in their parents’ home began before the recent recession, and has continued beyond it,” Rose Kreider, a family demographer with the Fertility and Family Statistics Branch and author of the report, said in a press release.

The census found that 59 percent of men aged 18 to 24 and 50 percent of women in the same age bracket still resided in their parents’ home in 2011.  This figure is up from 53 percent of men and 46 percent of women in 2005.

The Census Bureau also said that of the 74.6 million children younger than 18 in 2011, 69 percent lived with two parents, while another 27 percent lived with one parent.

Among the children who lived with just one parent in 2011, 87 percent of them lived with their mother.

The report also noted that in 2011, married couples with children made up 20 percent of all households.  This number down from 40 percent in 1970.

The Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey was conducted in February, March and April of 2011.

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On the Net:

• U.S. Census Bureau

The analysis of a new major study has concurred with decades of research that being active means being healthy, and also reduces the risk of cancer.

But just being active doesn´t mean you are fit for life. The new evidence suggests that people who have sedentary lifestyles, even when they do have exercise routines, are at an increased risk of cancer.

The study, published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research and presented at the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) annual conference in Washington, DC, has revealed a strong connection between inactivity and cancerous cell growth. Around 92,000 cases of breast and colon cancer each year can be attributed to lack of exercise, and researchers are now urging people to get and stay fit, adding in a few minutes of physical activity for every hour they spend being inactive.

“This gives us some idea of the cancers we could prevent by getting people to be more active,” ‘ead study author epidemiologist Christine Friedenreich of Alberta Health Services in Calgary, Canada, told USA Today. “This is a conservative estimate. The more physical activity you do, the lower your risk of these cancers,” she said.

The numbers “seem like very reasonable estimates,” added Alpa Patel, an American Cancer Society epidemiologist who studied the data.

One study of post-menopausal women confirmed that taking brisk daily walks helps to reduce several key biological indicators of cancer risk, including sex hormone levels, insulin resistance, inflammation and body fatness.

“In breast and colon cancers, for example, we´re seeing overall risk reductions of about 25 to 30 percent associated with higher levels of physical activity,” Friedenreich said. Experts have known for years that physical activity decreases the risk of chronic disease, but Friedenreich said the new data gives estimates on the number of cases that could be prevented if people were more physically active.

“A brisk daily walk of at least 30 minutes could lower a person’s risk over time for breast cancer and colon cancer,” Alice Bender, a registered dietitian with AICR, told USA Today.

Friedenreich reviewed more than 200 cancer studies from around the world and found convincing evidence that physical activity on a regular basis reduces the risk of breast cancer, colon cancer and endometrial cancer by 25 to 30 percent. And there is some evidence that it also reduces the risk of lung, prostate and ovarian cancer as well, Friedenreich said.

Patel has also investigated the health risks of sitting too long without moving around, which is known as “sitting disease.”

In that study, Patel and colleagues looked at 123,000 people and found that the more people sat around, the higher their risk of dying early was. “Even among individuals who were regularly active, the risk of dying prematurely was higher among those who spent more time sitting,” she said.

Even if you do 30 minutes of exercise a day, you need to make sure you are not just sitting around the rest of the day, said Patel. “You have to get up and take breaks from sitting.”

James Levine, a professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said many people sit an average of seven to 9 and a half hours a day. “If you´ve sat for an hour, you´ve probably sat too long,” he told USA Today.

Another study highlighted that even those who are physically active but sit for long periods are at greater risk of developing cancers. Researchers from Australia´s Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute discovered that that even breaks as short as one minute can help prevent health complications.

“Sitting time is emerging as a strong candidate for being a cancer risk factor in its own right,“ said Neville Owen, who presented evidence at the Washington conference. “It seems highly likely that the longer you sit, the higher your risk. This phenomenon isn’t dependent on body weight or how much exercise people do.”

His study revealed that the majority of adults´ days are spent being inactive.

The study found that on average, 60 percent (9.3 hours) of a person´s waking day was spent sedentary. This includes mealtimes, commutes to and from work, computer and TV time. Another 35 percent (6.5 hours) was spent in light activity such as walking to a meeting.

Office workers on average spend up to 75 percent of their workday sitting, with about 30 minutes of light activity during that time.

“When you´re sitting, the big muscles, especially in lower part of body, are completely unloaded. They´re not doing their job,” Owen said. That inactivity prompts changes in the body´s metabolism, Owen said, and produces a number of biological signals, what scientists call biomarkers, which are linked to cancer.

“It´s been surprisingly consistent with what strong relationships there are between physical inactivity and these biomarkers of cancer risk,” Owen said.

Owen is hopeful that the findings will prompt practical recommendations on workplace health, such as removing office waste baskets, using standing desks, and meetings with standing breaks.

“Taken together, this research suggests that every day, we´re each given numerous opportunities to be active and protect ourselves from cancer, not one,” AICR spokesperson Alice Bender added. “We need to start thinking in terms of make time and break time.”

For the most part, cancer researchers have emphasized the importance of getting a certain amount of dedicated exercise to lower risk of disease, and experts say it is still a good idea to follow those guidelines.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends adults should get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise each week, along with weekly muscle-strengthening activities.

But now it seems that the health benefits of being active require more than a regular dosage of daily exercise.

“It´s scary to think that even if I am going to the gym 30 to 45 minutes every day, that might not be enough,” said Patel. “But the other important message here is for the two thirds of U.S. adults who don´t engage in regular physical activity, there´s benefit in just moving around.”

Joan Vernikos, the former director of life sciences at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and author of “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals,” said simply standing once every 30 minutes can help stimulate the body by fighting the forces of gravity.

“It´s not how long you stay standing, but how often you stand up, how often you challenge your body to respond,” Vernikos told ABC News. “What provides the baseline of physiological activity in the body is small to large movement, intermittently all day, every day.”

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On the Net:

• Cancer Prevention Research
• American Institute for Cancer Research
• Alberta Health Services
• American Cancer Society
• Mayo Clinic
• Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute
• CDC

Healthcare workers who wear gloves while treating patients are much less likely to clean their hands before and after patient contact, according to a study published in the December issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. This failure of basic hand hygiene could be contributing to the spread of infection in healthcare settings, the researchers say.
Glove use is appropriate for situations when contact with body fluids is anticipated or when patients are to be managed with contact precautions. However, use of gloves should not be considered a substitute for effective hand hygiene practices taking place before and after patient contact. Although gloves can reduce the number of germs transmitted to the hands, germs can sometimes still get through latex. Hands can also be contaminated by “back spray” when gloves are removed after contact with body fluids.
The researchers, led by Dr. Sheldon Stone of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust, observed more than 7,000 patient contacts in 56 intensive care and acute care of the elderly wards in 15 United Kingdom hospitals, making this one of the largest and most detailed studies on gloves and their impact on hand hygiene. Overall, the study found that hand hygiene compliance was “disappointingly low,” at just 47.7 percent. Compliance was even lower in instances where gloves were worn, dipping to just over 41 percent.
“The chances of hands being cleaned before or after patient contact appear to be substantially lower if gloves were being worn,” said Dr. Stone, the principal investigator. “We call this the phenomenon of the ‘Dirty Hand in the Latex Glove.'”
Though troubling, the results also reveal an opportunity to reduce healthcare associated infections by focusing further hand hygiene improvement efforts on better hand hygiene when using gloves. Doing so may prove the critical step in getting overall hand hygiene levels to the levels needed to prevent transmission of infection, the researchers say.
Dr. Stone and his colleagues suggest further study on the behavioral reasons behind why healthcare workers are less likely to wash their hands when wearing gloves. Regardless, the researchers recommend that campaigns such as the World Health Organization’s Clean Care is Safer Care program should emphasize better hand hygiene associated with gloving practices.
Christopher Fuller, Joanne Savage, Sarah Besser, Andrew Hayward, Barry Cookson, Ben Cooper, Sheldon Stone, “The Dirty Hand in the Latex Glove: A Study of Hand-Hygiene Compliance When Gloves Are Worn.” Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology 32:12 (December 2011)
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On the Net:

• Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America
• Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology

Malaria Revealed As Ancient, Adaptive And Persistent Foe

One of the most comprehensive analyses yet done of the ancient history of insect-borne disease concludes for the first time that malaria is not only native to the New World, but it has been present long before humans existed and has evolved through birds and monkeys.

The findings, presented in a recent issue of American Entomologist by researchers from Oregon State University, are based on the study of insect specimens preserved in amber.

The study outlines the evolution of several human diseases, including malaria, leishmaniasis and trypanosomiasis. It makes clear that these pathogens have existed for at least 100 million years, and suggests that efforts to conquer them will be an uphill battle against such formidable and adaptive foes.

“Amber tells us that these diseases have been here for many millions of years, have co-evolved with their hosts and move readily from one species to another,” said George Poinar, Jr., a professor of zoology at OSU and one of the world´s leading experts on the study of fossils in this semi-precious stone.

“Malaria is one of the greatest insect-borne killers in human history, and more than one million people a year are still dying from it,” Poinar said. “But the evolutionary record suggests it can easily change its protein coat in response to vertebrate immune reactions. That´s why it´s always becoming resistant to drugs, and efforts to create vaccines will be very difficult.”

Insects preserved for tens of millions of years are offering new clues to the ancient history of these diseases. Blood-feeding vectors trapped eons ago in oozing tree sap reveal in near-perfect detail stages of vertebrate pathogens they were carrying when they became entombed.

“Most people think of malaria as a tropical disease, which today it primarily is,” Poinar said. “But historically it occurred in many parts of the world, including temperate zones.”

“As recently as 1935 there were 900,000 cases of malaria in the United States,” he said. “Near Portland, Ore., malaria almost wiped out some local Indian tribes in the 1830s, and the mosquitoes that carried it are still prevalent there. In the 1600s it hindered colonization from Massachusetts to Georgia. And there are 137 million people right now living in areas of risk in the Americas.

“It´s possible epidemics could explode again, almost anywhere in the world,” he said.

Having traveled much of the world to pursue amber, Poinar knows first-hand the risks involved.

“I caught malaria in the 1970s in the Ivory Coast in Africa,” he said. “My arm had bumped up against some mosquito netting while I slept. The following day, I started shaking with cold, then sweating with a high fever, thinking I was going to die.”

Millions have died. Globally, about 300-500 million cases of malaria occur each year, with more than a million deaths in Africa alone.

Among the points made in this report:

– Discoveries in amber have helped to pin down the minimum ages, origins and early hosts of several insect-borne human diseases.

– An archaic and now extinct malarial parasite was found in 100 million-year-old amber.

– Mosquitoes carrying malaria of the genus Plasmodium, the type that causes human illness, were established in the New World at least 15 million years ago, long before modern humans existed. At that time, the disease infected various types of birds.

– Spaniards arriving in South America found that when native peoples acquired fevers, they drank  infusions of cinchona bark, which was later found to contain quinine, an effective anti-malarial drug.

– Malaria apparently first went from birds to monkeys and eventually into humans.

Anatomically modern humans are only about 200,000 years old, experts say. These findings indicate they evolved with malaria for their entire existence.

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Image 1: This culicine mosquito was discovered in amber from the Dominican Republic, and carried a type of Plasmodium malaria able to infect birds. It shows malaria was established in the New World at least 15 million years ago. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

Image 2: These oocysts that carry malaria were found in amber from the Dominican Republic, preserved from millions of years ago. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)

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On the Net:

• American Entomologist
• Oregon State University

Just as the Occupy Wall Street movement has brought more attention to financial disparities between the haves and have-nots in American society, researchers from Indiana University and the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands are highlighting the disproportionate influence of so called “Rich Clubs” within the human brain.

Not all regions of the brain, they say, are created equal.

“We’ve known for a while that the brain has some regions that are ‘rich’ in the sense of being highly connected to many other parts of the brain,” said Olaf Sporns, professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in IU’s College of Arts and Sciences. “It now turns out that these regions are not only individually rich, they are forming a ‘rich club.’ They are strongly linked to each other, exchanging information and collaborating.”

The study, “Rich-Club Organization of the Human Connectome,” is published in the Nov. 2 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The research is part of an ongoing intensive effort to map the intricate networks of the human brain, casting the brain as an integrated dynamic system rather than a set of individual regions.

Using diffusion imaging, which is a form of MRI, Martijn van den Heuvel, a professor at the Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience at University Medical Center Utrecht, and Sporns examined the brains of 21 healthy men and women and mapped their large-scale network connectivity. They found a group of 12 strongly interconnected bihemispheric hub regions, comprising the precuneus, superior frontal and superior parietal cortex, as well as the subcortical hippocampus, putamen and thalamus. Together, these regions form the brain’s “rich club”.

Most of these areas are engaged in a wide range of complex behavioral and cognitive tasks, rather than more specialized processing such as vision and motor control. If the brain network involving the rich club is disrupted or damaged, said Sporns, the negative impact would likely be disproportionate because of its central position in the network and the number of connections it contains. By contrast, damage to regions outside of the rich club would likely cause specific impairments but would likely have little influence on the global flow of information throughout the brain.

Sporns said the cohesive nature of the rich club’s interconnections was surprising and unexpected. It would not have been implausible to have highly connected nodes that did not interact or influence each other to the same degree.

“You sort of wonder what they’re talking about when they’re communicating with each other,” he said. “All these regions are getting all kinds of highly processed information, from virtually all parts of the brain.”

The rich club, said van den Heuvel, might be the “G8 summit of our brain.”

“It’s a group of highly influential regions that keep each other informed and likely collaborate on issues that concern whole brain functioning,” he said. “Figuring out what is discussed at this summit might be an important step in understanding how our brain works.”

Sporns said he and van den Heuvel hope the findings and subsequent research could shed light on the network basis of brain disorders affecting mental health. Van den Heuvel’s prior research has already shown characteristic disturbances of brain networks in schizophrenia. Whether these disturbances specifically affect the brain’s rich club is an open question.

Interest in creating a comprehensive map of the human brain’s neural connections, the connectome, has accelerated in the last few years. In the U.S., the National Institutes of Health are currently funding a project involving a consortium of more than 70 scientists, including Sporns, who are working together to create a first map of the human connectome. Similar projects are planned or already under way in Europe and Asia.

“People are coming around to the idea that mapping the connectome is not only technically feasible but also very important to do,” Sporns said. “It’s a fundamental step towards understanding the brain as a networked system. Networks are everywhere these days, found in technology, social media and economics, ecology and systems biology — They’re becoming more and more central in many areas of science. The human brain is perhaps the most challenging example to date.”

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Image Caption: This image shows the group connectome, with the nodes and connections colored according to their rich-club participation. Green represents few connections. Red represents the most. Credit: Reprinted with permission: Van den Heuvel, et al. The Journal of Neuroscience 2011

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On the Net:

• Indiana University
• University Medical Center Utrecht
• Journal of Neuroscience

Like normal tissue, tumors thrive on nutrients carried to them by the blood stream. The rapid growth of new blood vessels is a hallmark of cancer, and studies have shown that preventing blood vessel growth can keep tumors from growing, too. To better understand the relationship between cancer and the vascular system, researchers would like to make detailed maps of the complete network of blood vessels in organs. Unfortunately, the current mapping process is time-consuming: using conventional methods, mapping a one-centimeter block of tissue can take months. In a paper published in the October issue of the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express, computational neuroscientists at Texas A&M University, along with collaborators at the University of Illinois and Kettering University, describe a new system, tested in mouse brain samples, that substantially reduces that time.

The method uses a technique called knife-edge scanning microscopy (KESM). First, blood vessels are filled with ink, and the whole brain sample is embedded in plastic. Next, the plastic block is placed onto an automated vertically moving stage. A diamond knife shaves a very thin slice — one micrometer or less — off the top of the block, imaging the sample line by line at the tip of the knife. Each tiny movement of the stage triggers the camera to take a picture. In this way, the researchers can get the full 3-D structure of the mouse brain’s vascular network — from arteries and veins down to the smallest capillaries — in less than two days at full production speed. In the future the team plans to augment the process with fluorescence imaging, which will allow researchers to link brain structure to function.

Paper: “Fast macro-scale transmission imaging of microvascular networks using KESM,” Biomedical Optics Express, Mayerich et al., Vol. 2, Issue 10, pp. 2888-2896 (2011).

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Image 1: This is a complex network of blood vessels in the mouse brain imaged by knife-edge scanning microscopy. The image represents an area about 2.9 millimeters across. Credit: Biomedical Optics Express

Image 2: Reconstruction of a small section from the previous image, showing the relative thickness of each blood vessel in the network (color-coded by thickness). The area depicted in the image is about 0.275 millimeters across. Credit: Biomedical Optics Express

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On the Net:

• Optical Society of America
• Biomedical Optics Express

US children and teenagers are becoming major targets of the soft drink industry, with exposure to more advertising and online marketing than ever before, according to a new study from the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, according to various media reports.

The study is the most widespread and scientific-based assessment of sugary drink nutrition and marketing ever conducted.

Data from the study shows that soft drink companies are aggressively targeting young people, especially black and Hispanic youth. Researchers are presenting their findings today during the American Public Health Association´s annual meeting in Washington, DC.

Soft drink ads on TV geared toward children and teens have doubled from 2008 to 2010, the report found, with increased marketing from Coca-Cola Co and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc.

On a positive note, children were exposed to 22 percent fewer ads from PepsiCo Inc., the study found.

Black children and teens saw 80 to 90 percent more ads than white children, including double the exposure for the energy drink 5-Hour Energy and Coca-Cola´s vitamin water and Sprite. Hispanic children also saw 49 percent more advertising for sugary and energy drinks on Spanish television, while Hispanic teens saw 99 percent more ads.

“Our children are being assaulted by these drinks that are high in sugar and low in nutrition,” Yale´s Kelly Brownell, co-author of the report, told Reuters. “The companies are marketing them in highly aggressive ways.”

The findings come from syndicated data from The Nielsen Company, comScore, Inc., and Arbitron Inc.  on 14 beverage companies. They examined the nutritional quality of nearly 600 products, including full-calorie soda, energy drinks, fruit drinks, flavored water, sports drinks, and iced teas. They also examined diet energy drinks and diet children´s fruit drinks.

The Rudd Center also implemented independent studies, content analyses and store audits due to unavailability of some information.

“Beverage companies have pledged to improve child-directed advertising,” said lead researcher Jennifer Harris, director of marketing initiatives at the Rudd Center, in a recent statement.

“But we are not seeing a true decrease in marketing exposure,” she said. “Instead companies have shifted from traditional media to newer forms that engage youth through rewards for purchasing sugary drinks, community events, cause-related marketing, promotions, product placements, social media, and smartphones.”

Study co-author Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center, said: “The beverage industry needs to clean up their youth-directed products: reduce the added sugar, take out the artificial sweeteners, and stop marketing products high in caffeine and sugar to young people. We also need the nutrition facts, including caffeine content, for all beverages, especially energy drinks.”

“Our results clearly show that the beverage industry´s self-regulatory pledges are not working,” said Brownell. “Children are seeing more, not less marketing, for drinks that increase the risk for serious diseases. If the beverage companies want to be considered public health partners, they need to do better.”

About 15 percent of children are overweight or obese, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Children today are likely to have shorter life spans than their parents, which will affect their ability to work and pay taxes, and potentially drive up healthcare costs.

Even though the American Academy of Pediatrics warns that highly caffeinated energy drinks are not appropriate for children and adolescents, such energy drinks as Red Bull and Amp aggressively market their products toward young people, the report said.

Teens saw an 18 percent increase in TV ads, and heard 46 percent more radio ads in 2010 for energy drinks than adults did.

Brownell said this new report is the first to analyze the data from several firms to measure the complete picture of youth exposure to marketing and advertising. He also said it was crucial to consider the online interaction children have with brands, especially since they are online longer than they watch TV.

For an example, the report found that 21 sugary drink brands had YouTube channels in 2010 with more than 229 million views by June 2011. Coca-Cola is the most popular brand on Facebook, with more than 30 million fans, the study found.

They also found the most-visited soft drink websites were MyCokeRewards.com and Capri Sun.

The study also examined drinks themselves. They discovered that the average 8-ounce serving of fruit drink has 110 calories and seven teaspoons of sugar — the same amount found in an 8-ounce serving of soda or energy drink.

The report was supported by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Rudd Foundation.

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On the Net:

• Full Report
• Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity
• American Public Health Association
• The Nielsen Company
• comScore, Inc.
• Arbitron Inc.
• CDC
• American Academy of Pediatrics
• YouTube

Advances in DNA testing could open the door for more expensive cancer treatments to be approved, as well as more personalized treatment options to emerge, one expert told Telegraph Medical Correspondent Stephen Adams on Saturday.
Matthew Seymour, director of the National Cancer Research Network (NCRN), told Adams that genetic testing techniques were advancing so rapidly that doctors could soon administer such an exam to find out which types of medicine would work best for them. That, in turn, could encourage regulators to approve costly treatment options, even if they only prove most effective on a handful of patients.
“New drugs are often turned down by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), because trials show that — on average — they only enable patients with advanced cancer to live a few weeks longer,” Adams wrote, noting that NICE opted not to approve Avastin for bowel cancer because “trials showed it only prolonged life by six weeks on average.”
Some, however, “lived much longer” thanks to the drug, he added. If medical experts could pinpoint which people would benefit most from medications like Avastin, Seymour says, it could lead to what Adams calls “smart prescriptions” individualized to each patent’s genetic disposition.
“What we are finding is that most people get no benefit, or are even harmed, by new drugs. But we are finding that some receive great benefit,” Seymour, a professor of gastrointestinal cancer medicine at Leeds University, said. “We have to get clever about how to target drugs. Medications for cancer have to be personalized because no two cancers are identical.”
“Most drugs companies now understand that their world has changed, and if they don’t introduce personalized medicine, they are simply not going to get their drugs approved and purchased,” he added.
According to Adams, a study conducted by Seymour illustrates the point. A trial of a chemotherapy drug called panitumumab revealed that it did not “significantly benefit” patients. However, it was later learned that as two out of every five people carried a specific gene mutation that kept them from benefitting from the drug, and further work pinpointed the group of cancer patients who benefitted most from the medication, many of whom lived “significantly longer” because of the drug.
The results of the study, which was sponsored by Cancer Research UK, will be presented during the National Cancer Reseach Institute conference next month, the Telegraph reported, and it marks the first time that genetic testing had been joined directly with a bowel cancer trial.
“This heralds a new generation of clinical research,” Seymour said. “When we have got drugs that only benefit a small number of patients, it is really important to find out who it is that is going to benefit“¦ The idea of treating 100 patients and only a few benefiting is ludicrous. We shouldn’t be doing it anymore.”
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On the Net:

• National Cancer Research Network (NCRN)
• National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)
• Cancer Research UK
• National Cancer Reseach Institute

Study shows cranberry juice is better than extract at fighting bacterial infections
With scientific evidence now supporting the age-old wisdom that cranberries, whether in sauce or as juice, prevent urinary tract infections, people have wondered if there was an element of the berry that, if extracted and condensed, perhaps in pill form, would be as effective as drinking the juice or eating cranberry sauce. A new study from researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute helps to answer that question.
The study tested proanthocyanidins or PACs, a group of flavonoids found in cranberries.  Because they were thought to be the ingredient that gives the juice its infection-fighting properties, PACs have been considered a hopeful target for an effective extract. The new WPI report, however, shows that cranberry juice, itself, is far better at preventing biofilm formation, which is the precursor of infection, than PACs alone. The data is reported in the paper “Impact of Cranberry Juice and Proanthocyanidins on the Ability of Escherichia coli to Form Biofilms,” which will be published on-line, ahead of print, Oct. 31, 2011, by the journal Food Science and Biotechnology.
“What we have shown is that cranberry juice´s ability to prevent biofilms is more complex than we may have originally thought,” said Terri Camesano, professor of chemical engineering at WPI and senior author on the paper. “For a while, the field focused on these PACs, but the data shows that they aren´t the silver bullet.”
Camesano´s lab explores the mechanisms that the virulent form of E. coli bacteria, the primary cause of most urinary tract infections (UTIs) in people, uses to form biofilms. This strain of E. coli is covered with small hair-like projections known as fimbriae that act like hooks and latch onto cells that line the urinary tract. When enough of the virulent bacteria adhere to cells, they form a biofilm and cause an infection. Previous work by Camesano´s lab has shown that exposure to cranberry juice causes the fimbriae on E. coli to curl up, reducing their ability to attach to urinary tract cells.
In the new study, Camesano´s team, which included graduate student Paola Andrea Pinzón-Arango and intern Kerrie Holguin, incubated two different strains of E. coli in the presence of two different mixtures of commercially available cranberry juice cocktail. They also incubated the bacteria separately in the presence of PACs, but not juice. While the juice cultures completely prevented biofilm formation, the PACs showed only limited ability to reduce biofilm formation, and only after extended exposure to the E. coli.
“Cranberries have been recognized for their health benefits for a number of years, especially in the prevention of UTIs,” the authors write in the new paper. “While the mechanisms of action of cranberry products on bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation are not fully understood“¦this study shows that cranberry juice is better at inhibiting biofilm formation than isolated A-type cranberry flavonoids and PACs, although the reasons for this are not yet clear.”
The research detailed in the current study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Cranberry Institute, and the Wisconsin Cranberry Board.
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On the Net:

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Food Science and Biotechnology

New research announceded on Monday offers evidence that drinking coffee is associated with a decreased risk of a common and slow-growing type of skin cancer known as basal cell carcinoma.

Scientists from Brigham and Women´s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston examined the risks of basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and melanoma in connection with coffee consumption and found the decreased risk was only seen in BCC.

The team presented their findings at the 10th American Association for Cancer Research International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, held October 22 to 25.

They found that women in the study who drank more than 3 cups of coffee per day were 20 percent less likely to develop BCC, than those who drank less than a cup per day. Men who consumed more than three cups per day shown a 9 percent reduction in risk of BCC.

Data for the study came from the Nurses´ Health Study, which followed 72,921 people between 1984 and 2008, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which followed 39,976 people between 1986 and 2008. The researchers found 25,480 skin cancer cases, of which BCC represented 22,786 of the cases — or 88 percent.

BCC rarely spreads to other parts of the body, and rarely returns if promptly removed. However, any apparent health benefit that is found to come from our diet is a huge bonus, the researchers said.

“Given the nearly 1 million new cases of BCC diagnosed each year in the United States, daily dietary factors with even small protective effects may have great public health impact,” said Fengju Song, Ph.D., from Brigham and Women´s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and lead author of the study. “Our study indicates that coffee consumption may be an important option to help prevent BCC.”

“Daily dietary factors with even small protective effects may have great public health impact,” Song told the Los Angeles Times in a statement. “Our study indicates that coffee consumption may be an important option to help prevent basal cell carcinoma.”

Song said one limiting factor in the study, however, was that participants were in the healthcare field and may have had better habits than the average person.

The researchers noted that they found an association, but not a direct cause-effect link. Song said further research is needed to confirm the findings and probe how coffee may act to reduce the risk of BCC.

Song and colleagues were surprised by the inverse connection in BCC cases only. Previous studies in animals had suggested a link between caffeine consumption and a reduced risk of skin cancer, but studies in people had not been conclusive.

“Mouse studies have shown that oral or topical caffeine promotes elimination of UV-damaged keratinocytes via apoptosis (programmed cell death) and markedly reduces subsequent SCC development,” Song said. “However, in our cohort analysis, we did not find any inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk for SCC.”

Consumption of coffee has also been linked to a reduced risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer and cancer overall. “To the best of our knowledge, coffee consumption is a healthy habit,” Song said.

The biggest risk factor for skin cancer is exposure to UV radiation. When in the sun for prolonged periods, the researchers suggest applying sunscreen is more important than drinking an extra cup of coffee to avoid the risk of skin cancer.

BCC is the most common form of skin cancer in the United States. The Skin Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society offer more information about basal cell carcinomas.

The study has yet to be published.

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On the Net:

• Brigham and Women´s Hospital
• Harvard Medical School
• American Association for Cancer Research
• Nurses´ Health Study

A new study suggests that teens who drink more than five cans of soft drinks a week are significantly more likely to behave aggressively.

The researchers studied 1,878 teens from 22 public schools in Boston, Massachusetts who were part of the Boston Youth Survey.

The teens were asked how many carbonated non-diet soft drinks they had drank over the past seven days.

The team then divided the responses up into two groups, those drinking up to four cans over the preceding week and those drinking five or more. 

The team looked at potential links to violent behavior in the group by asking if they had been violent towards their peers, a sibling, or a partner.

Responses were assessed in the light of factors likely to influence the results, including age and gender, alcohol consumption and how much sleep they had the night before.

The study found that those who drank 5 or more cans every week were more likely to have drunk alcohol and smoked at least once in the previous month.

The results also showed that heavy use of carbonated non-diet soft drinks were associated with carrying a gun or knife and having a violent attitude towards peers, family members and partners.

The researchers found that 23 percent of those drinking one or no cans of soft drinks a week carried a gun/knife, while 43 percent of those drinking 14 or more cans carried a weapon. 

Twenty-seven percent of the participants who said they drink 14 or more soft drinks a week showed more violence towards a partner as well.

The team said the probability of aggressive behavior was 9 to 15 percentage points higher for teens who were heavy consumers of non-diet carbonated soft drinks.

“There may be a direct cause-and-effect-relationship, perhaps due to the sugar or caffeine content of soft drinks, or there may be other factors, unaccounted for in our analyses, that cause both high soft drink consumption and aggression,” the authors wrote in research published online in Injury Prevention.

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On the Net:

• Boston Youth Survey
• Injury Prevention

Scientists said that organs grown in genetically modified pigs could be transplanted into humans in as soon as two years.

Pittsburgh University scientists say that a trial transplanting pig corneas into humans with eye problems could begin as early as 2013.

“With new genetically modified pigs becoming available that are likely to improve the outcome of cellular and corneal xenotransplantation further, we believe that clinical trials will be justified within the next two to three years,” the authors wrote in the journal The Lancet.

The researchers said transplants of larger organs like the lungs, hearts and kidneys is likely to take longer due to problems with clots forming.

“These problems mean that the longest survival time for pig organs in non-human primates to date ranges from a few days for lungs to around six to eight months for hearts, and trials of solid organ transplants of this nature in humans are likely to be several years away,” they wrote.

However, they said that in dire situations, a heart transplant from a pig might be feasible.

“Life-saving transplants of a pig liver or heart could be justified as a bridge until a human organ becomes available.”

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On the Net:

• Pittsburgh University
• The Lancet

[ Watch the Video ]
A new study concludes that men who experience persistently moderate or high levels of stressful life events over a number of years have a 50 percent higher mortality rate.
In general, the researchers found only a few protective factors against these higher levels of stress — people who self-reported that they had good health tended to live longer and married men also fared better. Moderate drinkers also lived longer than non-drinkers.
“Being a teetotaler and a smoker were risk factors for mortality,” said Carolyn Aldwin, lead author of the study and a professor of human development and family sciences at Oregon State University. “So perhaps trying to keep your major stress events to a minimum, being married and having a glass of wine every night is the secret to a long life.”
This is the first study to show a direct link between stress trajectories and mortality in an aging population. Unlike previous studies that were conducted in a relatively short term with smaller sample sizes, this study was modified to document major stressors — such as death of a spouse or a putting a parent into a retirement home — that specifically affect middle-aged and older people.
“Most studies look at typical stress events that are geared at younger people, such as graduation, losing a job, having your first child,” Aldwin said. “I modified the stress measure to reflect the kinds of stress that we know impacts us more as we age, and even we were surprised at how strong the correlation between stress trajectories and mortality was.”
Aldwin said that previous studies examined stress only at one time point, while this study documented patterns of stress over a number of years.
The study, out now in the Journal of Aging Research, used longitudinal data surveying almost 1,000 middle-class and working-class men for an 18-year period, from 1985 to 2003. All the men in the study were picked because they had good health when they first signed up to be part of the Boston VA Normative Aging Study in the 1960s.
Those in the low-stress group experienced an average of two or fewer major life events in a year, compared with an average of three for the moderate group and up to six for the high stress group. One of the study´s most surprising findings was that the mortality risk was similar for the moderate versus high stress group.
“It seems there is a threshold and perhaps with anything more than two major life events a year and people just max out,” Aldwin said. “We were surprised the effect was not linear and that the moderate group had a similar risk of death to the high-risk group.”
While this study looked specifically at major life events and stress trajectories, Aldwin said the research group will next explore chronic daily stress as well as coping strategies.
“People are hardy, and they can deal with a few major stress events each year,” Aldwin said. “But our research suggests that long-term, even moderate stress can have lethal effects.”
Michael Levenson, Heidi Igarashi, Nuoo-Ting Molitor and John Molitor with Oregon State University and Avron Spiro III with Boston University all contributed to this study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging as well as an award from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
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On the Net:

• Oregon State University
• Journal of Aging Research

A new analysis has found that the first genes which appeared after the primate branch split are more likely to be expressed in the developing human brain.
Researchers believe that evolutionary recent genes may be responsible for constructing the uniquely powerful human brain.
“We found that there is a correlation between new gene origination and the evolution of the brain,” senior author Manyuan Long, PhD, Professor of Ecology & Evolution at the University of Chicago, wrote in the journal PLoS Biology. “There are some 50 to 60 human-specific genes in the frontal cortex of the brain, the part that makes humans diverge with other non-human primates.”
Scientists have been trying to determine how the human brain evolved into its anatomy and functional capacity that currently separates us from our primate ancestors.
The researchers merged a database of gene age with transcription data from humans and mice to look for when and where young genes are expressed.
The team found that a higher percentage of primate-specific young genes were expressed in brain than mouse-specific young genes.
They said human-specific young genes are more likely to be seen in fetal brain, when the organ is developing.
The authors stressed their finding is only a correlation between the appearance of young, human-specific genes and the evolutionary appearance of advanced brain structures.
They said future research will look at the function of these genes and the role they may have played in building today’s unique human brain.
“Traditionally, people don’t believe that a new protein or new gene can play any role in an important process. Most people only pay attention to the regulation of genes,” Long said in a press release. “But out of a total of about 1,300 new genes, only 13 percent were involved in new regulation. The rest, some 1,100 genes, are new genes that bring a whole new type of function.”
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On the Net:

• University of Chicago Medical Center
• PLoS Biology

Biologists at Florida State devise new way to watch how cells move

For better and for worse, human health depends on a cell’s motility —— the ability to crawl from place to place. In every human body, millions of cells —are crawling around doing mostly good deeds ——— though if any of those crawlers are cancerous, watch out.

“This is not some horrible sci-fi movie come true but, instead, normal cells carrying out their daily duties,” said Florida State University cell biologist Tom Roberts. For 35 years he has studied the mechanical and molecular means by which amorphous single cells purposefully propel themselves throughout the body in amoeboid-like fashion ——absent muscles, bones or brains.

Meanwhile, human cells don’t give up their secrets easily. In the body, they use the millions of tiny filaments found on their front ends to push the front of their cytoskeletons forward. In rapid succession the cells then retract their rears in a smooth, coordinated extension-contraction manner that puts inchworms to shame. Yet take them out of the body and put them under a microscope and the crawling changes or stops.

But now Roberts and his research team have found a novel way around uncooperative human cells.

In a landmark study led by Roberts and conducted in large part by his then-FSU postdoctoral associate Katsuya Shimabukuro, researchers used worm sperm to replicate cell motility in vitro —— in this case, on a microscope slide.

Doing what no other scientists had ever successfully done before, Shimabukuro disassembled and reconstituted a worm sperm cell, then devised conditions to promote the cell´s natural pull-push crawling motions even in the unnatural conditions of a laboratory. Once launched, the reconstituted machinery moved just like regular worm sperm do in a natural setting —— giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to watch it move.

Roberts called his former postdoc’s signal achievement “careful, clever work” —— and work it did, making possible new, revealing images of cell motility that should help to pinpoint with never-before-seen precision just how cells crawl.

“Understanding how cells crawl is a big deal,” Roberts said. “The first line of defense against invading microorganisms, the remodeling of bones, healing wounds in the skin and reconnecting of neuronal circuits during regeneration of the nervous system —— all depend on the capacity of specialized cells to crawl.

“On the downside, the ability of tumor cells to crawl around is a contributing factor in the metastasis of malignancies,” he said. “But we believe our achievements in this latest round of basic research could eventually aid in the development of therapies that target cell motility in order to interfere with or block the metastasis of cancer.”

Funding for Robert’s worm-sperm study came from the National Institutes of Health. The findings are described in a paper (“Reconstitution of Amoeboid Motility In Vitro Identifies a Motor-Independent Mechanism for Cell Body Retraction”) published online in the journal Current Biology.

Why worm sperm?

For one thing, said Roberts, the worm sperm is different from most cells in that it doesn´t use molecular motor proteins to facilitate its contractions; it shimmies along strictly by putting together and tearing down its tiny filaments. And the simple worm sperm makes a good model because, while it is similar to a human cell it has fewer moving parts, making it less complicated to take apart and reassemble than, say, brain or cancer cells.

Armed with the newfound ability to reconstitute amoeboid motility in vitro, cell biologists such as Roberts may be able to learn the answers to some major moving questions. Among them: How can some cells continue to crawl even after researchers have disabled their supply of myosin, the force-producing “mover protein” that functions like a motor to help power muscle and cell contraction?

For Roberts and his team, the next move will be to determine if what they’ve learned about worm sperm also applies to more conventional crawling cells, including tumor cells.

“As always, there will be more questions,” Roberts said. “Are there multiple mechanisms collaborating to drive cell body retraction? Is there redundancy built into the motility systems?”

Co-authors of the Current Biology paper include Roberts, a professor in the FSU Department of Biological Science; Shimabukuro, a former FSU postdoctoral associate in biology who now is a research scientist at the Japan Science and Technology Agency; Naoki Noda, of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.; and Murray Stewart, of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

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Image Caption: This is an electron microscope image of two crawling worm sperm magnified ~5,000X. Credit: Courtesy, Tom Roberts, FSU Dept. of Biological Science

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On the Net:

• Florida State University
• Current Biology

During a decade of receiving mammograms, more than half of cancer-free women will be among those summoned back for more testing because of false-positive results, and about one in 12 will be referred for a biopsy.

Simply shifting screening to every other year lowers a woman’s probability of having one of these false-positive episodes by about a third — from 61 percent to 42 percent — over the course of a decade.

A new study delving into false-positives in mammography looked at nearly 170,000 women between the ages of 40 and 59 from seven regions around the United States, and almost 4,500 women with invasive breast cancer. Because of the added decade of testing alone, it found, women who start mammograms at 40 instead of 50 are more likely to have false-positive results that lead to more testing.

“This study provides accurate estimates of the risk of a false-positive mammography and breast biopsy for women undergoing repeat mammography in community practice, and so provides important information about the potential harms of undergoing regular mammography,” said co-author Karla Kerlikowske, a professor of medicine at the UCSF School of Medicine.

The study will be published in Annals of Internal Medicine. The research was led by Group Health Research Institute of Seattle for the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium.

“Recalls” for a second mammogram for what turn out to be non-cancer results, known as false positives, may cause inconvenience and anxiety. Recommendations for fine-needle aspiration or surgical biopsy are less common, but can lead to unnecessary pain and scarring. The additional testing also contributes to rising medical costs.

Kerlikowske is the lead author of an additional report — to be published in the same issue of Annals — that for the first time in the United States examines the accuracy of film mammography against digital, which has increasingly replaced older film screening.

That study looked at nearly 330,000 women between the ages of 40 and 79. The data was pooled from the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a collaborative network of mammography registries in the United States.

The researchers found that overall cancer detection rates were similar for both methods. However, digital screening may be better for women between the ages of 40 and 49 who are more likely to have extremely dense breasts associated with lower cancer detection. The study also found new evidence that digital mammography is better at detecting estrogen receptor-negative tumors, particularly in women aged 40 to 49 years.

Breast cancer may not be detected, the researchers caution, if a radiologist fails to identify a visible breast lesion or if a tumor is obscured by normal breast tissue. Additionally, an imperceptible tumor may grow quickly and be discovered through a clinical exam prior to the next mammogram.

Digital mammography was developed in part to improve the detection of breast cancer in dense breasts by improving the ability to distinguish normal dense breast tissue from isodense invasive cancer.

The authors note that for every 10,000 women 40 to 49 who are given digital mammograms, two more cases of cancer will be identified for every 170 additional false-positive examinations.

Healthy women will undergo 12 screening mammograms in their lifetimes if they follow U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines that recommend biennial screening starting at age 50 and continuing until age 74. This is controversial, with many practitioners recommending annual mammograms.

If women start biennial screening at 40, they will undergo 17 exams; those who start annual screenings at age 40 will undergo 34 exams.

For the false-positive study, the researchers found that after a decade of annual screening, a majority of women will receive at least one false-positive result, and 7 to 9 percent will receive a false-positive biopsy recommendation.

“We conducted this study to help women know what to expect when they get regular screening mammograms over the course of many years,” said study leader Rebecca Hubbard, PhD, an assistant investigator at Group Health Research Institute. “We hope that if women know what to expect with screening, they’ll feel less anxiety if — or when — they are called back for more testing. In the vast majority of cases, this does not mean they have cancer.”

The researchers say that screening every other year would likely lessen the probability of false-positive results “but could also delay cancer diagnosis.” However, for those diagnosed with cancer, the authors found women screened every two years were not significantly more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancer compared to those screened at one-year intervals.

The study stresses the importance of radiologists being able to review a patient’s previous mammograms because it “may halve the odds of a false-positive recall.”

Co-authors of both studies are Diana L. Miglioretti, PhD, of Group Health Research Institute, and Bonnie C. Yankaskas, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The National Cancer Institute funded the studies.

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On the Net:

• University of California – San Francisco
• Annals of Internal Medicine
• Group Health Research Institute of Seattle
• Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium

Researchers said on Monday that measuring radiation exposure using current Federal Communication Commission (FCC) guidelines understates how much radiation most people receive from their mobile devices.

The researchers said one reason why is that the current assessment method bases evaluations of how much radiation people are exposed to from their phones on measurements taken using a large, liquid-filled plastic model of the adult human head.

The authors of the study published in the journal Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine said 97 percent of the population will have higher proportional exposure than what is assessed.

The team said the current assessment uses a model of a person that is 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds.  This body-type only represents 3 percent of the population.

The researchers from several members of Environmental Health Trust said children will receive twice as much microwave radiation to the head from phones as adults, and 10 times the amount to bone marrow.

The study said current assessments do not examine exposure to parts of the body other than the head.

The researchers said the cellphone industry should stop using the SAM-based system to certify phones for use.  Instead, they believe the industry should begin using the computer-based “virtual family” simulation approach. 

This approach assesses the radiation absorption for 10 different-sized people, including: a 5-year-old girl, a 6-year-old boy, an 8-year old girl, an 11-year-old girl, a 14-year-old boy, a 26-year-old woman, a 35-year-old man, an obese man and three women at different stages of pregnancy.

“The SAM-based certification process should be discontinued forthwith,” the authors wrote in the paper. “Because billions of young children and adults with heads smaller than SAM are now using cell phones extensively … it is essential and urgent that governments around the world revise approaches to setting standards for cell phone radiation.”

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On the Net:

• Environmental Health Trust
• FCC
• Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine