Medical Science News Thread

[duchess of malfi]

Tiny robot to help cancer diagnosis
By Julie Clothier for CNN
Monday, March 14, 2005 Posted: 11:15 AM EST (1615 GMT)

LONDON, England (CNN) -- British scientists are developing a tiny robot to fit inside MRI machines, which will improve the accuracy of biopsies taken to screen for prostate cancer.

Needle biopsies are currently taken from the prostate using ultrasound technology to detect where the prostate gland is.

But Dr Alex Zivanovic, of Imperial College London, told CNN that ultrasounds provided poor image quality, which makes knowing where to take the biopsy from difficult.

"Several samples are usually taken, but it's a lucky dip as to whether you've got a relevant one. The tumor could be quite small and you could miss it altogether," he said.

Zivanovic and a group of scientists at the mechatronics in medicine laboratory at the college's department of mechanical engineering are now developing a system involving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.

The project is being funded by the National Health Service (NHS) Prostate Cancer Programme, and the machine will be developed within the next year and a half.

"MRI machines are the best way to image soft tissue inside the body, but although using MRI is preferable, to do so involves a very tight space inside the scanner tunnel. There's not much space in there, which makes it difficult," Zivanovic said.

The scientists will build a robot that will be controlled outside the scanner, while the patient will lie inside the tunnel as normal.

The MRI technology will enable them to know exactly where the biopsy needs to be taken from.

"It needs to be small enough to fit inside the tunnel but the prostate is fairly large so it needs to be able to move around," Zivanovic said. "It's a way of being more sure of catching a cancer."

He said disadvantages of using MRI included the high cost of the scanners. "But detecting more cancers early on will mean fewer patients."

Because the magnetic fields inside MRI scanners are so strong, the scientists will need to find an alternative to electricity to power the robot and ensure it can be moved around.

Piezo-ceramic actuators, or ultra sonic, technology -- similar to that used to power the zoom on some cameras -- is being investigated, he said.

Scientists at the laboratory have been researching and developing medical robots for about 15 years.

Zivanovic said the robots were able to perform high-precision tasks on a small scale.

"They're not being developed to replace surgeons, they're giving surgeons extra skills. It's about combining the advantages of robots over humans together with the advantages of humans have over robots."

Other projects at the college include a knee surgery robot, which has proved successful in clinical trials and is now being developed into a commercial product.

Another is a training system to teach surgeons how to perform knee surgery. The robot creates a "virtual" knee so that the operation can be performed in a simulated environment.

At St Mary's Hospital in London, meanwhile, robot technology was used recently to treat a patient suffering from atrial fibrillation, a common persistent heart rhythm disorder.

[duchess of malfi]

Music City croaks during allergy season
Pollen and pollutants postpone recording sessions
Monday, May 23, 2005 Posted: 10:03 AM EDT (1403 GMT)



Dr. Gaelyn Garrett examines singer David Glauber at the Vanderbilt University Voice Center in Nashville.



NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- For a town where so many people earn their living with a clear voice and a keen ear, Nashville sure is a lousy place for singers.

It sits in a moist, green bowl where pollens and pollutants get trapped in the air and give allergy sufferers fits. Spring and fall are the worst -- so bad that some artists have to delay their recording sessions.

"They can't get the tone," said Dr. Gaelyn Garrett, medical director of the Vanderbilt Voice Center. "I've had a couple of singers recently who have just postponed their studio work for a few weeks."

The clinic, part of Vanderbilt University, treats everyone from local choir members to superstars like Willie Nelson. The biggest problem for most is nasal drainage.

"It affects the resonance and the feedback they get when they're singing," Garrett said. "A lot of the professional singers will wear monitors. They rely on the feedback of their voice to help them find the notes and help with loudness. When they're congested in the nasal passages, it makes it very difficult."

Country singer Bryan White is reminded how difficult every time he hears his 1996 hit "I'm Not Supposed to Love You Anymore" on the radio.

"To this day it still bothers me because I can hear it in my nose. I can hear a little bit of the nasally thing," White said. "I remember that time was very difficult for me. It didn't affect the fate of the record, but I can still hear it."

White, an Oklahoma native who says he's allergic to just about everything, had trouble before he moved to Nashville, but Tennessee has made his allergies worse.

Things got so bad when he was recording his third album, "The Right Place," that he had to go to California where the climate is drier to finish it.

"We would have a session set up to do vocals and my nose would really close up and we'd have to stop and reschedule," White said. "We were wasting money. I had to go somewhere else where I could breathe."

Nashville lies in a gently rolling basin surrounded by the western and eastern Highland Rim. Like much of the Southeast, it typically ranks among the worst in the country for allergies and air pollution. The area has a long growing season and abundant rainfall and is particularly bad for ragweed and pollen.

"We have tons of trees and a lot of other kinds of pollen, so the pollen count is very high here," said Dr. John Overholt, an allergist in Franklin, about 20 miles south of Nashville.

A leading recording center, Nashville is home to thousands of professional musicians, singers, producers and engineers. Country artists alone sold 77.9 million albums last year -- nearly 12 percent of all album sales in all genres, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Over the years, everyone from Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan and Uncle Kracker have recorded here.

Overholt estimates that about 50 of his patients are singers, and they all complain of the same things: hoarseness, poor tone and limited vocal range.

"They feel they have a lot of trouble hitting the top end," he said.

Bluegrass singer Melonie Cannon had a scare last September when she developed laryngitis and went to a specialist.

"He said 'Let me tell you something. You are in the wrong profession and in the wrong town with your allergies,"' said Cannon, 32, who released her self-titled debut album last year.

She was ordered not to sing or speak for three weeks. Fortunately for Cannon, sinus surgery and medication did the trick. Now, she says, her throat "feels like silk."

[duchess of malfi]

Love can make you crazy

It's true! Neuroscientists report brain scans reveal altered state

By Benedict Carey

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE


New love can look for all the world like mental illness, a blend of mania, dementia and obsession that cuts people off from friends and family and prompts out-of-character behavior -- compulsive phone calling, serenades, yelling from rooftops -- that could almost be mistaken for psychosis.

Now for the first time, neuroscientists have produced brain scan images of this fevered activity, before it settles into the wine and roses phase of romance or the joint holiday card routines of long-term commitment.

In an analysis of the images appearing in The Journal of Neurophysiology, researchers in New York and New Jersey argue that romantic love is a biological urge distinct from sexual arousal.

It is closer in its neural profile to drives like hunger, thirst or drug craving, the researchers assert, than to emotional states like excitement or affection. As a relationship deepens, the brain scans suggest, the neural activity associated with romantic love alters slightly, and in some cases primes areas deep in the primitive brain that are involved in long-term attachment.

The research helps explain why love produces such disparate emotions, from euphoria to anger to anxiety, and why it seems to become even more intense when it is withdrawn.

"When you're in the throes of this romantic love it's overwhelming, you're out of control, you're irrational, you're going to the gym at 6 a.m. every day -- why? Because she's there," said Dr. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University and the co-author of the analysis. "And when rejected, some people contemplate stalking, homicide, suicide. This drive for romantic love can be stronger than the will to live."

Said Dr. Hans Breiter, director of the Motivation and Emotion Neuroscience Collaboration at Massachusetts General Hospital, "I distrust about 95 percent of the MRI literature, and I would give this study an A; it really moves the ball in terms of understanding infatuation love."

In the study, Fisher, Dr. Lucy Brown of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Dr. Arthur Aron, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led a team that analyzed about 2,500 brain images from 17 college students who were in the first weeks or months of new love. The students looked at a picture of their beloved while an MRI machine scanned their brains. The researchers then compared the images with others taken while the students looked at picture of an acquaintance.

Functional MRI technology detects increases or decreases of blood flow in the brain, which reflect changes in neural activity.

In the study, a computer-generated map of particularly active areas showed hot spots deep in the brain, below conscious awareness, in areas called the caudate nucleus and the ventral tegmental area, which communicate with each other as part of a circuit.

These areas are dense with cells that produce or receive a brain chemical called dopamine, which circulates actively when people desire or anticipate a reward.

Yet falling in love is among the most irrational of human behaviors, not merely a matter of satisfying a simple pleasure, or winning a reward. And the researchers found that one particular spot in the MRI images, in the caudate nucleus, was especially active in people who scored highly on a questionnaire measuring passionate love.

This passion-related region was on the opposite side of the brain from another area that registers physical attractiveness, the researchers found, and appeared to be involved in longing, desire and the unexplainable tug that people feel toward one person.

This distinction, between finding someone attractive and desiring him or her, between liking and wanting, "is all happening in an area of the mammalian brain that takes care of most basic functions, like eating, drinking, eye movements, all at an unconscious level, and I don't think anyone expected this part of the brain to be so specialized," Brown said.

The intoxication of new love mellows with time, of course, and the brain scan findings reflect some evidence of this change, Fisher said.

In an earlier functional MRI study of romance, published in 2000, researchers at University College London monitored brain activity in young men and women who had been in relationships for about two years. The brain images, also taken while participants looked at photos of their beloved, showed activation in many of the same areas found in the new study -- but significantly less so, in the region correlated with passionate love, she said.

[duchess of malfi]

time.blogs.com/daily_rx/?cnn=yes

Could Toxin Damage Become Hereditary ?
Pregnant women are advised to avoid environmental toxins to prevent harm to their babies. But a new study out of Washington State University suggests that by heeding those warnings they could also be sparing their great-grandchildren from fertility problems.

The study, published in Thursday's issue of Science, involved exposing rats to two common agricultural chemicals - the fungicide vinclozolin and the pesticide methoxychlorthat. Both are chemically related to natural hormones, and have been tentatively implicated in reproductive disorders in both animals and humans. When the rats gave birth, their male offspring tended to have low sperm counts and low fertility. None of that was a surprise. But what did surprise researchers was the fact that when these males did manage to reproduce, their offspring also had low sperm counts. And so did the generation after that - more than 90% of the males in each generation were affected.

If the same effect occurs in humans - a reasonable hypothesis - it could imply that keeping poisons out of the environment becomes even more important than previously realized. Michael K. Skinner, director of the University's Center for Reproductive Biology, suggests that that the new findings on toxin damage being transmitted across generations could even help explain the dramatic rise in breast and prostate cancer in recent decades as partly due to the cumulative effect of various toxins over several generations

[Edelaith]

Thank you for putting this thread up, Duchess, and thank you all who are contributing. This is good reading.

[dlbpharmd]

www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/06/scotus.medic ... index.html

[duchess of malfi]

Study links dull jobs to heart disease
Tuesday, June 7, 2005 Posted: 12:12 PM EDT (1612 GMT)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Dull, steady, unexciting jobs may make the heart beat in an unchanging, rapid rhythm -- which in turn could lead to heart disease, British researchers reported Monday.

They found that men with "low-grade jobs," meaning they had little control over daily tasks, and men in low social positions had faster and less-variable heart rates.

"This finding helps explain why men with low-paying jobs and less education have a higher risk for heart disease, a trend that has been evident for the last 30 years," said Dr. Harry Hemingway, of University College London Medical School, who led the study.

"The heart doesn't, or shouldn't, beat like a metronome," Hemingway said in a statement.

A healthy heart rate varies, he said.

His team studied 2,197 men aged 45 to 68 who worked for the British government, and talked to them about friends and family, education and lifestyle.

Job control was rated on a 15-item scale.

Steadier, faster heart rates were consistently seen in the men with lower social positions, less job control and higher depression.

Writing in the journal Circulation, Hemingway and colleagues said they found that heart rates of men in low-level positions were an average 3.2 beats per minute faster than men in top-level positions.

"Arteries behave as if they know how much a person makes and how much education they have had," Hemingway said.

The effect was clear even after taking into account factors such as smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise -- all of which also can adversely affect heart rate, Hemingway said.

It may be possible to help prevent heart disease by changing workplace conditions, Hemingway said.

"We hope this information provides insight into the mechanisms at work so that there is a possibility for interventions that will change this outcome," he said.

[duchess of malfi]

Tiny molecules linked to some cancers
Wednesday, June 8, 2005 Posted: 2:56 PM EDT (1856 GMT)

LONDON (Reuters) -- Scientists have identified a new group of culprits that play a major role in the development of human cancers.

They are tiny bits of ribonucleic acid (RNA) called microRNAs which control gene activity. Three teams of researchers said on Wednesday they initiate some cancers and could be used to diagnose the illness.

RNA is involved in making proteins in cells.

"These minuscule molecules are now definitely linked to the development of cancer," Paul Meltzer, of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Maryland, said in a commentary in the science journal Nature.

He added that the three independent studies published in the journal change the landscape of cancer genetics.

Todd Golub and his team at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston showed that different human cancers have a distinctive microRNA fingerprint.

In a second study scientists at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York reported that a certain cluster of microRNAs seem to cause cancer in mice.

The third report, by Joshua Mendell and researchers at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Maryland, found that some microRNAs cooperate with a gene linked to human cancers.

"Our discovery fits in quite well with the two other labs' studies on the involvement of microRNAs in cancer," Mendell said in a statement.

More than 200 microRNAs are known but how they function is still a mystery.

Meltzer said the findings could shed new light on what goes wrong when tumours are formed, how to detect cancers and to select the most appropriate treatment.

[duchess of malfi]

This is a big study my hospital has been involved with for sometime now:

Experimental Shingles Vaccine Proves Effective in Nationwide Study


Stronger version of chickenpox vaccine cuts incidence and severity of shingles in older adults
In one of the largest adult vaccine clinical trials ever, researchers have found that an experimental vaccine against shingles (zoster vaccine) prevented about half of cases of shingles — a painful nerve and skin infection — and dramatically reduced its severity and complications in vaccinated persons who got the disease. The findings appear in the June 2 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The Shingles Prevention Study, conducted over 5 ½-years, was led by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and carried out in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Merck & Co., Inc. (Whitehouse Station, NJ).

“This is very promising news for older persons,” says Stephen E. Straus, M.D., an infectious diseases specialist at NIAID and Director of the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, who participated in the design, oversight and conduct of the trial. “These striking results indicate for the first time that we can use a vaccine to prevent shingles, one of the most common and debilitating illnesses of aging. And among vaccine recipients who did get shingles, the episodes generally were far milder than they otherwise would have been.”

“For some people, shingles can result in months or even years of misery,” comments study leader Michael N. Oxman, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the San Diego VA Healthcare System and the University of California, San Diego.

Shingles, also known as herpes zoster, is caused by reactivation of the virus that causes chickenpox. Once chickenpox infection has run its course, the virus is not eliminated; rather, it retreats to clusters of sensory nerve cells usually located near the spinal cord, where the virus persists in a dormant state. As immunity weakens with advancing age, the virus can reactivate, multiply in and damage sensory nerve cells to cause pain. It then migrates to the skin, causing the blistering rash of shingles.

Generally, shingles first manifests as pain, itching or tingling in an area of skin on one side of the body or face. Then a painful blistering rash develops in that same area of skin; the rash can take two to four weeks to heal.

Anyone who has had chickenpox — which includes most adults in the United States — could develop shingles, though not all will. The two major risk factors are increasing age and declining immunity. Half of all people who live to age 85 will get the disease. Experts estimate more than a million new cases of shingles occur in the United States each year.

The trial was conducted at 22 study sites nationwide, including 16 VA medical centers and six clinical research sites outside the VA system coordinated through NIAID. Between November 1998 and September 2001, the multicenter research team enrolled more than 38,500 men and women age 60 or older into the study. Half of the participants received a single injection of the zoster vaccine — a live, weakened form of varicella-zoster virus, the virus responsible for chickenpox; the other half received a placebo vaccine. Neither the researchers nor the participants knew who received vaccine and who received placebo until after the study was over. The zoster vaccine used in the study, manufactured by Merck, is a new, more potent version of the chickenpox vaccine used to prevent chickenpox in millions of American children every year since 1995. The zoster vaccine was developed specifically for study in older adults.

During an average of more than three years of follow-up, the vaccine reduced the incidence of shingles by 51 percent: 642 cases of shingles occurred among those in the placebo group compared with only 315 in the vaccinated group. Among all vaccine recipients, the total burden of pain and discomfort due to shingles was 61 percent lower than in placebo recipients. Moreover, the zoster vaccine reduced the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia (PHN) — a form of chronic nerve pain that is the most common serious complication of shingles — by two-thirds compared with placebo. The vaccine was well tolerated, with the rates of serious adverse events low and local reactions at the vaccination site generally mild.

“As people live longer, and the proportion of older people in our population increases, it is highly likely that the prevalence of shingles will increase. A preventive shingles vaccine would be an enormous boon for the health and quality of life of seniors,” says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID director. “We are extremely gratified that this public-private partnership has led to these exciting results, which have the potential to greatly benefit seniors in years to come.”

Approximately 12 percent of older people with shingles experience pain lasting for 3 months or longer (the definition of PHN used in the study). As people age, however, shingles-associated nerve pain increases in frequency and severity. This complication may occur in nearly one-third of persons with shingles who are 60 years of age or older.

Patients with PHN often describe the pain as burning, throbbing, aching, stabbing or shooting, and it can cause both physical and emotional suffering. What can be most distressing and debilitating, according to these patients, is that at least 90 percent of them have allodynia — pain caused by something that ordinarily is not painful, such as clothing touching the skin, or a cool breeze. Simply dressing and having a shirt touch the side of the body that is affected can be excruciating.

Postherpetic neuralgia is difficult to treat. Antiviral medications can speed the healing of shingles and reduce the severity of nerve damage caused by the disease, but only if these medications are used within 72 hours of the first sign of a shingles rash. Thus, it is important for people to recognize the symptoms of shingles and get to a doctor quickly. Antiviral medications do not help relieve PHN once it has begun.

The researchers emphasize that the zoster vaccine was tested only as a preventive therapy and is not intended as a treatment for those who already have shingles or postherpetic neuralgia. On April 25, Merck announced that it had submitted a license application to the Food and Drug Administration for the zoster vaccine. If approved for use, the research team estimates the vaccine could prevent 250,000 cases of shingles that occur in the United States each year and significantly reduce the severity of the disease in another 250,000 cases annually.

The study was funded by the VA and by Merck, which supplied the vaccine and placebo. The James R. and Jesse V. Scott Fund for Shingles Research provided additional funds.

[duchess of malfi]

U-M researchers develop targeted chemo procedure
Drugs delivered only to cancer cells and avoid toxic side effects, scientists report
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
BY TRACY DAVIS
News Staff Reporter
Using nanotechnology, University of Michigan researchers have found a way to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs to tumor cells in animals. That not only increased the drugs' effectiveness, it reduced toxic side effects.

Previous studies employing cell cultures had suggested that nanotechnology could be an effective vehicle for the delivery of cancer drugs. But this is the first study to show the effectiveness of nanotechnology drug delivery systems in living animals. The study will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research today.

Study director Dr. James R. Baker Jr., the Ruth Dow Doan Professor of Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan, said he thinks nanotechnology will improve cancer treatment.

"The truly unique thing here is we can show for the first time we can take a cancer drug ... and get it inside the cancer cells," said Baker, who directs U-M's Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and the Biological Sciences. "So we give chemotherapy just to cancer cells, and avoid the toxic side effects."

Baker said he thought the research would have applications for many types of chemotherapy drugs, and many types of cancer. He and colleagues hope to have human clinical trials under way within 18 months, he said.

"It's very exciting work," said Max Wicha, director of the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center. He said other types of nanotechnology employing imaging capability allowed doctors to better know where tumors had spread.

Piotr Grodzinski, program director for cancer nanotechnology at the National Cancer Institute, said research of the sort Baker and his colleagues are doing - finding more effective ways to deliver older cancer treatments - would likely change how people are treated for cancer in the future.

He cautioned that animal studies don't always mean scientists can get the same outcome in human clinical trials. But he added, "if this works in people then we've really got something. It's a significant step forward."

Nanotechnology involves the use of tiny molecules. In this case, the molecules scientists used were so small, less than five nanometers in diameter, they could slip through the walls of cell membranes. A nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter.

To deliver the particle to cancer cells, scientists attach folic acid molecules. Cancer cells soak up more folate than regular cells through additional receptor sites on the cell surface. That helps prevent the cancer cells from developing resistance to drugs, and it helps the cells immediately internalize the particle, with the cancer drug attached.

In conventional chemotherapy, cancer drugs diffuse slowly over a cell membrane to get inside the cancer cell. That takes a long time, and it usually requires higher concentrations of the drug, which can lead to damage of normal cells and tissue.

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute. The University of Michigan has filed a patent application on targeted nanoparticle technology. A licensing agreement is currently being negotiated with Avidimer Therapeutics, an Ann Arbor biopharmaceutical company in which Baker holds a financial interest, according to U-M.

Tracy Davis can be reached at tdavis@annarbornews.com

or (734) 994-6856.
© 2005 Ann Arbor News. Used with permission

[duchess of malfi]

Today's date is Thursday, June 23, 2005.
Oregon Health & Science University


Presence of high-risk prostate cancer can be predicted without a biopsy, new study says
Identifying high-risk prostate cancer means more prudent treatment decisions, fewer unnecessary biopsies

PORTLAND, Ore. -- While prostate cancer is a very common diagnosis, it is a deadly disease in relatively few men. One in 6 men will develop prostate cancer during his lifetime. However, of these, only one in 10 cases will be life-threatening.

Yet, since the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening test became widely available about a decade ago, more men than ever are receiving treatment for prostate cancer even though it's clear that not all patients benefit equally from aggressive therapy. Treatment usually begins with a prostate biopsy and can include radiation, surgery and chemotherapy.

"This is the prostate cancer paradox," said Mark Garzotto, M.D., lead study investigator. "The big question is how to decide which men have life-threatening cancer. These men need aggressive treatment. Men who don't have deadly cancer potentially may instead be closely monitored, sparing them the side effects of treatments."

That's why researchers at the Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute and the Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center (PVAMC) began searching for a way to predict which men have lethal prostate cancer before a biopsy.

What they came up with is a simple chart that urologists and oncologists can use to predict whether a deadly prostate cancer tumor is present. This chart, or nomogram, will help physicians and patients identify whether aggressive cancer is present, as these men are by far the most likely to benefit from treatment.

"Our model can help predict which men may have the most aggressive type of prostate cancer and which men can relax," said Garzotto, director of urologic oncology at the PVAMC, associate professor of surgery (urology) in the OHSU School of Medicine, and member of the OHSU Cancer Institute.

An outpatient procedure that requires local anesthesia, prostate biopsy can cause patient anxiety, pain, bleeding and infection, and can lead to a significant increase in medical and nonmedical costs to health care systems and patients. Three out of 4 prostate biopsies are negative for cancer. In men with a PSA less than 10, only 9% have aggressive cancer.

Gleason score is used to define tumor grade. The Gleason score is the most commonly used prostate cancer scoring system and is considered one of the most important prognostic indicators for prostate cancer. The score is based on tissue findings throughout the prostate that correlate with the aggressiveness of a tumor. High Gleason scores are indicative of aggressive cancers and are not associated with a favorable prognosis. High-grade prostate cancer, the most lethal type, has a Gleason score of 7 or greater.

"Our nomogram identifies the men who are most likely to have high-grade tumors and are most likely to benefit from a biopsy," Garzotto said. "Knowing a patient's age and the results of a few simple clinical tests is all the information we need to accurately predict tumor grade without performing a biopsy."

Garzotto and his colleagues created the nomogram by statistically analyzing clinical variables collected prior to prostate biopsy. In the prospective study, they collected data on 1,699 men with a PSA of less than 10 ng/ml who underwent a prostate biopsy with a minimum of six samples. They analyzed the following variables: age, race, family history of prostate cancer, digital rectal exam, prostate specific antigen (PSA) values, PSA density (PSA divided by prostate volume), prostate volume, PSA doubling time and ultrasound findings. Thirty percent of data were reserved for study validation.

Through prostate biopsies, researchers found that almost 92 percent of the men were found to have no cancer or low to moderate cancer graded with Gleason scores between 1 and 6. About one-third of men with the disease had high-grade prostate cancer, which was detected in 157 subjects, or about 9 percent of the men in the study.

Researchers then used logistic regression analysis to compare clinical variables with biopsy outcomes. Researchers found they could accurately predict a tumor's Gleason score using three clinical variables: age, digital rectal exam findings and PSA density.

"We found that PSA density is by far the clinical variable most predictive of Gleason score," Garzotto said. Men who had a PSA density elevated to above 0.18 had a 24-fold greater chance of high-grade prostate cancer than men whose PSA density was low or normal.

[[Syl]]

Harmless Virus Kills Some Cancers

[duchess of malfi]

Survey: Many believe cancer myths

Tuesday, June 28, 2005; Posted: 12:55 a.m. EDT (04:55 GMT)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- More than 40 percent of Americans surveyed in a study falsely believed surgery can allow cancer cells to spread through the body, researchers said Monday. And up to a quarter believed there is a drug industry plot to cover up a cure for cancer.

The survey, published in the journal Cancer, may mean patients with cancer may fail to get treatment or may fail to stick with it, the researchers said.

The telephone survey of 957 adults was designed to represent the general U.S. population, said the researchers, led by Dr. Ted Gansler of the American Cancer Society.

"The most prevalent misconception, 'Treating cancer with surgery can cause it to spread throughout the body,' was endorsed as true by 41 percent of the respondents," the researchers wrote in their report.

"The second most prevalent misconception, 'The medical industry is withholding a cure for cancer from the public in order to increase profits,' was identified as true by 27 percent."

But most people -- 68 percent -- correctly rejected the idea that pain medications are ineffective against cancer pain and 89 percent knew it takes more than a positive attitude to treat cancer.

Eighty-seven percent knew there were effective treatments for cancer. More than 60 percent of cancer patients are still alive 5 years later.

The results show that the American public is significantly ill-informed about cancer, and that most people overestimate how much they know about the disease, the researchers said.

Only 25 percent of those surveyed correctly identified all five misconceptions as false.

The survey fits in with others recently done about what people know about cancer.

People who were 65 or older, of non-white race and those who admitted they knew little about cancer were more likely to get the answers wrong, the researchers said.

The findings may help explain why some groups are more likely to die of cancer than others, the researchers said. People who get early screening and prompt treatment for their cancer are more likely to survive.

Copyright 2005 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Avatar]

Thanks Duchess. While interesting, and believable, I'm always a tiny bit dubious about the extrapolation of 957 adults opinions into an "average" opinion of everybody in the country.

Even something as simple as the areas in which the survey is conducted could seriously skew the results. Still, very interesting.

--Avatar

[I'm Murrin]

If it was a telephone survey, it's possible they took participants from a number of different areas rather than just one to get their 'average' idea.

[Nathan]

I'm surprised that so many people know so little about cancer...

27% thought the medical industry is covering up a cure for cancer to increase profits?

How can you increase profits by not selling your amazing cancer cure? It would sell like anything! Not to mention the fact that, if the cure does cost less than current treatments, places like Britain would immediately use the cancer cure because the NHS needs to save money anywhere it can.

[I'm Murrin]

Ah, but the NHS doesn't know about the cure to use it - it's the evil pharmaceutical companies that are hiding the answer.

[Avatar]

Obviously because they'd rather that people paid over and over again for treatments which did not cure it, than once for a cure.

--A

[I'm Murrin]

You know too much!

[I'm Murrin]

Hey - there's a New Scientist print edition exclusive article up that looks really interesting, but I can't read it because I'm not an NS subscriber! It's about making people immune to HIV - here's the bit it lets you see:

Making people immune to HIV

* 02 July 2005
* Celeste Biever
* Magazine issue 2506

The cells that give rise to the human immune system have been genetically altered to make them resistant to the most common strain of HIV

THE cells that give rise to the human immune system have been genetically altered to make them resistant to the most common strain of HIV.

"The results are very promising and the researchers have every right to be excited," says Dana Carroll, a biochemist at the University of Utah. The catch is that the therapy might help only some HIV-positive people even if it works as intended.

The idea is to block HIV's main route into cells, which is via a surface protein called CCR5. A few people produce a mutated, shortened form of CCR5 that never reaches the surface of cells, which makes them resistant to HIV infection without any ill effects.

Now a team at Sangamo BioSciences in Richmond, California, has shown that it is possible to induce a similar mutation in human cells. The approach relies on zinc fingers, proteins that bind to sequences of three DNA ...

See? It cuts off and gives you the "subscribe now to read more" just as it's about to tell you what it's about!