New Study: MammaPrint genetic analysis for breast cancer.

In a recent study, findings show that genetic analysis is effective for diagnosing cancer recurrence. 

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The MammaPrint breast cancer test can dramatically reduce the number of women who need to undergo chemotherapy to treat the disease, according to a newly published study.

The prospective, outcome-based study of 427 breast cancer patients showed the genomic test, which analyzes 70 key genes, accurately determines which patients are at low risk of breast cancer recurrence and can therefore safely choose not to undergo chemotherapy.

Of the 219 patients in the five-year study who were determined to be "low risk" based on the MammaPrint test, 85 percent chose not to have chemotherapy. Of those patients, 97 percent were disease-free after five years. Of the 208 patients who were determined to be "high risk," 81 percent chose chemotherapy and 91% were disease-free after five years.

"MammaPrint correctly stratified patients into Low Risk and High Risk categories based on prognosis of a recurrence of the disease," said Prof. S.C. Linn, M.D., the principal investigator. "The outcome data generated in the study confirmed it was safe for the Low Risk patients to choose not to undergo chemotherapy and still have excellent outcomes."

The results of the peer-reviewed study, called MicroarRAy PrognoSTics in Breast CancER (or RASTER), conducted in 16 community-based clinics in the Netherlands, were published online by The International Journal of Cancer and will later appear in the journal's print edition.

The RASTER study is considered unique by its co-authors because it is the first and only study to prospectively evaluate the performance of a genomic breast cancer test by using outcome data -- in this case through follow-up of the patient cohort for five years.

"The study showed that incorporating MammaPrint results along with the traditional clinical parameters will significantly reduce the number of women who need chemotherapy, allowing them to avoid the side effects and toxicity of treatment, some of which can be permanent and debilitating," said breast surgeon Alison Laidley, M.D., FACS with Texas Breast Specialists, Texas Oncology (Dallas).

The study also showed that MammaPrint identified 30 percent more patients as Low Risk than traditional clinical parameters such as; tumor size, grade, patient age and lymph node status, which are often used in the U.S. to determine risk of recurrence. MammaPrint is a 70-gene, breast cancer assay performed on both fresh and FFPE tumor tissue, developed by Agendia.

"Of the prognostic tests commercially available for breast cancer, this is the first and only prospective validation to include outcome data," said David Macdonald, CEO of Agendia, the company that developed and provides the MammaPrint test. "MammaPrint can be administered to virtually all early-stage breast cancer patients, not just those with certain disease characteristics as with other tests limited to certain receptor and lymph node status. Finally, MammaPrint results benefit the physician by clearly categorizing all patients as high or low risk, eliminating the uncertainty of indeterminate scores reported by other genomic test methods."

Mummies reveal clues about the history of disease.

When studying mummified remains, pathologist, Michael Zimmerman also is studying the earliest known cases of many diseases, many of which may have claimed the lives of the person that is now being studied, thousands of years later. But what can this information teach us? For starters, in his studies, he finds that cancer was relatively uncommon. 

By staining samples of its lung tissue, he found the pathogen that causes tuberculosis, thus establishing the oldest known case of the disease. The only previous evidence of TB dating back that far had come from artwork depicting figures with bone deformities characteristic of the disease.

In 1991, the head of the anthropology department at Austria's University of Innsbruck called him after a 5,300-year-old frozen body, "Otzi the Iceman," was found in the nearby mountains, preserved by ice and snow. He missed his chance to examine the body when scientists realized that Otzi's final resting place was on Italian side of the border and that the Austrians had to give him up to an Italian museum. There, a CT scan revealed the cause of death: an arrowhead lodged in Otzi's left shoulder.

Over the years, Zimmerman has seen mummies with arthritis, club foot (King Tut suffered from it), cirrhosis of the liver and plaque in their arteries - ailments similar to what doctors see in autopsies today.

It's not hard to find mummies, he said. When modern Egyptians built railroads, so many mummies turned up during the digging that workers burned them for warmth. Since that first Smithsonian mummy, he said, he has examined 200 to 300. When he started out, he did a complete autopsy, cutting up the body and removing the organs. Now, he uses less-damaging procedures, imaging them with CT scans and inserting endoscopic instruments through small holes.

What amazed him was that among all these mummies, he saw only two cases of cancer, though he says tumors are easy to spot. During a recent talk at Villanova, he showed a slide of a rectal cancer found in a middle-aged Egyptian mummy, explaining how the cells stained a distinct color and showed signs of abnormal cell division.

Zimmerman and University of Manchester professor Rosalie David, who founded the university's renowned Egypt Mummy Project, wrote a 2010 paper for the journal Nature on the lack of mummified cancer and their speculation that cancer might be more tied to modern environments than has been assumed. Zimmerman attributes most of the difference to the modern prevalence of smoking: There's nothing in the historical or archaeological record to suggest that ancient Egyptians smoked.

The paper stirred up controversy, with some questioning whether the low cancer rates in ancient people are merely a consequence of shorter life spans - perhaps people simply didn't live long enough to get cancer. But even taking age into account, Zimmerman said, there's surprisingly little cancer. Besides, he said, he sees osteoarthritis, clogged arteries and other diseases of aging in these mummies. Some of the pharaohs lived past 90.

Geneticist Mary Daly of Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center said it's also likely that obesity plays a role in making cancer so much more common today than it was in ancient Egypt. If you took away cigarettes and obesity from today's population, Daly said, you'd see a drastic drop in cancer rates. That's essentially the population you're studying in ancient Egypt.

Other researchers share Zimmerman's interest in diseases of the distant past, though most study bones rather than mummies. Bones have revealed ancient cases of osteoporosis and a striking decline in height and general health in a number of societies after the adoption of agriculture, possibly due to unsanitary conditions and a sudden shift from varied diets to ones based primarily on grain.

-excerpt from the Washington Post 

New Study: Acupuncture, Massage, Yoga show results for Arthritis Treatments

Continuing study verifies results from acupuncture, massage, yoga, and tai chi on those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and low back pain. 

Reasearch from School of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland: 

There isn’t much scientific proof that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) – from aromatherapy to reflexology – helps with the pain and disability associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoarthritis (OA), fibromyalgia and low back pain.

But based on the available evidence, researchers in the United Kingdom, who evaluated clinical studies on 21 CAM therapies for the four conditions, concluded that acupuncture, massage, yoga and tai chi work in some cases.

These findings don’t mean that other CAM therapies – defined by this report as any therapy that exists outside normal health care practices – aren’t effective. The researchers stress that, in many cases, there just weren’t enough high-quality data to fully evaluate the therapies. “Where there is no or little evidence, it is very difficult to judge,” says lead author of the report, Gareth Jones, PhD, a senior lecturer in epidemiology in the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

The report is one of two published recently by Arthritis Research UK, a large medical-research organization. The other report rated supplements in the treatment of OA, RA and fibromyalgia.

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New Aberdeen University Arthritis Study

QiGong study shows increase of quality of life among female cancer patients.

From Psychcentral 

New research has found that qigong, an ancient Chinese mind-body practice, has been found to reduce depression and improve the quality of life in women undergoing radiation for breast cancer.

The study examined qigong in patients receiving radiation therapy and included a follow-up period to assess its benefits over time, according to researchers.

“We were [...] particularly interested to see if qigong would benefit patients experiencing depressive symptoms at the start of treatment,” said Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Departments of General Oncology and Behavioral Science.

“It is important for cancer patients to manage stress because it can have a profoundly negative effect on biological systems and inflammatory profiles.”

For the study, Cohen and his colleagues recruited 96 women with stage 1-3 breast cancer from Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center in Shanghai, China.

About half of the women — 49 — were randomly assigned to a qigong group consisting of five 40-minute classes each week during their five-to-six week course of radiation therapy. The remaining 47 women comprised a control group receiving standard care.

The program incorporated a modified version of Chinese medical qigong, which consisted of synchronizing one’s breath with various exercises, the researchers explained.

Participants in both groups completed assessments at the beginning, middle and end of radiation therapy and then one and three months later. Different aspects of quality of life were measured, including depressive symptoms, fatigue, sleep disturbances, and overall quality of life.

According to the researchers, patients in the qigong group reported a steady decline in depressive symptom scores beginning at the end of radiation therapy, with a mean score of 12.3, through the three month post-radiation follow-up with a score of 9.5. No changes were noted in the control group over time, the study found.

Read More Here: 

http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/01/27/qigong-improves-quality-of-life-for-breast-cancer-patients/50826.html

New study reveals exactly how herbal remedies can work.

From Huffpo

Science has confirmed just why an herb used in Chinese medicine possesses its healing properties.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, show that the herbal medicine Chang Shan, which is used to treat fever from malaria in Chinese medicine, works because of a derived compound in it called halofuginone.

The scientists from the Scripps Research Institute were able to find just how halofuginone works to suppress the immune system (since an immune response is generally what causes fevers) by creating a high-res molecular structure of the compound.

The university explained in a statement how exactly halofuginone may work in helping with malarial fever:

The new structure shows that, like a wrench in the works, halofuginone jams the gears of a molecular machine that carries out "aminoacylation," a crucial biological process that allows organisms to synthesize the proteins they need to live. Chang Shan, also known as Dichroa febrifuga Lour, probably helps with malarial fevers because traces of a halofuginone-like chemical in the herb interfere with this same process in malaria parasites, killing them in an infected person's bloodstream.

Halofuginone has been the focus of many other studies in the past, too. In a previous one, scientists from Harvard University School of Dental Medicine found thathalofuginone could block harmful immune cells from developing, which could be promising in treating autoimmune disorders.

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Scientists Develop New Ovarian Cancer Test From Standard Pap Smear Screening.

The Pap smear, first developed in the 1940s, often is described as the world's most successful cancer screening test. Deaths from cervical cancer, once a major killer of American women, have fallen 75% since the Pap smear's introduction.

Now, doctors are combining this grandfather of all screening tests with the latest genomic research to look for cancer in a completely different way. They hope to use the experimental test to detect cancer of the ovaries and the endometrium, or uterine lining.

The new approach is made possible by the discovery that cervical fluid, obtained during a Pap smear, may contain not only cells from a cervical cancer, but from an ovarian or endometrial cancer as well.

Using new DNA sequencing methods, doctors scanned this fluid for genetic mutations found only in ovarian or endometrial cancers, says a pilot study online Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

Authors note that their study was small, with samples from just 24 endometrial cancers and 22 ovarian cancers. The research is in its earliest stages and is nowhere close to being ready to be used in the clinic, says co-author Nickolas Papadopoulos, a professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Still, the experimental test, called PapGene, found 100% of the endometrial cancers and 41% of ovarian cancers. Importantly, the test didn't cause any "false alarms" by mistakenly flagging healthy samples as cancerous, Papadopoulos says.

Doctors have long sought to develop an effective screening test for ovarian cancer, which is typically found too late to cure, says Shannon Westin of Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who wrote an accompanying editorial.

Five-year survival rates for early ovarian cancers, which haven't spread, are 92%. Overall ovarian cancer survival rates, however, are only 44%.

Maurie Markman, a spokesman for the American Society of Clinical Oncology, called the approach "fascinating."

"It opens up a lot of research opportunities," says Markman, senior vice president of clinical affairs at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. "This should definitely be pursued."

Scientists have been searching for "biomarkers" of cancer for years, hoping to find a protein or other signal that could help detect cancer through a blood test. In spite of promising early results, researchers have produced "hundreds of examples of false leads" that could never be replicated, Markman says.

The PapGene approach also is intriguing, he says, because it could be combined with screenings that women already undergo.

The study was funded by a variety of sources, including the National Institutes of Health.

Papadopoulos and several of his co-authors are co-founders of Inostics and Personal Genome Diagnostics, which has licensed some of the technical aspects involved in PapGene tests to other companies.

About 15,500 American women die of ovarian cancer each year, along with more than 8,000 who die of uterine cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

Homeopathy's Common Flu Remedies

Common Flu Remedies

Below are a few of the most common flu remedies, along with some differentiating features.

Gelsemium
The number one flu remedy (also the remedy that was curative for the 1918 flu epidemic). Totally weak and prostrate, almost paralytic weakness. Droopy eyes -- can hardly keep them open. Legs weak and shaky. A slow onset. Flu might be preceded by worry over an upcoming event or task.  Bursting headache beginning in the neck and back of head. Aching muscular pain. Thirstlessness. Chills up and down the spine. Better from fresh air and urinating.

Nux Vomica
Irritability and oversensitivity, especially to noise and light. Flu might be preceded by anger or indignation, or be precipitated by overwork. Very cold. Wants to stay under the covers. Desires warm drinks. Shivering. Headache from noise and light. Fatigue and collapse. May want to keep working even when sick. Stomach upset, gas, diarrhea.

Aconitum Napellus
Sudden onset of fever, with chilliness, anxiety and great restlessness.  A remedy to consider after patient has been exposed to cold, dry weather or a fright.

Eupatorium Perfoliatum
Intense aching and painful limbs and back, bones feel like they were broken. Bursting headache.  Dare not to move because of the pain.  Shivering with chills in back.  Chill begins 7-9:00AM.  Eyeballs sore.
 
Arsenicum Album
Very anxious, restless, and thirsty. Fear of death, being left alone.  Worse from midnight to 2am. Exhaustion after the slightest exertion.

Bryonia Alba
Very irritable. Very thirsty for cold drinks.  Worse from any movement or noise. Pain from moving eyes.  Wants to lie quite still and be left alone.  Headaches and pain better from pressure.  Can have great pain in the head when coughing.

Baptisia
Rapid onset.  Sinks rapidly into stupid state.  Dull red face; patient looks drugged and out of it.  High temperature with red face.  Drops asleep while answering questions.  Gastric flu:  sudden attacks of violent diarrhea and vomiting.  Great prostration.

Rhus Toxicodendrum
Flu that comes on after cold wet weather.  Aching and stiffness in joints, worse from first movement but better after continued movement. Restlessness. Better from warmth.  Anxious and weepy.

Ferrum-Phosphoricum
Good to consider when none of the other flu remedies match well. A mid-grade fever -- 102-103F. Flushed face. Headache better from cold applications. Burning sensation in eyes. Stuffiness. Nose bleeds. Red swollen throat. Cough better at night. Sour burps, vomiting of undigested food. Aversion to meat and milk. Stiff neck. Restless and sleepless. Chill at 1pm. Worse from being touched or jarred.

To find out more or to request remedies contact : Martin Keane | Board Certified in Homeopathy

At 95 years old, a simple fountain of youth: Daily Walks, Consistency in Diet.

from the Dayton Daily News

DAYTON -- Sarah Deets, 95, is a retired physical education and elementary school teacher who knows the value of regular exercise and diet.

What she does: Deets walks 1 to 2 miles a day around the grounds of 10 Wilmington Place to stay in shape for her beloved annual excursions across the world.

"My husband and I lived on three acres, and I walked there -- that was one of the best habits I ever got into. When we moved here four years ago, I continued to walk."

How exercise keeps her healthy: Before her husband's death in 2008, the couple traveled almost every year, visiting all states, plus trips to such places as Canada, Australia, and England.

"Friends often asked how we could afford it, but we worked our tailbones off to put money in our travel fund," Deets said.

Always ready for adventures, she continues her annual trips with her daughter, Jean Moran and son-in-law Kenneth Bar-nett. They've been to South America and to the Mediterranean, and recently returned from this year's six-week trip to Hawaii, Japan and China.

"In Beijing, we walked and walked in the Forbidden City, and when we went to the Great Wall, we had to climb tall stairs, often without a railing," Deets said. "So many Chinese wanted their pictures taken with me, especially when they found out my age. I kept up with the group, even when we walked to the top of old shrines."

In addition to Beijing, the China trip included Xi'an, Shanghai, and a cruise down the Yangtze River.

"During the entire trip, I 'walked the walk,' without assistance or a wheelchair," Deets said.

She also exercises her mind. Deets received her master's degree in education in Wright State University's first graduating class.

"I've always loved to read and learn," she said. "I'm a member of the College Women's Club, and we meet every month at the Dayton Women's Club. I still attend the meetings, and was assistant treasurer for 12 years."

And, she adds: "I still play the stock markets."

Consistency in exercise and diet: The day after Thanksgiving, when it was so cold and windy outside, Deets put on her coat, bundled up, and walked.

"I thought I'd just walk around the promenade once, but went my usual four times," she said. "I don't feel right if I don't walk every day."

She also notes, "I eat whatever I want, but don't overeat. I love salads, fruits and vegetables, but also love meat and desserts. I just stop when I'm full."

Observations from her son-in-law: "Having no or few gray hairs and a full set of healthy teeth is quite amazing at 95," said Barnett, 74. "The only thing I can think of, other than having good genes, is that she eats well and is a consistent walker. I'm trying to emulate some of her habits."

Her advice to others: "It's so simple to travel, and to love life and enjoy it. Retired folks need to get up and move every day, not just sit around and play cards. On our trip, I saw people in wheelchairs, but they were still traveling -- it's so simple to travel.

"As Rosalind Russell said, 'Life is a banquet' - you just have to get out and do it."

And, like Deets, it's best to be in shape, prepared to enjoy the feast.