New research published in the journal Nature Medicine ‘has proved possible to multiply in the lab, before injecting, so that the transplant will work.

As in the traditional bone marrow transplant, stem cells from a compatible donor umbilical cord are used to regenerate the bone marrow of patients with leukemia and other haematological malignancies. First, chemotherapy ‘clean’ all malignant cells and, subsequently, the umbilical blood of the donor is responsible for ‘repopulate’ again.

The problem is that when stem cells are injected are not enough, take too long to generate new blood cells (clean of cancer). This leaves the patient several weeks with a bone marrow ‘medium gas’ (aplastic), and susceptible to infection, rejection or even death. (more…)

A study published in the medical journal Gut by a group of scientists Netherlands, reveals that alcohol raises the risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, a tumor located in the upper esophagus.

The report also claims that smokers also have an increased risk of cancer of the esophagus and stomach, much higher. A study for 16 years over 120,000 people between 55 and 70 years confirms that smoking increases the likelihood of gastric cancer and esophageal cancer.

The risk varies between 60% and 263% among cigarette smokers compared to nonsmokers. Alcohol also affects, to a lesser extent, the study said.

People who drank the equivalent of about two or three glasses of wine a day were five times more likely to develop tumors than abstainers.

A person who has multiple family members with pancreatic cancer is six times more likely to develop the disease. The study shows that this risk is even higher, nine times the general population, if a family member developed cancer before age 50.

The cancer that starts in youth is a feature of many familial cancer syndromes but do not know if the family members of patients with familial pancreatic cancer at an early age had a higher risk than those of patients who later suffered his life. (more…)

Explains I-Hsin Lin, head of the study, “Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in Taiwan. The tea, especially green tea, has received much attention because tea polyphenols are strong antioxidants and Tea preparations have shown an inhibitory activity against tumorigenesis. ”

Previous studies on green tea have not been taken into account by the shortcomings of the epidemiological model and its inherent biases.

The researchers enrolled 170 patients with lung cancer and 340 healthy patients as controls. The researchers administered questionnaires to obtain demographic characteristics, smoking habits, consumption of green tea, fruit and vegetable consumption, cooking practices and family history of lung cancer.

The authors also performed a genotyping-like growth factors and insulin polymorphisms in IGF1, IGF2 and IGFBP3, which has been associated with cancer risk. (more…)

The data are published in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. ” However, these biomarkers become greatly elevated only in the year prior to diagnosis. Researchers do not know yet what stage the cancer is found at the time of the increase of the marker.

The molecules CA125, HE4, mesothelin, B7-H4, the decoy receptor 3 and espondina-2 have been identified as potential biomarkers of ovarian cancer but until now had not evaluated their behavior in the period before diagnosis, with the exception CA125.

The researchers analyzed the serum samples stored test Carotene and Retinol Efficacy of assessing the effects of beta-carotene and retinol on lung cancer incidence among individuals at high risk for the disease. The researchers identified 34 patients who were diagnosed with ovarian cancer and those with serum for the test and 70 control subjects even. (more…)

Specifically, these researchers have discovered ten natural compounds of this fruit can block aromatase, an enzyme that converts androgen into estrogen and play a “key role” in this type of tumor, explained Shiuan Chen, author of the research .

Despite this finding, Chen said that the compounds would not be a replacement for drugs, aromatase inhibitors (AIs), such as’ Aromasin ‘Pfizer’ Femara ‘Novartis’ or’ Arimidex ‘, AstraZeneca, since the compounds pomegranate “are not as powerful as real drugs.”

The interest of this research “is probably more on prevention than on the therapeutic purpose,” added Chen.

Other researchers not connected with the study explained to the magazine that publishes the results are encouraging and suggest that further studies will be necessary to animals and humans to confirm the findings.

“It is not clear that these levels can be achieved in animals or humans because (compounds) are not well absorbed into the blood when they come through the diet,” said Gary Stoner, Ohio State University.

Previous studies have shown that pomegranate juice is rich in antioxidants (vitamins and other substances) that would help prevent conditions such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

It was known that the light worsens the pain of migraines, but so far that it was not right. Now, as published by the online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston deaconesses (United States) have a possible explanation.

The work shows an unknown connection between the light-sensitive cells in the eyes and certain nerve cells of the brain that are crucial for the perception of migraine pain.

Led by Rami Burstein, the researchers found that many blind people who suffer migraine also avoid light. However, blind patients who had completely lost an eye or the optic nerve connecting the eye to the brain did not flee from light. Therefore, it seemed that the exacerbation of migraine pain caused by light involves the detection of light by the eye, most likely through a special class of neurons in the retina that are sensitive to light and contribute to the regulation of daily rhythms, but it is not known if they contribute to the vision.

To test this hypothesis, the scientists studied rats in which sought a direct connection from the retina to the brain areas of pain. The researchers found that retinal axons, among which are some neurons designed to be sensitive to light, indeed sent links to a group of nerve cells in the area of the brain called the thalamus that are known to receive and transmit pain signals associated with migraine. This connection could explain how light aggravates the pain of migraine, the authors conclude.

He is known by the unattractive acronym XMRV, which correspond to the no less attractive to virus name xenotrópico murine leukemia virus, but 17 million people worldwide are going to be very aware of what it is said in the future .

Are affected by chronic fatigue syndrome, a disease that clearly knows its main symptom (fatigue which can become very disabling), but not cure or cause. Now the XMRV passes to lead the list of possible suspects of causing such depletion, ahead of fellow as herpes virus or Epstein-Barr. The finding was published in Science.

The work, however, is very preliminary. It is a statistical relationship (the virus was found in 67% of people with chronic fatigue, compared to only 4% in those without). Researchers at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Nevada admit they have not been able to describe the possible process between the pathogen and disease. (more…)

A brain imaging method could allow the differential diagnosis of dementia, according to a study by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester has been issued during the International Conference of the Alzheimer’s Association in Vienna (Austria).

The study may help future clinicians to differentially diagnose the three most common neurodegenerative disorder in the lives of patients.

The researchers developed a framework based on differential diagnosis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of three common neurodegenerative disorders: Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration and disease Lewy bodies using structural MRI.

At present, the examination of brain at autopsy is the only way to confirm with certainty that a patient had a specific form of dementia. This new framework, called “Structural Abnormality Index” or STAND-Map by their acronyms in English, may help diagnose the type of dementia in patients’ lives. (more…)

Disrupt sleep during the deep phase may lead to memory loss, to be reduced activity in the hippocampus at the time of encoding data to be remembered, according to a study published by the British journal Nature Neuroscience.

The research, conducted by a team from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience Ysbrand led by Van Der Werf, is based on memory tests conducted on two groups of people after a phase of sleep monitored and controlled by an electroencephalogram.

Thus, in the first group, once the subjects had reached the stage known as “deep sleep”, the researchers made a beep sound, though not enough to wake them up, it’s moved to a more superficial sleep .

Meanwhile, in the second group, individuals slept the same time as the previous group, but his dream is not artificially altered. (more…)