A tool for early breast cancer detection.

A new kind by ultrasonic was to be determined strongly effectively, if the pieces were in the female center cancer-like or harmless, the researchers of the USA, the one small study undertook said yesterday. The conclusion so confirmed in a larger examination could reduce the number of unnecessary Zentrumsbiopsien and calm women down that its tumors are harmless, said Richard de Barr by a radiologist at the X-ray by Southwoods and of MRI, which was opened in Youngstown, Ohio, which undertook the study.

If we to document can do that the technology is extremely precise, think I that them will give Mrs. the insurance, [a tumor], are good-like and them for not being worried may “Barr so-called. With the existing technology that one does not have there it.

Admits as education elasticity picture is main the technology a powerful version of the conventional ultrasonic. A special software program have themselves by the solutions medical Siemens develop a unit industriellen together-clenched Siemens German AG, radiologist use themselves the movement of the center material during an ultrasonic discovered, in order to determine the stiffness of an article.

Barr examined 166 tumors, which were suspected by center in 99 women, who were programmed for the Biopsie. The injuries were measured, by using the standard technology of ultrasonic and the elasticity ultrasonic. The radiologists characterized the center injuries, which seemed smaller have, by using the elasticity ultrasonic as harmless, while injuries, which seemed larger have, by using, the elasticity ultrasonic than were smartly characterized.

The physicians implemented then Biopsien on 80 of the women. The results proved that the education elasticity picture identified correctly each of the 17 injuries and 105 more smartly from 106 good-like injuries for a sensitivity of 100 for - one hundred and of a characteristic of 99 - one hundred.

More than million breast cancer cases

More than one million women will suffer from breast cancer in India in the next few years and women should be equipped to face the disease, say support groups.

This is the main goal of the four-day third Asia-Pacific Reach to Recovery International Breast Conference Support Conference inaugurated here yesterday.

Its objective is to bring home the truth that breast cancer is one of the cancers with the best cure rates, provided it is detected early.

The conference theme is "jagruti", which indicates a perpetual flame. "Today, we are witnessing an alarming number of younger women diagnosed with this disease," said Ranjit Kaur, president of the Reach to Recovery International, at the inaugural session.

A majority of these women are in the prime of their lives juggling the roles of working women, mothers and wives, she said. Breast cancer can dislocate a woman's place in society, threatening her self-esteem and status in life. Often, women are reduced to accepting lower salaries and reduced career opportunities.

"While the psychosocial support offered by women with similar experiences is crucial, I believe it's time to adopt a proactive approach which means looking beyond individual needs towards new ways of collaborating with authorities to ensure women with breast cancer lead a life of dignity and social inclusion."

This would mean working with other breast cancer support groups at a national level, she says. Not just breast cancer, but cancer in general needs a more forceful campaign of awareness, prevention and control since the disease in the developing world is a disaster waiting to happen. By 2020, 70 per cent of cancer deaths will be in the developing countries, experts say.

Friends of cancer patients through thick and thin

A cancer diagnosis does not need to be a death sentence to anyone, especially since it has gained you a friend in the form of Friends of Cancer Patients society.
The charitable group, or FOCP for short, takes its name seriously - going all out to be a real friend for a cancer patient in need.

On top of educating and increasing public awareness on cancers, group volunteers and members provide the type of need and support that only friends provide.


The support FOCP provides include financial, practical, moral and emotional. It is primarily a charitable organisation, dependent on funds donated by the public, which the group puts to good use to fund awareness and educational programmes, as well as supportive programmes for cancer patients.

"Cancer patients suffer in silence and isolation. We need to change that. Cancer is a disease that affects many others,"

Gene therapy 'cures' dying cancer men

Gene therapy has eradicated cancer from two dying men using genetically modified versions of their own immune cells.

Both were suffering from skin cancer but the technique could be customised to attack other cancers, even after they have spread and the outlook is grim.

Mark Origer, 53, narrated how, after five years of a losing battle, he got well enough to attend his daughter's wedding. "She wanted me to be there," he said.
Origer was diagnosed with melanoma the most aggressive form of skin cancer in 1999. A cyst on his back in 2002 was found to have malignant cells and the cancer continued to spread until, in June 2004, it was found in his liver. He underwent various treatments but none helped.

In December 2004, he was given the gene therapy and was discharged the same month. By January 2005, his tumours had shrunk by half and by September, when he attended Katie's wedding, a spot remained in his liver which surgeons removed. Last week, doctors pronounced him completely clear of cancer cells.

Of the 17 patients who underwent the therapy, it worked only on Origer and "Thomas M", 39. But scientists say they can adapt it to fight other cancers.

Red meat could double breast cancer risk

Women who eat red meat more than once a day double the risk of getting the most common form of breast cancer, doctors said.

Women who ate the most meat, especially in processed forms such as hamburgers and sausages, were at the greatest risk of hormone-sensitive breast cancers.
The new study of pre-menopausal women examined the effect of diet on different types of breast cancer.

The natural female hormones estrogen and progesterone are essential for a range of bodily functions but they are also responsible for stimulating growth in 70 per of breast cancers - those known as "hormone receptor positive".

The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study

The research findings, drawn from the reports of nearly 10,400 people whose cancers were diagnosed between 1970 and 1986, alter the context of a stunning medical success over the past 35 years - a period when children's survival rates from cancer went from virtually zero to nearly 80 per cent.

Despite drugs that are less toxic and technology that can precisely target malignant masses, youngsters and teenagers in treatment are likely to confront the same concerns, experts say.

The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study has prompted many survivors and their families to reconsider what the future holds - some with equanimity, others with sadness, fear or denial.

The childhood cancer study looked at men and women

The childhood cancer study looked at men and women whose malignancies had been diagnosed before their 21st birthdays. The subjects were among the first generation of childhood-cancer survivors. Their average age at the time of the study was 26.

Today, an estimated 270,000 people in the United States have survived childhood cancer.
Philip Rosoff, a Duke University medical professor who wrote a commentary accompanying their results, believes doctors of many disciplines must be trained to provide vigorous monitoring. Some survivors are resistant to ongoing care, which they associate with often traumatic childhood memories of their disease. Rosoff recalls a teenager who returned a decade after his treatment: "The minute he saw the IV pole, he broke out in a cold sweat and never came back."

New Dangers for Cancer Survivors

Study says chemotherapy leads to chronic health conditions in young adults.

Danielle Eichner of Rockville, Maryland, is a survivor. A decade ago, when she was 11, doctors diagnosed her with acute leukaemia and warned that death was imminent. But chemotherapy kept her alive. She graduated from high school, is attending college and will soon launch a career as an art therapist.

Only now, after a landmark study of childhood cancer survivors, are Eichner and her parents realising how the drugs and radiation that saved her life might affect her in the future.

The study concluded that many young adults who conquered cancer as children suffer chronic health issues more commonly seen in the elderly, including osteoporosis, hearing loss, thyroid problems and heart damage. More than one in every four have potentially life-threatening conditions.

Colon Cancer is the Fourth Most Deadly Cancer Globally

Drugs

Only certain cells, those with a protein on the surface called CD133, were able to initiate a new tumour.CD133 had previously been implicated in brain and prostate cancers. In a second study, Ruggero De Maria of the Istituto Superiore di Sanita in Rome and colleagues got the same CD133 cells to start tumours when injected under the skin of immune-deficient mice.

"These studies demonstrate that a small population of colon cancer cells, distinct from those that make up the bulk of a tumour, initiate tumour growth," Nature said.It may be possible to design drugs that attack only those cells, and thus treat colon cancer in a way that better affects the tumours without hurting healthy cells, the researchers said.

Colon cancer is the fourth most deadly cancer globally, killing 655,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organisation.

Cancer Stem Cells Start Tumours in Mice

Stem cells the master cells that give rise to all the blood and tissue in the body may also be responsible for tumours, according to two separate studies published on Sunday.
Canadian and Italian researchers both found that specialised colon cancer stem cells appeared to be the sources of colon cancer tumours in mice.

Their findings, published in the journal Nature, support the idea that future cancer treatments will have to home in on cancer stem cells.

Similar findings have been seen for leukemia, breast and brain cancers, but the two studies are the first to show cancer stem cells are also responsible for colon tumours.
"Colon cancer is one of the best-understood neoplasms (tumours) from a genetic perspective, yet it remains the second most common cause of cancer-related death in Canada, indicating that some of its cancer cells are not eradicated by current therapies," John Dick of University Health Network in Toronto and colleagues wrote in their report.
They implanted human colon cancer cells into mice with a deficient immune system a standard way of studying cancer.

Chronic Short Sleep is the Royal Road to Diabetes and Obesity.

When the men awoke, following the sleep-deprived state, their hunger and appetite increased - especially for calorie-dense, high carbohydrate foods. "Chronic short sleep is the royal road to diabetes and obesity," says Karine Spiegel, a sleep researcher and author of the study.

It appears, some researchers believe, that the links between sleep deprivation and obesity are two interacting epidemics. "A few years ago, I would look at obese people and see weakness of character," says Fred Turek, a sleep researcher at Northwestern University and director of the Centre of Sleep & Circadian Biology. "Now I believe that if you interfere with sleep, you're interfering with weight. If you interfere with weight, you're interfering with sleep."

The Nurses' Health Study, an epidemiological study begun in 1976 monitoring the health of more than 100,000 nurses, put poundage to sleep loss. In a study reported in this year's August 16 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers found that after 12 to 16 years, women who slept, on average, less than five hours were 5-1/2 pounds heavier than those who slept an average of seven hours per night.

A good night's sleep also can stave off short-term illness such as colds and flu, as well as hasten the benefits of a flu shot.

In a study reported in the September 25, 2002 Journal of the American Medical Association, 25 healthy young men, who normally slept seven to eight hours each night, received flu shots.

Chronic Inadequate Sleep.

The young men in the same study also had reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which normally surges just before waking from a good night's sleep, energising people for the day's demands. The study participants had the low morning levels of cortisol, typical of their grandparents.

And these volunteers also showed that, with chronic inadequate sleep, young people might be accelerating the beer-belly, pear-bottom problems typically linked to middle age. They were producing lower levels of growth hormone after less than a week of four hours of sleep. Growth hormone is largely secreted during the night's first round of deep sleep. As adults age, they naturally spend less time in deep sleep, getting less of the hormone that, in addition to driving childhood growth, plays a role in controlling the body's proportions of fat and muscle.

The University of Chicago study's findings were the first solid evidence that chronic partial sleep deprivation could have physical health consequences. Since then, researchers have begun to look deeper at the links between sleep and illness. A study published in the December 7, 2004 Annals of Internal Medicine found that when 12 healthy, young men were restricted to four hours of sleep for just two nights, levels of leptin, a hormone that signals satiety, dropped, while levels of ghrelin, a hormone that prompts appetite, increased.

Sleep is Essential to the Workings of Every Organ.

But it's only in the last half a dozen years that studies have begun to link chronic partial sleep deprivation to serious physical health consequences.

Sleep is essential to the workings of every organ. And it seems that the connection between sleep and health starts at the brain's central command post, the hypothalamus. There, sleep or lack of it can work to activate, or inhibit, hormone production. There, too, is where the body gets the signal to go to bed, to wake up and to adjust temperature, blood pressure, digestive secretions and immune activity.

Inadequate sleep works on hormone production in other areas as well. Without enough sleep, the central nervous system becomes more active, inhibiting the pancreas from producing adequate insulin, the hormone the body needs to digest glucose.

A groundbreaking study in 1999, led by Eve Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, showed that just six days of sleep restricted to four hours pushed 11 healthy young male volunteers into a pre-diabetic state. Those jaw-dropping results expanded the field of sleep research, and convinced scientists that chronic, partial sleep deprivation damaged the body, not just the mind.

Life Style Disorder

Sleep researchers have a name for the way the vast majority of people in America sleep: volitional chronic sleep deprivation, and it is a lifestyle disorder.

Without enough sleep, the cost in reduced memory, focus, concentration and reaction time is well established. Incidents in the lore of sleep research include the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. In each, key decisions were made by people who were sleep-deprived.

Sleep Based on Today's Reality

In the last decade, researchers have begun studying sleep based on today's reality: a country, such as the US, open for business virtually 24/7, and people increasingly unwilling or unable to call it a day. Sleep needs vary slightly, but the vast majority of people, experts agree, need just about eight hours of sleep each night to fully recover from 16 hours of being awake.

Yet, people are racking up sleep debt like a college kid with a credit card. About 40 per cent of Americans say they get fewer than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, and most - 71 per cent - get fewer than eight hours of sleep, according to a 2005 survey by the National Sleep Foundation.

Even on weekends, they sleep about seven and a half hours - better, but not enough to pay back the week's loss. Every hour they fall behind is considered an hour of sleep debt, and Americans accumulate about two full weeks of personal sleep debt a year.

Inadequate Sleep and a Decline in Immune Function.

Some scientists are exploring possible connections between inadequate sleep and a decline in immune function.

The Archives of Internal Medicine devoted its September 18 issue to the relationship between sleep and health. An editorial called for assessment of sleep habits as a standard part of all medical checkups.

That's because short sleep can hasten the arrival of the inevitable long sleep. The largest study of sleep duration and mortality was published in February 2002 in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The Cancer Prevention Study II of the American Cancer Society followed more than a million participants for six years.

The best survival was found among those who slept about seven hours a night, the worst among those who slept less than four and a half hours. Too much sleep - nine hours or more - also was associated with a higher risk of mortality.

Deprivation damages the body, not just the mind.

The alarm clock in Thom Stys's bedroom goes off at 4am every weekday, a scant four to five hours after his head hits the pillow. By 5am, he's left his Chino Hills home in California for the freeway and before the sun is up he's at his desk in Long Beach, making a round of phone calls to clients in Europe.

"If I left later, it would take me an hour and a half to get to work," says the 57-year-old vice-president of an aerospace forging company. "I simply can't afford to spend time caught up in freeway traffic."


The combination is deadly because a good night's sleep now appears to be every bit as important to good health and long life as a nutritious diet and regular exercise.
"Sleep is in the top three," says Dinges. "And I think it's number one. Sleep is a biological imperative and not getting enough has health-related costs."
In April, the American Institute of Medicine issued a report confirming links between sleep deprivation and an increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack and stroke.

Sleep well to stay healthy.

Most working blokes know that the more they work, the less they sleep. What they may not know is that the more time they spend in their cars, the less they sleep. Drive time - not television viewing, computer addiction or exercise - is second only to hours on the job as a reason people don't get the shut-eye they need.

"The most deadly combination," says David F. Dinges, chief of the division of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, "would be long commute time, long work hours and living in a place where you have to drive to get anything."

Immune Response

Eleven of the men were vaccinated on the fourth of five days in which their sleep was restricted to four hours, while the others got their usual night's sleep. Ten days later, blood tests showed that those who got the shots while sleep-deprived had less than half the benefits as those who slept normally.


The immune response to the vaccine of sleep-deprived volunteers didn't catch up with that of the well-rested subjects for more than three weeks.

Adequate sleep may be essential for good health but it's every bit as hard to pull off as eating a healthy, well-balanced diet or finding an hour a day to exercise.

"The most common sleep disorder is insufficient sleep," says Dr Dennis Nicholson, director of the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Centre's Sleep Disorders Centre in Pomona, California.

"People come in and say they're sleepy. It's because they're not getting enough sleep." The connection seems like a no-brainer, but many people don't see it, he says. They want a sleep study and a pill.

Sleeplessness in America is a safety issue and a health problem. "Sleep is as important as breathing, drinking and eating," says Dr Meir Kryger, a sleep scientist at the University of Manitoba, Canada. "It's critical to health, but it takes longer to notice."
So far, Thom Stys hasn't noticed any health consequences. As he wraps up his workday, the European clients he called in the morning are long asleep. He ends his day with a round of phone calls to his Asian clients, who are just getting to their offices. Then he's back on the highway to Chino Hills, to dinner, family and a bit of work before falling instantly asleep around midnight.