An Indian herbal remedy could one day be used to help fight pancreatic cancer, scientists hope.
A team at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute found extracts of triphala slowed the growth of human pancreatic tumours grafted onto mice.
The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, offer hope that one day a treatment might be developed.
But experts have warned the research is still at a very early stage.
The New Orleans Hornets announced Friday that injured forward Desmond Mason will have surgery to repair a deviated septum.
Mason will miss the remainder of the regular season thanks to the surgery. Should the Hornets make the playoffs, the team will re-evaluate his status, according to reports from the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Going into Friday’s game against Phoenix, the Hornets were a game out of the final playoff spot in the Western Conference.
What is a deviated septum? Click here.
Many baseball players, coaches and fans are convinced that bats made of aluminum or other metals outperform traditional wooden bats, sending balls screaming out of the park.
But do these hi-tech bats work so well that they pose a health hazard, crushing balls with such force that they can become lethal projectiles?
New York City believes so. Its City Council last month passed a ban against bats made from metal for use in high school games, with enough votes to defeat a veto by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Other governments, large and small, across the country are considering similar measures during April, National Youth Sports Safety Month.
“The kids don’t have a second to react to those balls anymore,” said Debbie Patch, of Miles City, Mont., who testified before the New York City Council about the death of her 18-year-old son, Brandon, a pitcher who was struck in the head by a ball hit by a metal bat. “The companies promote it that way. They promote it as, ‘Choose your weapon,’ and that’s what they are.”
But, the co-author of one of the studies cited to argue the deadly potential of metal bats says New York City may have acted in haste.
“To my knowledge, there are no published, peer-reviewed articles that show there is an increased incidence of injury from the use of aluminum bats,” said Richard M. Greenwald, executive director of the National Institute for Sports Science and Safety, and an adjunct associate professor of engineering at Dartmouth College.
The cause of high blood pressure may lie within the brain, rather than with problems relating to the heart, kidneys or blood vessels, research suggests.
Scientists at Bristol University say the findings could lead to new ways of treating the condition, which affects about one in five Britons.
The scientists isolated a protein, JAM-1, which appeared to trap white blood cells, obstructing blood flow.
This can cause inflammation and result in poor oxygen supply to the brain.
Scientists have come closer to working out what makes breast cancer deadly.
Four genes have been found to work together to drive the spread of breast cancer to the lungs.
Turning off all four genes at once dramatically reduces the ability of breast tumours to spread - or metastasise - a study in mice showed.
Reporting the results in Nature, the US team said they were planning clinical trials of drugs known to target two of the genes in the set.
The launch of new drugs and an increase in the number of people diagnosed with HIV is set to make AIDS medicine a $10.6 billion market by 2015, according to a report on Thursday.
Drugmakers may be under pressure to cut prices in the developing world but selling HIV drugs in the West remains a lucrative and fast-growing business.
Independent market research firm Datamonitor said the HIV/AIDS market was set to undergo significant changes over the next 10 years as drugs that work through novel mechanisms and next-generation versions of existing drugs are launched.
A combination of acupuncture and massage may help ease pain and depression symptoms after cancer surgery, a new study suggests.
Acupuncture has been shown in many studies to ease pain, and there’s growing evidence that it helps quell post-surgery nausea. Massage, meanwhile, has been shown in certain studies to aid cancer patients’ anxiety.
Until now, however, no studies have tried combining the two therapies for people undergoing cancer surgery — a physically and emotionally difficult process.
Brazilian and US scientists have used transfusions of patients’ own stem cells to reverse type 1 diabetes.
People with the condition are known as insulin-dependent, and require regular shots of the hormone.
But 14 out of 15 young people newly diagnosed with the condition no longer needed injections - sometimes for years - following the stem cell treatment.
However, experts warned the Journal of the American Medical Association study was preliminary and inconclusive.
Type 1 diabetes is caused by the patient’s own immune system destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
The presence of fat in the stomach may override the anti-cancer effects of vitamin C, research suggests.
In laboratory experiments, a team at the University of Glasgow simulated what happens in the human stomach.
They found vitamin C (ascorbic acid) mopped up potential cancer-causing compounds that are made when saliva and food mixes with stomach acid.
But when they added fat to the mix, the ascorbic acid could no longer convert the hazardous compounds into safe ones.
The scientists say their findings show how diet might be linked to certain stomach cancers.
Swimming teachers and other people who spend a lot of time near chlorinated pools face an increased risk of breathing problems, Dutch researchers report.
Chlorine reacts with substances such as urine and sweat to create byproducts that can irritate the respiratory tract, most importantly chloramines, explain Dr. Jose Jacobs of the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands and colleagues in a report in the European Respiratory Journal.
The research team surveyed 624 swimming pool employees and sampled air at six swimming pools. They measured trichloramine levels at all 38 pools included in the study to estimate long-term exposure among employees. Trichloramines are the most volatile type of chloramine, and are known to irritate the eyes and upper respiratory tract.
Americans who don’t have health insurance may have an increased risk of stroke.
So says a new study in the April issue of the Journal of the Society of General Internal Medicine.
People without health insurance are more likely to forego routine physical exams and to be unaware of cardiovascular disease risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels, the researchers said.
“Hypertension is the most powerful risk factor for stroke, and, in our study, we found that hypertension was significantly less likely to be well controlled in those lacking insurance,” study lead author Dr. Angela Fowler-Brown said in a prepared statement. She is a physician in the division of general medicine and primary care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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