Body

New York, NY (July 20, 2016)--Adding a novel monoclonal antibody therapy to traditional chemotherapy increased median survival by nearly a year in patients with advanced sarcoma, a lethal soft-tissue cancer. Findings from a multicenter clinical trial of the combination therapy, led by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian, represent the first appreciable improvement in sarcoma outcomes in decades.

The study was published online earlier this month in The Lancet.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A new study from the University of Illinois confirms a link between Pap smear screenings and a lower risk of developing cervical cancer in women over age 65. However, most American health guidelines discourage women in that age range from receiving screenings unless they have pre-existing risk factors.

The new findings are published in the journal Gynecologic Oncology.

A new scientific study has identified why colorectal cancer cells depend on a specific nutrient, and a way to starve them of it. Over one million men and women are living with colorectal cancer in the United States. The National Cancer Institute estimates 4.5% of all men and women will be diagnosed with the cancer during their lifetime, making it the third most common non-skin cancer.

Jamie Oliver's back-to-basics approach to improving our diets works, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Leeds found that men and women who attended one of the celebrity chef's eight-week Ministry of Food courses showed significant improvements in their eating habits.

The participants greatly increased their intake of fruit and vegetables, halved the amount of snacks they ate and became much more confident about their cooking skills, the nutritionists found.

A major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease 2015 (GBD 2015) study, published today in The Lancet HIV journal, reveals that although deaths from HIV/AIDS have been steadily declining from a peak in 2005, 2.5 million people worldwide became newly infected with HIV in 2015, a number that hasn't changed substantially in the past 10 years.

A scientist from the University of Exeter has helped to identify a male-killing microbe in a tropical butterfly called the African Queen, which leads to the death of all sons when a mother is infected.

An international collaboration between the University of Oxford and other European institutions has uncovered a correlation between a rare mutation in bowel cancers and a better prognosis, raising the possibility that patients with such tumours may not require chemotherapy after surgery.

DURBAN (July 19) - AIDS deaths are falling in most countries worldwide, but the rate of new infections increased in several countries over the past decade, threatening to undermine efforts to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030, a new scientific paper shows.

The study from the Global Burden of Disease collaborative network, published today in The Lancet HIV, found that 74 countries saw increases in age-standardized rates of new infections between 2005 and 2015, including Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico, and Russia.

New research from QUT shows preventable hospitalisation from diabetic foot disease is costing Australia hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Senior Research Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology and co-chair of Diabetic Foot Australia, Peter Lazzarini, said the importance of early prevention of diabetic foot disease was never more important.

Mr Lazzarini led the Australian-first study published in BMJ Open finding one in every 22 patients in our hospitals have active diabetic foot disease.

In cooperation with colleagues of the University of Rostock, the University of Luxembourg, the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the University of Eastern Finland, the Munich Scientists have now published the results in the journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers have discovered a protein that stimulates secretion of ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone produced in the stomach. When fed to mice, the protein, called soy-ghretropin, increased blood levels of ghrelin and boosted their appetite.

The findings, which are published in FEBS Letters, suggest that soy-ghretropin may be developed for elderly people or anorexic patients whose ghrelin levels and food intake are reduced.

Source: Wiley

With the rapid advance of miniaturization, data processing using electric currents faces tough challenges, some of which are insurmountable. Magnetic spin waves are a promising alternative for the transfer of information in even more compact chips. Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), as part of an international research venture, have now succeeded in generating spin waves with extremely short wavelengths in the nanometer range - a key feature for their future application.

A high dietary intake of omega 3 fatty acids, derived from oily fish, may help to lower the risk of death from bowel cancer in patients diagnosed with the disease, suggests research published online in the journal Gut.

If the findings can be reproduced in other studies, patients with bowel cancer might benefit from boosting their oily fish intake to help prolong their survival, say the researchers.

Certain questions in modern cell biology can only be answered by specifically observing the fate of individual cells. For example, researchers are interested in how stem cells develop into other cell types. Since in some cases such processes take several days to complete, the analysis with standard methods, which often measure only a single time point of the process, is not adequate.

Home cooked meals specifically designed for infants and young children, are not always better than commercially available baby foods, suggests research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Often perceived as the best option, home cooked meals are usually cheaper--unless organic ingredients are used--but they usually exceed energy density and dietary fat recommendations, the findings indicate.