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06 December 2011

What is the Internet Doing to our Brains?

En Youtube el doctor Paul Howard Jones explica los nexos de relación entre nuestro cerebro y la tecnología aplicada a Internet



American Society of Clinical Oncology issues annual report on progress against cancer

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has released Clinical Cancer Advances 2011: ASCO's Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer, an independent review of the advances in cancer research that have had the greatest impact on patient care this year. The report also identifies the most promising trends in oncology and provides insights from experts on where the future of cancer care is heading. "We've made significant strides in clinical cancer research over the past year and this report adds renewed hope for patients," said Nicholas J. Vogelzang, MD, Co-Executive Editor of the report. "More personalized treatment approaches and advances in early detection are helping patients live longer, healthier lives. But we must improve the nation's clinical research system and expand access to quality cancer care to accelerate the pace of progress."
This year's top research advances demonstrate new therapies for reducing cancer recurrence, progress made against hard-to-treat cancers, and improvements in cancer prevention and screening. The report also highlights several new drug approvals that bring smarter, more effective therapies to specific genetic subgroups of patients with cancer. The top five advances selected by the editors are:
A Phase III study finding that vemurafenib (Zelboraf), which targets a common mutation in melanoma in a gene called BRAF, improved overall survival in patients with advanced melanoma when compared to standard chemotherapy
A large national screening trial of more than 50,000 current and former heavy smokers that found three annual low-dose computed tomography (CT) scans reduced the death rate from lung cancer by 20 percent compared to those who were screened with three annual chest X-rays
FDA approvals on therapies for two hard-to-treat cancers:
Crizotinib (Xalkori) was approved for patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer who harbor a specific type of alteration in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene based on the results from two Phase II studies: one study demonstrated that 50 percent of patients experienced complete or partial tumor shrinkage for a median of 10 months and a second study found a 61 percent objective response rate lasting a median of 12 months
Ipilimumab (Yervoy) -- an immune therapy that activates the immune system's T cells -- was approved for patients with previously untreated metastatic melanoma based on the results of a Phase III trial showing that the drug, combined with the standard chemotherapy drug dacarbazine, improved overall survival by two months
The first conclusive evidence that an aromatase inhibitor reduced the risk of a first breast cancer, making exemestane (Aromasin) a preventative treatment option for postmenopausal women who are at high risk for the disease
Selected by an 18-person editorial board of prominent oncologists, the report highlights a total of 54 advances in clinical oncology over the past year and covers the full scope of patient care, including cancer disparities, advanced cancer care and survivor care.
Clinical Cancer Advances 2011 also features a "Year in Review" section, which describes key cancer policy developments and ASCO policy initiatives from the past year that are likely to influence cancer care over the coming years. Some of the important topics covered in this section include:
ASCO's recommendations for re-vitalizing U.S. clinical cancer research for the molecular era, captured in the new report, Accelerating Progress Against Cancer: ASCO's Blueprint for Transforming Clinical and Translational Cancer Research
Efforts to address the growing problem of oncology drug shortages
The potential impact of healthcare reform in addressing cancer disparities
To download a full copy of the Clinical Cancer Advances 2011 report, visit: http://www.cancer.net/cca



*Source: American Society of Clinical Oncology

Lanzan en Inglaterra un videojuego dirigido por la orina

La sociedad actual es adicta a las nuevas tecnologías y cada día aparecen en el mercado nuevos gadgets dirigidos a los usos más variados. En este sentido, las compañías de videojuegos suelen destacar entre las más originales a la hora de innovar y aportar nuevas ideas.
La compañía británica Captive Media acaba de dar un paso adelante, en cuanto a innovación se refiere, con su último invento. Se trata de un videojuego activado con la orina que se situará en los urinarios de bares y discotecas. En palabras de los ingenieros que han llevado a cabo el proyecto, Mark Melford y Gordon MacSween, el invento aprovecha "los 55 segundos con más potencial de mercado", que es el tiempo medio que un hombre adulto tarda en realizar sus necesidades.
El sistema consiste en unos sensores colocados en la paredes del urinario sensibles a la presión y dirección de la orina. Todo ello conectado a una pantalla LCD de 12 pulgadas que proyecta un videojuego, el cual se dirige durante la micción.
Según Captive Media es "el primer sistema interactivo de juego dirigido por la orina del mundo". Es precisamente la interactividad uno de los aspectos más interesantes que ofrece el sistema. Tras jugar una partida en uno de estos urinarios, el usuario tiene la posibilidad de enviar su puntuación a Twitter. Las mejores puntuaciones conformarán un ranking que podrá consultarse online y que se irá actualizando al instante.
Los primeros urinarios dotados con el original videojuego ya están colocados en el bar The Exhibit de Londres y se espera que en 2012 se instalarán en varios bares de todo el Reino Unido.

A new study suggests that a neurotransmitter might improve the treatment of cancer

Doses of a neurotransmitter might offer a way to boost the effectiveness ofanticancer drugs and radiation therapy, according to a new study led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. Using animal models of human breast and prostate cancers, the researchers found that injections of the neurotransmitter dopamine can improve blood flow to tumors and improve delivery of an anticancer drug, doubling the amount of the drug in tumors and increasing its effectiveness. The increasedblood flow also raised tumor oxygen levels, a condition that typically improves the effectiveness of both chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
The study also found that dopamine plays an important role in maintaining the structure of normal blood vessels, and that it does this by working through the D2 dopamine receptor, which is present in normal blood-vessel cells called endothelial cells and pericytes. Dopamine was absent in tumor blood-vessel cells.
The findings are published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Our study indicates a use for dopamine in the treatment of cancer and perhaps other disorders in which normalizing abnormal and dysfunctional blood vessels might improve therapeutic responses," says principal investigator Dr. Sujit Basu, associate professor of pathology and a researcher in the OSUCCC -- James Experimental Therapeutics Program.
"Since dopamine and related agents are already used in the clinic for other disorders, these comparatively inexpensive drugs might be applied to the treatment of cancer to increase the therapeutic responses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy," he says.
The blood vessels that develop inside tumors are structurally abnormal, chaotic and leaky and do a poor job of supplying blood to the tumor, Basu notes. This hinders the delivery of chemotherapeutic agents, and it leaves tumors oxygen deprived. This oxygen deprivation makes tumor cells resistant to chemotherapy and radiation.
Basu and his colleagues found that the dopamine treatment normalizes the structure of abnormal tumor blood vessels, indicating an important role for a neurotransmitter in the remodeling of blood vessels. Other key findings include the following:
The tumor tissue used in the study showed the absence of dopamine.
After dopamine treatment, tumor blood vessels in both cases resembled normal vessels in regard to leakiness and architecture. Pretreatment with a dopamine receptor antagonist negated this effect.
Subcutaneous human colon tumors in mice treated with dopamine and the chemotherapeutic drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) accumulated twice the amount of 5-FU as tumors in mice treated with the drug only, and the tumors were less than one-third the size of tumors in mice treated with 5-FU only.
"Overall, our findings suggest that the normalization of tumor blood vessels using the neurotransmitter dopamine might be an important approach for improving therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of cancer patients," Basu says.
Funding from the National Cancer Institute, U.S. Department of Defense Grant mainly supported this research; a grant from the American Heart Association partially supported one of the investigators.

**Source: Ohio State University Medical Center

La UE crea un comité para estudiar las enfermedades raras en red

Las enfermedades raras son las que afectan a menos de cinco personas por cada 100.000 habitantes. Y en sanidad, el número también hace la fuerza. La UE, consciente de ello, ha constituido un comité de 17 Estados miembros (entre ellos, España), los más activos y con más medios, para trabajar en redes de investigación en estas patologías, que además siempre son crónicas.
Con ello se pretende paliar uno de los aspectos negativos de estas dolencias. No se trata solo de que muchas tengan causas genéticas (el 80% de ellas) poco estudiadas o desconocidas, sino que la falta de una masa crítica de pacientes actúa en su contra: cuesta hacer ensayos, no interesan a los laboratorios y los médicos no están acostumbrados a verlas, por lo que las diagnostican tarde. Y aquí es donde un trabajo en red puede aportar soluciones.
"Se habla de que se creen centros de investigación por toda Europa, tal vez unos más especializados en unas enfermedades y otros en procesos diferentes. Y que siempre toda esa información estuviese circulando para favorecer a todos, sin fronteras. Otro tanto con los hospitales o universidades, incluso con la industria farmacéutica cuando colabora con nosotros en el tema de medicamentos huérfanos", afirmó Paola Testori-Goggi, directora de la Comisión de Enfermedades Raras en la UE.

-Sin abordaje
En la literatura médica universal se han descrito de 6.000 a 7.000 enfermedades raras y se estima entre 4.000 y 5.000 el número de ellas que carecen de abordaje terapéutico específico y curativo, salvo de tratamiento sintomático para paliar algunos síntomas. Se calcula que 30 millones de europeos están afectados por todo el conjunto de las enfermedades raras, considerando que el número máximo admitido para cada una de ellas sería inferior a 185.000 pacientes. En España esta última cifra se reduciría a 20.000.
España lidera uno de los proyectos de investigación más destacados, ENERCA 3. Para su director, Juan Luis Vives, jefe de Hematología del hospital Clínico de Barcelona, "el ENERCA 3 se encuentra en su tercera fase, después de que los 1 y 2 se desarrollaran entre 2002 y 2008". Está centrado en el estudio de anemias raras, como la talasemia, y participan 18 países y 90 expertos.

**Publicado en "EL PAIS"p

Young women may reduce heart disease risk eating fish with omega 3 fatty acids

Young women may reduce their risk of developing cardiovascular disease simply by eating more fish rich in omega-3 fatty acids, researchers reported in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. In the first population-based study in women of childbearing age, those who rarely or never ate fish had 50 percent more cardiovascular problems over eight years than those who ate fish regularly. Compared to women who ate fish high in omega-3 weekly, the risk was 90 percent higher for those who rarely or never ate fish.
Researchers used a Danish nationwide population based pregnancy cohort to examine whether or not eating more fish might reduce cardiovascular disease risk in the young women.
About 49,000 women, 15-49 years old, median age of just under 30 years in early pregnancy -- were interviewed by telephone or answered food frequency questionnaires about how much, what types and how often they ate fish, as well as lifestyle and family history questions.
Researchers recorded 577 cardiovascular events during the eight-year period, including five cardiovascular deaths in women without any prior diagnosis of the disease. In all, 328 events were due to hypertensive disease, 146 from cerebrovascular disease, and 103 from ischemic heart disease.
Inpatient and outpatient admission for cardiovascular disease was much more common among women who reported eating little or no fish. In three different assessments over a 30-week period, women who never ate fish had a three-fold higher disease risk compared to women who ate fish every week.
"To our knowledge this is the first study of this size to focus exclusively on women of childbearing age," said Marin Strøm, Ph.D., lead researcher and post doctoral fellow at the Centre for Fetal Programming, at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark. "The biggest challenge in getting health messages like this across to younger populations is that usually the benefits may not be evident for 30 or 40 years, but our study shows this is not the case. We saw a strong association with cardiovascular disease in the women who were still in their late 30's."
Fish oil contains long chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are believed to protect against heart and vascular disease. Few women in the study took fish oil supplements, so these were excluded from the analyses and the results were based on the dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acids, not intake from supplements.
Most previous studies that found cardiovascular benefits of omega-3 fatty acids have focused on men, according to Strøm.
"Men and women share many cardiovascular risk factors, but some studies have shown that there might also be gender differences. For example, inflammation, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels may have a more negative influence among women," Strom said.
Even women who ate fish only a couple of times a month benefitted. "Women who eat fish should find the results encouraging, but it is important to emphasize that to obtain the greatest benefit from fish and fish oils, women should follow the dietary recommendations to eat fish as a main meal at least twice a week," she said.
The most common fish consumed by women in the study were cod, salmon, herring, and mackerel.
"Our study shows that for younger women, eating fish is very important for overall health, and even though we found cardio-protective effects at relatively modest dietary levels, higher levels may yield additional benefits," Strøm said.

**Source: American Heart Association

El humo ambiental es especialmente perjudicial durante la infancia



Un 42% de los niños está expuesto diaria u ocasionalmente al tabaco, debido a que hasta un 11% de las madres y un 26% de los padres fuma en el domicilio. Así lo muestra un estudio elaborado por investigadores portugueses y del que se hace eco en España la Sociedad Española de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica (SEPAR).
La investigación, publicada en el último número de la revista 'Prevención del Tabaquismo', demuestra que un número significativo de niños siguen expuestos al humo en su hogar, pese a la evidencia de que el humo ambiental del tabaco es perjudicial para la salud en todas las fases de la vida, y especialmente en la infancia.
Los resultados de este estudio portugués revelan que un 1% de las madres y el 37% de los padres son fumadores diarios. Y, al menos, el 14% relata que una de las personas con las que convive (padre, madre, hermano u otro) fuma diariamente en casa, mientras que el 28% que lo hace ocasionalmente.
"El consumo de tabaco en el domicilio es un factor de riesgo para que los hijos sean fumadores posteriormente", señala el coordinador del Área de Tabaquismo de SEPAR, el doctor Carlos Jiménez, quien recuerda que la exposición pasiva provoca tos, ronquera, disnea, mayor riesgo de infecciones agudas (bronquitis y neumonía) e infecciones respiratorias de repetición, como inducción y exacerbación de asma.
"Es fundamental mantener la labor divulgadora sobre los daños del tabaco, la necesidad de continuar las campañas de sensibilización social y de impulsar políticas deshabituación tabáquica dado que las cifras de prevalencia de EPOC y cáncer de pulmón son elevadas y siguen creciendo", añade.
Aunque sólo un 1,7% de los alumnos tiene pensado fumar en un futuro, eso demuestra que aún no se ha ganado la batalla al tabaco, ya que la media de edad de los encuestados es de 9,14 años, una edad muy precoz para pensar en fumar.
Según datos de la SEPAR, los niños empiezan a fumar a los 13 años y a los 14 lo hacen de forma habitual. Por este motivo, su presidente, el doctor Juan Ruiz Manzano, advierte de que "es importante concienciar a los adultos sobre los perjuicios del tabaco y disuadir a los niños de un consumo precoz".
El Foro Autonómico de Tabaquismo que lidera la Sociedad Española de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica reunió a expertos neumólogos de las todas las sociedades científicas autonómicas el pasado 26 de noviembre para analizar la situación actual de la prevención y tratamiento del tabaquismo en España. Allí, se mostraron a favor de seguir trabajando en la misma dirección y que cualquier flexibilización de la ley ahora podría suponer un retroceso.
"Desde SEPAR y el Foro Autonómico del Tabaquismo siempre estaremos dispuestos a apoyar cualquier iniciativa en este sentido y nos ponemos a disposición de la nueva Administración para seguir colaborando en la prevención y tratamiento del tabaquismo", concluye su presidente.






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