(Press-News.org) Vienna, Austria - 05 December 2014: Austrian researchers have shown that a new technique which wraps chemotherapy drugs in a fatty cover (called a liposome) reduces heart damage, in a study presented today at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014 by Professor Jutta Bergler-Klein and Professor Mariann Gyöngyösi from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.
EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna.
Professor Bergler-Klein said: "Cancer survival has greatly improved, especially in breast cancer and lymphomas. But many chemotherapies, in particular anthracyclines, cause cardiac side effects that can lead to cardiomyopathy and severe heart failure. This is a frequent problem and when we see these patients it's terrible, for example a breast cancer patient who is developing heart failure. Of course we cannot ask oncologists to stop the chemotherapy because without it the patient will die."
She added: "Cardiotoxicity can occur acutely or up to 30 years after chemotherapy and is the second most common cause of death in cancer patients, after secondary malignancy in childhood cancer survivors. Risk increases with more chemotherapy or when radiation is also given. That is why it's so important to use a regimen that has as few cardiac side effects as possible."
Professor Bergler-Klein continued: "Liposomal encapsulation is a new technique which wraps the chemotherapy drug in a fatty cover called a liposome. More of the drug reaches the cancer cells because there is less degradation and there are fewer side effects on healthy cells because the fat cover acts as a barrier. The drug stays in the bloodstream longer, allowing higher cumulative doses to be given. We tested whether non-pegylated liposome encapsulation of the anthracycline doxorubicin (called Myocet) could decrease its cardiotoxicity compared to conventional doxorubicin or epirubicin, another anthracycline."
The study included 24 pigs that were randomised to receive the human dose-equivalent of either Myocet, conventional doxorubicin, or epirubicin in 3 cycles. Cardiac function was assessed by echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at baseline and follow up (after about 3 months). Laboratory follow up included haematology, renal function, and measurement of the cardiac enzymes troponin and BNP. The epirubicin group was excluded from the final analyses because of low survival levels.
Professor Bergler-Klein said: "The dose, imaging methodology and blood parameters simulate the monitoring that patients on this treatment would receive and produces valuable translational data."
The researchers found that the group receiving Myocet had better diastolic and systolic function in the left and right ventricles, compared to conventional doxorubicin. The Myocet group also had less fibrosis development in the myocardium as shown by MRI and histology staining.
Professor Bergler-Klein said: "Our study shows that doxorubicin encapsulated in a liposome had fewer cardiac side effects than doxorubicin given in the conventional way. We did find cardiac toxicity in the Myocet group as well, despite the fact that the pigs were young, healthy, and received anthracyclines for only a short period. This emphasises how important it is for all cancer patients taking anthracyclines to receive cardiac monitoring using echocardiography and biomarkers, and MRI where indicated."
She added: "Many patients who recover after chemotherapy have asymptomatic heart damage which can become symptomatic as they get older. When heart problems are picked up early patients can be given preventive treatment including ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers or beta blockers to prevent the progression to overt heart failure."
The researchers are conducting gene expression profiling on the histology samples which may explain the better outcome and cardiac function after Myocet therapy. They have found differences in the expression of the genes that control energy use and the metabolic state, with better regulation in the Myocet group.
Professor Bergler-Klein concluded: "Anthracyclines are a cornerstone of oncology treatment but the more cycles needed to fight cancer, the more cardiotoxic side effects the patient will have. We have shown that the cardiotoxicity can be reduced with liposomal encapsulation. Cardiac monitoring of all patients receiving anthracyclines is essential to detect early deterioration of the heart and give preventive treatment."
INFORMATION:
(BOSTON) -- Stem cells offer great potential in biomedical engineering due to their pluripotency, which is the ability to multiply indefinitely and also to differentiate and develop into any kind of the hundreds of different cells and bodily tissues. But the precise complexity of how stem cell development is regulated throughout states of cellular change has been difficult to pinpoint until now.
By using powerful new single-cell genetic profiling techniques, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston Children's Hospital have uncovered ...
Is the human immune system similar to the weather, a seemingly random yet dynamical system that can be modeled based on past conditions to predict future states? Scientists at VCU Massey Cancer Center's award-winning Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) Program believe it is, and they recently published several studies that support the possibility of using next-generation DNA sequencing and mathematical modeling to not only understand the variability observed in clinical outcomes of stem cell transplantation, but also to provide a theoretical framework to make transplantation a ...
On Dec. 4, 2014, the sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 1:25 p.m. EST. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.
To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, ...
Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Super Typhoon Hagupit to reach peak intensity today, Dec. 4, and although expected to weaken, will remain a Category 4 typhoon when it approaches the east central Philippines. NASA's Terra satellite and NASA/JAXA's GPM and TRMM satellites have been providing forecasters with valuable data on the storm. Computer models have varied on their track for the storm based on the strength of an upper-level system, so satellite data is extremely valuable in helping determine where Hagupit will move.
On Dec. 3, typhoon Hagupit ...
(Chapel Hill, N.C. - Dec 4, 2014) - Jessica Zègre-Hemsey, a cardiac monitoring expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her colleagues at the University of California San Francisco, revealed more than 2.5 million alarms were triggered on bedside monitors in a single month - the first figure ever reported from a real-world hospital setting.
Alarm fatigue occurs when nurses and other clinicians are exposed to a high number of physiological alarms generated by modern monitoring systems. In turn, alarms are ignored and critical alarms are missed ...
Petaluma, CA - Just like us, grasslands need rest to improve their health. A study just published by Point Blue Conservation Science in the journal Ecological Restoration shows a 72 percent increase in where native perennial grasses were found on a coastal California ranch when cattle grazing was changed to give the land more time to rest.
Over the last 300 years, nonnative annual grasses have invaded California's grasslands. These exotic grasses complete their lifecycle in one year and out-compete the native perennial grasses (grasses that live for multiple years). ...
WASHINGTON - Fear of police, language barriers, lack of knowledge of cardiac arrest symptoms and financial concerns prevent Latinos - particularly those of lower socioeconomic status - from seeking emergency medical help and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), according to a study published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Barriers to Calling 911 and Learning and Performing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) for Residents of Primarily Latino, High-Risk Neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado").
"Residents of low-income, minority neighborhoods ...
WHAT:
Two medical imaging techniques, called positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT), could be used in combination as a biomarker to predict the effectiveness of antibiotic drug regimens being tested to treat tuberculosis (TB) patients, according to researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. With multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) on the rise worldwide, new biomarkers are needed to determine whether a particular TB ...
El Niño, the abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, is a well-studied tropical climate phenomenon that occurs every few years. It has major impacts on society and Earth's climate - inducing intense droughts and floods in multiple regions of the globe. Further, scientists have observed that El Niño greatly influences the yearly variations of tropical cyclones (a general term which includes hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones) in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. However, there is a mismatch in both timing and location between this climate ...
While Ebola has attracted much of the world's attention recently, a severe HIV epidemic rages on around the world and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Globally, more than 34 million people are infected with HIV; in sub-Saharan Africa alone, 3 million new infections occur annually.
In an attempt to stop the spread of HIV, governments in the region are considering providing antiretroviral drugs to people who do not have the virus but are at risk for becoming infected. Such drugs are known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
Although the conventional strategy -- ...
