(Press-News.org) Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden are now launching a plan to effectively treat psoriasis.
An estimated 125 million people worldwide suffer from the difficult to treat disease, which manifests itself in scaly and often itchy patches on the skin. The reason is that cells divide without restraint as new blood vessels form in the deeper layers of the skin.
An important component is the psoriasin protein (S100A7), which are abundant in psoriasis-affected skin but rarely in normal skin. The same protein is also assumed to be a factor in the development of breast cancer. The research team led by associate professor Charlotta Enerbäck have now illustrated that, in a study on cultured skin cells, the interaction between psoriasin, oxygen free radicals and vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF) leads to significantly increased cell division and growth of new blood vessels (angiogenesis). When we blocked the formation of psoriasin, the expression of VEGF also decreased.
Published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, the results open new possibilities for the effective treatment of this crippling disease.
"We want to examine the ability of psoriasin as a target for therapy. By inhibiting psoriasin, we believe we can reduce vascular formation and thus the proliferation of the disease's magnitude and intensity," says Charlotta Enerbäck.
Previous studies in mice have shown that angiogenesis inhibitors reduce not only neovascularization but also inflammation and excessive cell division. Attempts to inhibit the growth factor VEGF have resulted in unwanted side effects because it exists in normal tissue where it contributes to wound healing.
"Since psoriasin expresses itself specifically only in the diseased psoriatic skin, we expect that inhibitors against this are highly selective and effective against the disease, and that the risk for side effects is minimal," says Charlotta Enerbäck.
Presently, palliative treatments with vitamin D, cortisone, light and low doses of chemotherapy are used. More recently, some "biological", antibody-based drugs arrived on the market, however they are very expensive and not free from side effects.
INFORMATION:
Article: Psoriasin (S100A7) Increases the Expression of ROS and VEGF and Acts through RAGE to Promote Endothelial Cell Proliferation by Emman Shubbar, Jenny Vegfors, Mary Carlström, Stina Petersson and Charlotta Enerbäck. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment online 21 December 2011.
END
Van Trader, leading website in the UK for the purchase and sale of used vans, launched a competition in collaboration with Talksport Radio, 1089/1053am, giving fans and listeners the chance to win a new van.
The competition, sponsored by the sister company of the network of online car dealers offer new and used cars, Auto Trader, is an airborne "Van in the Van" questionnaire on the basis of famous football players with the name of ... Van. The listener who knows their Van stuff how to win Van Nistelrooy Van Persie will come out with a Citroen Berlingo of more ...
Boston, MA – Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have successfully tested a controllable endoscopic capsule, inspired by science fiction, that has the ability to "swim" through the body and could provide clinicians with unprecedented control when photographing the inside of the human body.
The capsule is designed to be swallowed like a pill and can be equipped with a camera. Once inside the patient's digestive track, a doctor can "steer" the capsule through the body using an MRI machine, photograph specific areas of interest, and view those pictures wirelessly.
With ...
When nerve cells communicate with one another, specialized receptor molecules on their surfaces play a central role in relaying signals between them. A collaborative venture involving teams of chemists based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and the University of California in Berkeley has now succeeded in converting an intrinsically "blind" receptor molecule into a photoreceptor. They achieved this feat by using molecular genetic techniques to attach what amounts to a light-controlled chemical "switch" to a macromolecular receptor that is normally activated ...
OzeVision Web Hosting snatches the distinction of ranking 10th amongst the "Top 25 Most Poplar" web hosting companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" by WebHostDir.com. The awards page can be viewed at:
http://ozevision.com/web_hosting/top-25-most-popular-webhosting-awards.html
WebHostDir.com appraise the 25 most liked companies in the category "Australian Web Hosting Directory" on monthly basis. The "25 Most Popular List" is based on the number of online votes a webhost company receives and the number of ...
EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Eastern view of parenting, as defined by best-selling author and self-described "tiger mother" Amy Chua, is that children should be pushed to excel at all costs. Parents needn't worry about their happiness, she argues, only their success.
But now a Michigan State University scholar is refuting that theory.
In her research, Desiree Baolian Qin – who, like Chua, is a Chinese mother – found that high-achieving Chinese students were more depressed and anxious than their white counterparts. And contrary to the tiger mother philosophy, Qin said, ...
MadCap Software, Inc., the leader in multi-channel content authoring and a showcase company for Microsoft Visual Studio and Microsoft XPS, today announced that it has published a new case study on athenahealth, Inc. Using the MadCap technical communications suite, the company's current technical writing team is able to publish new versions of its print and online documentation each month, even as the number of topics has tripled from 15 to 45.
More than 29,000 medical providers nationwide take advantage of the athenahealth cloud-based, practice management, electronic ...
CLEVELAND -- Bladder cancer, most frequently caused by smoking and exposure to carcinogens in the workplace, is one of the top 10 most common forms of cancer in men
and women in the U.S. More than 70 percent of bladder cancers are diagnosed in stage T1 or less and have not invaded the muscle layer. At these early stages, standard treatment is surgery (transurethral resection) and the burning away of tumors with high energy electricity (fulguration). Many patients also may receive subsequent intravesical chemotherapy because there is often a high-risk for cancer recurrence. ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- A study from Rhode Island Hospital has found that collaborative
behavioral management may be effective in reducing substance abuse among convicted marijuana users who are paroled. The findings have important implications for the management of a substantial proportion of the U.S. community correctional population. The study is published in Addiction and is available online in advance of print.
In the U.S., over 700,000 inmates leave prisons each year and over two-thirds of those inmates have a drug problem. The return of these inmates to the community ...
A team of researchers led by the University of Colorado Boulder has used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of construction -- the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.
In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble spied five small galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch and very young, living just 600 million years after the universe's birth in the Big Bang. One light-year is about 6 trillion miles.
Galaxy clusters ...
Dr. Matt DiDuro of Health Choice Chiropractic Center, Alpharetta chiropractic, further informs patients of valuable chiropractic health care topics via his new practice blog. Whether they are current patients, or simply searching for a chiropractor in Alpharetta and surrounding areas, Dr. DiDuro is excited to offer increased chiropractic knowledge through his practice blog.
"With the chiropractic industry advancing, we recognize the importance of keeping our patients and visitors up-to-date with all of the new and exciting things taking place at our practice. With ...
