A small study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers found that online virtual communities may be an effective way to train patients in meditation and other mind/body techniques. The ability to learn and practice approaches that elicit the relaxation response – a state of deep rest that has been shown to alleviate stress-related symptoms – in a virtual environment could help surmount several barriers that can restrict participation. "Our finding that a medical intervention – in this case teaching a mind/body approach that includes the relaxation response ...

The first typhoon of the northern hemisphere 2012 typhoon season is headed for landfall in Vietnam. NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites have been providing forecasters with valuable data on Typhoon Pakhar, that includes rainfall rates, cloud extent and temperature. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite flew almost directly over Pakhar when it was a newly formed tropical storm in the South China Sea on March 29, 2012 at 1122 UTC/4:22 p.m. Asia local time (or 7:22 a.m. EDT). The intensifying storm had wind speeds of about 45 knots (~52 mph/~83 kph) and was ...

Stir lots of small particles into water, and the resulting thick mixture appears highly viscous. When this dense suspension slips through a nozzle and forms a droplet, however, its behavior momentarily reveals a decidedly non-viscous side. University of Chicago physicists recorded this surprising behavior in laboratory experiments using high-speed photography that can capture action taking place in one hundred-thousandths of a second or less. UChicago graduate student Marc Miskin and Heinrich Jaeger, the William J. Friedman and Alicia Townsend Friedman Professor in Physics, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and CHICAGO, Ill. -- Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new treatments for prostate cancer, today announced that its lead candidate galeterone (TOK-001) was well-tolerated with minimal side effects and demonstrated efficacy in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) in a Phase 1 study. The data will be presented in an oral presentation titled, "ARMOR1: Safety of galeterone (TOK-001) in a Phase 1 clinical trial in chemotherapy naïve patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC)," abstract ...

CHICAGO — Patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer had limited side effects and in many cases a drop in prostate-specific antigen expression with galeterone (TOK-001), a small-molecule oral drug, according to phase I data presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held here March 31 - April 4. Castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) is an advanced form of prostate cancer that occurs when the disease progresses after treatment with androgen deprivation therapy. Galeterone works against CRPC by blocking the androgen receptor, reducing levels of the ligand ...

CHICAGO — The use of metformin in men with prostate cancer before prostatectomy helped to reduce certain metabolic parameters and slow the growth rate of the cancer, according to the results of a phase II study. Anthony M. Joshua, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., staff medical oncologist at the Princess Margaret Hospital, University Health Network in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, presented the data at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held here March 31 - April 4. Metformin is the most commonly prescribed medication for diabetes. Prior laboratory research has suggested that metformin may ...

CHICAGO — The antiangiogenic drug pazopanib has demonstrated clinically meaningful activity in patients with refractory urothelial cancer, according to results presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held here March 31 - April 4. The results also revealed that increases in interleukin-8 levels early after treatment with pazopanib may predict a lack of tumor response to the therapy. "Historically, prognosis of patients with relapsed or refractory urothelial cancer is quite dismal," said Andrea Necchi, M.D., faculty member in the department of medicine at Fondazione ...

Today, the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) publish their jointly developed European Union Standards for Tuberculosis Care (ESTC). The 21 patient-centred standards aim to guide clinicians and public health workers to ensure optimal diagnosis, treatment and prevention of tuberculosis (TB) in Europe – with nearly 74,000 reported TB cases in the EU/EEA in 2010 clearly showing that TB remains a public health challenge across the region. The new EU-specific guidelines were developed by a panel of 30 experts ...

TORONTO -- Low oxygen levels in tumors can be used to predict cancer recurrence in men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer even before they receive radiation therapy. The clinical research, led by radiation oncologists at the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) Cancer Program, University Health Network (UHN) is published online today in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research (doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-11-2711). "We've not only shown that men do worse if they have low oxygen levels (hypoxia) in their prostate cancer, but ...

CHICAGO - A pair of targeted therapies shrank tumors in some patients with treatment-resistant Ewing's sarcoma or desmoplastic small-round-cell tumors, according to research led by investigators from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012. Five of 17 Ewing's sarcoma patients responded to the combination, with two achieving complete responses, one for 27 weeks. The researchers noted that the ability to manage patients' treatment-related side effects is vital to maintaining the therapy and slowing disease progression. ...

Baltimore, MD – March 31, 2012. Metformin, a drug widely used to treat Type II diabetes, may help to prevent primary liver cancer, researchers at the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Cancer Center report in the April 2012 issue of Cancer Prevention Research. Primary liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma, is an often-deadly form of cancer that is on the rise worldwide and is the fastest-growing cause of cancer-related deaths among American men. Patients with Type II diabetes have a two- to three-fold increased relative risk of developing primary ...

London -- The latest research developments to reprogram scar tissue resulting from myocardial infarction (MI) into viable heart muscle cells, were presented at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2012 meeting, held 30 March to 1 April at the South Kensington Campus of Imperial College in London. In a keynote lecture Dr Deepak Srivastava outlined his approach that has been described as a "game changer" with the potential to revolutionise treatment of MI. For the first time at the FCVB meeting, Srivastava presented the results of his latest studies using ...

A second mutation found in the tumors of patients with BRAF-mutated metastatic melanoma does not contribute to resistance to BRAF inhibitor drugs, a finding that runs counter to what scientists expected to be true. The study by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that patients with the mutations in both the MEK1 and BRAF genes respond as well to the inhibitors as patients with the BRAF mutation alone. Another surprising finding is that the MEK1 and BRAF mutations exist together in these patients, despite the fact that they drive ...

BOSTON -- In a finding that may challenge popular notions of body fat and health, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have shown how fat cells can protect the body against diabetes. The results may lead to a new therapeutic strategy for preventing and treating type 2 diabetes and obesity-related metabolic diseases, the authors say. In the last decade, several research groups have shown that fat cells in people play a major role in controlling healthy blood sugar and insulin levels throughout the body. To do this crucial job, fat cells need a small ...

Cardiomyopathy comprises a deterioration of the heart muscle that affects the organ's ability to efficiently pump blood through the body. Previously researchers have tied forms of the disease to the alternative splicing of titin, a giant protein that determines the structure and biomechanical properties of the heart, but the molecular mechanism remained unknown. Professor Michael Gotthardt and Professor Norbert Hübner of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, and colleagues have found that the RNA binding motif protein 20 (RBM20), a gene ...

Structural changes in heart muscle cells after heart failure can be reversed by allowing the heart to rest, according to research at Imperial College London. Findings from a study in rats published today in the European Journal of Heart Failure show that the condition's effects on heart muscle cells are not permanent, as has generally been thought. The discovery could open the door to new treatment strategies. Heart failure means that the heart muscle is too weak or stiff to pump blood as effectively as it needs to, and it is commonly the result of a heart attack. Around ...

A century on from the sinking of the Titanic, science writer Richard Corfield takes a look at the cascade of events that led to the demise of the 'unsinkable' ship, taking into account the maths and physics that played a significant part. At 11.40 p.m. on Sunday 14 April 1912 the Titanic, bound from Southampton to New York, struck an iceberg just off the coast of Newfoundland and became fully submerged within three hours, before dropping four kilometres to the bottom of the Atlantic. There have been many stories recounting why the ship struck the iceberg and why two-thirds ...

New research shows it may be no accident when doctors observe how patients suffering from both breast cancer and arthritis seem to have more aggressive cancer. However, the new-found interaction between the two diseases may also suggest a possible treatment. A potential relationship between metastatic breast cancer and autoimmune arthritis, as suggested by past epidemiological studies, has led researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte to perform a series of mouse model experiments that appear to confirm the connection. "Epidemiological studies ...

CHICAGO, IL (April 1, 2012)––Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia have found that a protein associated with other cancers appears to also be important in head and neck cancer, and may consequently serve as a good target for new treatments. The findings will be reported at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012 on Sunday, April 1. The researchers found that patients whose tumors had higher levels of the protein known as Aurora-A had a shorter survival following surgery to remove their tumors than patients whose tumors had normal levels of the protein. "This ...

CHICAGO, IL (April 1, 2012)––Pancreatic cancer kills more than 40,000 people every year, and among cancers it's particularly insidious. For 80 percent of patients, the disease is already so advanced at the time of diagnosis that treatment is unlikely to provide significantly life-extending benefits. For patients diagnosed with localized pancreatic cancer, the five-year survival rate remains barely above 20 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute. New research from scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, which will be presented at the AACR Annual ...

CHICAGO, IL (April 1, 2012)––At the time of diagnosis, the majority of breast cancers are categorized as estrogen-receptor positive, or hormone sensitive, which means their cancerous cells may need estrogen to grow. Patients with this type of cancer often respond favorably to treatments called aromatase inhibitors, like tamoxifen, which cause cell death by preventing estrogen from reaching the cancerous cells. Over time, however, the disease often becomes resistant to estrogen deprivation from the drugs—making treatment options more limited. New findings that will be ...

A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years. The research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at ...

In April 1947 the post-war Labour Government raised the school leaving age from 14 to 15 and paved the way for a further increase to 16 in 1972. Now, 65 years later, as the UK prepares to raise the 'education participation age' to 17 in 2013 and to 18 in 2015, new research reveals that the transitions of 1947 and 1972 met with more controversy and difficulty than previously thought. In a study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Dr Tom Woodin and Professor Gary McCulloch of the Institute of Education, London, analysed the debate surrounding the implementation ...

WASHINGTON – Fishing for herring, anchovy, and other "forage fish" in general should be cut in half globally to account for their critical role as food for larger species, recommends an expert group of marine scientists in a report released today. The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force conducted the most comprehensive worldwide analysis of the science and management of forage fish populations to date. Its report, "Little Fish, Big Impact: Managing a crucial link in ocean food webs," concluded that in most ecosystems at least twice as many of these species should be left in ...

Bethesda, MD -- A new discovery in mice may lead to new treatments that could make bone marrow transplants more likely to succeed and to be significantly less dangerous. According to new research findings published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (https://www.jleukbio.org) Brazilian scientists may have found a way to prevent the immune system from attacking transplant grafts and damaging the host's own cells after a bone marrow transplant. Specifically, they found that a receptor for a mediator of the inflammatory process, known as platelet activating factor plays ...