Frozen Broccoli's 'Lost' Cancer-fighting Powers Restored

The research conducted by University of Illinois broccoli also demonstrated how the food industry can act to restore the frozen vegetable's health benefits.

Elizabeth Jeffery, a U of I professor of nutrition said that as little as three to five servings of broccoli a week provides a cancer-protective benefit, but that isn't true for bags of broccoli that you pluck out of your grocery's freezer.

The problem begins when soon-to-be-frozen broccoli is blanched, or heated to high temperatures, to inactivate enzymes that can cause off-colors, tastes, and aromas during the product's 18-month shelf life, she explained.

The extreme heat destroys the enzyme myrosinase, which is necessary to form sulforaphane, the powerful cancer-preventive compound in broccoli, she said.

In the second study, the researchers experimented with blanching broccoli at slightly lower temperatures instead of at 86 degree C. When they used a temperature of 76 degree C, 82 percent of the enzyme myrosinase was preserved without compromising food safety and quality.

The researchers first thought that thawing frozen broccoli in the refrigerator might rupture the plant's cells and kick-start the enzyme-substrate interaction. It didn't work.

The researchers decided to expose frozen broccoli to myrosinase from a related cruciferous vegetable.

When they sprinkled 0.25 percent of daikon radish-an amount that's invisible to the eye and undetectable to our taste buds-on the frozen broccoli, the two compounds worked together to form sulforaphane, said Edward B. Dosz, a graduate student in Jeffery's laboratory.

The researchers found that the radish enzyme was heat stable enough to preserve broccoli's health benefits even when it was cooked for 10 minutes at 120 degree F. So you can cook frozen broccoli in the microwave and it will retain its cancer-fighting capabilities.

Source-ANI

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Organ Donor Awareness Week 2013 - Gift of a Lifetime

by Thilaka Ravi on? August 07, 2013 at 2:19 PM Health In Focus People whose organs can be harvested after they are declared 'brain dead' are failing to give a fresh lease of life to those who are languishing for want of an organ transplant. This happens all over the world either because people aren't quite sure how organ donation works or people have pledged their organs and haven't told anyone about it to facilitate 'deceased' organ donation.
Different countries around the world celebrate Organ donor awareness week at different dates to honor donors and donor families and to increase public awareness on the pressing need for organ donors everywhere in the world. In India, August 8th to 14th each year is earmarked to promote the noble cause of organ donation. Central and State governmental bodies, NGOs, hospitals and health experts use this week to encourage organ and tissue donation to ease the life of many who continue to suffer because they don't get an organ for transplant.

Why is there a Great Need for Organ Donation?

Organs and tissues that we donate can improve the quality of life for many others?perhaps free people from painful dialysis treatments, save limbs, fix joints, give sight to many and help burn victims heal or save lives. Every person whose organs and tissues are used for transplantation after 'brain dead' can single handedly achieve all of the above and even more, because in deceased organ donation, organs and tissues harvested within a time frame from one person declared 'brain dead' can be used to save as many as nine lives or more.

The human body is capable of surviving after organs or tissues are transplanted from a close relative, family member or someone with a near match that the patient's body can accept. A living person can donate a kidney, a part of the liver, lung, intestine, or pancreas. Eyes, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, heart, heart valves, intestinal organs and tissues can be harvested from a brain dead (deceased) donor within a specified time in cadaver transplantation.

What Hampers Organ Donation?

Certain common myths that are largely responsible for preventing organ donation from happening on a wider scale have emerged from international surveys.

? Many people wrongly believe that 'brain death' does not mean fully dead and the person can recover and will need the organs

? Some people are scared that doctors may give up trying to save their lives if they knew about their wish to be an organ donor

? Some people have a wrong religious belief that a dead person's body without vital organs is incomplete and so the dead person cannot 'rest in peace'?or reach heaven

? Some people are complacent in their belief that there is a buy-sell black market that can fully supply organs and tissues for transplant

? Many people don't know that people of any age and with medical ailments can be donors

How to be an Organ Donor?

A classic case of a missed chance for organ donation happened in Mumbai, last week. A young man died in a road accident and though his brothers were willing to donate his organs the donation couldn't happen because they said his wife wouldn't be able to bear it and shouldn't know about it at all. Of course doctors couldn't harvest the organs without the wife's consent. Many lives can be saved if only more people pledge to donate organs, carry a donor card and discuss their wish to donate organs with their near and dear ones. This will definitely ease the job of grief counselors who have to persuade relatives to give permission to harvest organs at an emotional moment when a person is declared 'brain dead.'

How can I help Raise Awareness on Organ Donation?

The demand-supply ratio of the need for organs for transplant and the organs available is dismally low, especially in developing countries. Awareness campaigns through street theater, talks and poster campaigns in schools, colleges and corporate offices and highlighting successful organ transplants through the social media are slowly taking the importance of organ donation to all kinds of people. The much acclaimed recent movie 'The Ship of Theseus' has added a spiritual dimension to organ donation.

Personally, each of us can fill out the organ and tissue donor form or card and register with our State Donor Registry to show our willingness to allow our organs to be harvested after our death. It is very important we inform our family members about our intention to be a donor, so that they can respect our wish after our death and allow doctors to harvest organs and tissues without a fuss. We can seek more information on organ donation and recommend the cause to friends and colleagues so more people can become registered donors on special days like Valentine's day, Mother's day, Friendship day and many such days that people celebrate together round the year.

More people need to be sensitized on the dire need of organs for transplant on the one hand and the number of road accident victims who die everyday without their organs harvested-organs that can be so precious to those in need. If victims of accidents are declared 'brain dead' and if their organs are harvested on time, countless lives can be saved everyday.

Let's decide to pledge the organs and tissues that we can't take with us when we leave this world. The world will be a happier place with less suffering if each of us can actively crusade for the cause of raising awareness on organ donation and do our bit to close the huge gap between demand and supply in organ transplantation.

Download an Organ Donor card from http://www.mohanfoundation.org/downloads.asp

Source-Medindia

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Protein Linked to Learning also Induces Cocaine Addiction: Researchers

The study describes how the learning-related protein works with other proteins to forge new pathways in the brain in response to a drug-induced rush of the "pleasure" molecule dopamine.

By adding important detail to the process of addiction, the researchers, led by a group at Johns Hopkins, said that the work may point the way to new treatments.

"The broad question was why and how cocaine strengthened certain circuits in the brain long term, effectively re-wiring the brain for addiction," Paul Worley, M.D., a professor in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said.

"What we found in this study was how two very different types of systems in the brain work together to make that happen," he said.

The study is published in the journal Cell.

Source-ANI

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Study Reveals Why Tumors Become Drug-resistant

A new study from MIT reveals that much of this resistance develops because a protein called AXL helps cancer cells to circumvent the effects of ErbB inhibitors, allowing them to grow unchecked. The findings suggest that combining drugs that target AXL and ErbB receptors could offer a better way to fight tumors, says Doug Lauffenburger, the Ford Professor of Bioengineering, head of MIT's Department of Biological Engineering and an affiliate member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

"Drug resistance is the major challenge in cancer these days. People are coming up with a lot of targeted therapies for particular genes and identifying drugs that work against them, but resistance is just invariably the issue," says Lauffenburger, the senior author of a paper describing the findings in the Aug. 6 issue of Science Signaling.

ErbBs, a family of epithelial growth factor receptors (EGFRs), are proteins that are often overactive in cancer cells, causing them to grow and divide uncontrollably. The drug Iressa is used to treat lung cancer patients whose tumors overexpress one type of ErbB mutant, and Herceptin targets another ErbB family member that is found in certain types of breast cancer.

"There are a lot of excellent drugs that target EGFR itself or other members of that family, yet they have these limitations," Lauffenburger says.

Systems analysis

In the new study, Lauffenburger and colleagues set out to identify factors that help tumor cells become resistant to EGFR and other ErbB inhibitors. To do this, they developed a new computer model and applied it to a large dataset called the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, which includes information on about 1,000 human cancer lines and their responses to different drugs.

Led by biological engineering graduate student Aaron Meyer, lead author of the paper, the researchers created a machine learning program that can sift through the data and look for pairs of overexpressed proteins that make tumor cells resistant to EGFR inhibitors. In this case, they searched for the EGFR protein in combination with every other possible protein in the database, one pair at a time.

Through this analysis, the researchers found that EGFR paired with the AXL receptor appears to be the strongest marker for EGFR inhibitor resistance. They found this pattern across many types of cancer, including lung, breast and pancreatic.

A few previous studies have shown that overexpression of AXL is associated with resistance to EGFR inhibitors in a particular tumor, but this is the first systematic study to demonstrate the correlation, Lauffenburger says. This "systems biology" approach, which focuses on complex interactions within biological systems, is critical for finding new drugs that work together to knock out cancer's defense mechanisms, he says.

"It's now well known that when you look for a single pathway, you won't get to an effective therapeutic. You will end up with resistance," Lauffenburger says. "You've got to look at pathways in combination, you've got to look at whole interacting networks. That's the only way."

Clues to a mystery

Then, in experiments on cancer cells grown in the lab, the researchers found that the AXL protein tends to cluster with EGFR on cell surfaces, so when EGFR is activated, AXL also becomes active. AXL then not only stimulates further much of the same cellular machinery targeted by EGFR, but also additional pathways provoking cell growth and division. AXL also helps cells become more motile, allowing cancer to spread through the body.

The researchers also showed that other members of the ErbB family beyond EGFR similarly cluster with AXL. This suggests that AXL inhibition may also be effective for treating breast cancers dependent on ErbB2 or ovarian cancers that overexpress ErbB3, Lauffenburger says.

The study sheds light on the complicated interactions between EGFR and other proteins that help tumors re-emerge after initial treatment with EGFR inhibitors, and could help researchers develop improved treatments, says Trever Bivona, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.

"The implication that emerges from the findings is that the way receptor kinases interact to undermine sensitivity to treatment is quite complex," says Bivona, who was not part of the research team.

High levels of AXL have previously been found in triple-negative breast cancer cells, which lack the three most common breast cancer markers ? estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors and HER2 receptors. The new finding may explain why EGFR inhibitors fail to work on these tumors even though they have high EGFR levels, Lauffenburger says.

"Triple-negative breast cancer cells were a special interest of ours mainly because it's always been such a mystery why they have not responded to EGFR inhibitors," he says.

The new study suggests that AXL inhibitors, either alone or in combination with EGFR inhibitors, might be an effective treatment for triple-negative breast cancer, which is now treated with chemotherapy drugs that have severe side effects. A handful of clinical trials are currently testing AXL inhibitors against different types of cancer, and Lauffenburger is now planning studies in mice to investigate the effects of combining AXL and EGFR pathway inhibitors.

Source-Eurekalert

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Minimally Invasive Stents Show Advantage Over Bypass Surgery

by Bidita Debnath on? August 07, 2013 at 11:05 PM Research News People who undergo minimally invasive placement of stents to open clogged leg arteries are significantly less likely than those who have conventional bypass surgery to need a second treatment for the condition within two years.
This research was suggested by Johns Hopkins. For now, bypass surgery remains the gold standard for treating symptoms of peripheral artery disease (PAD), but the Johns Hopkins researchers are hopeful that further study will confirm the advantage their study shows for the stents.

The researchers, reporting online in the Journal of Vascular Surgery, also found that both treatments were equally successful in restoring healthy blood circulation to the legs. But threading a stent through an artery through access in the groin and into the blocked leg vessel to create a wider path for blood requires no general anesthesia and is typically associated with shorter hospital stays and recovery times than open bypass, they add.

"We are constantly looking for the best way to improve quality of life for the 10 percent of the population who suffer from peripheral artery disease," says study leader Mahmoud B. Malas, M.D., M.H.S., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, director of endovascular surgery and director of The Vascular and Endovascular Clinical Research Center at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. "Our study suggests the minimally invasive approach shows real promise, and we are embarking on a large, randomized study of the two procedures to develop guidelines that can be used for determining when a stent is likely to be best and when a bypass cannot be avoided."

PAD is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs, a likely sign of a widespread accumulation of fatty deposits in the coronary and cerebral vessels, where blockages may lead to heart attacks and stroke, respectively. Without enough oxygen-rich blood flow to keep up with demand, people experience PAD's most notable symptom ? leg pain when walking. As the disease progresses, patients may develop gangrene or open sores that threaten the limb.

Once the pain is serious and chronic, even without walking, doctors consider manually bypassing the blockages. In contrast to minimally invasive stenting, a so-called femoral-popliteal bypass requires a large incision to open the leg, and the surgical attachment of a piece of vein or a synthetic tube above and below the blockage to reroute blood flow.

The small study, just published, was conducted by analyzing records from 104 patients with PAD who either got a stent or a bypass operation at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center between September 2005 and September 2010. The average age of patients in the study was 68 years.

Patients who received stents had a 31 percent risk of needing another procedure to restore blood flow within 24 months, while those who received a bypass had a 54 percent chance of needing another intervention. The researchers found that women were twice as likely as men to need a second operation.

Malas cautions that patients in the stent group may have had better outcomes because 77 percent of them had what were considered smaller blockages, while 73 percent of those who had bypass surgery had larger ones. Physicians use a somewhat subjective measure to choice a treatment, confounding efforts to tease out clear guidelines about when to use stents or bypass.

It is most difficult to determine which course of action to take with medium-sized blockages, Malas says, noting that in his study, patients with longer blockages were more likely to have had a stent in the past that failed, so their diseases may have progressed further along.

Malas says he tells his patients how important it is to adopt healthy habits ? exercising, eating properly, taking aspirin and medications to control elevated cholesterol and not smoking ? to try to reduce the effects of PAD, which is a "cousin" of coronary artery disease. By the time they need surgical intervention, he says, their disease could not only be threatening their limbs, but their lives.

"We try to improve their quality of life, but stents and bypass won't cure the patient of PAD at this stage," he says. "We're improving circulation, but the disease is still there and it will continue to progress, so modifying other risk factors is a must."

Source-Eurekalert

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Survey Finds Most Americans Don't Want to Live Beyond Age 100

The survey of more than 2,000 people by the Pew Research Center's Religion and Public Life Project sought to probe the nation's views on the prospect of living longer lives.

Already, aging adults account for a growing share of the US population. About 41 million Americans are 65 or older, making up 13 percent of the population, up from four percent in 1900.

By 2050, that number will rise to 20 percent, according to Census Bureau projections.

A majority of US adults (56 percent) said they would not "choose to undergo medical treatments to slow the aging process and live to be 120 or more," said the Pew report. A total of 38 percent said they would.

With the average US life expectancy at 78.7 years, more than two thirds said they would like to live longer than that, somewhere between 79 and 100.

The median, or midpoint, for ideal lifespan was 90, or about 11 years longer than the current US average.

Asked whether current medical treatments are worth the costs because they help people live longer and better quality lives, 54 percent agreed and 41 percent disagreed on grounds that modern medical advances "often create as many problems as they solve."

There was also significant concern about how life-extending technologies would be used, and by whom.

Seventy-nine percent said everyone should be able to get medical treatments that would slow, stop or reverse the aging process.

However, two-thirds said that in practice, only the wealthy would have access.

Two-thirds of respondents also said that longer life expectancies would strain natural resources, and believed that "medical scientists would offer the treatment before they fully understood how it affects people's health."

Views were split on the question of whether the economy would be more productive if people could work longer -- with 44 percent agreeing and 53 percent rejecting this idea.

For certain health issues, Americans were optimistic that medical science would perform well in the future. Seven in 10 said that they expect a cure for most cancers by 2050, and 71 percent said artificial arms and legs will perform better than natural ones.

"And, on balance, the public tends to view medical advances that are available today to prolong life as good (63%) rather than as interfering with the natural cycle of life (32%)," the survey said.

By 2050, the government forecasts there will be at least 400,000 Americans aged 100 or older.

Just 10 percent said the trend toward an aging population is a bad thing.

One quarter said a major anti-aging breakthrough that would allow average folk to live to 120 and beyond was likely by 2050.

The telephone poll was conducted from March 21 to April 8 among a nationally representative sample of 2,012 adults and carried a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Source-AFP

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Cartilage from Ribs Used to Create Ears for Eight-year-old Boy

Specialist surgeons from Great Ormond Street Hospital, will be constructing his ears from the boy's ribs and then graft them to his Kieran's head.

Experts will be using cartilage from Kieran Sorkin's ribs to construct the ears and graft them to his head. This eight-year-old was born without ears and had small lobes in place of ears.

He has undergone many operations and also has a hearing aid, due to which he has been able to hear moderately.

Medics will be carving cartilage from six of his ribs and making it into the shape of ears. It will then be attached during an operation next year.

Source-Medindia

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