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Scientists have found a possible explanation for why fruit-eaters and vegans may gain protection against the spread of cancers.

They have shown that a fragment released from pectin, found in all fruits and vegetables, binds to and is believed to inhibit galectin 3 (Gal3), a protein that plays a role in all stages of cancer progression.

‘Most claims for the anti-cancer effects of foods are based on population studies,’ said Vic Morris from the Institute of Food Research. ‘For this research, we tested a molecular mechanism and showed that it is viable.’

Population studies such as EPIC, the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer, identified a strong link between eating lots of fibre and a lower risk of cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. But exactly how fibre exerts a protective effect is unknown.

Pectin is better known for its jam-setting qualities and as being a component of dietary fibre. The present study supports a more exciting and subtle role, according to a release of Norwich BioScience Institutes.

Interaction between dietary carbohydrates and mammalian proteins, of which this research is an example, may provide an explanation. Other food carbohydrates such as beta glucans are considered to be bioactive and their anti-cancer action can be attributed to different types of carbohydrate - mammalian protein interactions.

‘For a whole combination of different effects, it is best to consistently eat a range of fruits, vegetables and high-fibre foods,’ said Morris. ‘You don’t necessarily have to eat a superfood.’

The next stage of Morris’ research is to identify how pectin can be taken up by the body and released so it can exert its effect on cancer cells.

The research was published in The Faseb Journal.

India’s Biocon Ltd on Thursday launched a cancer drug, Abraxane, here in partnership with Abu Dhabi-based company Neopharma.

Abraxane can be used for the treatment of breast cancer after failure of combination therapy for metastatic disease or relapse within six months of chemotherapy.

“The drug is going to change the way breast cancer is treated through chemotherapy as it is a combination of chemotherapy and a biotech formulation,” Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said today.

“As it uses nanotechnology and a protein, it allows you to deliver a very cyto-toxic agent in a very targeted way to the tumour and will hence make a huge difference to cancer patients,” Shaw said.

She said the transformation of her company’s focus from an industrial enzymes manufacturer to biopharmaceuticals happened due to an understanding of proteins.

“When we started seeing what else we could do using the technologies that we had developed for enzymes, biopharmaceuticals became a natural extension,” she added.

The whole business of biopharmaceuticals was very different from industrial enzymes,” Shaw added.

On her own journey from being a master brewer to a successful businesswoman, she said “I ventured into biotechnology because of my passion for the biological sciences when nothing was happening in this field.

It has taken me 30 years to really build a company that is now world r enowned. So it has been a very satisfying journey and of course I still have got a long way to go.”

A World Health Organisation (WTO) meet has identified priority areas to assess the impact of climate change on human health and have agreed on a plan of action to create guidelines for the same.

Experts at the meeting convened by WHO have identified five priority research areas. It will take into account the interaction of climate change with other factors including economic development and urbanisation along with the impact of long-term changes such as increasing drought and comparing the effectiveness of short-term responses.

It will also study the implications of mitigation and adaptation policies on non-health sectors and boosting public health systems’ ability to address climate change-related risks.

“This plan provides the framework for doing just that,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said.

Over 80 top researchers from around the world met for three days in Madrid, Spain to draw up their recommendations. WHO’s 193 Member States had asked the agency to strengthen the evidence base for policy action to be taken.

The amount of scientific research into the links between climate change and health lag far behind studies on such issues as air pollution and smoking, the agency said.

Don’t give over-the-counter cold remedies to kids under 4, drug companies said Tuesday. What sniffling little ones need, doctors said, are plenty of fluids and lots of tender, loving care.

“The best thing a parent can do is comfort their children,” said Dr. Laura Herrera, a Baltimore family practitioner and mother of two. “Keeping them as comfortable as possible is certainly better than giving cough and cold medicines.”

In a concession to pediatricians, who doubt the drugs do much good for children and worry about risks, the companies that make over-the-counter remedies like Dimetapp and Pediacare announced they had changed their advice to parents for the second cold season in a row.

Besides recommending against cold medicines off drugstore and grocery shelves, the companies say not to give antihistamines to kids to help them sleep. The new instructions are on packages that started hitting stores this week.

Last year, the industry went against cough and cold medicines for children under 2. The latest changes came after discussions between drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration. The talks were kept quiet for months as federal health officials debated how to respond to a pediatricians’ petition seeking to ban the medications for kids under 6. At a public hearing last week, neither industry officials nor regulators gave any hint of an impending announcement.

Cough and cold products have been given to children for decades, but it turns out the medicines were never scientifically tested to see how well they work in kids. And recent research has found some untoward side effects, mostly stemming from accidental overdoses.

Pediatricians who support a ban for kids under 6 nonetheless said they were pleased with the industry announcement.

“It’s a huge step forward,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, Baltimore’s health commissioner. “There is no evidence that these products work in kids, and there is definitely evidence of serious side effects.”

Problems with over-the-counter cough and cold medicines send some 7,000 children to hospital emergency rooms each year, with symptoms including hives, drowsiness and unsteady walking. Many kids overdose by taking medicines when their parents aren’t looking.

“The 2- and 3-year-olds are definitely the highest risk,” said Sharfstein. “More than 50 percent of the problem is with these kids. If they don’t have this stuff around the home, they’re less likely to grab it and ingest it.”

The new advice could create its own kind of quandary. For example, what to do in a family with a 3-year-old and a 6-year-old?

Dr. Herrera said parents should resist the urge to give the medications to the older child. “They feel like they’re doing good by giving these medications, but in some cases they could be doing more harm than good,” she said.

Herrera has a 6-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and neither of them have gotten cold remedies.

The drug makers said they are also introducing new dispensers to help parents make sure they give the right amount of medicines, and not too much. The industry is expanding a nationwide educational campaign aimed at getting parents to be more careful.

“We are doing this voluntarily out of an abundance of caution,” Linda Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, said in announcing the changes on behalf of the companies. “The vast majority of the serious adverse events are in 2- to 3-year-olds. They are the ones who get into the products by being curious toddlers.”

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., an advocate for children’s health care, said he will continue to press the FDA to ban the drugs for children under 6. Outside advisers made that recommendation to the agency a year ago.

“While I’m pleased to see that the drug companies are voluntarily taking some steps to ensure the safety and well being of our children, I am disappointed that the FDA has not followed the recommendations of its own advisory panel,” Dodd said.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, a senior FDA official, said restricting use of the medicines to children over 4 makes sense as an interim step, while the agency continues to study the risks and benefits in children under 12. It’s a process that could take years.

“This was a logical cutoff,” said Woodcock, adding, “It was somewhat of a judgment call.” She said government officials fear that taking the medicines off the shelves might prompt parents to give their children adult medicines instead.

Leading cough and cold brands include Dimetapp, Pediacare, Robitussin, Triaminic, Little Colds and versions of Tylenol that have ingredients to treat cold symptoms. U.S. families spend at least $287 million a year on cold remedies for kids, according to Nielsen Co. statistics that do not include Wal-Mart sales.

Herrera, the Baltimore family doctor, said kids with colds usually get better in a few days. Coughs and sniffles can be distressing, but they are also a sign that the body is doing its work.

Parents may want to give Tylenol or Motrin if a child is running a fever of 101 degrees or higher, Herrera said. Sniffles can be cleaned up with tissues or gently suctioned if kids are too young to blow their noses. And children should be watched for any signs of trouble breathing, which could signal more serious problems.

The industry said parents should never:

_Give adult medicines to a child.

_Give two or more medicines with the same ingredients at the same time.

_Give antihistamines to make a child sleepy.

And parents should:

_Give the exact recommended dose, using the measuring device that comes with the medicine.

_Keep medicines out of sight and out of reach.

_Consult their doctors if they have any questions.

Free prescription drug samples distributed to pediatric patients may be unsafe, research suggests.

The study, published in the October 2008 issue of Pediatrics, examined data on 10,295 children and adolescents from the 2004 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey.

The researchers found that one in 20 American children received free drug samples in 2004. And among those who took at least one prescription drug that year, nearly one in 10 received free samples.

This in concerning, since the researchers also found that some of the most frequently distributed samples may be unsafe.

Four of the 15 most frequently distributed samples in 2004 were identified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as having significant new safety concerns, including new black box warnings or significant revisions to existing warnings.

The top 15 samples included (among others) Strattera (atomoxetine) and Adderall (amphetamine/dextroamphetamine), drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Both of those medications are Schedule II controlled substances, meaning they are controlled and monitored by the Drug Enforcement Agency due to high potential for abuse.

Some physicians welcome the use of free sample medications as a way to get medications to needy patients. But this study’s findings showed that few free samples actually go to the children who most need them.

Only 16 percent of the children who received free samples were uninsured for all or part of 2004, and less than one-third had low family incomes, defined as less than $38,000 for a family of four.

“New medications are frequently released before their safety profile is fully understood, and samples tend to be newer medications. Free samples encourage the casual use of medications in our children before enough is known about potential harm,” lead author Sarah Cutrona, a physician at Cambridge Health Alliance and an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said in a news release from the alliance and Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

Another of the study’s authors, Neal LeLeiko, director of the pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Hasbro and a professor of pediatrics at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, expressed his concern about the distribution of free medication samples.

“Previous findings in adults strongly suggest that free drug samples serve as a marketing tool. Our study shows that samples can pose a serious and unappreciated risk to our children,” LeLeiko said in the news release.

The inhaled steroids that are often used to treat asthma don’t work as well in the overweight or obese, new research shows.

In fact, the treatments are 40 percent less effective in these patients than in those of a healthy weight, said study author Dr. E. Rand Sutherland, an associate professor of medicine at National Jewish Health in Denver.

“The combination of obesity and asthma appears to do something to limit the pathways by which steroids reduce inflammation,” he said.

“We had seen these preliminary reports that inhaled steroids might not work as well [in overweight patients],” he said. So, his team decided to try to see if that was so, and to find out why.

About 20 million Americans have asthma, said Sutherland, and nearly half are overweight or obese, having a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher.

His team looked at 33 adults with asthma and 12 without. “We took blood cells and airway cells” from all, he said, and measured the response of the cells to the glucocorticoid called dexamethasone.

The steroid works by interfering with inflammatory signaling pathways by raising the level of a molecule called MAP kinase phosphatase-1 (MKP-1).

When the cells were exposed to the steroid, the levels of MKP-1 increased by 5.27 times in the lean asthma patients but increased by 3.11 times — 41 percent less — in those who were overweight or obese.

Why the difference occurs is not known, Sutherland said. “We can speculate. Obesity has been associated with increasing inflammation in the body. It may be that the same processes that increase inflammation leading to diabetes and cardiovascular disease may also be implicated in modifying steroid effects.”

The study is well-done, said Dr. John E. Heffner, past president of the American Thoracic Society and chair of medical education at the Providence Portland Medical Center, in Oregon.

It shows that the more obese a person with asthma is, the less the expression of MKP-1 — and the more inflammation.

The practical advice, Heffner said, is to suggest overweight patients with asthma lose weight. However, he said, “We don’t know if you can regain your responsiveness to glucocorticoids if you lose weight.”

Sutherland cautions those with asthma not to stop taking medications. “This [study ] doesn’t mean the drug won’t work, it just means the drugs might not work as well” in overweight patients with asthma. Physicians may want to increase the dose, however.

The study was published in the first October issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

A computer is as good as a second pair of eyes for helping a radiologist spot breast cancer on a mammogram, one of the largest and most rigorous tests of computer-aided detection found.

Like spell-checkers looking for mistakes, the computers flag suspicious areas on X-rays for a closer look by a radiologist. Mammograms are used to screen women for early signs of breast cancer but the tests aren’t perfect. In the U.S., the X-rays are read by a single radiologist and cancers are sometimes missed.

Computer-aided detection, or CAD, was developed to help radiologists pick up more cancers. Approved a decade ago, these computer programs are now used for about a third of the nation’s mammograms. But the value and accuracy of the technology has continued to be debated.

Now, British researchers are reporting results from a randomized study of 31,000 women. Mammograms in Britain are routinely checked by two radiologists or technicians, which is thought to be better than a single review. Researchers wanted to know if a single expert aided by a computer could do as well as two pairs of eyes.

They found that computer-aided detection spotted nearly the same number of cancers, 198 out of 227, compared to 199 for the two readers.

In places like the United States, “Where single reading is standard practice, computer-aided detection has the potential to improve cancer-detection rates to the level achieved by double reading,” the researchers said. Their findings were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine,

The study was done at three centers in England that do a large number of routine mammograms. Most of the women in the study were assigned to have their mammograms reviewed twice — once by a pair of experts and a second time by a single reviewer aided by a computer.

“What we demonstrated was that one reader using CAD could pick up as many cancers as the two readers could,” said radiologist Fiona J. Gilbert of the University of Aberdeen, lead author of the study.

She said computer-aided detection could be used to expand screening by Britain’s national health service, which now offers the test every three years to women 50 to 70. The cost-effectiveness will have to be determined first, she said.

The new findings are encouraging, said Dr. Carol H. Lee, a radiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

“In the United States, it’s just not practical in most practices to do double readings by physicians,” said Lee, who is head of the American College of Radiology’s Breast Imaging Commission. “These results are reassuring to me that single reading with CAD can achieve that same sensitivity.”

The U.S. government recommends mammograms every one or two years starting at age 40. Experts said there aren’t enough radiologists to give mammograms two readings, and insurers don’t pay for a second look. Medicare does pay an additional $15 for computer-aided detection.

That extra money helped spur the adoption of the computer checks, said Dr. Ferris M. Hall, a radiologist at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where computers are used. He expects more places to use them as they switch to digital images from film X-rays, which eliminates a step in the process.

The research was funded by the British government and Cancer Research UK, a charity. Two of the researchers have received fees from the maker of a computer system and served as unpaid consultants to another.

A Chinese herbal remedy called horny goat weed is a promising alternative to Viagra for impotent men, Italian researchers said on Monday.

The herb has long held a reputation as a natural aphrodisiac. The lab experiments, which did not look at whether the plant actually increases desire, could lead to new drugs to help men get erections, said Mario Dell’Agli, a researcher at the University of Milan, who led the study.

“This could be the natural Viagra,” he said in a telephone interview. “The novelty is that we have synthesized a new molecule that one day may be able to replace Viagra.”

Erectile dysfunction is a common condition worldwide, and drugs like Pfizer Inc’s Viagra, Eli Lilly and Co’s Cialis or tadalafil, and Bayer AG’s Levitra or vardenafil, work by increasing blood flow to the genitals.

But the medicines, which inhibit an enzyme called phosphodiesterase type 5 that restricts blood flow around the body, including to the penis, can have side effects ranging from headaches, upset stomach and visual problems including blindness.

The Italian team looked for alternatives by studying a number of plants reputed to boost sexual performance.

After homing in on horny goat weed, the researchers modified a compound in the plant called icariin and found it blocked the erection-inhibiting enzyme as well as Viagra did.

Because the compound targets the enzyme more precisely, it may have fewer side effects than Viagra, known generically as sildenafil, Dell‘Agli said.

Further tests in animals and humans are needed but the extract from the herb represents a potential new erectile dysfunction treatment with fewer side effects, Dell’Agli said.

“The compound icariin is present in the horny goat weed in large amounts and its activity against (the enzyme) is lower compared to Viagra,” he said. “But the new molecule we synthesized from icariin is as good as Viagra against (the enzyme).”

It’s not just the elderly who vulnerable to the ill effects of air pollution, new research suggests.

In a study of 2.7 million deaths across 48 U.S. cities, researchers found that death rates tended to rise on days when ozone pollution increased — with the older adults being most at risk.

However, while age was the strongest risk factor, there was also evidence that older women were more vulnerable to ozone pollution than older men were, and blacks were more vulnerable than other racial groups.

People with atrial fibrillation — a heart rhythm disturbance common in older adults — were also at increased risk of dying on days with poor air quality.

The study, conducted by Mercedes Medina-Ramon and Joel Schwartz of the Harvard School of Public Health, adds to evidence linking daily ozone increases to spikes in death rates.

It also suggests that even moderately elevated levels of ozone may be hazardous for certain vulnerable people.

The difference in pollution-related death rates between the elderly and young, for example, was much greater in cities that typically had relatively low ozone levels than in cities with generally high ozone concentrations.

This suggests that at high levels, ozone has a more uniform effect on death rates, the researchers explain in the journal Epidemiology.

Ground-level ozone forms when sunlight reacts with pollutants from cars, factories and other sources, and is the main component of smog. Ozone levels are typically highest in the summer.

Ozone pollution can cause inflammation in the airways and exacerbate respiratory ills like asthma and emphysema or other chronic diseases like heart disease. Because the elderly are more likely to have pre-existing medical conditions, they are also more vulnerable to the dangers of poor air quality.

In this study, each ozone increase of 10 parts per billion was linked to a 0.65 percent increase in the overall death rate. Among adults older than 65, that figure was 1.1 percent.

The reasons for the disparities between races and sexes are not clear, according to the researchers. They note, however, that one study of young adults found that black volunteers tended to have more breathing problems in response to ozone exposure.

The current findings, according to the researchers, may help lay the groundwork for air quality standards that better protect vulnerable people

Up to 80 percent of cancer patients who undergo radiation treatment do not take medications to combat pain, a new study indicates.

Many of the patients cited fears of addiction as well as cost as their reasons for saying no to painkillers. However, the most common reason given was that their healthcare provider had not recommended medication, according to the report.

“To eliminate barriers to optimal pain management for cancer patients, healthcare providers should talk with their patients about pain symptoms and pain medications,” Dr. Charles Simone, from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, said in a statement.

The current findings come from an Internet-based questionnaire posted on OncoLink (www.oncolink.org) examining analgesic use and pain control in cancer patients getting radiation treatment. Data from 106 patients were included in the analysis.

Forty-six percent of patients reported pain related to the cancer itself, and 58 percent of subjects had pain from their treatment, the report’s authors note in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics.

The only statistically significant factor linked to non-use of painkillers was educational level. Specifically, individuals with education beyond high school were less likely to use analgesics than those with lower educational levels: 11 percent vs. 36 percent.

Lower rates of use were also noted by whites compared with other races (16 percent vs. 32 percent) and by women than men (17 percent vs. 29 percent).

Patients with pain who chose not to use analgesics often tried alternative therapies.

To improve pain control for cancer patients undergoing radiation, Simone said that his center, the Radiation Oncology Branch of the NCI, has established an electronic system that requires healthcare providers to assess pain levels and pain medication every time they see a patient.

SOURCE: International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics, September 1, 2008.