By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today A four-gene signature accurately distinguished high-risk prostate cancer from low-risk disease in a series of experiments involving mice and human tumor specimens. In studies involving archived human prostate cancer specimens, the test demonstrated 83% accuracy for identifying cancers that led to fatal metastatic spread. Combining the test result with Gleason score increased the accuracy to 90%, researchers reported online in Nature. The results indicate the test has potential to help reduce unnecessary treatment of prostate cancer by distinguishing...

By WILLIAM MARSDEN, The Gazette St. Lawrence River fish are loaded with antidepressant drugs such as Prozac, leading scientists to wonder if the “happy hormone” is altering the lifestyle of the chronically grumpy-looking marine animals. Researchers at the Universite de Montreal and Environment Canada have discovered large quantities of antidepressants in the liver, muscle and brain tissues of brook trout exposed to three months of various levels of treated effluent from Montreal’s sewage treatment plant. According to the peer-reviewed study, which is published this week in the...

ZURICH—Swiss drug giant Roche Holding AG said Wednesday its promising new skin-cancer drug helps patients with advanced forms of the disease live longer and without their illness worsening, according to late-stage trial data. RG7204 is a novel drug compound that targets a specific part in the cell, which is considered to be causing cancer in half of all patients who suffer from metastatic melanoma tumors. The drug tries to subdue activity of the mutated form of the so-called BRAF protein. The drug’s positive performance in the trial is likely to boost Roche’s pipeline and the group’s...

Drinking a pint of beer a day is good for you, a new study claims. Moderate drinking of ale and lager can cut the risk of diabetes and high blood pressure and even help people lose weight, doctors say. The Spanish researchers suggest combining beer with exercise and a healthy Mediterranean diet high in fish, fruit and vegetables and olive oil. Beer contains folic acid, vitamins, iron and calcium and has the same health benefits already attributed to moderate wine drinking, researchers found. And they blamed fatty foods like chips, a lack of exercise and binge drinking for beer bellies in Britain....

Early blood pressure treatment is safer and more effective with two medicines than one, a study has shown. The results are likely to change the way doctors treat the condition, a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes. Patients are normally given one drug, with others added, if needed, over a period of months. But the Accelerate study shows it is best to start treatment with two medicines together at the same time as it can result in much faster and more effective control of blood pressure, with fewer side effects. Professor Morris Brown, from Cambridge University, who led the trial,...

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times As they say, you are what you eat. And if you’re a mouse, you’re also what your father ate. So say researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin. In a study published this week in the journal Cell, they report that a father’s diet influences how metabolic genes function in his offspring. The research team fed some male mice a normal diet, while other mice got a low-protein diet. All the males mated with females who ate the same healthy diet. Sure enough, the offspring of the protein-deprived fathers...

Placebo Effect Benefits Patients Even When They Knowingly Take a Fake Pill Could you be healed by the power of a placebo drug—even when you know it’s a fake? It might sound strange to some, but a new study published in the most recent issue of PLoS One may have turned the conventional idea of a placebo on its head. Researchers found that placebo pills benefited patients, even when doctors explained that they were only taking sugar pills. “Until now, doctors have thought they had to lie about the placebo pill in order to tap into the effects,” said Dr. Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard...

Study: Herceptin plus Tykerb help women with early breast cancer more than either drug alone SAN ANTONIO (AP) — New drug combinations are helping women with early breast cancer. Using two drugs that more precisely target tumors doubled the number of women whose cancer disappeared compared to those who had only one of the drugs, doctors reported Friday. However, another study added to the controversy over Avastin for breast cancer. Most women who received the drug for a few months before surgery fared no better than those who did not, it found. The studies were presented Friday at the San...

Why does a baby born during the winter months have a higher risk of developing bipolar depression, schizophrenia, SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and other neurological disorders compared to one born during the summer? Scientists from Vanderbilt University, USA, wrote in the journal Nature Neuroscience that exactly when a baby is born can have a dramatic and lifelong effect on the functioning of their biological clocks. Professor of Biological Sciences Douglas McMahon, and team say their experiment provides the first proof of seasonal imprinting of biological clocks in mammals. In this case,...

Glenda Kwek Australian experts have hailed as “remarkable” and “significant” a study that found taking aspirin daily cuts your risk of getting cancer, but cautioned the drug should not be regarded as a “magic bullet”. The British study, which was published in the medical journal The Lancet, analysed eight trials involving 25,570 patients, and found a daily dose of aspirin of less than 75 milligrams – about a quarter of an aspirin tablet – reduced cancer deaths by an average of 21 per cent during the studies and 34 per cent after five years. “It’s...