Know about Ovarian Cancer

Women must be very attentive at any sign or symptom that could indicate an ovarian cancer. The symptoms generally match with other affections too but if the patient goes at the doctor’s for a check-up the doctor will be able to tell whether it is cancer or not.Some of the key symptoms are abdominal pain or pressure, bloating or swelling, urgent urinating and pelvic discomfort. Some might experience an indigestion that lasts a long time, nausea, the loss of appetite and weight, fatigability, discomfort during sexual intercourse, and even a low back pain. Diagnosing ovarian cancer can take a lot of time from three to six months because at first the digestive affections have to be eliminated and then the urinary problems too. only if the symptoms persist a lot of time then the doctor would consider the ovarian cancer a possibility.The causes of the ovarian cancer are not known exactly, some doctors say that one cause is the tissue repair process that starts functioning after the egg is released, and others say that the feminine hormones are guilty for the uncontrollable division of the cells.The scientists have classified the ovary tumors in three: the epithelial tumors which affect the postmenopausal women; the germ cell tumors who affect young women and the stromal tumors which can be found in the tissue that is responsible with the production of the feminine hormones.It seems that there are persons which are more exposed to ovarian cancer than others. Persons that have inherited a gene which is responsible with breast cancer or with colon cancer occurrence are exposed to ovarian cancer too. Those who have a family history of ovarian cancer are also at risk of having themselves the disease after some years. Women who are at the menopause and who have never given birth are at risk. Those women that have an ovarian cyst, who suffer of unexplained infertility and who are obese since they were 18 can develop ovarian cancer at a moment in their lives. The best thing is to pay attention to any malfunctioning of your body and to go for a check-up periodically because ovarian cancer is easier to treat in its early stages and the recuperation of the patient is faster if treatment is applied promptly.



Posted by: Adnan

Symptoms of Ovarian Cancer and more....

If you experience any of the above symptoms over two or three weeks and if it gets worse with time, you should get yourself tested for ovarian cancer. As these symptoms could be associated with any other disease or minor ailment, it is impossible to diagnose ovarian cancer on their merit alone. The doctor will conduct a pelvic exam, an abdominal or vaginal ultrasound, and a blood test to check for the presence of CA 125. None of these tests are conclusive in themselves. But, a positive count on two or more of the tests should be followed by a biopsy (laparotomy) or a laparoscopy to rule out or diagnose ovarian cancer. A very small percentage of women facing these symptoms are diagnosed with the dreaded disease. And sometimes, women can reach the very last stages of cancer with no symptoms at all. The best you can do is to maintain a healthy lifestyle and undergo an annual examination to catch the cancer before it metastasizes.


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Abortion raises premature birth risk and more about it....?

Premature birth (also known as preterm birth) is the birth of a baby before the standard period of pregnancy is completed. In most systems of human pregnancy, prematurity is considered to occur when the baby is born sooner than 37 weeks after the beginning of the last menstrual period (LMP). The opposite condition, postmature birth, is defined as birth more than 42 weeks after the LMP. The standard length of a human gestation is 266 days. However, for convenience most timing is based on the LMP, with conception being assumed to occur approximately 14 days after the LMP, making a standard term pregnancy 280 days or 40 weeks. Premature or preterm birth is defined medically as childbirth occurring earlier than 37 completed weeks of pregnancy. Approximately 12 percent of babies in the United States or 1 in 8 are born prematurely each year. London: Pregnant and planning abortion? Just give a second thought because it might triple the risk of your subsequent baby being born premature or underweight which is strongly linked to deaths in the first week of life. A team of international researchers has carried out a study and found that women who abort their child are likely to give birth to premature or underweight babies in future, 'The Times' reported today. The same holds true for women who have a miscarriage, according to the researchers. "Infections or adhesions (due to surgery) in the womb slow the growth of subsequent babies," lead researcher Tilahun Adera of the Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States was quoted as saying. The team came to the conclusion after analysing a data of more than 45,000 births. The records were linked to details of the mother's medical history, but did not distinguish between abortion and miscarriage. The data related to 1959-66, when abortion was far less common and women would have been reluctant to admit to having had one. The researchers found that a single abortion or miscarriage almost tripled the risk of low birthweight; two increased the risk about fivefold; and three increased the risk ninefold. A miscarriage or abortion increased the risk of a subsequent baby being premature by 70 per cent, two doubled the risk and three tripled it -- the results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and heavy drinking were also taken into consideration. "Though the study is the largest done in the US, it has limits, the most salient being the data didn't distinguish between abortion and miscarriage”. For more details on Abortion raises premature birth risk visit www.halfvalue.com and www.halfvalue.co.uk For more information on books visit

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King’s breakthrough in fight against Cancer

A team at King’s have identified a switch that could boost the body’s own anti-cancer mechanisms and fight tumours. Scientists believe that the body's immune system recognises abnormal cells and attacks them before they evolve to be cancerous, implying that cancer would be even a more common disease without this mechanism.The team led by Professor Adrian Hayday and Dr Jessica Strid, working with a team at Yale University led by Dr Mike Girardi, raised the prospect that this natural anti-cancer mechanism can be enhanced. Lead researcher Professor Hayday comments, ‘Increasingly, the scientific data suggest that every day, your incidence of cancer is limited by your immune system, it seems to be patrolling day to day, keeping cancer levels lower.’ The team reports in the journal Nature Immunology that the key lies in a molecule known as Rae-1 which is switched on in the skin of mice soon after exposure to carcinogenic chemicals and agents, and often long before a tumour is formed.The study shows quite unexpectedly, that this molecule is on its own enough to drive a re-organisation of the immune system that includes the rapid recruitment into the skin of a special subset of T lymphocytes cells not usually found there. When the white cells that recognise Rae-1 were removed, there was increased incidence of solid tumours after exposure to cancer causing chemicals. Professor Hayday says, ‘The seemingly inescapable conclusion is that as soon as Rae-1 is switched on during cell transformation, the event is visible to the immune system.’ In human beings, the immune system in the gut shares many features in common with mouse skin, including the rapid activation of a molecule, known as MICA, which is arguably the human equivalent of Rae-1. So perhaps the greatest clinical relevance is to bowel cancers.’It is thought that the reason the immune system fails, allowing cancer to develop is based on the fact that tumours can seemingly manipulate the manufacture of Rae-1 (and of other related molecules) so that, after a while, they actually begin to use the immune system's own tools to suppress the response. Indeed, Professor Hayday’s study clearly shows that some affected immune cell populations in skin were found to suppress the body’s capacity to reject tumours. As always, a fine balance needs to be achieved, but by identifying the key molecules involved, approaches to this seem plausible. Indeed, the study should breed "immense optimism" that the immune system contains within it cells that are indeed ready and able to identify tumours at an early stage of development, says Professor Hayday, and that if there is good "functional follow-through" tumour growth may indeed be stopped in its tracks.Professor Peter Parker Head of the Division of Cancer at King’s College London comments, ‘The recognition and elimination of cancerous and precancerous cells by the immune system has immense potential for the treatment of this disease. The identification by Adrian and his colleagues of Rae-1 as a cancer associated target for such immuno-recognition provides a strong impetus towards developing this as a line of therapeutic attack in patients.’ Professor Hayday explains, ‘The Rae-1 equivalent molecules in humans, MICA and MICB, clearly deserve investigation by drug companies so that a mimic might be developed to help turbocharge the body's anticancer mechanism, notably to help tumours of the bowel, lung, prostate and breast tumours. If it can be manipulated, it has relevance to the major solid tumours.’The paper 'Acute upregulation of an NKG2D ligand promotes rapid reorganization of a local immune compartment with pleiotropic effects on carcinogenesis' is available online. Notes to editorsKing's College LondonKing's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher 2007) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has 19,300 students from more than 130 countries, and 5,000 employees. King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. The College is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings and has an annual income of approximately £400 million. An investment of £500 million has been made in the redevelopment of its estate.King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, social sciences, the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe and is home to five Medical Research Council Centres – more than any other university.

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New protein discovered to block HIV

New protein discovered to block HIV18 Jan 2008, PR 14/08 The discovery of a novel human protein called tetherin which appears to block the replication of HIV-1 thereby halting the spread of the virus, has been made by Dr Stuart Neil, Lecturer in the Department of Infectious Diseases at King’s College London.Dr Neil isolated tetherin whilst working in the group of Paul Bieniasz at Rockefeller University’s Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York. This breakthrough study published in Nature is particularly exciting because tetherin might be an important antiviral inhibitor of many diverse viruses. Lead researcher Dr Stuart Neil and a team of researchers in the Infectious Disease Department at King’s will set up a laboratory to focus on trying to understand the mechanisms by which the HIV-1 gene Vpu counteracts tetherin. Dr Neil comments; ‘With this new discovery there is potential for opening up a novel drug target for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Understanding how Vpu takes out the activity of Tetherin will facilitate the design of therapeutics to inhibit this part of the virus, allowing the cell’s natural defence systems to interfere with HIV replication.' The research will be funded by the Wellcome Trust.Understanding VpuHIV-1, the virus responsible for the AIDS pandemic, encodes several small proteins whose role is to subvert host mechanisms that block viral replication. One protein, termed Vpu, is known to overcome a factor in infected human cells that interferes with the release of new HIV-1 virus particles. This novel protein tetherin appears to block the replication of HIV-1 that lacks a Vpu gene by keeping newly produced viral particles stuck to the surface infected cells, and preventing the spread of the virus.The HIV protein Vpu is required for the release of viral particles, and evidence for a tetherin molecule has accumulated over the last few years. Paul Bieniasz and colleagues show that Vpu works to neutralize the host cell protein CD317, which they rename tetherin. In this way it allows efficient discharge of HIV-1 particles from infected cells. The team argue that inhibition of virus release by tetherin is a previously unknown mechanism by which organisms protect themselves against certain viruses. (Nature Press Release)In the absence of a Vpu gene, the production of HIV-1 from human cells is inefficient because a human factor prevents the release new viral particles, leaving them stuck on the cell surface. This effect is far more pronounced when cells are treated with Interferon, a protein released from virally infected cells that tells the surrounding tissue to shut-down virus replication. Dr Neil explains: ‘We isolated tetherin by looking for genes in human cells that were induced by interferon. Tetherin is a protein found in the cell membrane whose function was until now unknown. We showed that expression of tetherin was sufficient to block the replication of HIV-1 that lacked a Vpu gene, but a functional Vpu protein negated tetherin’s effect. Thus we believe HIV-1 encodes Vpu as a way of getting round the antiviral effects of Tetherin. Understanding the mechanism by which Vpu does this may allow us to design drugs that inhibit its function, allowing Tetherin again to block HIV release, and suppress the ability of the virus to spread to new cells.’The paper Tetherin inhibits retrovirus release and is antagonized by HIV-1 Vpu is available online.Notes to editorsFigure 1. In the absence of Vpu, expression of Tetherin causes newly made HIV-1 particles to remain stuck on the surface of infected cells, preventing their spread to new uninfected cellsKing's College LondonKing's College London is one of the top 25 universities in the world (Times Higher 2007) and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, King's has 19,300 students from more than 130 countries, and 5,000 employees. King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. The College is in the top group of UK universities for research earnings and has an annual income of approximately £400 million. An investment of £500 million has been made in the redevelopment of its estate.King's has a particularly distinguished reputation in the humanities, law, social sciences, the health sciences, natural sciences and engineering, and has played a major role in many of the advances that have shaped modern life, such as the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is the largest centre for the education of healthcare professionals in Europe and is home to five Medical Research Council Centres – more than any other university.


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