Does too much protein in the diet increase cancer risk?
A great deal of research connects nutrition with cancer risk. Overweight people are at higher risk of developing post-menopausal breast cancer, endometrial cancer, colon cancer, kidney cancer and a certain type of esophageal cancer. Now preliminary findings from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggest that eating less protein may help protect against certain cancers that are not directly associated with obesity.
The research, published in the December issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, shows that lean people on a long-term, low-protein, low-calorie diet or participating in regular endurance exercise training have lower levels of plasma growth factors and certain hormones linked to cancer risk.
Skipping statin therapy raises heart attack risk
Worldwide thousands of people taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are suffering unnecessary heart attacks because they are not complying with the recommended treatment, Dutch researchers said on Thursday.
The researchers estimate up to 9,000 European and 7,000 American statin users have heart attacks that are avoidable.
Bird flu could force changes to African traditions
African customs such as using children to rear village poultry could expose them to deadly bird flu and must be addressed to lower the risk of human infection, delegates said at a summit this week.
Experts from around the world are meeting in Mali’s capital Bamako to discuss how to fight the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus and prevent it causing a human influenza pandemic.
Physical education program boosts girls’ fitness
Taking physical education (PE) class every school day for a full year improves high school girls’ cardiovascular fitness, a new study shows.
But daily PE class has become a rarity at US schools, Dr. Deborah Rohm Young of the University of Maryland in College Park, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health. “More and more schools are getting rid of it,” she said, noting that many require just a year or a single semester of PE throughout the four years of high school.
“Erectile Dysfunction” Drugs Heighten Natural Anti-Cancer Activity
Sildenafil and other “impotence drugs” that boost the production of a gassy chemical messenger to dilate blood vessels and produce an erection now also show promise in unmasking cancer cells so that the immune system can recognize and attack them, say scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.
Tests at Hopkins on mice with implanted colon and breast tumors showed that tumor size decreased two- and threefold in sildenafil-treated animals, compared to mice that did not get the drug. In mice engineered to lack an immune system, tumors were unaffected, proof of principle, the scientists say, that the drug is abetting the immune system’s own cellular response to cancer.
