Scientists from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, US have now developed a new, cheaper and faster method to detect certain types of lung cancer in patients with no history of smoking.

About 8-12% people who have never smoked a single cigarette suffer from lung adeno carcinoma. A protein called 'anaplastic lymphoma kinase' (ALK) is present in the tumor which grows in such patients. Such a tumor is most likely to be detected among younger people and is more aggressive than the other types of tumors. The disease progression is more than double the progression rate of ALK-negative lung cancer tumor.

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) can be used to detect lung cancer by testing antigens or proteins in the tumor. Study leader, Dr. Ping Yang said, "This discovery could make it easier for doctors to select the best courses of treatment for individual patients. Because it is already performed in most pathology labs, (IHC) testing can be done on-site versus sending a sample to another diagnostic testing site."

After the marathon, Mumbaikars can gear up for one more race on February 27. But this race will be of a different kind as there will be no winners nor losers.

The Terry Fox Run is a non-competitive event conducted to raise funds for the Tata Memorial Hospital and Cancer research. In a meet held at Trident on Friday, Judith Fox-Alder, sister of Terry Fox, said that the run in India is the second largest in the world. ''Thirty-four countries participate in the Terry Fox Run. It is amazing to see how Terry, who had run the Marathon of Hope 30 year ago, has won the hearts of people all over the world,'' said Judith.

The event will be held on February 27 at 8 am and will begin from Air-India building at Nariman Point to Marine Drive flyover and back to Brabourne Stadium. Around 50-60 schools will participate in the run. State DGP D Sivanandan and singer Raageshwari will flag off the run.have one more reason to run. But this time it will be to raise funds for cancer research.

It is time to run for a cause once again and this time, Mumbaikars will run just for the sheer joy of running. The Terry Fox Run is a non-competitive event where people get together as individuals, families and groups to raise money, proceeds of which will go to the Tata Memorial Hospital for Cancer research.


In an event held at Trident on Friday, Judith Fox-Alder, sister of Terry Fox said she marvelled at how much the annual run had been able to do for cancer research, and how much it continued to do. The Run in India is now the second biggest run in the world! "We have 34 countries that are doing Terry Fox runs now. It's quite amazing that Terry 30 years ago did his Marathon of Hope and captured a nation, and now he has captured the hearts of people all over the world" said Fox-Alder.


The Terry Fox Run will be held on February 27 at 8.00 a.m. from Air-India Building (Nariman Point) to Marine Drive Flyover and back to Brabourne Stadium. 50-60 schools will participate in this run. State director-general of police D Sivanandan and singer Raageshwari will flag off the Run.

The widely-used illicit drug cannabis hampers sexual health, or at least the following article suggests so. Dr. Rany Shamloul, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology recently found that cannabis usage leads to sexual dysfunction among men. The research findings can probably alter the currently believed impact of cannabis use on sexual health.

The investigation was conducted on animals and in vitro studies that seemingly associated cannabis use with sexual dysfunction. According to the commonly held belief, cannabis affects certain receptors in the brain, but these receptors also exist in the penis. Since cannabis use allegedly have an antagonizing effect on receptors in the penis, ability to achieve and maintain an erection may be extremely difficult.

The drug is apparently utilized by young, sexually active people who are unaware of its hazardous effects on sexual health and performance. As Nathaniel Branden quotes, 'The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance,' making people aware about the negative outcomes of cannabis usage appears beneficial. The research seems to have important implications in the health-space.

The research will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Men and women with high triglyceride levels are at an increased risk of ischemic stroke, which typically occurs when blood flow to the brain is blocked by a build-up of fatty deposits within blood vessels, a new Danish study contends.
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In fact, this stroke risk seems to be more pronounced for triglyceride fats than it is for cholesterol, even though cholesterol is currently the prime focus of current guidelines. These findings, the researchers said, suggest that triglyceride levels should be incorporated into stroke-prevention guidelines.

"There might be an association between elevated triglyceride levels and increased stroke risk," said Dr. Tara Narula, a cardiologist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "All the guidelines really just focus on total cholesterol and LDL [low-density lipoprotein] cholesterol, and not on non-fasting triglycerides."

The link between high cholesterol and stroke has never actually been proven, yet giving people the cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins seems to lower their stroke risk. But statins also lower triglyceride levels, suggesting that this might be the mechanism at play.

High triglyceride levels may indicate the presence of fat particles similar to "bad" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, which can also contribute to the build-up of plaque in arterial walls.

"Triglycerides are associated with atherosclerosis; however, triglycerides in themselves are not causal in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis," explained Dr. Marianne Benn, senior author of the study, which appears in the Feb. 21 online issue of the Annals of Neurology. "They are a marker of high levels of atherogenic lipoprotein remnants [very low density lipoproteins and intermediate density lipoproteins]."

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States, according to the American Stroke Association, and 87 percent of all cases are attributed to ischemic stroke, according to background information from the researchers.

In the Danish study, Benn and her colleagues looked at almost 14,000 men and women, all white, in Copenhagen, who had had baseline triglyceride and cholesterol levels taken between 1976 and 1978 and who were then followed for up to 33 years. During that time, 837 women and 837 men had an ischemic stroke.

For both men and women, higher non-fasting triglyceride levels were linked with an increased risk of stroke, even after adjusting for age, gender, smoking, alcohol use, lipid-lowering therapy, hormone therapy (in women) and other factors.

Women with triglyceride levels of 443 mg/dL had nearly quadruple the risk of suffering a stroke, compared to women whose levels were less than 89 mg/dL. Those with levels between 89 and 177 mg/dL had a 20 percent increased risk.

Mens' increased risk ranged from 20 percent to 2.3-times higher, with the risk increasing as triglyceride levels went up.

Increased cholesterol was not linked to an increased risk of stroke in women, though it was in men whose cholesterol was 348 mg/dL or higher.

The American Heart Association characterizes "normal" triglyceride levels as lower than 150 mg/dL.

Based on the findings of this latest study, "desirable levels of triglycerides are below 180 to 200 mg/dL," said Benn, who is with Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.

"Patients should attempt to reach this goal through lifestyle changes [weight loss, reduction of intake of saturated fatty acids, cholesterol, and alcohol, more exercise, and cessation of smoking]," she said.

If that doesn't work, the provider should move to medication, he added. "If triglyceride levels are still above 200 mg/dL after three months," she said, "the patient should be treated with lipid-lowering medication [statin, fibrates, and niacin]."

A new study has found that asthma may have a surprising link with the composition of the species of bacteria that inhabit bronchial airways. This finding could help the researchers in discovering a new treatment or even potential cures for the common inflammatory disease.

The new detection methods used in this study has helped the researchers in finding that the diversity of microbes inside the respiratory tract is more vast than previously suspected. This diversity creates complex and inter-connected microbial neighborhood that appears to be associated with asthma.

MD, Homer Boushey, a UCSF Professor of medicine in the division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and co-author of the study says that most of the people believes that asthma was caused by inhalation of allergens but this study shows that it may be more complicated than that and asthma may involve colonization of the airways by multiple bacteria.

It was a three-year project in which samples from the airway linings of 65 adults with mild to moderate asthma were collected in addition to the samples of 10 healthy adults. Using a tool, scientists have found that bronchial airway samples from asthmatic patients contained far more bacteria than samples from healthy patients.