People who have had common skin cancers may be at an increased risk of developing melanoma and 29 other cancer types, a new study has warned.

Individuals who had nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) were at increased risk for subsequently developing other cancer types, and this association was much higher for those under 25 years of age, researchers said.

NMSC is the most common type of skin cancer. It is relatively easy to treat if detected early, and rarely spreads to other organs, they said.

"Our study shows that NMSC susceptibility is an important indicator of susceptibility to malignant tumours and that the risk is especially high among people who develop NMSC at a young age," said Rodney Sinclair, professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

"The risk increases for a large group of seemingly unrelated cancers; however, the greatest risk relates to other cancers induced by sunlight, such as melanoma," said Sinclair.

Compared with people who did not have NMSC, those who did were 1.36 times more likely to subsequently develop any cancer, including melanoma and salivary gland, bone, and upper gastrointestinal cancers.

Survivors younger than 25 years of age, however, were 23 times more likely to develop any cancer other than NMSC.

In particular, they were 94 and 93 times more likely to get melanoma and salivary gland cancer, respectively.

"Our study identifies people who receive a diagnosis of NMSC at a young age as being at increased risk for cancer and, therefore, as a group who could benefit from screening for internal malignancy," said Sinclair.

Researchers hypothesised that people who develop skin cancers later in life do so as a result of accumulated Sun exposure, while those who develop skin cancer at a younger age may do so as a result of an increased susceptibility to cancer in general.

To investigate this, they stratified the risk ratios by age and discovered that young people with NMSC are more cancer-prone.

The researchers constructed two cohorts: one of 502,490 people with a history of NMSC, and a cohort of 8,787,513 people who served as controls.

They followed up with the participants electronically for five to six years, and 67,148 from the NMSC cohort and 863,441 from the control group subsequently developed cancers.

They found that for those who had NMSC, the relative risk for developing cancers of the bladder, brain, breast, colon, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate, and stomach remained consistently elevated for the entire period of the study, and the risk for cancers of the brain, colon, and prostate increased with time.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Bio-mar

Anyone with blood pressure that is higher than the optimal 120/80 reading may be more likely to have a stroke, according to a new analysis.

The meta-analysis looked at research on the risk of developing stroke in people with 'prehypertension' or blood pressure higher than optimal but lower than the threshold to be diagnosed with high blood pressure, which is 140/90 mmHg.

"These findings, if confirmed, have important takeaways for the public. Considering the high proportion of the population who have higher than normal blood pressure, successful treatment of this condition could prevent many strokes and make a major difference in public health," explained study author Dingli Xu of Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China.

A total of 19 prospective cohort studies with more than 760,000 participants were included in the analysis and participants were followed for time periods ranging from four to 36 years.

From 25 to 54 percent of study participants had pre-high blood pressure.

The analysis found that people with pre-high blood pressure were 66 percent more likely to develop a stroke than people who had normal blood pressure.

The results were the same after researchers adjusted for other factors that could increase the risk of stroke, such as high cholesterol, diabetes and smoking.

The researchers determined that nearly 20 percent of strokes in the study population were due to pre-high blood pressure.

The analysis also divided people with prehypertension into high and low groups, with blood pressure over 130/85 in the high range.

Those in the high range had a greater risk of stroke than those in the low range.

Those in the high range were 95 percent more likely to develop a stroke than those with normal blood pressure, while those in the low range were 44 percent more likely.

"Prehypertension should be managed with changes in diet and exercise to help reduce the risk of stroke," Xu noted in the study published in the journal Neurology.

In a break-through for people suffering from diabetes, research has demonstrated that the intestinal cells could be an accessible and abundant source of functional insulin-producing cells.

Destruction of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas is at the heart of type 1 and type 2 diabetes.

"We are looking for ways to make new beta cells for these patients to one day replace daily insulin injections," said Ben Stanger, an assistant professor at University of Pennsylvania.

Transplanting islet cells to restore normal blood sugar levels in patients with severe type 1 diabetes is one approach to treating the disease.

Using stem cells to create beta cells is another area of investigation.

However, both of these strategies have limitations.

"Our results demonstrate that the intestine could be an accessible and abundant source of functional insulin-producing cells," Stanger noted.

In the new research, Stanger and his team introduced the three beta-cell reprogramming factors Pdx1 (P), MafA (M) and Ngn3 (N) - collectively called PMN - into the acinar cells of the pancreas.

Remarkably, this manipulation caused the cells to take on some structural and physiological features of beta cells.

They expressed PMN in a wide spectrum of tissues in one-to-two-month-old mice.

Three days later the mice died of hypoglycemia.

The team knew they were on to something given that some of the mouse cells - cells other than acinar cells - were making way too much extra insulin.

"In tracking down which cell type it was, we saw transient expression of the three factors in crypt cells of the intestine near the pancreas," Stanger explained.

They dubbed these beta-like, transformed cells 'neoislet' cells.

These cells express insulin and show outward structural features akin to beta cells.

The neoislets are also responsive to glucose - when exposed to glucose they release insulin.

The cells were also able to improve hyperglycemia in diabetic mice.

What is more, expressing PMN in human intestinal 'organoids' - miniature intestinal units that can be grown in culture - also converted intestinal epithelial cells into beta-like cells.

"Our ultimate goal is to obtain epithelial cells from diabetes patients who have had endoscopies, expand these cells, add PMN to them to make beta-like cells, and then give them back to the patient as an alternate therapy," Stanger expressed.

The report was published in the journal Cell Reports.

A Japanese scientist has asked for the findings of his groundbreaking study in stem cells to be withdrawn amid doubts over its quality.

According to Reuters news agency, Prof Teruhiko Wakayama of the University of Yamanashi told Japanese TV that when he was conducting the experiment, he believed that it was absolutely right, but many mistakes have emerged which has led him to withdraw the research paper, the BBC reported.

Several questions have been raised about the images used in the scientific report which claimed that dipping skin cells in acid could cheaply and quickly convert them into stem cells.

The original study, which was published in the journal Nature, had found that stem cells no longer needed to be taken from embryos or made by complicated and costly genetic tampering, and had been hailed as "remarkable" and as a "major scientific discovery".

For the first time, researchers have shown that an essential biological process known as protein synthesis can be studied in adult stem cells.

The ground-breaking findings also demonstrate that the precise amount of protein produced by blood-forming stem cells is crucial to their function.

"This finding not only tells us something new about stem cell regulation but also opens up the ability to study differences in protein synthesis between many kinds of cells in the body," said Sean Morrison, director of the children's medical centre research institute at University of Toronto.

The discovery measures protein production, a process known as translation, and shows that protein synthesis is not only fundamental to how stem cells are regulated, but also is critical to their regenerative potential.

Different types of blood cells produce vastly different amounts of protein per hour, and stem cells in particular synthesise much less protein than any other blood-forming cells.

"This result suggests that blood-forming stem cells require a lower rate of protein synthesis as compared to other blood-forming cells," Morrison added.

Researchers applied the findings to a mouse model with a genetic mutation in a component of the ribosome - the machinery that makes proteins - and the rate of protein production was reduced in stem cells by 30 percent.

The scientists also increased the rate of protein synthesis by deleting the tumour-suppressor gene 'Pten' in blood-forming stem cells.

In both instances, stem cell function was noticeably impaired.

Together, these observations demonstrate that blood-forming stem cells require a highly regulated rate of protein synthesis - such that increases or decreases in that rate impair stem cell function.

"Many people think of protein synthesis as a housekeeping function, in that it happens behind the scenes in all cells. The reality is that a lot of housekeeping functions are highly regulated," explained Robert A.J. Signer, a post-doctoral research fellow in Morrison's laboratory.

Many diseases, including degenerative diseases and certain types of cancers, are associated with mutations in the machinery that makes proteins.

Discoveries such as this raise the possibility that changes in protein synthesis are necessary for the development of those diseases, said the study published in the journal Nature.