Curry Favor?

LONDON - A MOLECULE found in a curry ingredient can kill oesophageal cancer cells in the laboratory, suggesting it might be developed as an anti-cancer treatment, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers at the Cork Cancer Research Centre in Ireland treated oesophageal cancer cells with curcumin - a chemical found in the spice turmeric, which gives curries a distinctive yellow colour - and found it started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells also began to digest themselves, they said in a study published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Previous scientific studies have suggested curcumin can suppress tumours and that people who eat lots of curry may be less prone to the disease, although curcumin loses its anti-cancer attributes quickly when ingested. But Sharon McKenna, lead author of the Irish study, said her study suggested a potential for scientists to develop curcumin as an anti-cancer drug to treat oesophageal cancer.

Cancers of the oesophagus kill more than 500,000 people across the world each year. The tumours are especially deadly, with five-year survival rates of just 12 to 31 per cent. Ms McKenna said the study showed curcumin caused the cancer cells to die 'using an unexpected system of cell messages'.

Normally, faulty cells die by committing programmed suicide, or apoptosis, which occurs when proteins called caspases are 'switched on' in cells, the researchers said.

But these cells showed no evidence of suicide, and the addition of a molecule that inhibits caspases and stops this 'switch being flicked' made no difference to the number of cells that died, suggesting curcumin attacked the cancer cells using an alternative cell signalling system. -- REUTERS

it has begun!

and so, with nary a peep, clerkship has begun for real. to be fair, it actually started last week, but what with finals week looming over us in all its ominous glory, there was barely a soul with his heart into hospital affairs.

afterall, i was in -pathology-... and with the exception of us pricking holes into each other and drawing test tube after test tube of blood with great finesse, there was hardly any hands-on exposure. what WAS available though, was hour after boring hour of somnambulistic lectures on how to pack samples, which bottles should go where, yadda yadda. information which, unless you ARE staying at the TSGH, is completely useless.

so perhaps it was good news that while we had to endure the week-long lessons, while other people were let off early to do last minute studying, we weren't missing out on the GOOD STUFF, so to speak.

unfortunately, i fell victim to terrain of our infamous tennis court and ended up with a foot resembling the likes of a pork trotter. raw, mind you, not one of those german pork knuckle kind. massive ecchymosis aside, the swelling made for good simulation of pitting edema, and it would altogether be quite funny had it not come at such a bad time and err, well if it didnt happen to me. heh.

so, it was with such an awesome appendage that i dove headlong (or.. lung?) into the respiratory ward (i have -no- idea what some of the chinese terms mean, translated into english), into the world of COPD, pneumonia, TB and puffing ventilators. to a universe dominated by s. pneumoniae, h. influenzae, acinetobacter, mycoplasma, chlamydia, legionella, and the occasional m. catarrhalis, klebsiella, and pseudomonas aeruginosa. and err. scabies. (as discovered today)

i am of course, now the smallest of fry, the phytoplankton of the deep dark sea of medicine. except that unlike the phytoplankton, i dont actually -contribute- much. but foodchain-wise, yep the phytoplankton and i, we're right there at the same level.

though, i must say that i am learning at the speed of light! visual input, verbal exchanges, and the occasional handson experience (try not to move, mr!) all makes for great neuronal stimulation! i can feel those pathways forming arreddddyyyyy.

as it is -rather- late now, i hope to do a more detailed to account as to what exactly ive learnt so far... in the near future. tomorrow will see me doing my first ever night shift. whoopeedoo?

a solution to the ageing heart?

HONG KONG - SCIENTISTS in Japan said they have uncovered evidence that shows it may be possible to delay or prevent heart failure in humans.

In a paper published in the journal Circulation, Tetsuo Shioi, lead researcher and assistant professor of medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto, and his team described how they managed to suppress a variety of the P13K gene in a group of elderly mice.

The gene regulates the lifespan of cells and plays a role in the ageing of tissues. In previous studies, suppression of this gene extended the lifespan of the roundworm and kept the hearts of old fruit flies healthy.

Compared with another group of mice in which the gene was left intact, mice with the suppressed gene had improved cardiac function, less fibrosis (which makes the heart inflexible) and fewer biological markers of ageing.

'This study showed that ageing of the heart can be prevented by modifying the function of insulin and paves the way to preventing age-associated susceptibility to heart failure,' Mr Shioi said.

Old age is a major risk factor for heart failure, a condition when the heart is unable to pump enough blood around to supply the oxygen the body needs, the World Health Organisation says. -- REUTERS


MILLIONS SUFFER HEART FAILURE

ACCORDING to the American Heart Association, 5.7 million Americans have heart failure, and nearly 10 out of every 1,000 people over age 65 suffer heart failure every year.

Mariell Jessup, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, said older people experience a slow but gradual loss of heart cells and a host of other cellular abnormalities which make the remaining cells contract less efficiently.

'This early work in a mouse model, clarifying the role of PI3K in cardiac ageing, could ultimately allow scientists to understand if human hearts are similarly influenced,' he said.

As mammals, mice are considered a good surrogate for studies of human diseases and conditions; their body plan, physiology and genome share many features with humans. -- REUTERS