Acupuncture significantly reduced joint pain for postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer receiving treatment with an aromatase inhibitor compared with both sham acupuncture and no treatment, according to data from the randomized, phase III SWOG S1200 clinical trial presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 5–9. “Aromatase inhibitors are among the...
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Novel compound restores immune response in patients with melanoma
A novel compound may restore immune response in patients with melanoma, according to a study presented at the ESMO Immuno Oncology Congress 2017. “Checkpoint inhibitors are a standard of care immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma,” said lead author Dr Sapna Patel, Assistant Professor, Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston,...
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Study provides insights on immune cells involved in kidney disease
Researchers have uncovered new information on cells involved in the body’s immune response following kidney injury. The findings, which appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), may lead to new strategies to help protect individuals’ kidney health. Dendritic cells are a type of immune cell thought to form...
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Taurine lends hand to repair cells damaged in multiple sclerosis
Demyelination by MS. The CD68 colored tissue shows several macrophages in the area of the lesion. Original scale 1:100. New research suggests that administering taurine, a molecule naturally produced by human cells, could boost the effectiveness of current multiple sclerosis (MS) therapies. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) found that taurine helps spark...
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Scientists discover new way to help nerve regeneration in spinal cord injury
There is currently no cure for spinal cord injury or treatment to help nerve regeneration so therapies offering intervention are limited. People with severe spinal cord injuries can remain paralysed for life and this is often accompanied by incontinence. A team led by Drs Liang-Fong Wong and Nicolas Granger from Bristol’s Faculty of Health Sciences...
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Divide and conquer: Pitting pathogens against each other helps fight drug resistance
Researchers have developed a way to turn pathogens against each other in order to fight drug-resistance in parasites Bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to our best drugs and antibiotics, and if we aren’t careful we could prescribe ourselves into a future where even the most routine treatments and surgeries become deadly again. Now, researchers at the...
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Gene therapy shows promise against blood-clotting disease
This Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017 photo provided by Jay Konduros, left, shows him and his brother, Bill, at Jay’s home in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. The brothers, who have hemophilia, were involved in a gene therapy study for their condition. Gene therapy has freed 10 men from nearly all symptoms of hemophilia for a year...
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Immunotherapy drug nearly eliminates severe acute graft-versus-host disease
Principal investigator, Dr. Leslie Kean, associate director of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer Research at Seattle Children’s, leads several research projects to develop novel approaches to predicting and preventing graft-versus-host disease. Results from a phase 2 clinical trial, presented by Seattle Children’s Research Institute at the 59th American Society of Hematology (ASH)...
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Immunotherapy strategy could be beneficial for relapsed acute myeloid leukemia
ATLANTA – University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers report that pairing an immunotherapy drug with chemotherapy proved beneficial for some patients with acute myeloid leukemia whose disease did not respond to standard treatment or had relapsed. Seven out of 18 patients with relapsed or persistent AML, or nearly 39 percent, had a...
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ASH: High-dose gene transfer beneficial in severe hemophilia A
(HealthDay)—For men with severe hemophilia A, high-dose factor VIII gene transfer is associated with sustained normalization of factor VIII activity levels, according to a study published online Dec. 9 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, held from Dec. 9 to 12 in Atlanta. Savita...