Oncologists need to assess efficacy of mercury to treat cancer: Dr Arul Amuthan

Oncologists and scientists engaged in the research of cancer treatments should conduct a comprehensive study on the efficacy of mercury which is being used as an anti-cancer drug in the age old Siddha system, said Dr Arul Amuthan, Lecturer, department of pharmacology, Melaka Manipal Medical College in Karnataka.

Dr Amuthan, who claims to be the first ethno-pharmacologist from Indian traditional medicine sector, has told Pharmabiz that if the modern medical science in India does not recognise the metal (mercury) as a drug to treat cancer, the country will have to fight for its patent rights from the Europeans in the near future.

He said his three years of research has shown that metal (mercury, arsenic and copper) based Siddha drug is a safe alternative for cisplatin therapy or arsenic trioxide in selected cases of cancer treatments wherein the patients cannot bear the adverse effects. He found that mice treated with Siddha drugs showed better health than what did in cisplatin therapy in terms of appetite, haemoglobin, red blood cells and white blood cells. He observed that the oncologists could develop an integrative medicine approach for treating cancer by combining allopathy and the proven methods of traditional systems.

Siddha System of Medicine is the authentic ancient Indian traditional medicine dealing metal-mineral based drugs along with herbals for cancer treatment. Ayurveda acquired this knowledge from Siddha system from Siddhar Nagarjuna during his period. Siddha literatures mention cancer disease as ‘putrunoi’ which means the disease of growth like termite mount. Indian yogis suggested use of copper, gold, arsenic and mercury for cancer therapy. Such drugs have been administered to cancer patients for 3 to 7 days depend on the severity. After a gap of 7 days the drug was again given for 3-7 days. This cycle repeated until the cancer was controlled.”

“In developed countries a new approach, ‘integrative medicine approach’, which is a combination of modern and ancient methods of treatments, has received attention among oncologists to treat cancer. In India, even though the cancer patients have the rights to choose the traditional medicine therapy, such integrative medicine approach is not in the front line. This is because there is no attempt made to provide integrative health care using Indian traditional medicines along with existing allopathy drug therapy. We don’t even have a registry to find out how many patients are following integrative medicine approach”, said Dr Amuthan. 

He said government Siddha medical college working at Palayamkottai in Tamil Nadu has a separate outpatient department (OPD) to provide Siddha treatments for cancer patients who visit the OPD while taking chemotherapy from the nearby Thirunelveli medical college. But, so far no effort has been made to find out the efficacy part of the Siddha drugs or the additional benefits the patients derive from administering the traditional medicines, he alleged. Dr Amuthan, who takes forward the research on Siddha drugs in curing cancer disease, said each Siddha OPD should be established in all the cancer hospitals so that the patients will have the accessibility for integrative medicine for cancer.

Cancer is being treated by chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. Arsenic (Arsenic trioxide) and platinum (cisplatin, carboplatin, oxaliplatin) are the well proven anticancer drugs which are part of the chemotherapy regimen for cancer treatment. Certain herbal derived chemicals such as vincristine, vinblastine, vinorelbine, and paclitaxel also play important role in the treatment of cancers. Most of the time, the terminal days of the patient undergoing these therapies would end up with terrible adverse effects caused by the drug therapy, he added.
Source:Pharmabiz

Walk to Ignite the Creative Being in You: Study

Stanford University researchers have revealed that walking helps in increasing a person's creativity by 60 per cent.

According to researchers Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, creative outburst was seen after walking and whether it was done indoors or outdoors was not an important point. 

In one of the experiments, participants were made to walk on a treadmill facing a blank wall or walking outdoors. Scientists found that walking generated creative responses two times more compared to people who were just sitting down. After the walks, creative quotient was not affected even after they sat down.

"Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking. We finally may be taking a step, or two, toward discovering why," the researchers said.

However, when walkers were given problems which needed a single answer, they lagged behind a bit from those who responded while sitting, said the research.

The study was published in American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.

"I thought walking outside would blow everything out of the water, but walking on a treadmill in a small, boring room still had strong results, which surprised me," said Oppezzo, a former Stanford doctoral graduate researcher in educational psychology who is now a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University.

Oppezzo further said that the next step would be an attempt to understand the exact reason for the association between walking and creativity. Co-founder of Apple late Steve Jobs was known to favour walking meetings. 

Source:Stanford University

High Doses of Antidepressants Increases Suicidal Risk in Children Young Adult

Bottom Line: Young adults and children who start antidepressant therapy at high doses, rather than the prescribed doses, appear to be at greater risk for suicidal behavior during the first 90 days of treatment.
 

Author: Matthew Miller, M.D., Sc.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues. 

Background: A previous meta-analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of antidepressant trials suggested that children who received antidepressants had twice the rate of suicidal ideation and behavior than children who were given a placebo. The authors of the current study sought to examine suicidal behavior and antidepressant dose, and whether risk depended on a patient's age. 

How the Study Was Conducted: The study used data from 162,625 people (between the ages of 10 to 64 years) with depression who started antidepressant treatment with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor at modal (the most prescribed doses on average) or at higher than modal doses from 1998 through 2010. 

Results: The rate of suicidal behavior (deliberate self-harm or DSH) among children and adults (24 years or younger) who started antidepressant therapy at high doses was about twice as high compared with a matched group of patients who received generally prescribed doses. The authors suggest this corresponds to about one additional event of DSH for every 150 patients treated with high-dose therapy. For adults 25 to 64 years old, the difference in risk for suicidal behavior was null. The study does not address why higher doses might lead to higher suicide risk. 

Discussion: "Considered in light of recent meta-analyses concluding that the efficacy of antidepressant therapy for youth seems to be modest, and separate evidence that dose is generally unrelated to the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressants, our findings offer clinicians an additional incentive to avoid initiating pharmacotherapy at high-therapeutic doses and to monitor all patients starting antidepressants, especially youth, for several months and regardless of history of DSH." 

(JAMA Intern Med. Published online April 28, 2014. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1053. Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com.) 

Editor's Note: Authors made a conflict of interest and funding disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc. 

Commentary: Initial Dose of Antidepressants, Suicidal Behavior in Youth
In a related commentary, David A. Brent, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh, and Robert Gibbons, Ph.D., of the University of Chicago, write: "In summary Miller et al are to be commended on a thoughtful and careful analysis of the effects of initiating antidepressants at higher than modal doses." 

"Their findings suggest that higher than modal initial dosing leads to an increased risk for DSH and adds further support to current clinical recommendations to begin treatment with lower antidepressant doses. While initiation at higher than modal doses of antidepressants may be deleterious, this study does not address the effect of dose escalation," they continue. 

"Moreover, while definitive studies on the impact of dose escalation in the face of nonresponse remain to be done, there are promising studies that suggest in certain subgroups, dose escalation can be of benefit. Finally it should be noted that in this study, there was no pre-exposure to post-exposure increase in suicidal behavior after the initiation of antidepressants in youth treated at the modal dosage," they conclude.
 

Ginseng can treat and prevent influenza and RSV, researcher finds

Ginseng can help treat and prevent influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a respiratory virus that infects the lungs and breathing passages, according to research findings by a scientist in Georgia State University's new Institute for Biomedical Sciences.

In a recent issue of Nutrients and an upcoming publication of theInternational Journal of Molecular Medicine, Sang-Moo Kang reports the beneficial effects of ginseng, a well-known herbal medicine, on human health.

Kang's primary research focuses on designing and developing effective vaccines against viral diseases such as influenza virus and RSV, but he partnered with a university and research institutes in South Korea that wanted international collaborative projects to study if ginseng can be used to improve health and protect against disease because of the potential benefit in fighting these viruses. Ginseng has been reported to have anticancer, anti-inflammatory and immune modifying abilities.

Seasonal influenza is a serious respiratory disease that causes annual epidemics in humans worldwide, resulting in about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Influenza can spread quickly, and new, unexpected pandemic influenza viruses may emerge at any time and cross over to different species. The H1N1 influenza virus, a new strain known as swine flu that emerged in 2009, spread rapidly to more than 74 countries. There are also challenges with existing influenza vaccines, such as required annual updates and no protection against pandemic strains and bird flu.

In addition, there are no vaccines available for RSV, which affects millions and is the leading cause of inflammatory bronchiolitis pneumonia and viral death in infants and in some elderly adults.

In his study published in Nutrients, Kang investigated whether red ginseng extract has preventive effects on influenza A virus infection. He found that red ginseng extract improves the survival of human lung epithelial cells infected with influenza virus. Also, treatment with red ginseng extract reduced the expression of genes that cause inflammation.

After infection with influenza A virus, mice that were orally administered ginseng over a long time showed multiple immune modifying effects, such as stimulated antiviral production of proteins important in immune response and fewer inflammatory cells in their bronchial walls. The study indicates the beneficial effects of red ginseng extract on preventing influenza A virus infections could result from immune modifying capabilities of ginseng.

In his upcoming publication in the International Journal of Molecular Medicine, Kang investigated whether Korean red ginseng extract has antiviral effects, or the ability to treat RSV infection. Kang found Korean red ginseng extract improved the survival of human lung epithelial cells against RSV infection and inhibited the virus from replicating, or multiplying, in the body. In addition, treatment with Korean red ginseng extract suppressed the expression of RSV-induced inflammatory genes and the formation of chemically reactive molecules containing oxygen, which play a role in virus-induced epithelial damage in RSV.

Also, mice that were orally administered Korean red ginseng extract had lower viral levels after infection with RSV. The results suggest that Korean red ginseng extract has antiviral activity against RSV infection.

Kang has further demonstrated ginseng's beneficial effects on influenza and RSV in previously published studies.

Source-Georgia State University 

Specialized yoga program could help women with urinary incontinence

UCSF team discovers natural way to avoid accidental urine leakage

An ancient form of meditation and exercise could help women who suffer from urinary incontinence, according to a new study from UC San Francisco.

In a study scheduled to be published on April 25, 2014 in Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery, the official journal of the American Urogynecologic Society, UCSF researchers discovered that a yoga training program, designed to improve pelvic health, can help women gain more control over their urination and avoid accidental urine leakage.

"Yoga is often directed at mindful awareness, increasing relaxation, and relieving anxiety and stress," said first author Alison Huang, MD, assistant professor in the UCSF School of Medicine. "For these reasons, yoga has been directed at a variety of other conditions – metabolic syndrome or pain syndromes – but there's also a reason to think that it could help for incontinence as well."

Huang and her colleagues recruited 20 women from the Bay Area who were 40 years and older and who suffered from urinary incontinence on a daily basis. Half were randomly assigned to take part in a six-week yoga therapy program and the other half were not. The women who took part in the yoga program experienced an overall 70 percent improvement – or reduction – in the frequency of their urine leakage compared to the baseline. The control group – or the group that did not start yoga therapy – only had 13 percent improvement. Most of the observed improvement in incontinence was in stress incontinence, or urine leakage brought on by activities that increase abdominal pressure such as coughing, sneezing, and bending over.

Huang and her colleagues believe that yoga can improve urinary incontinence through more than one mechanism. Because incontinence is associated with anxiety and depression, women suffering from incontinence may benefit from yoga's emphasis on mindful meditation and relaxation. But regular practice of yoga may also help women strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor that support the bladder and protect against incontinence.

"We thought this would be a good opportunity for women to use yoga to become more aware of and have more control over their pelvic floor muscles," Huang said.

Approximately 25 million adults in America suffer from some form of urinary incontinence, according to the National Association for Continence. Up to 80 percent of them are women. Urinary incontinence becomes more common as women age, although many younger women also suffer from it.

"We specifically developed a yoga therapy program that would be safe for older women, including women with minor mobility limitations," Huang said. "So we were partially assessing safety of this program for older women who are at highest risk for having incontinence in the first place."

Not all types of yoga may help with urinary incontinence. The yoga program used in the study was specially designed with input from yoga consultants Leslie Howard and Judith Hanson Lasater, who have experience teaching women to practice yoga in ways that will improve their pelvic health. Still Huang and her colleagues believe that many women in the community can be taught to preserve pelvic muscle strength and prevent incontinence.

"It would be a way for women to gain more control over their pelvic floor muscles without having to go through traditional costly and time-intensive rehabilitation therapy," Huang said.

Men were not included in this study because urinary incontinence in men is often related to problems related to the prostate, which may be less likely to improve with yoga. Huang and her colleagues hope to eventually build on this study and double the length of the study to 12 weeks.

Source:Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery, the official journal of the American Urogynecologic Society,

To Prevent Most Common Type of Heart Disease, Scientists Alter Fat Metabolism in Animals

With a view to prevent the development of atherosclerosis, scientists have found a way to block abnormal cholesterol production, transport and breakdown successfully.
 Lead investigator Subroto Chatterjee, Ph.D., a cardio-metabolic expert at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center Current asserted that cholesterol-lowering medications tackled the issue on a single front either by blocking cholesterol synthesis or by preventing the body from absorbing too much of it, but atherosclerosis was a multi-factorial problem that required hitting the abnormal cholesterol cycle at many points. 

The Johns Hopkins team used an existing man-made compound called D-PDMP to block the synthesis of the GSL molecule, and as a result it prevented the development of heart disease in mice and rabbits fed a high-fat, cholesterol-laden diet. 

The findings reveal that D-PDMP appears to work by interfering with a constellation of genetic pathways that regulated the fat metabolism on multiple fronts from the way cells derived and absorbed the cholesterol from food in a way that cholesterol was transported to tissues and organs and was then broken down by the liver and excreted from the body. 

The experiments showed that treatment with D-PDMP led to a drop in the animals' levels of bad cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein, LDL and a drop in oxidized LDL, a particularly virulent form of fat that formed when LDL encountered the free radicals. 

The results also showed that a there was a surge in good cholesterol or high-density lipoprotein, HDL, known to counteract the effects of LDL by mopping it up and a significant drop in triglycerides, that was another type of plaque-building fat. 

Source:The study has been published in the journal Circulation.

 

Simple Tip to be Happy

One can be happy by making others smile, reveals study.
 Researchers at Stanford University have claimed that making someone smile is as good for the giver as it is for the receiver and if one sets out to make someone happy, instead of just smile, then they will probably fail, ABC News reported. 

According to the study, as happiness is a vague, abstract condition and in the end one won't know if the other person is really happy, it can cause frustration and thus unhappiness. 

Psychologist Jennifer Aaker, lead author of the study said that a prosocial act can not only boost the happiness of the recipient, but it can boost the happiness of the giver as well, and that making someone smile is a concrete goal, they said, so it's easier to achieve. 

The study was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.

 

Scientists Find New Point of Attack on HIV for Vaccine Development

The newly identified site can be attacked by human antibodies in a way that neutralizes the infectivity of a wide variety of HIV strains. 

"HIV has very few known sites of vulnerability, but in this work we've described a new one, and we expect it will be useful in developing a vaccine," said Dennis R. Burton, professor in TSRI's Department of Immunology and Microbial Science and scientific director of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center (NAC) and of the National Institutes of Health's Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) on TSRI's La Jolla campus. 

It's very exciting that we're still finding new vulnerable sites on this virus," said Ian A. Wilson, Hansen Professor of Structural Biology, chair of the Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI and member of the NAC and CHAVI-ID. 

The findings were reported in two papers-one led by Burton and the second led by TSRI Assistant Professor Andrew B. Ward, also a member of NAC and CHAVI-ID, and Wilson-appearing in the May issue of the journal Immunity. 

The discovery is part of a large, IAVI- and NIH-sponsored effort to develop an effective vaccine against HIV. Such a vaccine would work by eliciting a strong and long-lasting immune response against vulnerable conserved sites on the virus-sites that don't vary much from strain to strain, and that, when grabbed by an antibody, leave the virus unable to infect cells. 

Cloaked by Shields 

HIV generally conceals these vulnerable conserved sites under a dense layer of difficult-to-grasp sugars and fast-mutating parts of the virus surface. Much of the antibody response to infection is directed against the fast-mutating parts and thus is only transiently effective. 

Prior to the new findings, scientists had been able to identify only a few different sets of "broadly neutralizing" antibodies, capable of reaching four conserved vulnerable sites on the virus. All these sites are on HIV's only exposed surface antigen, the flower-like envelope (Env) protein (gp140) that sprouts from the viral membrane and is designed to grab and penetrate host cells. 

The identification of the new vulnerable site on the virus began with tests of blood samples from IAVI Protocol G, in which IAVI and its NAC partnered with clinical research centers in Africa, India, Thailand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to collect blood samples from more than 1,800 healthy, HIV-positive volunteers to look for rare, broadly neutralizing antibodies. The serum from a small set of the samples indeed turned out to block the infectivity, in test cells, of a wide range of HIV isolates, suggesting the presence of broadly neutralizing antibodies. In 2009, scientists from IAVI, TSRI and Theraclone Sciences succeeded in isolating and characterizing the first new broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV seen in a decade. 

Emilia Falkowska, a research associate in the Burton laboratory who was a key author of the first paper, and colleagues soon found a set of eight closely related antibodies that accounted for most of one of the sample's HIV neutralizing activity. The scientists determined that the two broadest neutralizers among these antibodies, PGT151 and PGT152, could block the infectivity of about two-thirds of a large panel of HIV strains found in patients worldwide. 

Curiously, despite their broad neutralizing ability, these antibodies did not bind to any previously described vulnerable sites, or epitopes, on Env-and indeed failed to bind tightly anywhere on purified copies of gp120 or gp41, the two protein subunits of Env. Most previously described broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies bind to one or the other Env subunit. The researchers eventually determined, however, that PGT151 and PGT152 attach not just to gp120 or gp41 but to bits of both. 

In fact, gp120 and gp41 assemble into an Env structure not as one gp120-gp41 combination but as three intertwined ones-a trimer, in biologists' parlance. PGT151 and 152 (which are nearly identical) turned out to have a binding site that occurs only on this mature and properly assembled Env trimer structure. 

"These are the first HIV neutralizing antibodies we've found that unequivocally distinguish mature Env trimer from all other forms of Env," said Falkowska. "That's important because this is the form of Env that the virus uses to infect cells." 

Structure Revealed 

The second of the two new studies was an initial structural analysis of the new vulnerable epitope. 

Using an integrative approach that combined electron microscopy on the Env trimer complex with PGT151 (led by the Ward lab) with the structure of the PGT151 Fab by x-ray crystallography (led by the Wilson lab), the scientists were able to visualize the location of the PGT151-series binding site on the Env trimer-which includes a spot on one gp41 protein with two associated sugars (glycans), a patch on the gp120 protein and even a piece of the adjacent gp41 within the trimer structure-"a very complex epitope," said Claudia Blattner, a research associate in the Wilson laboratory at TSRI and member of the IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center who, along with graduate student Jeong Hyun Lee, was a first author of the second paper. 

A surprise finding was that the PGT151-series antibodies bind to the Env trimer in a way that stabilizes its otherwise fragile structure. "Typically when you try to purify the native Env trimer, it falls apart, which has made it very hard to study," said Ward. "It was a key breakthrough to find an antibody that stabilizes it." 

Although the PGT151 site is valuable in itself as an attack point for an HIV vaccine, its discovery also hints at the existence of other similar complex and vulnerable epitopes on HIV. 

Authors and Funding 

In addition to the scientists named above, the contributors to the first paper, "Broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies define a novel glycan-dependent epitope on the pre-fusion conformation of gp41 on cleaved Envelope trimers," were Alejandra Ramos, Jeong Hyun Lee, Chi-Hui Liang and Pascal Poignard, all from TSRI and IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center; Alejandro Ramirez, Ryan McBride, Michael B. Zwick and James C. Paulson from TSRI; Katie J. Doores from King's College London School of Medicine; Ronald Derking, Marit J. van Gils and Rogier W. Sanders from the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam; Sachin S. Shivatare, Chung-Yi Wu and Chi-Huey Wong of Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; Po-Ying Chan-Hui and Kristine Swiderek of Theraclone Sciences, Inc., Seattle; Yan Liu and Ten Feizi of Imperial College London; Michael S. Seaman of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; John P. Moore of Weill Medical College of Cornell University; and Wayne C. Koff of IAVI in New York City. 

The contributors to the second paper, "Structural delineation of a quaternary, cleavage-dependent epitope at the gp41-gp120 interface on intact HIV-1 Env trimers," included Kwinten Sliepen, Ronald Derking, Alba Torrents de la Peña, Marit van Gils and Rogier W. Sanders from the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam; Albert Cupo and John P. Moore of Weill Medical College of Cornell University; Jean-Philippe Julien and Pascal Poignard of TSRI and IAVI Neutralizing Antibody Center; and Wenjie Peng and James C. Paulson of TSRI.
Funding for the first study came from IAVI; the National Institutes for Health (grant AI33232, HIVRAD P01 AI82362); the NIH-funded Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) (grant UM1AI100663); The Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT and Harvard; and the Aids Fonds Netherlands (grants #2011032, #2012041). 

Funding for the second study was provided by IAVI, CHAVI-ID (UM1 AI100663); NIH (P30AI036214, HIVRAD P01 AI082362 and R01 AI084817); the University of California, San Diego Center for AIDS Research; The California HIV/AIDS Research Program; Aids Fonds Netherlands (grant #2011032); the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research; the European Research Council; and the German Academic Exchange Service.
IAVI's funding of this work arose in part from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID administers the foreign assistance program providing economic and humanitarian assistance in more than 120 countries worldwide. />

 Source:At The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), scientists working with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has discovered a new vulnerable site on the HIV virus.The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI),

No Increase in Use of Marijuana Among Adolescents After Medically Legalized

There is finally a sigh of relief by the parents and physicians concerned about an increase in adolescent's marijuana use following the legalization of medical marijuana. According to a new study at Rhode Island Hospital which compared 20 years worth of data from states with and without medical marijuana laws, legalizing the drug did not lead to increased use among adolescents. The study is published online in advance of print in the Journal of Adolescent Health.
"Any time a state considers legalizing medical marijuana, there are concerns from the public about an increase in drug use among teens," said principal investigator Esther Choo, M.D., an attending physician in the department of emergency medicine at Rhode Island Hospital. "In this study, we examined 20 years worth of data, comparing trends in self-reported adolescent marijuana use between states with medical marijuana laws and neighboring states without the laws, and found no increase in marijuana use that could be attributed to the law." 

Choo continued, "This adds to a growing body of literature published over the past three years that is remarkably consistent in demonstrating that state medical marijuana policies do not have a downstream effect on adolescent drug use, as we feared they might." 

Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 21 states and the District of Columbia. 

The study examined a nationally representative sample of high school students. The data showed that past-month marijuana use was common, at nearly 21 percent of the study population. However, there were no statistically significant differences in marijuana use before and after policy changes in any state pairing. 

"Researchers should continue to monitor and measure marijuana use," Choo said. "But we hope that this information will provide some level of reassurance to policymakers, physicians, and parents about medical marijuana laws." 

Choo's principal affiliation is Rhode Island Hospital, and she also holds an academic appointment as an assistant professor of emergency medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. 

 Source: Journal of Adolescent Health.

Link Between Chronic Inflammation and High-grade Prostate Cancer Identified

Men with inflammation may have nearly twice the risk of having prostate cancer than those with no inflammation, says study.The link between persistent inflammation and cancer was even stronger for men with so-called high-grade prostate cancer — those with a Gleason score between 7 and 10 — indicating the presence of the most aggressive and rapidly growing prostate cancers.

"What we've shown in this observational study is a clear association between prostate inflammation and prostate cancer, although we can't prove that inflammation is a cause of prostate cancer," said Elizabeth A. Platz, Sc.D., M.P.H., a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine.

Cancer researcher Angelo M. De Marzo, M.D., Ph.D., cautioned that inflammation is too widespread in men to be used as a diagnostic tool for prostate cancer. However, researchers want to know more about what causes prostate inflammation, how it may contribute to prostate cancer, and whether this inflammation may be prevented. "I think there will be strategies going forward for either preventing inflammation or intervening when it occurs," Platz said.

The findings, reported April 18 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, come from analysis of information about men in the placebo-taking group of the Southwest Oncology Group's Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial. That trial, designed to learn whether the drug finasteride could prevent prostate cancer, included biopsies for prostate cancer at the end of the study even if there were no suspicious signs of cancer such as high prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels.

Researchers have examined possible links between inflammation and prostate cancer in other studies, but the previous studies began by sampling tissue from men who had some cause to undergo a biopsy, Platz explained. "Our study was designed to rule out the bias that would ordinarily exist between the way we detect prostate cancer and the presence of inflammation."

"Because inflammation makes PSA levels go up, men with inflammation are more likely to have higher PSA and, with a rising PSA, they're more likely to be biopsied," she said. "By doing more biopsies on these men, prostate cancer is more likely to be detected, even if inflammation is not a cause of prostate cancer."

For the study, Platz, De Marzo and colleagues examined benign tissue samples taken from the biopsies of 191 men with prostate cancer and 209 men without cancer, examining the samples for the prevalence and extent of immune cells that indicate inflammation. They found that 86.2 percent of the prostate cancer patients had at least one tissue sample with signs of inflammation, compared to 78.2 percent of men without cancer.

"We knew going into this research that inflammation in the prostate is very common in men who have biopsies because of the higher PSA levels and other indicators of prostate cancer," said De Marzo, who is a professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine and associate director of cancer research pathology at its Kimmel Cancer Center, "but we did not anticipate the high prevalence of prostate inflammation in men who didn't have an indication for biopsy."

Ultimately, men with at least one tissue sample showing signs of chronic inflammation had 1.78 times higher odds of having prostate cancer, and 2.24 times higher odds of having an aggressive cancer, the researchers concluded. The association held firm even in men with low PSA levels at the time of their biopsies.

The Johns Hopkins team is studying the relationship between PSA levels and detailed measures of inflammation in men with no indications for a prostate biopsy, as well as a potential link between sexually transmitted disease history and the amount of inflammation in the prostate.

 Source: The link between persistent inflammation and cancer was even stronger for men with so-called high-grade prostate cancer — those with a Gleason score between 7 and 10 — indicating the presence of the most aggressive and rapidly growing prostate cancers.

"What we've shown in this observational study is a clear association between prostate inflammation and prostate cancer, although we can't prove that inflammation is a cause of prostate cancer," said Elizabeth A. Platz, Sc.D., M.P.H., a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Medicine.

Cancer researcher Angelo M. De Marzo, M.D., Ph.D., cautioned that inflammation is too widespread in men to be used as a diagnostic tool for prostate cancer. However, researchers want to know more about what causes prostate inflammation, how it may contribute to prostate cancer, and whether this inflammation may be prevented. "I think there will be strategies going forward for either preventing inflammation or intervening when it occurs," Platz said.

The findings, reported April 18 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, come from analysis of information about men in the placebo-taking group of the Southwest Oncology Group's Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial. That trial, designed to learn whether the drug finasteride could prevent prostate cancer, included biopsies for prostate cancer at the end of the study even if there were no suspicious signs of cancer such as high prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels.

Researchers have examined possible links between inflammation and prostate cancer in other studies, but the previous studies began by sampling tissue from men who had some cause to undergo a biopsy, Platz explained. "Our study was designed to rule out the bias that would ordinarily exist between the way we detect prostate cancer and the presence of inflammation."

"Because inflammation makes PSA levels go up, men with inflammation are more likely to have higher PSA and, with a rising PSA, they're more likely to be biopsied," she said. "By doing more biopsies on these men, prostate cancer is more likely to be detected, even if inflammation is not a cause of prostate cancer."

For the study, Platz, De Marzo and colleagues examined benign tissue samples taken from the biopsies of 191 men with prostate cancer and 209 men without cancer, examining the samples for the prevalence and extent of immune cells that indicate inflammation. They found that 86.2 percent of the prostate cancer patients had at least one tissue sample with signs of inflammation, compared to 78.2 percent of men without cancer.

"We knew going into this research that inflammation in the prostate is very common in men who have biopsies because of the higher PSA levels and other indicators of prostate cancer," said De Marzo, who is a professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins' School of Medicine and associate director of cancer research pathology at its Kimmel Cancer Center, "but we did not anticipate the high prevalence of prostate inflammation in men who didn't have an indication for biopsy."

Ultimately, men with at least one tissue sample showing signs of chronic inflammation had 1.78 times higher odds of having prostate cancer, and 2.24 times higher odds of having an aggressive cancer, the researchers concluded. The association held firm even in men with low PSA levels at the time of their biopsies.

The Johns Hopkins team is studying the relationship between PSA levels and detailed measures of inflammation in men with no indications for a prostate biopsy, as well as a potential link between sexually transmitted disease history and the amount of inflammation in the prostate.