Metabolic Factors Linked To Risk Of Breast Cancer

Washington: Physiological factors linked with metabolic syndrome may play a major role in the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, according to a study.

The metabolic syndrome, or insulin resistance syndrome, consists of a large number of factors, including abdominal obesity, high blood glucose levels, impaired glucose tolerance, abnormal lipid levels, and high blood pressure.

It is also associated with poor diet and lack of physical activity and can increase the risk for diabetes and heart disease.

The metabolic syndrome is characterised by elevated insulin levels, and scientists have recently proposed that insulin may contribute directly or indirectly to the development of breast cancer.

Researchers suspect that the metabolic syndrome could influence the risk for breast cancer by affecting interrelated hormones, such as insulin, oestrogen, cytokines and growth factors.

“This study suggests that having the metabolic syndrome itself or some of its components may increase a woman”s risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. However, much more work is needed to understand the role of these metabolic factors and their interplay with better established breast cancer risk factors, such as reproductive and hormonal factors,” said Dr. Geoffrey C. Kabat, senior epidemiologist in the department of epidemiology and population health at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.

In the current study, the researchers have for the first time assessed whether women who met the criteria of having the metabolic syndrome were at greater risk for postmenopausal breast cancer.

For the study, the researchers used existing data from the Women”s Health Initiative – a large, national study designed to assess major causes of chronic disease in women.

The participants in the study included postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 years at enrolment who had repeated measurements of components of metabolic syndrome over an eight-year period.

They were measured for factors including blood levels of glucose, HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, as well as waist girth and blood pressure.

Kabat said that the results demonstrated a modest positive association of having the metabolic syndrome as a whole.

Of the 4,888 women with baseline measurements who did not have diabetes, 165 incident cases of breast cancer were diagnosed during the follow-up period.

Presence of the metabolic syndrome at baseline was not linked with breast cancer risk.

Kabat, however, said that in analyses that made use of the repeated measurements, “women who had the metabolic syndrome during the three to five years prior to breast cancer diagnosis had roughly a doubling of risk.”

The findings also showed significant associations with elevated blood glucose levels, triglycerides and diastolic blood pressure.

The study has been published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. (ANI)

Australian Study Links Cot Deaths To Smoking

Sydney - We already know that smoking in pregnancy results in babies that are around 250 grams lighter than those born to mothers who did not smoke.

And we also know from the statistics that infants in homes where there are smokers are up to four times more likely to succumb to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) – more commonly called cot death.

Researchers in Australia believe they can explain how exposure to tobacco smoke impacts on the brains of babies.

“We think that there are certain effects on receptor systems within the brain that had led to this final mechanism of cell death,” said Sydney University’s Rita Machaalani.

In work just published in the journal Brain, Machaalani describes how she and her colleagues looked at the brain tissue of 67 infants who had undergone autopsies because their deaths were unexplained.

Such deaths, of which there are around 80 in Australia each year, are usually put down to SIDS.

To control for other factors, their findings were compared with an analysis of the brain tissue of 25 infants who had died suddenly but whose deaths were put down to a cause other than cot death.

They found that brain cell die-off was precipitated both by a pregnant woman smoking and by a mother exposing her infant to second-hand smoke. Cell death was in a region of the brain that regulates breathing and heart function.

“Smoking does change and affect their babies,” Machaalani said, noting that around 10 per cent of Australian women smoked during pregnancy.

A Day 30 Mnts Laugh Keeps Heart Diseases Away

For hundreds of years, we’ve known that “Laughter is the best form of medicine.” It makes people feel good for a reason, and the physiological effects on the health are miraculous.

And, now a study claimed that by laughing 30 minutes daily, people can keep their hearts healthy.

The study was conducted by the researchers of Loma Linda University in Loma Linda, California.

The researchers discovered that watching comedy for just half-an-hour on a daily basis can help a person lessen his/her levels of stress hormones plus compounds, which are linked to disease of the heart.

Study’s lead researcher Dr. Lee Berk said, “The best clinicians understand that there is an intrinsic physiological intervention brought about by positive emotions such as mirthful laughter, optimism and hope.”

The study researchers looked at 20 men and women, who had diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels.

All took their tablets as normal, but the researchers asked half of the participants to choose a “mirthful laughter” in the form of 30 minutes of comedy on a daily basis.

Those patients made up the laughter group; the other patients served as a comparison group.

During the yearlong research, the patients had blood examinations after every two months.

The researchers found that stress hormone levels diminished in the laughter group after two months.

By four months into the study, the participants in the laughter group had lower blood levels of certain inflammatory chemicals, and the levels of “good” cholesterol, thought to defend against heart disease, also increased by 26%.

Patients who took the medicine without laughter had just a 3% rise.

The group watching comedy programmes also witnessed a fall of 66% in harmful C-reactive proteins that raises heart disease risk.

While the control group also saw a fall in the amount of the proteins, it was much smaller at 26 per cent over the course of the year.

The results of the study are presented at the Experimental Biology conference in New Orleans.

Nutritrition in the Womb May Cause Genetic Changes During Pregnancy

Washington: Researchers from University of Utah have found that lack of proper nutrition in the womb may cause permanent genetic changes in the offspring.

In the study conducted using rats, the researchers found that fetuses receiving poor nutrition in the womb become genetically primed to be born into an environment lacking proper nutrition. As a result, the rats were likely to grow to smaller sizes than their normal counterparts.

They were at higher risk for health problems throughout their lives, such as diabetes, growth retardation, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and neurodevelopmental delays.

“Our study emphasizes that maternal-fetal health influences multiple healthcare issues across generations,” said Robert Lane, professor of pediatric neonatology at the University of Utah, and one of the senior researchers involved in the study.

“To reduce adult diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, we need to understand how the maternal-fetal environment influences the health of offspring,” he added.

During the study, the researchers included two groups of rats. The first group was normal. The second group had the delivery of nutrients from their mothers” placentas restricted in a way that is equivalent to preeclampsia.

The rats were examined right after birth and again at 21 days (21 days is essentially a preadolescent rat) to measure the amount of a protein, called IGF-1, that promotes normal development and growth in rats and humans.

They found that the lack of nutrients caused the gene responsible for IGF-1 to significantly reduce the amount of IGF-1 produced in the body before and after birth.

The findings are published online in The FASEB Journal.

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