Nox4 protein can be used as a marker to predict untreatable kidney cancer

A team of researchers from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio confirmed the role of a certain protein in the development of high-grade kidney cancer. The researchers also showed that a higher level of the protein can be used as a marker to predict which tumors will develop treatment resistance and progress more rapidly.

Dharam Kaushik, MD, led the study published May 31 in the journal Translational Research.
Dr. Kaushik is an associate professor of urology in the Long School of Medicine at the university, also called UT Health San Antonio. He also is a genitourinary oncologic surgeon at the Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson.

About 30% of patients with kidney cancer are not diagnosed until their cancer has spread to other parts of the body. Metastatic disease is notoriously resistant to current targeted therapies. In 2018, there were about 403,262 new cases of kidney cancer and 175,098 related deaths worldwide. 

"Therefore, there is an urgent unmet need for developing new tools to predict which cancers will develop into high grade that are resistant to treatment."
Dr. Dharam Kaushik, Associate Professor of Urology, Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio

In previous preclinical and animal studies the researchers proved that the protein -- nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase-4 (Nox4) -- often called Nox4, was involved in promoting the more serious cancer.

In the current study, the researchers studied the treatment records of 350 patients who had kidney cancer between January 2013 and June 2016. Their results showed that Nox4 also concentrates in the nucleus of human kidney cancer cells. The findings were bolstered by a series of statistical analyses using clinical data of patients who survived or died from kidney cancer. The combined results suggest that nuclear Nox4 expression may be an independent marker of disease progression and poor survival in patients with high-grade, advanced-stage kidney cancer.

"Our analysis showed that a high level of nuclear Nox4 is an important marker predicting resistance to targeted therapy. To our knowledge, this is first report of nuclear Nox4 localization and the correlation with disease progression, poor survival and development of resistance to targeted/immune therapy in kidney cancer," he said.

During the study, the researchers also identified a smaller group of patients with high levels of nuclear Nox4 who had rapid disease progression or died within six months of surgery. "These patients would be ideal candidates for a future study of survival outcomes using adjuvant targeted therapy that includes a Nox4 inhibitor." Dr. Kaushik said.

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Now research shows Coronavirus patients may develop this brutal disorder

News about another brutal side effect of coronavirus has surfaced. Researchers have found that patients with COVID-19 can develop subacute thyroiditis, an inflammatory thyroid disease.

Subacute thyroiditis is usually preceded by an upper respiratory infection and causes neck pain. The study was published in Oxford’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Researchers in Pisa,  Italy found that an 18-year-old woman’s thyroid became infected after she had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID-19) in February. In March, she tested negative for COVID-19 but then came down with a fever and complained of very bad pain in her neck and jaw. She displayed an enlarged thyroid as well as an increased heart rate and tested positive for high thyroid hormone levels.

COVID-19 continues to show us many surprises,” Dr. David Hiltzik, director of head and neck surgery at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City told  US news. “It has been shown to manifest in so many different organ systems throughout the body, so it is not surprising that the thyroid joins the many other areas that have been affected by the disease.

Luckily subacute thyroiditis is quite treatable. The Italian woman was given prednisone which helped her neck pain and fever and the rest of her symptoms dissipated after a week.

Thyroiditis can be caused by many different infections including mumps and HIV so this isn’t a surprising side effect of COVID-19 which is causing a number of post-viral infections.

According to John Hopkins University, more than 5.2 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported around the world and there have been 338,000 deaths.

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Older men with lean body mass more prone to develop diabetes over time

Older adults have the greatest burden of diabetes; however, the contribution of age-related muscle loss to its development remains unclear. 

Researchers have found in a new study that Older men who have lower lean body mass as they age are more prone to developing diabetes, while similar findings were not found in older women. The study has been published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

The researchers conducted a study to assess the relationship of lean body mass with aging to incident diabetes in community-dwelling adults. 

The researchers studied 871 men and 984 women, with an average age of 60 years at the initial visit, from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, who were followed up to 15 years. They used Dual X-ray Absorptiometry and found that lower lean body mass with aging is associated with incident diabetes in men but not women.

One in four adults aged 65 and older has diabetes, making them the group with the greatest burden of diabetes. Skeletal muscle is the largest insulin-sensitive tissue in the body and plays an essential role in blood sugar regulation. Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, may contribute to the development of diabetes in older adults.

 "Age-related muscle loss may be an under-recognized target for interventions to prevent the development of diabetes in older adults," said the study's first author, Rita R. Kalyani, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. "We found that relatively lower lean body mass with aging was related to a higher incidence of diabetes in men but not women, and partially related to body size."

The study concluded that relatively lower lean body mass with aging is associated with incident diabetes in men, and partially related to anthropometrics, but not women. 

"Future studies that use more direct methods to assess skeletal muscle mass may give further insights into these relationships and the sex differences that we observed," Kalyani said.

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