Portable 'electronic nose' can accurately screen Barrett's oesophagus

A new Portable 'electronic nose' can accurately screen Barrett's oesophagus.

A portable 'electronic nose' can accurately pick up the precursor condition to food pipe (oesophageal) cancer, known as Barrett's oesophagus, indicates a proof of principle study, published online in the journal Gut. Researchers found that the accuracy of the electronic nose was high, especially among patients taking a high-dose proton pump inhibitor, an acid reduction medicine.

This inexpensive and non-invasive technique may be a promising test for diagnosing oesophageal cancer in primary care, say the researchers. 

The number of new cases of this cancer has risen sixfold over the past few decades, with most cases being diagnosed when the disease is already advanced and difficult to treat. 

Barrett's oesophagus, a condition in which healthy cells lining the food pipe are replaced by abnormal cells, is a known precursor to the disease. 

It can be diagnosed using a long flexible tube with a camera on the end (endoscope). But the procedure is expensive and unpleasant for patients, making it unsuitable for population screening. 

So scientists have been exploring other less invasive and cheaper options, including analysis of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs for short. 

VOCs are gaseous compounds produced by metabolic processes in the body, including inflammation and abnormal cellular activity, which can be detected in a person's breath. 

The researchers wanted to see how effective and accurate a portable 'electronic nose' device would be for picking up Barrett's oesophagus. 

Some 402 adults scheduled for endoscopy breathed into a highly sensitive electronic nose, designed to detect subtle differences in VOC patterns, for 5 minutes. 

Of this group, 129 patients had Barrett's oesophagus; 141 had acid reflux disease, including 50 who had an inflamed oesophagus as a result; and 132 had a normal oesophagus or hiatus hernia that accounted for their symptoms. 

Analysis of the VOC profiles detected by the electronic nose showed that these differed significantly among patients with Barrett's oesophagus, acid reflux, and those with a normal oesophagus/hernia.

The sensitivity of the device was 91%--in other words, its ability to pick up Barrett's oesophagus--and its specificity was 74%--in other words, its ability to detect those without the condition. 

When the analysis was further restricted to patients who had been taking drugs (proton pump inhibitors) to curb stomach acid production for at least a month or those with a hiatus hernia, both of which are likely to muddy the diagnostic waters, its accuracy was still good. 

"The findings of our study provide evidence that patients with [Barrett's oesophagus] have VOC breath prints different from those without," they write. 

While it's still not clear exactly how breath VOCs indicate cancerous cell changes, the sensitivity and specificity of VOC breath testing for Barrett's oesophagus is comparable to that of breast cancer and bowel cancer screening, they explain. 

Chemical analytical techniques for VOC analysis have also been used, and are very effective, but they are also expensive. What's more, they are time-consuming and require highly skilled staff to operate them and analyse the results, point out the researchers. 

Further research will be required to validate these findings in a much larger study, they emphasise. But they conclude: "Given the high tolerability, high acceptability and low costs, breath testing may be a promising approach to be used for non-invasive screening for [Barrett's oesophagus] in a primary care setting."

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Researchers discover new methid to reduce chemo doses for patients

Chemotherapy, which is a saviour for many cancer patients, is a painful treatment to undergo following which many patients quit it midways.

But researchers, have developed a method that delivers chemotherapy drugs directly to malignant cells and bypasses healthy ones. With this discovery, doctors aim to reduce chemo doses for patients, thereby reducing the unpleasantness side-effects associated with the treatment.

Most anti-cancer treatment are not sufficiently specific, meaning they attack healthy cells together with the malignant ones they're trying to get rid of, explained a Prof.

This leads to the many serious side-effects associated with chemotherapy. Eliminating cancerous cells while leaving healthy one alone is an important step towards reducing patients'  suffering, the Prof. added.

The study focused on the selective expression of the TRPV2 protein by cancer cells. When activated, TRPV2 protein opens a canal inside cell membranes.

Researchers studied liver cancer cells and were able to successfully insert a low dose of doxorubicin, a chemotherapeutic agent, through the canal directly into cancer cells.

Not only did the new method target cancer cells without harming healthy ones. In the future, the precision of this delivery method may allow doctors to prescribe lower chemo doses and to relieve patients from some of the harsher effects of chemo.

It's too early to make concrete predictions but we are hopeful this discovery will lead the way towards a new, more targeted delivery method for chemotherapy treatment, one that will drastically reduce patients' pain, the Prof. concluded.

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Modified radiotherapy less likely to damage healthy cells: Experts

A modified way of concentrating radiotherapy dose in tumour while minimising damage to healthy cells has been proposed in a recent research.

The study —proposes that focusing high-energy particle beams on a small spot deep inside the body could potentially enable clinicians to target cancerous tumour precisely.

External beam radiotherapy involves treating patients with either high energy X-rays or particle beams. Tumour cells are killed by the radiation, which is usually administered in multiple fractions, which are applied daily over several weeks.

The lead of the project, said: “Around half of the population will suffer from cancer at some time in their lives. Of these people, half will be treated using radiotherapy or a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.”

One of the challenges in radiotherapy is to deposit a high radiation dose in a way that the dose fully ‘conforms’ to the tumour to ensure that all cancerous cells are killed while preventing damage to healthy cells. Our study showed that we can very simply focus radiation onto a tumour to irradiate it while reducing the dose in surrounding healthy tissue.”

One of the disadvantages of using X-rays in radiotherapy is that these are absorbed in the body and their effects diminish, resulting in a high entrance dose. Proximal and distal doses before and after the tumour can also be as high as, or higher than, the radiation dose in the tumour.

To eradicate the tumour precisely with sufficient radiation to kill all tumour cells, the X-ray beam is often rotated while pointing at the tumour from different directions, while the patient remains stationary.

An effective radiotherapy modality uses heavier particles such as protons and ions. These have the advantage of radiation doses that can be confined to a small region called the “Bragg peak.”

“This work presents a comprehensive numerical study of fundamental issues encountered in cancer treatment with very high energy electrons for a wide range of geometries. Results suggest that technology and beam transport systems routinely employed in high-energy particle accelerators could find direct application in this field, expanding the range of tools available for radiotherapy,” said  one of the researchers of the study.

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Israeli Scientists Claim To Have Found A ‘Complete Cure’ For Cancer & It’ll Be Available By 2020

The revolutionary cure, dubbed MuTaTo, is being developed by researchers and will apparently be available for cancer patients early next year.

One of the researcher said, "Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market. Our solution will be both generic and personal.

The scientists also claim that it will be cheap and effective and will have minimal side-effects.

MuTaTo reportedly uses a combination of cancer-targeting peptides and a unique toxin that only targets and terminates cancer cells. It leaves alone healthy cells and tissues in the process.

The Israeli scientists claim that that the cure can be hyper-personalised to each patient.

They have successfully conducted trials on mice and are now fast-tracking to conduct human trials through 2019.

If the trials complete successfully, it will save millions of lives in the coming years.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/       
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Science Has Discovered a Pill to Slow Aging

A leading researcher on aging, coined the term 'the longevity dividend' in 2006, which describes the health and economic benefits individuals and societies could enjoy by slowing biological aging and extending people's years of healthy living. While the term was new, the concept had been around for decades. But, it seems that science has finally caught up with the idea.

The researchers have been urging researchers to shift their focus from lifespan to healthspan. This also means compressing what they call 'the red zone', the time period toward the end of life in which a person is frail and sick. Let's take a look at what aging interventions we could see in the near future:
According to him, most of us alive today will likely be taking some sort of intervention, such as a pill. However, he says that we probably won't look at it as a way to slow aging, but rather as a way to reduce our risk of disease, because the result is the same.

Yet, while this seems like a hopeful idea, how exactly would these drugs work? According to him "One of the interventions that researchers are pursuing are substances called senolytics, which are designed to attack something called “zombie cells.” The cells in our bodies divide. After they divide a certain number of times, they eventually die. Except some of them don’t quite die, but dying and remaining in place, and the ones that don’t die interfere with the functioning of the healthy cells. And they accumulate over time." he says.

 

He also adds: "The senolytic compounds are designed to go into the body and clear out the zombie cells. They remove the interference that’s going on with the body’s own functioning. This means that you’ll be more resistant to cancer, you’ll be more resistant to cardiovascular disease, you’ll be more resistant to Alzheimer’s disease, you’ll be more resistant to stroke and arthritis and osteoporosis and the other kinds of things that go wrong with our bodies as we get older. So, imagine an intervention, whether it’s a pill or some other type of intervention, that could reduce your risk of everything at once. It would dwarf in importance a cure for cancer. That’s what we’re pursuing."

The good news is that the government agency has changed its policies on reviewing drugs. Some time ago, the agency only reviewed drugs that attack specific diseases. But according to the researcher, "That changed. My colleagues and I met with representatives of the agency a couple of years ago to discuss this very issue. And the FDA has given us its approval in this effort to identify aging as a target. Previously, the only targets were specific diseases, and the FDA has now approved the idea that aging is a reasonable target to go after. You still measure it in diseases, in terms of your outcome metrics, but you recognize that the fundamental biological process of aging is the target that you are attacking."

Of course, this intervention is not available to us, the general public, yet, so you may be wondering what you should be doing in the meantime. "While we’re waiting for this intervention to come online, of course, what we should be doing is what we all know we should be doing: exercising more and eating less," he says, adding that, "It’s not all that complicated. We know that excess weight is harmful and we know that lack of exercise is harmful. And short of that, Mother Nature takes its own toll, and the genetics of exceptional longevity is something we can’t control at this point. So, control what you can control."

But, you may be wondering, is it sustainable to have people living longer in terms of population growth? He says that "if population growth was an issue, why are we pursuing a cure for cancer? If population growth was an issue, why are we pursuing a cure for cardiovascular disease?". It seems to us he believes that population growth is not something that should prevent us from pursuing healthier, longer lives.

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So, stay tuned, perhaps, sooner, rather than later, we may all be taking a pill to help slow the aging process.