Widespread Hepatitis C Screening – Do Benefits Outweigh Harms?

Georgetown University. US: In light of recent recommendations for widespread hepatitis C screening, researchers are calling for clinical trials to determine if that screening would result in greater benefit or harm.

Modified Pancreatic-Cancer Regimen Maintains Effectiveness While Reducing Side Effects and Cost

Ohio State University. US: A simple change to a two-drug therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer provides similar cancer control while significantly improving quality of life and reducing the cost of care, according to data collected by The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James.)

Pancreatic cancer

NIH. US: Pancreatic cancer is a disease in which malignant (cancer) cells form in the tissues of the pancreas.The pancreas is a gland about 6 inches long that is shaped like a thin pear lying on its side. The wider end of the pancreas is called the head, the middle section is called the body, and the narrow end is called the tail. The pancreas lies between the stomach and the spine.

Possible treatments identified for highly contagious stomach virus

Washington University. US: Antibiotics aren’t supposed to be effective against viruses. But new evidence in mice suggests antibiotics may help fight norovirus, a highly contagious gastrointestinal virus, report scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Norovirus

CDC. US: Norovirus is a very contagious virus. You can get norovirus from an infected person, contaminated food or water, or by touching contaminated surfaces. The virus causes your stomach or intestines or both to get inflamed (acute gastroenteritis). This leads you to have stomach pain, nausea, and diarrhea and to throw up.
Anyone can be infected with norovirus and get sick. Also, you can have norovirus illness many times in your life. Norovirus illness can be serious, especially for young children and older adults.

Iron overload disease causes rapid growth of potentially deadly bacteria

UCLA. US: Deficiency of the hormone hepcidin makes people vulnerable to Vibrio vulnificus, but a medical form of the hormone can cure the infection.

Study shows vaccination decreases rotavirus rates

Baylor College. US: A new study by Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital researchers shows that a vaccine for rotavirus in infants reduces the rates of infection.

New Technology Discovers Unknown Risk Genes for Pancreatic Cancer

German Cancer Research Center: Cancer is a complex disease of the genes. The reasons why a tumor develops are often unknown. An international team of researchers from the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) and the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute has now developed a technique that can identify causes of cancer invisible to genetic sequencing. The technique has uncovered large sets of previously unknown pancreatic cancer genes. It is hoped that this study will boost research into a disease that is still poorly understood and for which five-year survival rates have stood at around 5 per cent for the past four decades.

Researchers Find Cancer Biopsies Do Not Promote Cancer Spread

Mayo Clinic US: A study of more than 2,000 patients by researchers at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Jacksonville, Florida, has dispelled the myth that cancer biopsies cause cancer to spread. In the Jan. 9 online issue of Gut, they show that patients who received a biopsy had a better outcome and longer survival than patients who did not have a biopsy.The researchers studied pancreatic cancer, but the findings likely apply to other cancers because diagnostic technique used in this study — fine needle aspiration — is commonly used across tumor types, says the study’s senior investigator and gastroenterologist Michael Wallace, M.D., M.P.H., professor of medicine.

Genomic Predictors for Recurrence of Liver Cancer

Plos: In a new study,  Ju-Seog Lee and colleagues develop a genetic predictor that can identify patients at high risk for late recurrence of liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma, HCC) and provided new biomarkers for risk stratification.

Killing for DNA: a predatory device in the cholera bacterium

Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne. Switzerland: Publishing in Science, EPFL scientists have uncovered the unconventional way that the cholera bacterium stabs and kills other bacteria to steal their DNA, making it potentially more virulent.

Cholera

WHO: Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It has a short incubation period and produces an enterotoxin that causes a copious, painless, watery diarrhoea that can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly given. Vomiting also occurs in most patients.
Most persons infected with V. cholerae do not become ill, although the bacterium is present in their faeces for 7-14 days. When illness does occur, about 80-90% of episodes are of mild or moderate severity and are difficult to distinguish clinically from other types of acute diarrhoea. Less than 20% of ill persons develop typical cholera with signs of moderate or severe dehydration.
Cholera remains a global threat and is one of the key indicators of social development. While the disease no longer poses a threat to countries with minimum standards of hygiene, it remains a challenge to countries where access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation cannot be guaranteed. Almost every developing country faces cholera outbreaks or the threat of a cholera epidemic.

Researchers Map Direct Gut-Brain Connection

Duke University. US: After each one of those big meals you ate over the holidays, the cells lining your stomach and intestines released hormones into the bloodstream to signal the brain that you were full and should stop eating.

Researchers at Duke University have now mapped out another system, a cell-to-cell connection between the gut and the nervous system, that may be more direct than the release of hormones in the blood.

Liver cirrhosis more common than previously thought, study finds

Loyola Universitu US: Cirrhosis of the liver is more common than previously thought, affecting more than 633,000 adults yearly, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology. And surprisingly, 69 percent of the adults identified as possibly having cirrhosis may not know they have this disease.

Unveiling how rotavirus causes infection

Griffith University. Australia: Researchers from Griffith University’s Institute for Glycomics and the University of Melbourne have significantly advanced understanding of a virus that kills up to half a million children each year.
Rotaviruses are considered the most important cause of severe diarrhoea in children, with all being infected by the time they reach the age of five.

Mix of Bacteria in Gut May Depend More on Diet than Genes

UCSF. US: Microbiota, Microbiome Change Quickly, UCSF Researchers Find
Genes are important, but diet may be even more important in determining the relative abundance of the hundreds of health-shaping bacterial species comprising an individual’s gut microbiota, according to UC San Francisco scientists whose latest mouse experiments to probe this nature-versus-nurture balance were published online December 18, 2014 in Cell Host and Microbe.

Can Probiotics Keep Gastrointestinal System Healthy?

Tufts University. US: Many advertisements and Internet postings say probiotics are effective for treating asthma, dermatitis and irritable bowel syndrome.

At best, there is marginal evidence that probiotics help these conditions.

Where they have been convincingly shown to be beneficial is in the treatment or prevention of certain kinds of diarrhea and other, less-common illnesses.

Rotavirus is the most common cause of diarrhea in infants and children. Probiotics will significantly lower the risk of getting the “gastrointestinal flu” because of this virus and other similar organisms. And if a child does get sick, the illness will be less severe if you administer probiotics.

Rotavirus

Rotavirus disease is most common in infants and young children. However, older children and adults and can also become infected with rotavirus. Once a person has been exposed to rotavirus, it takes about 2 days for the symptoms to appear.
Children who get infected may have severe watery diarrhea, often with vomiting, fever, and abdominal pain. Vomiting and watery diarrhea can last from 3 to 8 days. Additional symptoms include loss of appetite and dehydration (loss of body fluids), which can be especially harmful for infants and young children.
Symptoms of dehydration include

FDA approves Viekira Pak to treat hepatitis C

FDA. US: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Viekira Pak (ombitasvir, paritaprevir and ritonavir tablets co-packaged with dasabuvir tablets) to treat patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 infection, including those with a type of advanced liver disease called cirrhosis.

Pancreas Cancer

The most common type of cancer of the pancreas is an adenocarcinoma of the pancreas. 85% of all cancerous tumors of the pancreas are adenocarcinomas. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is the 4th leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that each year 29,000 American are diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the pancreas and approximately 28,000 die of pancreatic cancer.