What the scientists are saying…
Prostate blood test breakthrough
A £50 blood test can identify which men with advanced prostate cancer will respond well to the standard drug treatment, a study has shown. If adopted, it could prolong lives, and spare patients unnecessary side effects, by ensuring that those who won’t respond to the drugs are offered alternative treatments. In advanced cases, where the cancer is no longer responding to hormone therapy, and is spreading, patients are now usually offered two targeted drugs – abiraterone and enzalutamide. Many patients can take these and live cancer-free for years; but in other men, the cancer quickly returns. Now, by testing the blood of 265 patients, the team of British scientists, along with colleagues in Europe, have discovered that these drugs are not effective on tumours that carry a particular genetic abnormality (possibly because the drugs don’t attach properly to the genetic receptor). The scientists believe 15%-30% of patients have this abnormality. They’ll now investigate whether giving these men immediate chemotherapy improves their outcomes.
Should statins be relabelled?
The side effects of statins have been greatly exaggerated, reports The Times. In a study involving 10,000 people, researchers found that when the participants didn’t know that they were taking statins, they were no more likely to report side effects, such as muscle pain and sleep disturbance, than those given sugar pills. But when they were told they were taking statins, their side effects increased: reports of muscle pain went up by 41%. In a report in The Lancet, the team puts this down to the “nocebo effect” – people are more likely to experience symptoms if they are expecting them. The study leader, Professor Peter Sever of Imperial College London, is calling for these side effects to be taken off the packaging, as they may be deterring tens of thousands of people who would benefit from the cholesterol-lowering drugs from taking them. In a separate study, Imperial researchers found evidence that millions of people who are taking statins are on the wrong dose – and that 680,000 people with heart disease are not taking them at all. Patients are advised to check their dose the next time they see their GPS.
Aspirin may reduce cancer risk
Many people already take low doses of aspirin to help ward off heart disease. Now, a study has suggested that they may also be lessening their risk of developing some forms of cancer. The research, in the US, involved more than 130,000 people who were tracked for a 32-year period, during which 13,000 of them died of cancer. The participants were asked about their aspirin use every two years. Those who regularly took aspirin were found to be about 30% less likely to die of colon cancer; women who took it were 11% less likely to die of breast cancer; and men were 23% less likely to die of prostate cancer. The study only showed association, and not causation, but aspirin is an antiinflammatory, and tumour growth has been linked to inflammation. Even in low doses, aspirin can have harmful side effects if taken regularly, and people should consult their GPS before doing so.
Why traffic pollution is a killer
Ultra-fine particles like those emitted by diesel cars enter the bloodstream and build up in the arteries, new research has found. The study helps explain why airborne pollution raises the risk of heart attack and stroke – and suggests that efforts to combat it may be focusing on the wrong particles, reports the New Scientist. Carbon-based nanoparticles are hard to detect in the body; so for the study, researchers at the University of Edinburgh asked volunteers to breathe air filled with harmless gold ones. Within 15 minutes, these were showing up in their bloodstream – and they were still there, in their blood and urine, three months later. Next, they examined tissue removed from the bodies of a few volunteers known to be at risk of heart disease, and found that the gold particles had accumulated in the fatty plaques that “fur up” the blood vessels. Currently, pollution is measured according to PM2.5 levels: this refers to the mass, per cubic metre of air, of particulates that are 2.5 microns in width, or less. But the nanoparticles that reach the bloodstream are smaller than 2.5 microns – so even when overall PM2.5 levels are stable or falling, the actual number of the harmful nanoparticles may be increasing.