Quantum Units Education

Although drinking alcohol is known to be a risk factor for developing breast cancer, a new study suggests that alcohol may not have any effect on whether you survive the disease.  In fact, researchers found that being a moderate drinker may actually improve your chances of survival.

“The results of the study showed there was no adverse relationship between drinking patterns before diagnosis and breast cancer survival,” said Polly Newcomb, director of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the lead author of the study.

“We actually found that relative to non-drinkers there were modestly improved survival rates for moderate alcohol intake.”

The researchers followed close to 25,000 breast cancer patients for an average of 11 years, and found that women who drank moderately – three to six drinks per week – before developing breast cancer were 15% less likely to die from the disease.

Full story of alcohol and breast cancer at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

The month in which babies are born can affect how their immune systems develop, and even how vulnerable they are to autoimmune diseases.

Scientists studying the neurological disorder multiple sclerosis, in which the body’s own immune cells destroy the protective coating around nerves and can lead to paralysis and loss of other functions, have long been puzzled by the “birth month effect.” Many patients with MS are born in the spring, and rates of the disease are lowest for those born in November.

Some have speculated that insufficient levels of vitamin D, which the skin produces when exposed to sunlight, on the mom’s part could play a role, since babies born in May are gestated during the colder, darker months, while winter babies are in utero during the spring and summer.

Now a study published in JAMA Neurology shows that this hunch may be correct, and suggests a mechanism for how the vitamin might be driving immune system development.

Full story of birthdays and immune systems at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Although drinking alcohol is known to be a risk factor for developing breast cancer, a new study suggests that alcohol may not have any effect on whether you survive the disease.  In fact, researchers found that being a moderate drinker may actually improve your chances of survival.

“The results of the study showed there was no adverse relationship between drinking patterns before diagnosis and breast cancer survival,” said Polly Newcomb, director of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and the lead author of the study.

“We actually found that relative to non-drinkers there were modestly improved survival rates for moderate alcohol intake.”

The researchers followed close to 25,000 breast cancer patients for an average of 11 years, and found that women who drank moderately – three to six drinks per week – before developing breast cancer were 15% less likely to die from the disease.

Full story of alcohol and breast cancer at CNN Health

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

A shortage of a protein called TDP-43 caused muscle wasting and stunted nerve cells. This finding supports the idea that malfunction of this protein plays a decisive role in ALS and FTD. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

ALS is an incurable neurological disease which manifests as rapidly progressing muscle wasting. Both limbs and respiratory muscles are affected. This leads to impaired mobility and breathing problems. Patients commonly die within a few years after the symptoms emerged. In rare cases, of which the British physicist Stephen Hawking is the most notable, patients can live with the disease for a long time. In Germany estimates show over 150,000 patients suffering from ALS — an average of 1 in 500 people.

Proteins gone astray

Over the last few years, there has been increasing evidence that ALS and FTD — a form of dementia associated with changes in personality and social behavior — may have similar or even the same origins. The symptoms overlap and common factors have also been found at the microscopic level. In many cases, particles accumulate and form clumps in the patient’s nerve cells: this applies particularly to the TDP-43 protein.

Full story of molecules and dementia at Science Daily

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/

Beedie Savage – President of Quantum Units Education

Diseases that progressively destroy nerve cells in the brain or spinal cord, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are devastating conditions with no cures.

Now, a team that includes a University of Iowa researcher has identified a new class of small molecules, called the P7C3 series, which block cell death in animal models of these forms of neurodegenerative disease. The P7C3 series could be a starting point for developing drugs that might help treat patients with these diseases. These findings are reported in two new studies published the week of Oct. 1 in PNAS Early Edition.

"We believe that our strategy for identifying and testing these molecules in animal models of disease gives us a rational way to develop a new class of neuroprotective drugs, for which there is a great, unmet need," says Andrew Pieper, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry at the UI Carver College of Medicine, and senior author of the two studies.

About six years ago, Pieper, then at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and his colleagues screened thousands of compounds in living mice in search of small, drug-like molecules that could boost production of neurons in a region of the brain called the hippocampus. They found one compound that appeared to be particularly successful and called it P7C3.

Full story of nerve cell death at Science Daily

Photos courtesy of and copyright PhotoPin, http://photopin.com/