Children who live in areas with fewer pediatricians are more likely to suffer life-threatening ruptures of the appendix than those in areas with more pediatricians, even when accounting for other factors such as the number of hospitals, imaging …
With chitlins about to make their annual appearance on Christmas and New Year’s Day menus, scientists have good news for millions of people who love that delicacy of down-home southern cooking, but hate the smell. They are reporting the first identi…
The following are highlights of new cancer research being released at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO) 52nd Annual Meeting to be held October 31 through November 4, 2010, in San Diego.
For full copies of the abstracts and pres…
Colon sloughs lining
The intestines have to work properly if we are to benefit from the food we eat. Digestive juices must be secreted, the food broken down into smaller components and then transported through the gut wall and onwards to muscles an…
An association between a common human virus and colon cancer has been established by a group of researchers in the U.S., suggesting a possible role for it in the development of cancer in the human intestinal tract. The so-called JC virus most likely infects humans through the upper respiratory tract and remains in a latent stage in most people throughout their lives, and, in some cases, causes minor sub-clinical problems. But in people whose immune systems are depressed, either through chemotherapy given to organ transplant recipients or an illness such as AIDS, JCV can become active and may contribute to cancer in the brain or cause the fatal demyelinating disease Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML).