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Genetic Marker For Aggressive Prostate Cancer
hairygenes writes "Northwestern University researchers have found a genetic marker associated with aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Previously characterized mutations in markers at 8q24 are associated with a broader population than previously reported and with much more aggressive tumors. deCODE genetics, who originally characterized these mutations, noted a 60% increase in risk of prostate cancer, but this study finds more concrete linkage to inheritance and disease severity."
Northwestern University researchers have found a genetic marker associated with aggressive forms of prostate cancer. Previously characterized mutations in markers at 8q24 are associated with a broader population than previously reported and with much more aggressive tumors.
You see, that's interesting, because I had always assumed it had some relation to markers at g04t53.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
You forgot to click the Anonymous box, you idiot.
And for the record, when the toilet paper come back clean, just like white idiots.
...so I hope they allow health benefits to cover prostate cancer testing for those at risk, instead of using the genetic marker to class it as a pre-existing condition or to refuse to insure you.
I'm sick and tired of the medical "profession". It has a lot in common with the oldest profession.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
What's sad is this is one of the few pieces of research devoted to prostate cancer, a cancer that affects way more men, than breast cancer affects women.
Yet the feminist movement has research on men's health buried, and promotes the fewer cases of breast cancer as being more important. Look at all the promotion for breast cancer research, treatment, survivor support etc, but there is no such thing for men. Where are the prostate cancer ribbon days?
Feminism has a lot to answer for.
>I'm sick and tired of the medical "profession". It has a lot in common with the oldest profession.
Hey, what a coincidence! I'm sick and tired of people who lump nurses and doctors into the same broad category with their retarded insurance providers! They have a lot in common with people who lump everyone with a last name of "Yousef" into the same broad category with "terroristic bad-guy evildoers".
But, hey, next time you visit the ER with a life-threatening emergency, be sure to wear your T-shirt with that catchy slogan on it. We all need a good chuckle once in a while.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Most of us are probably too young for it to be a personal concern, but it certainly is one for our fathers. This will be a great advance if confirmed and widely used.
The problem is the side effects of current treatments. They are fairly dire, including impotence and incontinence as very common (and probably underreported) side effects of surgery. Because most PCs are not aggressive, the main consequence of intensive screening programs is that we detect more non-aggressive cases, we then needlessly operate, and we thus needlessly produce unpleasant side effects in thousands of men who would have died with, but not of, non-aggressive PC. But, there was no way to know.
So if you could have some way of only treating those we really need to treat, it would have major quality of life implications for a lot of men.
The other question is, what the right treatment is. This is very personal and depends on risks and attitudes to it. It seems from a review of the literature by an amateur, that the treatment which offers the best risk reward ratio is Intermitten Hormone suppression. It is going to be unpleasant, but its temporary. Its not guaranteed to work - but neither is surgery, the recurrence rate is not trivial.
Biopsy is also not either totally reliable or particularly safe in itself. You can miss the tumour, if its small, if there is one. It is also possible that when biopsy is done under general anesthetic, the anesthetic itself can produce total urinary blockage in a man with benign enlargement.
All in all this is a very messy illness and its great that some real progress in diagnosis is being made.
Saw Palmetto
That's so dumb, I don't even know where to begin.
1. The doctors and nurses are the ones who treat you. None of them would refuse to treat you because of a pre-existing condition, or because your being dumb is what got you there in the first place. I've yet to hear about anyone working in the ER turning away a stroke patient because it was some pre-existing condition, or someone with a cracked skull because, hey, they shouldn't have climbed on the house in the first place.
2. Then there are the guys who have to pay for that kind of treatment. I.e., the insurances. These aren't doctors, these are MBA and accountant types. For them it doesn't matter if you live or die, for them it matters if they make money. If it doesn't make more money than the interest at the bank/investment-fund/whatever, they're going to take their money and put it there. For them it's all down to statistics. If there's a 1% chance that you'll need a $40,000 operation in the next 40 years, they'll factor that in as an extra $10 per year on your insurance. Make that $11 or $12, because they want to make a profit too. If it's a 50% chance, they might not insure you at all.
It's completely different professions, lemming.
And more importantly, it's not like that everywhere. On most of continental europe, and IIRC Canada too, the state stepped in and created a fund for everyone. Basically everyone pays for everyone else. It's not perfect, but noone ever ends up denied medical care _because_ it's known that they'll need it.
There you go, the medical profession has no problem with that kind of setup either. They just need a salary, and someone has to pay for all the machinery and equipment. If the state enforced a more fair way of paying for it, the doctors have no problem with it. In fact, I think most are for it.
Unfortunately, that won't go that easily in the USA, where a whole cult of the psychopaths is the default culture. There's a whole caste repeating to everyone that the american dream is to shaft someone on the way to the top, and that all that matters is the Holy Dollar. As Queensryche put it, "gotta make a milion, doesn't matter who dies." Caring for your fellow man is outright communistic and undermining the very fundament of the whole socierty. (Yeah, right.)
So if anyone did try to implement a fair system where everyone has access to medical care, _especially_ if it's known that they'll need it, I'm betting on an _avalanche_ of the following two responses:
1. Noooo, it's _my_ money! I'm healthy, why should I pay for all the bums with pre-existing conditions? Papa needs a car with a wing, not to subsidize all the cripples and retards. (Until they themselves discover that they do have some genetic condition that didn't become obvious until old age. The it's "why the fuck don't I get free healthcare from everyone else... and still keep all the money I saved by not paying for everyone else???")
2. Noooo, it's a communistic plot! Wtf of an anti-american and anti-capitalist idea is that to take from everyone according to their means, and give to everyone according to their needs? The free unrestricted market solves everything by itself! If that gets implemented, we're all _doomed_. All those lazy bums will stop working and live off medicare! People will stop working hard for a promotion if they get their medical needs covered anyway! The whole economy will collapse! (Never mind that it didn't collapse in, say, Germany, where exactly such a system is in place.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yet another step towards a Gattaca future.
HMMMMM. Well, yes. That _is_ a noble sentiment. But, just for the sake of argument, can you tell us a little something about the history of the AMA positions on socialized medicine vs. corporatized medicine?
Hey, if you don't like the free market, move to Russia, comrade!
And hey I'm sick of asshole doctors with a bigger gut than me literally telling me and I quote "You look pregant". Or the 3 different doctors that fucking didn't check the contraindications on the medication they were giving and almost fritzed my fiancee's brain. She went to them having the occassional petite mal seizure, and came away on meds that cause suicidal tendancies if you come off too quickly and that were giving her 2 grand mal seizures a day at the end. Or doctors that don't know a dislocated shoulder when they see one. Or my current gem - a doctor that won't believe me about the pain I'm suffering right at the moment (even though it's a pre-existing thing from my childhood and i have no reason to lie). But hey maybe I just like spending $400 and taking days off, or the joy of being MRI'd.
So you know what, I don't give a shit if you are a doctor or a nurse or someone you know is one. The medical profession is a fucking horses ass. I'm sure there are good doctors out there, but that's despite the motherfucker of a system.
You know fucking nothing about me or the reasons I'm angry at the medical profession, so back the fuck off.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Mutations Markers at 8q24? Mutations all right!
My Highlighter Markers only comes at a00ffff (Aqua) , 00ff00 (Light Green) and ffff33 (Yellow).
The principle utility of this discovery -- if it leads to a test -- is that it will help in screening patients who need immediate treatment for their prostate cancer from those where it is reasonable to wait and see how fast the cancer progresses. That's important because a large number of elderly men have prostate cancer (50% is a common estimate) and there aren't close to enough resources to treat them all. Nor, probably, is there any need to do so.
I went to a prostate cancer research conference, and over lunch, I asked one of the investigators, "You're working on this gene that only affects 5% of men with prostate cancer. What good is that? How does that help the other 95%?"He said, when we find that gene that causes prostate cancer in 5% of the men, we can go back and find the protein that the gene produces, and find all the other proteins that it interacts with. It often turns out that the other 95% of cancers involve defects in the other proteins it interacts with.
Then, he said, we can figure out the chain of events, and figure out a way to interrupt that chain.
In order for a prostate cell to become cancerous, several of those proteins have to get disrupted -- first the cells go through uncontrolled growth, then the orderly organization of the cells in the tissue becomes disrupted, then they leave the tissue to move to other parts of the body, then they find someplace else in the body where they can survive, then they start reproducing and forming metastases in that other place in the body. (Prostate cancer cells often wind up in the bone, because there are growth factors there that keep them going.)
Once they figure out those cancer pathways, he told me, they can try to find a way to block one of them. If you can do that, you can stop the cancer.
The big home run in cancer treatment was imatinib (Gleevec). They found one critical step in the uncontrolled growth of white blood cells in chronic myelocytic leukemia, which used to have a survival of about 5-8 years. Imatinib http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imatinib controls the growth of those cells and extends survival substantially. (Sorry I don't have the numbers handy.) I have a friend in her 30s who is alive today because of imatinib.
Another valuable use of these genetic tests is to tell you whether the cancer really is an aggressive cancer that you have to worry about, or whether it's one of the cancers that will just grow slowly and harmlessly for the rest of your life, because it didn't go through all those other steps.
The recent diagnostic success story is chronic lymphocytic leukemia. CLL usually affects men in their 60s, and is usually found when they go to a doctor for a routine physical and get a routine blood test. There are two types of CLL: one has a survival of 6-8 years. The other has a median survival of 22 years. They can now tell patients which ones they have with a genetic or protein marker test. If you're 65 years old, there's a big difference between knowing you have 6-8 years to live and knowing that you have 22 years to live.
Same with prostate cancer. As you said, most prostate cancers will grow so slowly that (especially if you're 65) they won't cause any symptoms during your lifetime. If only we knew which ones they were. Now you get a PSA test, a biopsy, and a recommendation for surgery if under the microscope the orderly organization of the cells is disrupted. If these scientists can find genes that can tell the difference between aggressive prostate cancers and the ones that are harmless, then we'll know which of those disrupted-looking biopsies will go on to the next step of invasive cancer, and which will remain harmless, and most of that surgery will be unnecessary.
The 11 May Science magazine just had an article on genetic research in prostate cancer and other diseases (subscription only, sorry). You Republican voters may not like to hear this, but one scientist said, "Yes, when you cut taxes and create a deficit and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an unpopular war, it leaves you with precious little to spend on anything else."
I know you are an ass. That's enough.
It's good to see that prostate examinations are finally going digital!
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
Heh. If the previous use of "lemming" was just a mild euphemism, the above tantrum above moderation earns the "lemming" title fair and square, beyond all reasonable doubt.
Why _do_ you care that much about moderation? It just says that one other person thought the same. Big deal either way. Out of millions of readers, no matter what you say, someone will think you're an asshole, someone will think you're an idiot, someone will think you're working for the global conspiracy, and someone will think it's the greatest thing ever said by a human. And someone can't read past the first paragraph. Which of them gets a mod point, is as good as a dice toss.
More importantly, the truth or falsehood of a statement don't have _anything_ to do with how popular or unpopular it is. As Carl Sagan put it, "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Neither getting a standing ovation, not getting laughed at, proves anything about being right or wrong.
So how about worrying about the message you read, or saying what you really believe, instead of throwing tantrums about moderation? Just an idea. Worrying about who's popular and who's not... that-a-way lies groupthink and SFV (Stupid Fashion Victim) syndrome.
In other words: lemming.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, here's what I do know, and I don't need more than the retarded tantrum above as proof. And if that's not enough, I can look at the other retarded tantrums you've posted in this thread alone.
But I digress. Here's what I do know: you're a fucking retard. Smooth brain. Room temperature IQ... in Celsius.
For starters, you _still_ can't comprehend the difference between doctors and the insurance accountants. When you talk about spending thousands of dollars, guess what? That's the insurance system that shafted you, not the doctors.
What _do_ you expect the doctors to do about it? Work for free and pay out of their own pocket for your care? Do _you_ do your job for free and pay the company expenses out of your own pocket? Then wtf of a right do you think you have to demand that from doctors?
In other words, when you rant and rave about the resemblance of the medical profession and prostitution: then how about _your_ job? Don't tell me you don't do it for money. Then what gives you the right to be outraged when others want to be paid for their work? _Nobody_ owes you a lollypop, and throwing spoiled-brat tantrums about it won't change that fact. You're just as big a hooker as them and as the rest of us. Now get off that high horse and learn to live in society.
I also do know, from your own retarded rants, that you're in a country where the "preexisting condition" idiocy does apply. That's all I need to know there. I don't give a fuck, and it makes no difference, whether that's USA or India or whatever. I just need to know what kind of insurance you have, and you already told me that. So throwing a retarded tantrum along the lines of "yeah, but you don't also know the colour of my underwear" is just pointless.
I also notice from the other answer of yours that you still don't understand how insurances work. When you let it rip about that rant about comunism and capitalism, you just prove that you're, simply put, too fucking stupid to understand what I'm talking about. That's not a rant, that's the whole crux of the problem. An insurance company is a company out to make money, ultimately. _That_ is why it excludes against pre-existing conditions. It's simple capitalism at work.
When they set your monthly rate to insure you against, say, fire, they look at how much they'd have to pay you _and_ the probability of that happening. It's a simple maths and statistics game. You get decent insurance if you can prove that you'll never need it, you pay through the nose if you're very likely to need it soon. The same applies to health ensurance: if they think there's a 1% chance that you'll need an expensive operation in your lifetime, you get good insurance, if they think you'll need it every year, they don't give you insurance at all.
At any rate, the _logical_ recourse there isn't to throw tantrums about the doctors, but to change that insurance system. There's no freakin' thing the doctors can do about it. If the insurance accountants don't pay, that's the end of it. WTF _do_ you expect the doctor to do there? _Someone_ has to pay. Either you lobby to change to a more fair system, or you suck it up and pay out of your own pocket. Expecting the doctors to work for free is _not_ an option.
But, more generally, I also notice is your propensity to blame your problems on others. It's the doctor's fault if he says you look like you're pregnant. (And, I see a couple of other "fat and proud of
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What are you going to do next? Poke your tongue out at me?
Child!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
1. You amuse me. You talk about stupidity, yet you prove that _you_ are still too stupid to even understand what system I'm supporting there and what I'm not.
Here, lemme spare your little monkey brain the effort: I _don't_ support the kind of insurance you have to live with. I _do_ think that doctors have nothing to do with that insurance system.
Also, if I were to get diagnosed with just about anything, I _can_ get medical care, because I live in one of those countries where everyone pays for everyone else. That's why I was suggesting you change that system, instead of throwing a retarded rant about doctors. But I don't expect you to have enough neurons to understand that.
2. I do advocate taking responsibility, because it's retarded to _blame_ others for _your_ problems. Fine by me if you're too lazy to exercise an hour a day, which, according to your own messages, is what would take to lose some of that fat and be a lot healthier as a result. But at least fucking have the decency to also accept, at least theoretically, that it's your own fault for whatever happens as a result. Harping about how you don't adhere to the "fat and guilty" club is fucking retarded, when then you then go and rant along the lines of "fat and blaming the doctor."
Get this: primarily it's _your_ job to keep yourself fit and healthy. Just like brushing your teeth, really. If you choose to not take care of yourself, fine by me, but at least do have the decency to not blame others for it. The whole "fat and blaming the doctor for health problems" attitude is just as retarded as hearing someone go "never brushed my teeth, but I'm blaming the dentist." It's just fucking stupid.
3. About the moderation: dearie, all progress ever was made by people who said their opinion regardless of whether it was popular or not. Galileo's point of view wasn't popular, to say the least, but it happened to be right. Einstein's theory of relativity was called "bolshevism". Even the fact that you have a right to vote, instead of being a land-owners' state, has to do with some people saying the very unpopular thing at the moment: that it's about damn time it was a real democracy. Etc. The only reason we're out of the caves by now is because some people didn't care about being popular, and just said what they thought.
While SFVs (Stupid Fashion Victims) like you were always a part of the problem. At every point there was a good percentage of the population playing retarded prom-queen games. Along the lines of, "whaat? If I say I too am against the Inquisition, my neighbours will think I'm some kind of heathen too. I can't lose popularity like that. Let's join in the booing and hissing." Or "whaat? If I say I too am for universal vote, they'll think I'm some kind of malcontent who doesn't know his place. Let's boo at that idea."
And yes, that means even you _could_ be right or wrong, regardless of how others moderated you. But what you're too fucking retarded to understand is that that doesn't say I can't have my own opinion about it. That's what I was saying. And my opinion is that you're so fucking stupid, it's a miracle you can use a computer or tie your shoelaces.
4. If you don't like the mild euphemism "lemming", fine by me. By now you have more than proven, beyone all doubt, that you deserve a promotion there. I hereby dub thee "complete cretin."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.