No hospital sends a stroke patient home without a detailed plan to help them regain as much of their normal functioning as possible. Yet cancer patients are routinely released with no guidance on how to deal with the impairments that may linger after their treatment is done. A lot of cancer survivors feel ditched after treatment, says Catherine Alfano, deputy director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship at the National Cancer Institute. Research shows that cancer rehabilitation can help people reduce disability and improve their functioning, yet too few cancer survivors get such care, says Julie Silver, a physician and associate professor at Harvard Medical School. She encountered the problem herself after undergoing rigorous treatment for breast cancer in 2003. Afterward, she felt abandoned. Recognizing an unmet need, Silver launched the Survivorship, Training and Rehab program. STAR helps hospitals and other health-care facilities develop cancer rehabilitation programs that coordinate care among diverse providers. The programs are tailored to each person and their cancer, whether its breast, lung, prostate or something else. Cancer patients should seek out such programs even before beginning treatment. (Ask your doctor for a referral.) Among hospitals in the area, Inova Alexandria Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center … Continue reading →

Public release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Jason Socrates Bardi jbardi@aip.org 240-535-4954 American Institute of Physics WASHINGTON D.C., July 29, 2013 -- If genes are the currency of life, then the whole economies are genetic networks, which include genes as well as the complex webs of interactions and interconnections between them. Genetic networks are integrally important to the proper development and functioning of an organism, just as genes are, but they tend to be far more complex and difficult to understand. Because of their complexity, the field has been slow to unravel genetic networks, said Leon Glass, the Isadore Rosenfeld Chair in Cardiology and a professor of physiology at McGill University. Now a special issue of the journal CHAOS, produced by AIP Publishing, explores new experimental and theoretical techniques for unraveling genetic networks. "Most emphasis has been on the properties of individual genes, and mutations in individual genes have been identified that lead to diseases, such as the cystic fibrosis gene," said Glass. But the proper expression of individual genes is regulated by both environmental factors, metabolic factors and the expression of other genes in the body, he added. "To understand these interactions," Glass said, "it … Continue reading →

Public release date: 29-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Amanda Petrak amanda.petrak@case.edu 216-368-0345 Case Western Reserve University Scientists historically have argued that evolution proceeds through gradual development of traits. But how can incremental changes apply to the binary switch between two sexes, male or female? Researchers at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine have found that a genetic process among the many species of rodents could have significant implications regarding our assumptions about sex determination and the pace of evolution. "What we addressed is a long-standing puzzle in natural history: why different types of rodents can exhibit profound differences in how male sex is determined in the embryo," said Michael Weiss, MD, PhD, chairman of the Department of Biochemistry, the Cowan-Blum Professor of Cancer Research and a professor of biochemistry and medicine. "Some rodent populations have both XY males and XY females, and in other populations the Y chromosome has disappeared entirely." In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Weiss and his research team analyzed the Sry gene, which is part of the Y chromosome. This mammalian gene, which steers differentiation in the embryonic gonad toward the development of testes, begins the … Continue reading →