Chronic Inflammation Linked to Cancer

From the American Cancer Society

Chronic Inflammation Linked to Cancer

Body's Immune Systems Can Make Healthy Cells Change

Article date: 2002/06/06

The relationship between chronic inflammation and cancer gets a careful look in a report in the journal Oncology (Vol 16, No 2: 217-229). Some cancers are known to occur more frequently in people with certain inflammatory diseases — like inflammatory bowel disease and hepatitis. The authors believe an understanding of what is going on in the cells of these diseases may one day lead to better prevention and treatment for cancer. Read More

FDA Issues Anti-Inflammatory Drug Alert

From WebMD.com
by Todd Zwillich

WebMD Medical News

Back in April 7, 2005 the following announcement was made -- The popular arthritis drug Bextra will be pulled from the U.S. market under a decision issued by the FDA Thursday.

FDA officials say they asked Pfizer -- the drug's maker -- to remove it from U.S. pharmacies because its risks of heart, stomach, and skin problems clearly outweighed its benefits. Read More

The FDA provided a detailed list of drugs included in the Anti-Inflammatory Drug Alert. Read More.

Inflammation/ Free Radicals and Parkinson's Disease

From Annalsonline.org (New York Academy of Sciences)
M. FLINT BEAL
The pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD) remains obscure, but there is increasing evidence that impairment of mitochondrial function, oxidative damage (free radicals) , and inflammation are contributing factors. The present paper reviews the experimental and clinical evidence implicating these processes in Parkinson's Disease. Read More.

Free Radicals and Parkinson's Disease

From News-Medical.net
University of Virginia Health System

Research by neuroscientists at the University of Virginia Health System shows that oxygen free radicals are damaging proteins in mitochondria, the tiny cellular 'batteries' of brain cells.

This damage may be one main cause of Parkinson's Disease (PD), the chronic movement disorder that affects at least one million Americans. UVa scientists believe the damage is taking place in a large protein structure called complex I, the first stop in the electron transport chain, which produces an electrical charge inside mitochondria. Mitochondria then use this electrical charge to make energy.

Using the brain cells from deceased Parkinson's patients who donated to the UVa brain bank, Dr. Jim Bennett, a UVa neurologist, and colleagues, isolated complex I from the mitochondria of ten Parkinson's brains and compared them to the complex I proteins from twelve normal brains. They discovered that the complex I assembly in Parkinson's had 50 percent more damage from oxygen. The complex I in Parkinson's brains also had evidence of not being properly assembled and had reduced electron flow, Bennett said.

"This part of the protein complex is being damaged by oxygen free radicals more in a brain with Parkinson's than it is in someone of same age who does not have PD," Bennett said. His research is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Read More.

Inflammation and Depression

From ScienceDaily.com and Emory University Health Sciences Center

Individuals with major depression have an exaggerated inflammatory response to psychological stress compared to those who do not suffer from depression, according to a study by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine. Because an overactive inflammatory response may contribute to a number of medical disorders as well as to depression, the findings suggest that increased inflammatory responses to stress in depressed patients may be a link between depression and other diseases, including heart disease, as well as contributing to depression itself. Read More.

Free Radicals and Heart Disease

From National Institutes of Health/ PubMed.gov

The Role of Oxidative Stress and the Genesis of Heart Disease

Although researchers in radiation and cancer biology have known about the existence of free radicals and their potential role in pathobiology for several decades, cardiac biologists only began to take notice of these noxious species in the 1970s. Read More.

Free Radicals and Diabetes

From the National Institutes of Health/ PubMed.gov

• Oberley LW.

Radiation Research Laboratory, Department of Radiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242.

The role of active oxygen species in diabetes is discussed in this review. Type I diabetes is caused by destruction of the pancreatic beta cells responsible for producing insulin. In humans, the diabetogenic process appears to be caused by immune destruction of the beta cells... Not only are oxygen radicals involved in the cause of diabetes, they also appear to play a role in some of the complications seen in long-term treatment of diabetes. Read More.

Toxicity Connection in Diabetes

From Oxford Journals/ Toxicological Sciences
Nicole Burns ¹ and Barry Gold ^{1 *}


Type 1 diabetes in humans arises from the autoimmune destruction of pancreatic -cells and typically presents in childhood. Genetic susceptibility is an underlying cause, but environmental agents, i.e., toxins and viruses, are postulated to be initiating factors. Read More

Inflammation Connection in Asthma Broader than Originally Thought

From Respitory-Research.com

Abstract
		Asthma was originally described as an inflammatory disease that predominantly involves the central airways. Pathological and physiological evidence reported during the past few years suggests that the inflammatory process extends beyond the central airways to the peripheral airways and the lung parenchyma. The small airways are capable of producing T-helper-2 cytokines, as well as chemokines, and they have recently been recognized as a predominant site of airflow obstruction in asthmatic persons. The inflammation at this distal site has been described as more severe than large airway inflammation. These findings are of great clinical significance, and highlight the need to consider the peripheral airways as a target in any therapeutic strategy for treatment of asthma. Read More

Inflammation Factor in Attention Deficit/ ADDHD

From ClinicalTrials.gov, a service of The National Institutes of Health
Is inflammation a key factor in Attention Deficit?
Purpose Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent childhood neuropsychiatric disorder, characterized by age-inappropriate and impairing levels of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness. Approximately 5-10% of school-age children are affected by ADHD, and in many cases, symptoms persist into adolescence and adulthood.

Cytokines are key mediators of immune function and can be either pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. Recently few studies have suggested involvement of cytokine pathways in subjects with ADHD.

Polymorphism of IL-1 receptors antagonists' alleles have been suggested in families and subjects suffering from ADHD. Moreover, a new variant of inflammatory bowel disease, another immunological based disease, was recently suggested in children with ADHD and other developmental disorders. There are no other published reports on cytokine production in children who suffer from ADHD.

The aim of this study is to investigate the inflammatory response in children with this disorder. Read More.

Can Drugs for Arthritis Have Harmful Levels of Toxicity?

From the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health
Contributed by The Department of Medicine, Standford School of Medicine, CA

OBJECTIVE. To compare the toxicities of commonly employed disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS. Toxicity Index scores, computed from symptoms, laboratory abnormalities, and hospitalizations attributable to DMARD therapy, were assessed in 2,747 patients. Read More

What is Inflammation?

From The Cleveland Clinic Health Information Center

Inflammation is a process by which the body’s white blood cells and chemicals protect us from infection and foreign substances such as bacteria and viruses.

In some diseases, however, the body’s defense system (immune system) inappropriately triggers an inflammatory response when there are no foreign substances to fight off. In these diseases, called autoimmune diseases, the body’s normally protective immune system causes damage to its own tissues. The body responds as if normal tissues are infected or somehow abnormal. Read More

Inflammation: The Root of all Evil in Diabetes and the Dysmetabolic Syndrome

From Medscape.com
Aaron I. Vinik, MD, PhD, FCP, FACP

At this year's EASD Meeting, the Camillo Golgi lecture was given by Professor Antonio Ceriello, Chair of Internal Medicine, University of Udine, Italy. Professor Ceriello has systematically studied the role of oxidative stress as a contributor to insulin resistance, as well as a possible factor affecting pancreatic islet dysfunction.^[1] He proposed that free radicals were generated in excess, causing inflammation damaging to the endothelium of muscle, fat, and pancreatic islets. This concept thus implicates inflammation in both sides of the equation leading to the dysmetabolic syndrome and culminating in type 2 diabetes -- notably insulin resistance and impaired beta-cell function. Read more (free site, but requires registration)

The Science of Mangosteen

From LoveMangosteen.net
by Less Berenson, M.D., F.A.C.P. Rev 10-19-2006
The Mangosteen fruit and its rind (or "pericarp") represent an extremely powerful, natural antinflammatory. Inflammation is a key link to Cancer, Alzheimer's, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Allergies, Arthritis, and Autoimmune Disease. Dr Berensen provides in laymans language how Mangosteen can be successfully used both in addition to, and as a substitute to traditional medicine. Read more. http://www.lovemangosteen.net/files/scienceofmangosteen.pdf