Demand for Spanish-language cancer Web materials quadruples
Contact: Beth Bukata
bethb@astro.org
703-431-2332
American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology
Internet resources and access remain scarce
Although Spanish-speaking cancer patients are rapidly increasing their search for patient education resources on the Internet, there are very few Spanish-language Web sites available to provide this information, according to a study presented October 28, 2007, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology’s 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.
Spanish-speaking cancer patients were also shown to have more limited access to the Internet compared to English-speaking users of cancer information Web sites, based on the user patterns of the two groups.
“There is an urgent need for more Web-based information to be more available to Spanish-speaking patients with cancer, and Internet access needs to be more widely available,” said Charles Simone II, M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation oncologist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “The increased knowledge gained among these patients will help to eliminate healthcare disparities and lead to improved medical outcomes.”
The Spanish-language cancer information Web site, OncoLink en español, quadrupled their number of unique visitors last year, from 7,000 visitors per month in January 2006 to nearly 29,000 monthly visitors by the end of the year. More than 200,000 users visited the Web site in 2006.
In contrast, the English-language version of the site, OncoLink, had nearly 2 million visitors last year, although their number of unique visitors did not increase throughout the year. OncoLink en espanõl was launched in 2005 by OncoLink, one of the oldest and largest Internet-based cancer information resources. Both sites are managed by the University of Pennsylvania.
The study shows that OncoLink en español users were less likely to browse the Internet during weekends and morning hours, compared to the users who browsed OncoLink, suggesting that they are accessing the Internet more through work or specialized services.
In addition to when they accessed the Internet, OncoLink en español users also differed on the types of cancers they searched for, as well as the timing and method of their Internet search patterns.
“Awareness of these differences can assist cancer education Web sites to tailor their content to best meet the needs of their Spanish-speaking users,” said Dr. Simone.
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The study was carried out using AWStats, a Web-data analyzing program, to collect and compare statistical data from the secure servers of both language versions of OncoLink.
For more information on radiation therapy in English and in Spanish, visit http://www.rtanswers.org.
The abstract, “The Utilization of Radiation Oncology Web-based Resources in Spanish-speaking Oncology Patients,” will be presented for poster viewing starting at 10:00 a.m, Sunday, October 28, 2007. To speak to the study author, Charles Simone, II, M.D, please call Beth Bukata or Nicole Napoli October 28-31, 2007, in the ASTRO Press Room at the Los Angeles Convention Center at 213-743-6222 or 213-743-6223. You may also e-mail them at bethb@astro.org or nicolen@astro.org.
Appendix isn’t useless at all: It’s a safe house for bacteria
Contact: Richard Merritt
Merri006@mc.duke.edu
919-660-1309
Duke University Medical Center
DURHAM, N.C. – Long denigrated as vestigial or useless, the appendix now appears to have a reason to be – as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.
Drawing upon a series of observations and experiments, Duke University Medical Center investigators postulate that the beneficial bacteria in the appendix that aid digestion can ride out a bout of diarrhea that completely evacuates the intestines and emerge afterwards to repopulate the gut. Their theory appears online in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
“While there is no smoking gun, the abundance of circumstantial evidence makes a strong case for the role of the appendix as a place where the good bacteria can live safe and undisturbed until they are needed,” said William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of experimental surgery, who conducted the analysis in collaboration with R. Randal Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., Duke professor emeritus in general surgery.
The appendix is a slender two- to four-inch pouch located near the juncture of the large and small intestines. While its exact function in humans has been debated by physicians, it is known that there is immune system tissue in the appendix.
The gut is populated with different microbes that help the digestive system break down the foods we eat. In return, the gut provides nourishment and safety to the bacteria. Parker now believes that the immune system cells found in the appendix are there to protect, rather than harm, the good bacteria.
For the past ten years, Parker has been studying the interplay of these bacteria in the bowels, and in the process has documented the existence in the bowel of what is known as a biofilm. This thin and delicate layer is an amalgamation of microbes, mucous and immune system molecules living together atop of the lining the intestines.
“Our studies have indicated that the immune system protects and nourishes the colonies of microbes living in the biofilm,” Parkers explained. “By protecting these good microbes, the harmful microbes have no place to locate. We have also shown that biofilms are most pronounced in the appendix and their prevalence decreases moving away from it.”
This new function of the appendix might be envisioned if conditions in the absence of modern health care and sanitation are considered, Parker said.
“Diseases causing severe diarrhea are endemic in countries without modern health and sanitation practices, which often results in the entire contents of the bowels, including the biofilms, being flushed from the body,” Parker said. He added that the appendix’s location and position is such that it is expected to be relatively difficult for anything to enter it as the contents of the bowels are emptied.
“Once the bowel contents have left the body, the good bacteria hidden away in the appendix can emerge and repopulate the lining of the intestine before more harmful bacteria can take up residence,” Parker continued. “In industrialized societies with modern medical care and sanitation practices, the maintenance of a reserve of beneficial bacteria may not be necessary. This is consistent with the observation that removing the appendix in modern societies has no discernable negative effects.”
Several decades ago, scientists suggested that people in industrialized societies might have such a high rate of appendicitis because of the so-called “hygiene hypothesis,” Parker said. This hypothesis posits that people in “hygienic” societies have higher rates of allergy and perhaps autoimmune disease because they — and hence their immune systems — have not been as challenged during everyday life by the host of parasites or other disease-causing organisms commonly found in the environment. So when these immune systems are challenged, they can over-react.
“This over-reactive immune system may lead to the inflammation associated with appendicitis and could lead to the obstruction of the intestines that causes acute appendicitis,” Parker said. “Thus, our modern health care and sanitation practices may account not only for the lack of a need for an appendix in our society, but also for much of the problems caused by the appendix in our society.”
Parker conducted a deductive study because direct examination the appendix’s function would be difficult. Other than humans, the only mammals known to have appendices are rabbits, opossums and wombats, and their appendices are markedly different than the human appendix.
Parker’s overall research into the existence and function of biofilms is supported by the National Institutes of Health. Other Duke members of the team were Andrew Barbas, Errol Bush, and Shu Lin.
What emotional memories are made of
Mouse experiments reveal ‘flight or fight’ hormone’s role
Contact: Nick Zagorski
nzagors1@jhmi.edu
443-287-2251
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
Both extensive psychological research and personal experiences confirm that events that happen during heightened states of emotion such as fear, anger and joy are far more memorable than less dramatic occurrences. In a report this week in Cell, Johns Hopkins researchers and their collaborators at Cold Spring Harbor and New York University have identified the likely biological basis for this: a hormone released during emotional arousal “primes” nerve cells to remember events by increasing their chemical sensitivity at sites where nerves rewire to form new memory circuits.
Describing the brain as a big circuit board in which each new experience creates a new circuit, Hopkins neuroscience professor Richard Huganir, Ph.D. says that he and his team found that during emotional peaks, the hormone norepinephrine dramatically sensitizes synapses – the site where nerve cells make an electro-chemical connection – to enhance the sculpting of a memory into the big board.
Image showing phosphorylated GluR1 receptors congregating around sites of neuronal synapses.
Norepinephrine, more widely known as a “fight or flight” hormone, energizes the process by adding phosphate molecules to a nerve cell receptor called GluR1. The phosphates help guide the receptors to insert themselves adjacent to a synapse. “Now when the brain needs to form a memory, the nerves have plenty of available receptors to quickly adjust the strength of the connection and lock that memory into place,” Huganir says.
Huganir and his team suspected that GluR1might be a target of norepinephrine since disruptions in this receptor cause spatial memory defects in mice. They tested the idea by either injecting healthy mice with adrenaline or exposing them to fox urine, both of which increase norepinephrine levels in brain. Analyzing brain slices of the mice, the researchers saw increased phosphates on the GluR1 receptors and an increased ability of these receptors to be recruited to synapses.
When the researchers put mice in a cage, gave a mild shock, took them out of that cage and put them back in it the next day, mice who had received adrenaline or fox urine tended to “freeze” in fear – an indicator they associated the cage as the site of a shock – more frequently, suggestive of enhanced memory.
However, in a similar experiment with mice genetically engineered to have a defective GluR1 receptor that phosphates cannot attach to, adrenaline injections had no effect on mouse memory, further evidence of the “priming” effect of the receptor in response to norepinephrine.
The researchers plan on continuing their work by going in the opposite direction and engineering another mouse strain that has a permanently phosphorylated or “primed” receptor. “We’re curious to see how these mice will behave,” Huganir says. “We suspect that they’ll be pretty smart, but at the same time constantly anxious.”
###
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship, NARSAD, and the Ale Davis and Maxine Harrison Foundation
Authors on the paper are Hailan Hu, Eleonore Real, and Roberto Malinow of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Joe LeDoux of New York University; and Kogo Takamiya, Myoung-Goo Kang, and Huganir of Johns Hopkins
On the Web:
http://neuroscience.jhu.edu/RichardHuganir.php
http://www.cell.com
One species’ entire genome discovered inside another’s
Whole-genome transfer raises questions about evolution, sequencing
Scientists at the University of Rochester and the J. Craig Venter Institute have discovered a copy of the entire genome of a bacterial parasite residing inside the genome of its host species.
The finding, reported in today’s Science, suggests that lateral gene transfer—the movement of genes between unrelated species—may happen much more frequently between bacteria and multicellular organisms than scientists previously believed, posing dramatic implications for evolution.
Such large-scale heritable gene transfers may allow species to acquire new genes and functions extremely quickly, says Jack Werren, a principle investigator of the study.
Wolbachia in yellow with host cells in red.
The results also have serious repercussions for genome-sequencing projects. Bacterial DNA is routinely discarded when scientists are assembling invertebrate genomes, yet these genes may very well be part of the organism’s genome, and might even be responsible for functioning traits.
“This study establishes the widespread occurrence and high frequency of a process that we would have dismissed as science fiction until just a few years ago,” says W. Ford Doolittle, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Microbial Genomics at Dalhousie University, who is not connected to the study. “This is stunning evidence for increased frequency of gene transfer.”
Fruit fly ovaries showing wolbachia infection within.
“It didn’t seem possible at first,” says Werren, professor of biology at the University of Rochester and a world-leading authority on the parasite, called Wolbachia. “This parasite has implanted itself inside the cells of 70 percent of the world’s invertebrates, coevolving with them. And now, we’ve found at least one species where the parasite’s entire or nearly entire genome has been absorbed and integrated into the host’s. The host’s genes actually hold the coding information for a completely separate species.”
Wolbachia may be the most prolific parasite in the world—a “pandemic,” as Werren calls it. The bacterium invades a member of a species, most often an insect, and eventually makes its way into the host’s eggs or sperm. Once there, the Wolbachia is ensured passage to the next generation of its host, and any genetic exchanges between it and the host also are much more likely to be passed on.
Since Wolbachia typically live within the reproductive organs of their hosts, Werren reasoned that gene exchanges between the two would frequently pass on to subsequent generations. Based on this and an earlier discovery of a Wolbachia gene in a beetle by the Fukatsu team at the University of Tokyo, Japan, the researchers in Werren’s lab and collaborators at J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) decided to systematically screen invertebrates. Julie Dunning-Hotopp at JCVI found evidence that some of the Wolbachia genes seemed to be fused to the genes of the fruitfly, Drosophila ananassae, as if they were part of the same genome.
Michael Clark, a research associate at Rochester then brought a colony of ananassae into Werren’s lab to look into the mystery. To isolate the fly’s genome from the parasite’s, Clark fed the flies a simple antibiotic, killing the Wolbachia. To confirm the ananassae flies were indeed cured of the wolbachia, Clark tested a few samples of DNA for the presence of several Wolbachia genes.
To his dismay, he found them.
“For several months, I thought I was just failing,” says Clark. “I kept administering antibiotics, but every single Wolbachia gene I tested for was still there. I started thinking maybe the strain had grown antibiotic resistance. After months of this I finally went back and looked at the tissue again, and there was no Wolbachia there at all.”
Clark had cured the fly of the parasite, but a copy of the parasite’s genome was still present in the fly’s genome. Clark was able to see that Wolbachia genes were present on the second chromosome of the insect.
Clark confirmed that the Wolbachia genes are inherited like “normal” insect genes in the chromosomes, and Dunning-Hotopp showed that some of the genes are “transcribed” in uninfected flies, meaning that copies of the gene sequence are made in cells that could be used to make Wolbachia proteins.
Werren doesn’t believe that the Wolbachia “intentionally” insert their genes into the hosts. Rather, it is a consequence of cells routinely repairing their damaged DNA. As cells go about their regular business, they can accidentally absorb bits of DNA into their nuclei, often sewing those foreign genes into their own DNA. But integrating an entire genome was definitely an unexpected find.
Werren and Clark are now looking further into the huge insert found in the fruitfly, and whether it is providing a benefit. “The chance that a chunk of DNA of this magnitude is totally neutral, I think, is pretty small, so the implication is that it has imparted of some selective advantage to the host,” says Werren. “The question is, are these foreign genes providing new functions for the host” This is something we need to figure out.”
Evolutionary biologists will certainly take note of this discovery, but scientists conducting genome-sequencing projects around the world also may have to readjust their thinking.
Before this study, geneticists knew of examples where genes from a parasite had crossed into the host, but such an event was considered a rare anomaly except in very simple organisms. Bacterial DNA is very conspicuous in its structure, so if scientists sequencing a nematode genome, for example, come across bacterial DNA, they would likely discard it, reasonably assuming that it was merely contamination—perhaps a bit of bacteria in the gut of the animal, or on its skin.
But those genes may not be contamination. They may very well be in the host’s own genome. This is exactly what happened with the original sequencing of the genome of the anannassae fruitfly—the huge Wolbachia insert was discarded from the final assembly, despite the fact that it is part of the fly’s genome.
In the early days of the Human Genome Project, some studies appeared to show bacterial DNA residing in our own genome, but those were shown indeed to be caused by contamination. Wolbachia is not known to infect any vertebrates such as humans.
“Such transfers have happened before in the distant past” notes Werren. “In our very own cells and those of nearly all plants and animals are mitochondria, special structures responsible for generating most of our cells’ supply of chemical energy. These were once bacteria that lived inside cells, much like Wolbachia does today. Mitochondria still retain their own, albeit tiny, DNA, and most of the genes moved into the nucleus in the very distant past. Like wolbachia, they have passively exchanged DNA with their host cells. It’s possible wolbachia may follow in the path of mitochondria, eventually becoming a necessary and useful part of a cell.
“In a way, wolbachia could be the next mitochondria,” says Werren. “A hundred million years from now, everyone may have a wolbachia organelle.”
“Well, not us,” he laughs. “We’ll be long gone, but wolbachia will still be around.”
###
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
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