Exercise boosts tumour-fighting ability of chemotherapy

Study after study has proven it true: exercise is good for you. But new research from University of Pennsylvania scientists suggests that exercise may have an added benefit for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Exercise boosts tumour-fighting ability of chemotherapy

Their work, performed in a mouse model of melanoma, found that combining exercise with chemotherapy shrunk tumors more than chemotherapy alone.
Joseph Libonati, an associate professor in the School of Nursing and director of the Laboratory of Innovative and Translational Nursing Research, was the senior author on the study, which appears in the American Journal of Physiology. His collaborators included Penn Nursing’s Geetha Muthukumaran, Dennis Ding and Akinyemi Bajulaiye plus Kathleen Sturgeon, Keri Schadler, Nicholas J. Thomas, Victor Ferrari and Sandra Ryeom of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Exercise has long been recommended to cancer patients for its physical and psychological benefits. Libonati and colleagues were particularly interested in testing whether exercise could protect against the negative cardiac-related side effects of the common cancer drug doxorubicin. Though effective at treating a variety of types of cancer, doxorubicin has is known to damage heart cells, which could lead to heart failure in the long-term.

“The immediate concern for these patients is, of course, the cancer, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get rid of it,” Libonati said. “But then when you get over that hump you have to deal with the long-term elevated risk of cardiovascular disease.”

Previous studies had shown that an exercise regime prior to receiving chemotherapy could protect heart cells from the toxic effects of doxorubicin, but few had looked to see whether an exercise regimen during chemotherapy could be beneficial.

To do so, Libonati’s team set up an experiment with four groups of mice. All were given an injection of melanoma cells in the scruffs of their neck. During the next two weeks, two of the groups received doxorubicin in two doses while the other two groups received placebo injections. Mice in one of the treated groups and one of the placebo groups were put on exercise regimens, walking 45 minutes five days a week on mouse-sized treadmills, while the rest of the mice remained sedentary.

After the two-week trial, the researchers examined the animals’ hearts using echocardiogram and tissue analysis. As expected, doxorubicin was found to reduce the heart’s function and size and increased fibrosis — a damaging thickening of tissue. Mice that exercised were not protected from this damage.

“We looked, and the exercise didn’t do anything to the heart — it didn’t worsen it, it didn’t help it,” Libonati said. “But the tumor data — I find them actually amazing.”

The “amazing” result was that the mice that both received chemotherapy and exercised had significantly smaller tumors after two weeks than mice that only received doxorubicin.

Further studies will investigate exactly how exercise enhances the effect of doxorubicin, but the Penn team believes it could be in part because exercise increases blood flow to the tumor, bringing with it more of the drug in the bloodstream.

“If exercise helps in this way, you could potentially use a smaller dose of the drug and get fewer side effects,” Libonati said.

Gaining a clearer understanding of the many ways that exercise affects various systems of the body could also pave the way for developing drugs that mimic the effects of exercise.

“People don’t take a drug and then sit down all day,” Libonati says. “Something as simple as moving affects how drugs are metabolized. We’re only just beginning to understand the complexities.”

Source: science daily


Ginger – The Amazing Healing Herb

Ginger is a very good antioxidant and has anti-bacterial, antiseptic, sedative and antipyretic effect. Fresh ginger submerged in warm water, deeply penetrates the tissue, brakes down and melts accumulated mucus, initiate circulation, relieves pain, inflammation and swellings, accelerates detoxification it is very useful in the case of muscle inflammation and chronic back pain.

Ginger – The Amazing Healing Herb

Melts fatty deposits

This healing root speeds up the muscle metabolism, lowers cholesterol, helps in secretion of saliva and ingested food starch, reduces bloating and constipation, all of which contributes to weight loss.
If you want to loose weight fast, add to yo meals fresh or dried ginger or drink tea made from this beneficial root.

Improves mental capacities

Ginger relieves headaches and contribute to a better brain function. If it in any way we use it during the day, we will be fresher and will have more strength and energy, and if in the evening we eat hot vegetable soup with an addition of ginger, we will provide our self a good rest and sleep.

Lowers Stress

Ginger is rich in antioxidant, which helps in harmful chemicals removal, that our body produces when we are under worries, and thus affects the reduction of psychological stress. During this depression treatment it also impairs and the digestion process followed by occurrence of nausea, for which ginger is the ideal cure for these problems too.

Fights against colds and flu

If you regularly use ginger, you can easily prevent and fight the flu or colds, as well as the potential complications from these diseases. Ginger will strengthen our immune system, facilitate breathing and relieve headaches. It encourages sweating, so that`s why it`s excellent for lowering high body temperatures.

Cures Arthritis

Since ginger has anti-inflammatory properties, it is highly effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthiritis, osteoarthritis and other diseases of the musculoskeletal and connective tissue. Some studies show that in the case of arthritis, ginger is even more effective than other conventional drugs and medications.

Cure for cold hands and feet

Herb ginger is a powerful tool for engaging of the circulatory system.
If you suffer from cold hands and feet you should drink tea from this medicinal herb.

Source: only pure nature


Chemotherapy likely to get less painful

Chemotherapy likely to get less painful

Saint Louis University professor of pharmacological and physiological sciences Daniela Salvemini found a molecular pathway by which a painful chemotherapy side effect happens and a drug that may be able to stop it.

“The chemotherapy drug paclitaxel is widely used to treat many forms of cancer, including breast, ovarian and lung cancers,” said Salvemini.

“Though it is highly effective, the medication, like many other chemotherapy drugs, is frequently accompanied by a debilitating side effect called chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, or CIPN,” she added.

In addition to causing suffering to patients, CIPN is often a limiting factor when it comes to treatment. Salvemini and her colleagues studied paclitaxel, which is also known as Taxol, and discovered that the pain pathway is dependent on activation of S1PR1 in the central nervous system.

This engages a series of damaging neuro-inflammatory processes leading to pain. By inhibiting this molecule, they found that they could block and reverse paclitaxel-induced neuropathic pain without interfering with the drug’s anti-cancer effects. The study appeared in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Source: post


Man Has Skin Reaction to Tattoo — 20 Years Later

There have been many cases of people having allergic reactions just after getting a tattoo. But for one man in England, the reaction was delayed, coming 20 years after he got his tattoo, according to a new report of his case.

The 54-year-old man had recently completed chemotherapy for the blood cancer lymphoma, and had just undergone a bone-marrow transplant using his own cells. Six days later, when his immune system was still suppressed because of the procedure, he developed a fever.

Looking for the cause of the fever, doctors found newly formed skin lesions on the red-ink parts of his old tattoo, resembling the allergic reaction that some people experience when they get a new tattoo.

“While acute red-ink tattoo reactions are well documented, a case of a tattoo reaction with a delay of more than two decades has not been previously described,” said Dr. George Chapman, who treated the man.

Although most people who get such reactions to tattoo ink are allergic to one of the ingredients in the ink, this was likely not the case for this patient, said Chapman, of Churchill Hospital in England.

“Given this was a bone-marrow transplant of the patient’s own bone marrow, his immune system should be near identical (in terms of what his immune system reacts to, and what it has seen before) both before and after the transplant,” Chapman told Live Science in an email.

“I believe that immune-system suppression was the trigger for the reaction, Chapman said.

Most likely, the tattooing done decades ago had introduced bacteria into the man’s body, and those bacteria were held at bay by a healthy immune system, Chapman explained. But once the immune system was compromised by chemotherapy, those bacteria found an opportunity to cause problems.

In fact, three days later, when the patient’s immune system returned to normal, the lesions healed, leaving only peeling skin behind [Image of the tattoo reaction]

The patient declined a biopsy, so it remains unknown which bacteria may have caused the reaction.

However, it is also possible that the reaction was not due to an infection, Chapman said. Rather, an ingredient in the ink might have interacted with one of the chemotherapy drugs to form a new compound. This new molecule could have then appeared new to the immune system, and caused a reaction, Chapman said.

The report was published Jan. 10 in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Source: Live science