Dr. John's Health Matters
Welcome to Dr. John's Health Matters blog.
The articles posted here are from various sources who are duly acknowledged. I would appreciate being immediately notified, if any copywritten material needs to be removed. This blog is not intended to replace the qualified advice of a licensed health practitioner. Readers should exercise their own judgment. Enjoy, subscribe, participate and tell others :)
Following:
Navigate
COMING SOON!
Expand all | Collapse all 
Search
Click Tags under Articles
NOTE: SEARCH BY KEYWORD FUNCTIONS BELOW ARE TEMPORARILY MALFUNCTIONING. USE AT OWN RISK.
Or Display Full Article by
Posts tagged "gene"
Tuesday, Sep 1st, 2009 ↓Breast Cancer: Risk Increases For Smokers And Overweight Women →
Sept 1, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—A recent study published in the Journal of Cancer Epidemiology has reinforced the correlation between being overweight, smoking and breast cancer. What makes this study unique is how test subjects were not diagnosed for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, which predispose women to breast cancer.
Instead, women with such gene mutations were excluded to allow researchers to concentrate on lifestyle factors such as smoking, exercise, nutrition and weight. All women analyzed in the study were direct ancestors of the first French colonists.
“To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted on a sample of women without BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, which are often found in French-Canadian women,” says lead researcher Vishnee Bissonauth, a graduate of the Université de Montréal’s Department of Nutrition and a researcher at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center.
For full article, see link above.
Tags: smoking breast cancer risk overweight obesity cigarette smoker gene mutation correlation
Immune System Linked To Schizophrenia →
Jluy 6, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disease, thought to be caused by the interaction of both genetic and environmental factors. Because there is no biochemical test that can identify the disorder, physicians rely upon the recognition of its symptoms — which can include auditory hallucinations and paranoia — in order to make their diagnosis.
Now following on their earlier work that identified three gene locations that may be implicated in schizophrenia, researchers at UCLA and colleagues from around the world have, for the first time, identified additional genes that confirm what scientists have long suspected — that the immune system may play a role in the development of the disorder. Further, they have also identified genetic anomalies that disrupt the cellular pathways involved in brain development, memory and cognition, all markers of schizophrenia.
The research appears in the July 1 online edition of the journal Nature.
Roel Ophoff, the co-lead author and an assistant professor at the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and his collaborators from nearly 50 institutions worldwide, performed a genome-wide scan of 2,663 people diagnosed with schizophrenia and 13,498 controls from eight European locations. They were looking for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), genetic variations that are commonly present in the general population but more often present in those suffering from the disorder. In total, nearly 314,000 SNPs were included in their analysis.
They found significant associations with genetic markers on the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), a group of genes that controls several aspects of the immune response. Further, they discovered additional variations in two other genes, called NRGN and TCF4, which points to perturbation of pathways involved in brain development, memory and cognition.
“This is another step forward in understanding the biological basis of this disorder, one that robs people of their lives,” said Ophoff, who holds a joint appointment at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. “It also shows the importance of worldwide collaborations for the study of schizophrenia genetics, because it allows us to do very large numbers of scans.”
For full article see link above.
Lifestyle Changes To Help You Avoid Kidney Stones →
June 10, 2009 (Mercola.com) —Kidney stones (renal lithiasis) can be one of the most excruciatingly painful conditions you can experience. In the United States, about 10-15 percent of adults will be diagnosed with a kidney stone in their lifetime. Roughly 1 million Americans develop kidney stones each year. Once you have had one kidney stone attack, your chance of recurrence is about 70 to 80 percent.
For full article see link above.
Tags: kidney stone water prevention risk urine lifestyle gene dehydration diet fluid
Ear Wax, Body Odor: Breast Cancer Link? →
June 5, 2009 (Therapytimes.com) — A variation in a gene already associated with breast cancer risk is also linked with especially unpleasant underarm body odor and wet ear wax, according to a team of Japanese scientists.
The discovery is not meant to make women with either condition anxious, says Toshi Ishikawa, PhD, professor of biomolecular engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the senior author of the study. Rather, he says, “we do strongly hope that our study will provide a new tool for better prediction of breast cancer risk” by using a new method of finding the variation developed by his team.
Having wet ear wax or excessively smelly armpits does not mean a woman is destined to get breast cancer, Ishikawa says. “To be clear, I should strongly mention that the [specific gene variation found to link body odor, wet ear wax, and breast cancer risk] is one factor that increases breast cancer risk,” Ishikawa says. “And it might have to work in tandem with something else — such as environmental factors and mutations of tumor suppressor genes such as BRCA1, BRCA2, p53, and so on.”
For full article see link above.
Heart Disease Gene Useless at Predicting Heart Disease, Research Reveals →
Jan 20 09 (natural news) A new study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine reveals that the genetic trait long thought to be a predictor of heart disease is actually useless at predicting heart disease.
As Reuters reports, the doctor who led the study explains, “Once you already know the traditional risk factors, the additional information about the genetic variation doesn’t help any. It doesn’t improve your ability to predict.”
It turns out that “traditional risk factors” — such as smoking, blood pressure and measures of systemic inflammation — are the only real predictors of heart disease.
For full article, see link above.
Genes Don't Cause Cancer, Study Reveals →
Jan 02 09 (NaturalNews) — It’s a clever line parroted by cancer docs everywhere: Your genes cause cancer, so you’d better get your breasts surgically removed just in case, you know, so you don’t ever get cancer.
But as it turns out, the whole genetic link to cancer is 99% hogwash. A study completed at the Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece analyzed hundreds of other studies that claimed to have “discovered” genes that cause cancer, and it found that out of 240 claimed associations between genes and cancer risk, only two genes actually had any significant correlation at all. (That’s less than one percent, if you’re keeping track.)
Put another way, over 99% of the claims about genes causing cancer don’t hold up to scientific scrutiny.
For full article, see link above.
