Medical Bulletin 22/March/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Novel combination therapy regimen shows promising results for prostate cancer

According to the National Cancer Institute, prostate cancer is the most common cancer and second leading cause of cancer death among men in the United States. Castration-resistant prostate cancer, or CRPC, is a late stage of prostate cancer that continues to grow despite androgen blockade.

TALAPRO-2, a study led by Neeraj Agarwal, MD, FASCO demonstrated that using TALZENNA, in combination with XTANDI, may reduce the risk of disease progression or death by 37%.

Agarwal, Presidential Endowed Chair of Cancer Research at Huntsman Cancer Institute, presented the results of one of his many Phase III trials at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium last month.

Reference:

Neeraj Agarwal et al,HUNTSMAN CANCER INSTITUTE,TALAPRO-2.

Extra X chromosome-linked gene may explain why females have lower viral infection severity, study

In a study published March 16 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Immunology, a collaborative team of UCLA researchers have found that female mouse and human NK cells have an extra copy of an X chromosome-linked gene called UTX. UTX acts as an epigenetic regulator to boost NK cell anti-viral function, while repressing NK cell numbers. This may explain why viral infections can be more severe in males than females

“While it is well-known that males have more NK cells compared to females, we did not understand why the increased number of NK cells was not more protective during viral infections. It turns out that females have more UTX in their NK cells than do males, which allows them to fight viral infections more efficiently,” said co-senior author Dr. Maureen Su, professor of microbiology immunology and molecular genetics, and of pediatrics, at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

Reference:

Mandy Cheng et al,The X-linked epigenetic regulator UTX controls NK cell-intrinsic sex differences,Nature Immunology,doi 10.1038/s41590-023-01463-8

Study finds disproportionate percentage of females with unexplained infertility to have gene variants known to cause serious problems

Medical College of Georgia researchers have recently reported that about 17% of women with unexplained infertility also have gene variants known to cause disease, from common conditions like heart disease to rare problems like ALS.

Theirs appears to be the first study to identify an increased prevalence of disease-causing genetic variants in females with unexplained infertility, the team, led by Lawrence C. Layman, MD, reports in the New England Journal of Medicine.

They hypothesized that genetic disease creates a predisposition to infertility and subsequent medical illness and their findings support that link, they write. Females with infertility, for example, have been noted to have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

Reference:

Unexplained Female Infertility Associated with Genetic Disease Variants,New England Journal of Medicine,MEDICAL COLLEGE OF GEORGIA AT AUGUSTA UNIVERSITY.