Medical Bulletin 25/January/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Poor sleep during teenage years may increase subsequent MS risk: Study

Insufficient and disturbed sleep during the teenage years may heighten the subsequent risk of multiple sclerosis (MS), suggests a case-control study published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.

For the study, the researchers drew on a population-based case-control study, the Epidemiological Investigation of Multiple Sclerosis (EIMS), comprising 16–70-year-old Swedish residents. The researchers focused particularly on sleep patterns during the ages 15 to 19, and the final analysis included 2075 people with MS and 3164 without the condition in this age group when recruited to the study. Participants were asked about their sleeping patterns at different ages: length of sleep on work or school days, and at weekends or on free days.

Reference:

Insufficient sleep during adolescence and risk of multiple sclerosis: results from a Swedish case control study doi 10.1136/jnnp-2022-330123,Journal: Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry

Timing chemotherapy improves treatment results for female lymphoma patients: Study

In "chronochemotherapy" the aim is timing the delivery of the drug when the body is least vulnerable to the harmful effects of the drug, while the cancer cells are at their most vulnerable.

A group of South Korean researchers studied a group of patients suffering from Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).They analyzed 210 patients to investigate whether there is any difference between morning and afternoon treatment.

Reference:

Professor KOH Young-il et al,Chemotherpay delivery time affects treatment outcomes of female patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma,JCI Insight,doi 10.1172/jci.insight.164767

Study finds midlife obesity linked to heightened frailty risk in older age

Carrying far too much weight, including a midriff bulge, from mid-life onwards, is linked to a heightened risk of physical frailty in older age, finds research published in the open access journal BMJ Open. The researchers drew on participants in the population based Tromsø Study to find out whether general (BMI) and abdominal (waist circumference) obesity separately and jointly, might affect the risk of pre-frailty/frailty. The final analysis included 4509 people aged 45 or older.

By 2015-16, 28% of participants were pre-frail, 1% were frail, and 70.5% were strong. In all, nearly 51% of those who were strong and 55% of those categorised as pre-frail were women.

Reference:

Body mass index, waist circumference and pre-frailty/frailty: the Tromsø study 1994−2016 doi 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065707,Journal: BMJ Open

Neuronal molecule that make prostate cancer more aggressive identified in recent study

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death among American men. Now, researchers have discovered key molecular players that drive prostate cancer to progress into a highly aggressive form of the disease called neuroendocrine prostate cancer that currently has no effective treatment. The finding uncovers new avenues to explore for therapeutics to treat neuroendocrine prostate cancer.

To better understand how neuroendocrine prostate cancer develops, Dr. Languino and colleagues looked for biomarkers of the disease. To look for molecules unique to neuroendocrine prostate cancer, the researchers found that aVb3 integrin expression in prostate cancer cells bumped up the expression of a known marker of neuroendocrine prostate cancer and significantly increased the expression of a molecule called Nogo receptor 2 (NgR2). Dr. Languino and her colleagues wanted to find out what this molecule, a neuronal protein, is doing in cancer.

Reference:

Fabio Quaglia, Shiv Ram Krishn, Khalid Sossey‐Alaoui, Priyanka Shailendra Rana, Elzbieta Pluskota, Pyung Hun Park, Christopher D. Shields, Stephen Lin, Peter McCue, Andrew V. Kossenkov, Yanqing Wang, David W. Goodrich, Sheng‐Yu Ku, Himisha Beltran, William K. Kelly, Eva Corey, Maja Klose, Christine Bandtlow, Qin Liu, Dario C. Altieri, Edward F. Plow and Lucia R. Languino (2022) “The NOGO receptor NgR2, a novel αVβ3 integrin effector, induces neuroendocrine differentiation in prostate cancer,” Scientific Reports, 12:18879 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-21711-5