Medical Bulletin 2/May/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Heart damage cause from cancer drugs identified

Safer cancer drugs are now one step closer after a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers found the likely reason that some treatments damage the heart.

Now an international study has identified proteins in the blood that are linked to an increased risk of developing heart diseases, including heart failure, and which are also affected by drugs used in cancer treatment.

The team say that their findings can explain how cancer drugs cause their damaging effects on the heart and could help to identify those at increased risk. In the long run, they believe this will help to improve cancer treatments, with new drugs potentially being developed that can shrink tumours without affecting the identified proteins.

Reference:

Druggable proteins influencing cardiac structure and function: Implications for heart failure therapies and cancer cardiotoxicity,Science Advances, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.add4984

Aantivirals that could combat emerging infectious diseases identified

A new study has identified potential broad-spectrum antiviral agents that can target multiple families of RNA viruses that continue to pose a significant threat for future pandemics. The study tested a library of innate immune agonists that work by targeting pathogen recognition receptors, and found several agents that showed promise, including one that exhibited potent antiviral activity against members of RNA viral families.

The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which has claimed nearly seven million lives globally since it began, has revealed the vulnerabilities of human society to a large-scale outbreak from emerging pathogens. While accurately predicting what will trigger the next pandemic, the authors say recent epidemics as well as global climate change and the continuously evolving nature of the RNA genome indicate that arboviruses, viruses spread by arthropods such as mosquitoes, are prime candidates.

Reference:

Innate immune pathway modulator screen identifies STING pathway activation as a strategy to inhibit multiple families of arbo and respiratory viruses, Cell Reports Medicine. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2023.101024

Prostate cancer risk for transgender women

Transgender women keep their prostates even after gender-affirming surgery, but the extent to which they remain at risk of prostate cancer has been unclear.

The study drew on 22 years of data from the Veterans Affairs Health System. Although the sample size was necessarily small, it is still the largest study of its kind. Transgender people often face discrimination and disparities, and there has been a growing acknowledgement of the complexities involved in their health care.

Reference:

Farnoosh Nik-Ahd, et al,Journal of the American Medical Association,