Jan 15, 2020 06:18 AM
Unfruitful: eating more produce will not cure, stop prostate cancer
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/u...ate-cancer
INTRO: National guidelines recommend that men with prostate cancer eat a vegetable-rich diet, suggesting it might decrease cancer progression and death. But in a Phase III randomized clinical trial, patients with prostate cancer assigned to eat seven or more servings of vegetables and fruits daily saw no extra protection from the increased consumption of micronutrients.
“These data indicate that, despite prevailing scientific and public opinion, eating more vegetables will not alter the course of prostate cancer. It will not, to the best of our knowledge, suppress or cure it,” said J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center professor of urology and study lead investigator. “However, while eating a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and getting more exercise may not cure cancer, it may keep the body stronger and healthier, which may help patients tolerate cancer treatments.”
The Men’s Eating and Living (MEAL) study, published January 14, 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association and led by UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center investigators, enrolled 478 men aged 50 to 80 years at 91 sites in the United States. The patients had been diagnosed with early-stage prostate adenocarcinoma and enrolled in an active surveillance program in which patients defer immediate treatment until the disease advances... (MORE)
Racial disparities in heart failure explained
https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/...ilure.html
INTRO: Researchers at UT Southwestern have uncovered evidence that the higher prevalence of “malignant” enlargement of the heart among blacks contributes to the higher incidence of heart failure in this population. The new study is published online in the journal Circulation.
Left ventricular hypertrophy or LVH is the enlargement and thickening of the muscular wall of the left ventricle of the heart, the lower left chamber. This thickening can be detected on an electrocardiogram or with imaging tests like an echocardiogram. LVH can occur in several forms. In about half of cases, LVH occurs without other evidence of heart damage or stress, and in these cases the prognosis appears to be benign and similar to people without LVH. In contrast, in the other half of cases, when LVH occurs together with signs of damage or stress to the heart muscle, the course is malignant and associated with a markedly higher risk of heart failure.
“Malignant LVH is easily identifiable with widely used tests in the clinic, so now that we’ve found this association, we are hoping to identify patients with higher risk for heart failure earlier, when preventive interventions can have a greater impact on future risk,” says James de Lemos, M.D., a professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Previous studies described a malignant type of left ventricular hypertrophy but did not include enough participants to enable researchers to conclude whether the observed differences in malignant LVH contribute to a higher risk of heart failure for black versus white individuals. So the UT Southwestern researchers pooled data from three biracial cohort studies – the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, the Dallas Heart Study, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) – to test the hypothesis that malignant LVH may contribute to disparities in heart failure risk.
Combined, the three studies encompassed health data from more than 26,000 people living in North Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota, Maryland, Illinois, California, New York, and Texas. All three studies included height, weight, blood pressure, and blood test results as well as electrocardiogram results, a measure of the electrical activity of the heart. For this study, the researchers excluded participants with cardiovascular or kidney disease and those who were not self-identified as white or black, which resulted in a study group of 15,710 participants. The median age was 57 years with 56 percent female, 32 percent black, and 36 percent with hypertension... (MORE)
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/u...ate-cancer
INTRO: National guidelines recommend that men with prostate cancer eat a vegetable-rich diet, suggesting it might decrease cancer progression and death. But in a Phase III randomized clinical trial, patients with prostate cancer assigned to eat seven or more servings of vegetables and fruits daily saw no extra protection from the increased consumption of micronutrients.
“These data indicate that, despite prevailing scientific and public opinion, eating more vegetables will not alter the course of prostate cancer. It will not, to the best of our knowledge, suppress or cure it,” said J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center professor of urology and study lead investigator. “However, while eating a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables and getting more exercise may not cure cancer, it may keep the body stronger and healthier, which may help patients tolerate cancer treatments.”
The Men’s Eating and Living (MEAL) study, published January 14, 2020 in the Journal of the American Medical Association and led by UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center investigators, enrolled 478 men aged 50 to 80 years at 91 sites in the United States. The patients had been diagnosed with early-stage prostate adenocarcinoma and enrolled in an active surveillance program in which patients defer immediate treatment until the disease advances... (MORE)
Racial disparities in heart failure explained
https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/...ilure.html
INTRO: Researchers at UT Southwestern have uncovered evidence that the higher prevalence of “malignant” enlargement of the heart among blacks contributes to the higher incidence of heart failure in this population. The new study is published online in the journal Circulation.
Left ventricular hypertrophy or LVH is the enlargement and thickening of the muscular wall of the left ventricle of the heart, the lower left chamber. This thickening can be detected on an electrocardiogram or with imaging tests like an echocardiogram. LVH can occur in several forms. In about half of cases, LVH occurs without other evidence of heart damage or stress, and in these cases the prognosis appears to be benign and similar to people without LVH. In contrast, in the other half of cases, when LVH occurs together with signs of damage or stress to the heart muscle, the course is malignant and associated with a markedly higher risk of heart failure.
“Malignant LVH is easily identifiable with widely used tests in the clinic, so now that we’ve found this association, we are hoping to identify patients with higher risk for heart failure earlier, when preventive interventions can have a greater impact on future risk,” says James de Lemos, M.D., a professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Previous studies described a malignant type of left ventricular hypertrophy but did not include enough participants to enable researchers to conclude whether the observed differences in malignant LVH contribute to a higher risk of heart failure for black versus white individuals. So the UT Southwestern researchers pooled data from three biracial cohort studies – the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, the Dallas Heart Study, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) – to test the hypothesis that malignant LVH may contribute to disparities in heart failure risk.
Combined, the three studies encompassed health data from more than 26,000 people living in North Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota, Maryland, Illinois, California, New York, and Texas. All three studies included height, weight, blood pressure, and blood test results as well as electrocardiogram results, a measure of the electrical activity of the heart. For this study, the researchers excluded participants with cardiovascular or kidney disease and those who were not self-identified as white or black, which resulted in a study group of 15,710 participants. The median age was 57 years with 56 percent female, 32 percent black, and 36 percent with hypertension... (MORE)