Scientists in Australia develop world-first blood test to detect skin cancer before it spreads through the body

Scientists in Australia have developed a world-first blood test to detect skin cancer before it spreads through the body. 

•  Jonathan Pearlman, in sydney

18 JULY 2018 • 5:33PM

Early stage melanoma can often be difficult to distinguish from a mole CREDIT:  CALLISTA IMAGES

The test could potentially allow early detection of melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, and increase the prospects of treatment. It may also help to avoid invasive and costly biopsies.

Researchers said the test could prove more accurate than the current method of detection, which typically involves a doctor looking at the skin and assessing spots or changes to moles before removing a sample for further examination. But an early stage melanoma can often be difficult to distinguish from a mole.

“While clinicians do a fantastic job with the tools available, relying on biopsies alone can be problematic,” said Pauline Zaenker, from Edith Cowan University.

“The body starts producing these antibodies as soon as melanoma first develops which is how we have been able to detect the cancer in its very early stages with this blood test. No other type of biomarker appears to be capable of detecting the cancer in blood at these early stages.”

Melanoma, which are typically caused by exposure to the sun, can, if undetected, spread to other parts of the body such as the lungs, liver and brain. These secondary melanomas can be more dangerous and harder to treat.

A trial of the new blood test involving 209 people found the cancer during its early stages in 81.5 per cent of cases.


Actor Hugh Jackman recently revealed he had been treated for skin cancer - a basal cell carcinoma - after seeking advice for a mark on his nose. CREDIT: @REALHUGHJACKMAN / INSTAGRAM

Detection of melanoma before it spreads can result in a 90 to 99 per cent five-year survival rate but the survival rate for people with secondary forms is less than 50 per cent.

The researchers said the test could be used for routine screening of people with a higher risk of melanoma, such as those with a large number of moles, pale skin or a family history of the disease.

“It’s critical that melanoma is diagnosed more accurately and early,” said Professor Mel Ziman, from Edith Cowan University.

“So a blood test would help in that identification particularly at early stage melanoma, which is what is the most concerning and would be most beneficial for everybody if it was identified early.”

The researchers plan to conduct clinical trials and believe the test could be available in three to five years.

The World Health Organization says skin cancers are more common for Caucasians, particularly people with pale or freckled skin, fair or red hair, or blue eyes.

Australia has one of the world’s highest rates of melanoma, with 14,000 new diagnoses and almost 2000 deaths each year.

Professor Rodney Sinclair, from the University of Melbourne, said the test was not 100 per cent accurate and results would still need to be interpreted with caution, potentially with a check by a dermatologist.

The research findings were published in the journal Oncotarget.

0https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/18/scientists-australia-develop-world-first-blood-test-detect-skin/

Curious Cook: Observations about food in France in May – Part 2

The weather has been very (very) wet this May in France and I spent a lot of time reading with my dog curled up beside me. Fortunately, there is no shortage of interesting news to keep our minds busy. (Go here for Curious Cook: Observations about food in France in May – Part 1)

July 17, 2018 Food

By CHRIS CHAN

Eggs?

An egg a day keeps the strokes at bay … or does it?

A large study in China (conducted between 2004 and 2008 with 416,213 participants aged between 30 and 79 years) concluded that eating an egg a day reduced the risk of death via strokes by 28% and heart attacks by 18% across a wide demographic. Oddly, this food study provided no additional supporting dietary data.

So this extraordinary claim has to be viewed cautiously, because an earlier 2015 Korean study of 23,417 adults found that eating eggs actually increased artery calcification (a leading indicator of heart disease) – though it also noted that this was observed more in people who were overweight/obese and/or ate few vegetables. Statistically it is a common mistake to credit a single item (such as eggs) without considering all other associated factors which can affect predicated outcomes.

Therefore the safest interpretation of the China study is: eating an egg daily is fine for people on good diets and who are not overweight, which as it turns out, is something we already know anyway.

Fasting intermittently and diabetes?

As someone prone to sinusitis, every few months I restrict my calorie intake to around 200 calories a day for three to five consecutive days. This appears to reset the immune system and then I am fine for another few months – if you are curious, more details are somewhere in here.

I therefore follow a very intermittent fasting (IF) strategy, and not the more common IF diets which prescribe stuff like semi-fasting two days out of every week.

So headlines like “Fasting Diets Can Increase the Risk of Diabetes” emanating from a widely-reported talk at the 2018 European Society of Endocrinology Annual Meeting in Barcelona piqued my interest – especially as it asserted: “intermittent fasting diets may actually damage the pancreas and affect insulin function in normal healthy individuals, which could lead to diabetes and serious health issues”. This is a striking claim which would be remiss of me not to investigate.

Searching for study papers revealed the University of São Paulo had not published any. All that was available was a short transcript which noted that the research was conducted on Wistar rats, which have a totally different diurnal (daily) feeding cycle to humans. Starving a rat for just one day is roughly similar to starving a human for two to three weeks, starving mammals often react by developing insulin resistance which helps minimise weight loss – and there was no mention of the fasting period(s) used.

In any case, the research seemed to focus on markers associated with insulin resistance and it was unclear if any rats actually developed diabetes.

To be fair, I will review the paper when it is published but it is extremely likely the “normal healthy individuals” cited in Barcelona referred to rats rather than humans. Phew.

In any case, I had earlier bookmarked a paper from MIT which claimed that fasting boosts intestinal stem cells’ (ISCs) ability to regenerate, even in aged subjects. If you are curious, it was suggested fasting conditions may somehow cause ISCs to boost/re-activate the peroxisome proliferator-activator receptors (PPAR) responsible for fatty acid oxidation. This may be plausible as a lack of food should promote a more efficient digestive environment – however, the research was based on young and old mice, not humans. So until there is confirmation the same effect happens in humans, it is probably best to leave it as an interesting conjecture.

The spleen and baking soda

Baking Soda

A paper from the Medical College of Georgia, USA, in the Journal Of Immunology claimed that ingesting sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3, or baking soda) can reduce inflammation in both test rats and humans. This paper reads like an unfinished detective story.

The plot started originally with test research into slowing kidney failure rates by reducing blood acidity via the introduction of an alkaline compound, NaHCO3 – note that kidney failure causes increases in blood acid levels. Promising results led to a detailed, complex investigation of NaHCO3’s unexpected side effect on general inflammation.

The surprising outcome was a conclusion that NaHCO3 stimulated the mesothelial cells on the surface of the spleen (an organ involved in the immune system), and this had the effect of shifting the balance in the body from M1 (inflammatory) to M2 (anti-inflammatory) macrophages (which are special white blood cells involved in clearing pathogens, defective cells and other cellular debris from the body).

How this M1-to-M2 switch happens may be due to the production by the spleen’s mesothelial cells of acetylcholine, an important neuro-transmitter associated with reducing inflammation as well as learning and memory. This is an intriguing piece of research, with two additional notable items.

One is the apparent anti-inflammatory response is destroyed if the spleen is perturbed or damaged in any way; the second is the humans studied was a small group of 18 healthy young adults, and therefore probably statistically irrelevant.

I have read well over a thousand scientific papers, and the impression is that not all the research done was strictly warranted or worthwhile. However, if asked to choose the most intriguing paper of the month, this would probably be it, although it is a long way before further peer-reviewed research can confirm the findings reported.

Gut behaviour

An opinion piece from researchers in Oxford University in Nature magazine explored the reasons why human behaviours may be modified by the human gastrointestinal microbiota (HGM).

While such behavioural change may not be as extreme as, say, the changes invoked by the rabies virus, there are certainly bacteria in the HGM producing compounds which can make humans feel good or lousy.

Organisms that co-exist symbiotically within a host are known as symbionts – and symbionts are likely to have a major influence on host evolution by influencing host behaviour in a manner which benefits the symbionts and (hopefully) also the host.

Why I bracketed the word “hopefully” is because of an odd situation. Rodents infected with the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii lose their aversion to the scent of cat urine, making them more likely to be caught and killed by cats. The reason is because the parasite can only reproduce in felines and it therefore needs to sacrifice its rodent host to be eaten by a cat.

This is not only a cat and mouse issue. Thirty to 50% of all humans today currently have toxoplasmosis, which means their brains are infected by Toxoplasma gondii.

Perhaps as a result of human immune responses to this infection, several conditions have been associated with toxoplasmosis. They include leukaemia, various neuro-degenerative diseases, neuroticism, aggression, impulsive behaviours, suicidal tendencies, etc – though one should note correlation is not necessarily proof of causation. Generally, toxoplasmosis is asymptomatic and the vast majority are not even aware of infection, though it might help explain why many humans like cats irrationally (as witnessed by the number of cat items on YouTube and Instagram).

The HGM situation is different as it comprises of many species of bacteria clustered together, which limits each individual strain’s ability to influence the host – any self-initiated aggressive attempt to boost an individual species is likely to be met with counter-measures from other bacteria. Therefore, quorum sensing generally keeps a healthy HGM in balance. More about this on: https://www.star2.com/living/viewpoints/2016/03/13/curious-cook-a-quorum-of-flavour-part-1/.

The HGM also resides within the Enteric Nervous System (ENS), a huge conglomeration of neurons stretching from the oesophagus to the anus and linked to the Central Nervous System (CNS) via the vagus nerve.

Hence, the HGM can transmit good and bad signals via the ENS to the CNS, and these signals can influence behaviour. An example is the tension-induced “butterflies in the stomach” feeling, which can provoke odd coping behaviours.

Pleasant signals may result from neurotransmitters (or precursors to neurotransmitters) created by certain species in the HGM in response to ingested food.

Less pleasant signals can arise from other HGM bacteria which spawn uncomfortable immune system responses as a result of stress or poor diet – note that for now, we exclude the different, strident reactions to external pathogenic invasions or chemically-disruptive events (eg. smoking, alcohol, pollution, etc).

Both good and bad signals may alter (and reinforce) host behaviour in ways to benefit different bacteria within the HGM. Feeling good may cause the host to seek and ingest more food linked to pleasure.

Bad feelings may lead to the host also ingesting more to compensate for feeling lousy or malnourished. Either way, such changes in host behaviour can benefit certain adept bacteria in the HGM without being disruptive to other bacteria.

So if you are certain the brain in the head is always in charge of making decisions, you might want to think again.

https://www.star2.com/food/2018/07/17/curious-cook-observations-about-food-in-france-part-2/

Curious Cook: Observations about food in France in May – Part 1

I probably like my dog too much – he is now beside me providing inspiration as I write. His inspiration is mostly a bunch of snores – but I know that if I lock him and my wife in the cellar overnight, only he will be happy to see me again when I open the door.

June 24, 2018 Food, Food News

By CHRIS CHAN

Anyway, here are some observations from May 2018.

Real cheese

In France, foodies are up in arms about the imminent “murder” of a famous cheese from Normandy. Traditionally, real Camembert cheese carries the label “Camembert de Normandie” which has the protected AOP (l’Appellation d’Origine Protégée) status, as opposed to “Fabriqué en Normandie” which means that cheese made elsewhere is just “finished” in Normandy and then labelled as “Camembert”. The production of real Camembert is only 5,500 tonnes a year compared to 60,000 tonnes of the other cheese.

But from 2021, cheese from outside Normandy can be labelled as “Camembert de Normandie” using the prized AOP designation, provided it meets some new production criteria – and the original real cheese will be confusingly relabelled as “Véritable Camembert de Normandie” (or REAL Camembert from Normandy). Why is it a big deal? Just try the two cheeses side by side and you will see. This move was likely instigated by cynical industrial producers wishing to hijack a famous global appellation to sell more inferior cheeses to the rest of the world.

As to the interesting question why real Camembert differs in taste to its facsimiles, the answers are unclear. One hypothesis is unspecified differences in the nutrition of cows in the region of real Camembert production, for example, types of grass eaten or the underlying mineral nature of the land itself. More relevant is probably the use of unpasteurised milk for producing real Camembert, and maturation via the introduction of a particular assortment of bacteria which includes Penicillium camemberti, Geotrichum candidum, Debaryomyces hansenii, and Kluyveromyces lactis. How bacteria confer flavours into milk solids during cheese production is briefly covered in the two-part series, “A quorum of flavour” although Camembert is somewhat unusual in that the bacterium Kluyveromyces lactis only survives the first 11 days of maturation before it is destroyed by Debaryomyces hansenii. Cheeses initiated outside Camembert normally use pasteurised milk – and transportation to Normandy (to qualify for using the name “Camembert”) may also interfere with the affinage (maturation) of the cheese.

Fake truffles

One simple fail-safe dish to make is cream and fresh cooked flat pasta with shavings of truffles on top. If you feel adventurous, then add a dusting of grated parmesan and ground pepper. But this dish failed spectacularly at home the last two times – and annoyed, I investigated the problem.

I found that, despite the “Fabriqué en France” (Made in France) label on the jar, the truffles inside were denoted as Tuber indicum – the same truffles traditionally used by Chinese farmers to feed pigs (as the fungi tastes like sawdust and is generally unfit for human consumption). Further research revealed that for a jar of truffles to qualify for a “Made in France” label, the sole requirement is simply to package any truffles in a factory located on French soil. Personally, I am outraged as people are being deliberately (yet legally) misled by deceitful labelling into overpaying for a fake premium product. The real French (and Italian) black truffles are Tuber melanosporum and the genuine white truffles are Tuber magnatum – and both varieties are sensually, profoundly and uniquely aromatic. Proper black truffles can sell for over €800 a kilo, the white truffles are even more expensive – and in case you are curious, rubbish tasteless Chinese truffles usually fetch less than €40-50 a kilo.

So the sad lesson is, with both cheeses and truffles, one cannot assume the labelled origin is any indication of true quality – and I am certain this applies to many other foods as well. We are probably aware of “Italian” olive oil which actually originates from other countries, but I had not expected that a premium iconic European delicacy could be debased so blatantly in its home country by imported Chinese pig food. Even in the EU (and other countries), one cannot rely on governments to uphold quality of food above the interests of industrial food producers.

Fat Mediterranean kids

The home of the Mediterranean diet is now awash with fat children, according to the WHO’s Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative, which claimed that over 40% of children aged nine are now overweight or obese in Greece, Spain, Italy and Cyprus – exceeding even the 31% rate in the US. This jarring spike in childhood obesity has little to do with the Mediterranean diet as children in these countries are ignoring the diet and instead are eating more junk food and sugar, combined with less exercise. The statistic is actually a sobering reminder how quickly public health can deteriorate with unbalanced modern eating habits, and it is just ironic that it is happening in the region credited with one of the world’s healthiest diets.

Curiously, France still has relatively low child obesity rates (less than 9%), which may be attributable to the general French preference for good local produce over foreign fast food.

Cockroach milk as a superfood

This is a revival of an old story, based on a 2016 paper on insect proteins titled “Structure of a heterogeneous, glycosylated, lipid-bound, in vivo-grown protein crystal at atomic resolution from the viviparous cockroach Diploptera punctate”. The “milk” referred to is a soup of curious crystals secreted by pregnant females to nourish embryos in the uterus of an unusual cockroach species (Diploptera punctuate) which gives birth to live young.

Research revealed these crystals contain fats, sugars and proteins, are densely calorific (four to five times the calories of cow milk) and the crystal nutrients are released based on the rate of digestion. This may be useful for endurance sportspersons or people requiring constant nutrition– though I still think it preferable to eat snacks periodically than suck on cockroach milk crystals. The superfood angle is posited on developing genetically-modified yeast to duplicate these crystals in commercial quantities – if successful it may become a rich source of nutrition if other types of food become unavailable in the future. However, there is no detailed research to confirm impact of these proteins after human ingestion, so calling cockroach milk a superfood now is fanciful unfounded hype.

Trans-fats (again)

The WHO has announced a major initiative to eliminate trans-fats from human diets globally by 2023. It is about time, as trans-fats may be the cause of up to 10 million deaths around the world annually. Most developed countries have already instigated bans or restrictions on the use of trans-fats in food production by now, so the WHO drive is mainly targeted at poorer countries. Eliminating trans-fats globally by 2023 is a very tall order, especially as trans-fats are regularly used to preserve and extend the life of common cooking oils in many tropical countries. If you want to know why trans-fats are so problematic, please read the two-part series “A fat lot of good”.

Obese cancers

A recent presentation at the European Congress on Obesity in Vienna stated that obesity is now linked to 12 forms of cancers, up five from the seven associated cancers 10 years ago listed by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). They are cancers of the liver, ovary, prostate, stomach, mouth and throat, bowel, breast, gall bladder, kidney, oesophagus, pancreas and womb.

Also sobering is the WCRF estimation that obesity will overtake smoking as the biggest cause of cancer in several developed countries within two decades. Excessive consumption of processed meats, junk foods, red meat, sugar, combined with sedentary lifestyles and/or alcohol is likely to lead to obesity and an enhanced risk of cancer. The confirmed link between junk food and cancer is noted in this article on processed food.

As to why obesity is linked to cancers, only a few items are summarised here due to subject complexity. For example, excess adipose (fat) tissue perturbs the balance and expression of sex hormones, and also insulin and IGF1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor 1) – these imbalances are likely to provoke cell damage/mutation. Additionally, obesity causes production of fat-derived cell-signalling proteins/hormones known as adipokines, particularly Interleukin 6 (IL-6) and Tumour Necrosis Factor (TNF), both associated with chronic inflammation, subsequent immune system abnormalities and tissue damage. Obesity also messes with leptin, a hormone linked in several puzzling ways to cancers in various organs. And so on.

Then there is the confirmed link between obesity and diabetes, a disease also known to aggravate the onset of cancers. As such, the only tangible social benefit of an obese population is to enhance the wealth of the food industry, probably followed by medical professionals and pharmaceutical companies. This sounds harsh, but facts sometimes are.

The rest of the month’s observations follow in the next part.

https://www.star2.com/food/2018/06/24/curious-cook-observations-about-food-in-france-part-1