Early stage melanomas grow superficially in a radial manner and can be treated by surgery. By contrast, advanced stage melanomas grow vertically, gaining the ability to invade other tissues and metastasize to distant organs, and are usually highly resistant to chemotherapy and radiation. Understanding the molecular differences between radial and vertical growth melanomas might provide new targets for the development of drugs to treat individuals with advanced stage melanoma. [click link for full article]

CV Technologies Inc. (TSX : CVQ) today announced that Health Canada has approved wide-ranging new health claims for COLD-fX®. After an extensive review, the Natural Health Products Directorate (NHPD) - Health Canada’s division responsible for evaluating the safety, efficacy and quality of natural health products (NHPs) - has issued a product license and natural product number (NPN) for COLD-fX®. [click link for full article]

The following highlights recently released journal articles on women’s health issues. Breast Cancer “Long-Term Results of Tamoxifen Prophylaxis for Breast Cancer: 96-Month Follow-up of the Randomized IBIS-I Trial,” Journal of the National Cancer Institute: John Cuzick of [click link for full article]

Astelin (azelastine), a prescription antihistamine nasal spray, has been shown to give quick relief to people with pollen-induced allergy symptoms. The benefits were shown to occur within 15 minutes compared…

Empowering patients with chronic disease to take control over their condition is an important part of management. In a number of lung diseases, self-management programmes have been shown to be helpful; however, these have commonly started with health professionals deciding what is best for patients. [click link for full article]

Over the past three decades, the prevalence of childhood asthma has increased substantially. It has been hypothesised that environmental risk factors, such as parental smoking, number of siblings, and air pollution, are responsible for this increase. A study of the Dutch Twin Registry examined both environmental and genetic risk factors in susceptibility to asthma, eczema, and rhinitis in a large group of children. [click link for full article]

Worldwide, over 300 million people are affected with asthma. It is known that both genetic and environmental factors influence who will suffer from asthma. Researchers from Michigan State University in the USA and The David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre in the UK have shown that the smoking habits of mothers during pregnancy increase asthma risk in children who possess a specific genetic make-up. [click link for full article]

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the commonest life-threatening genetic disease affecting people of northern European descent. In the UK, it affects approximately one newborn in 2,400. Babies born with the disease, if untreated, cannot digest their food normally, fail to thrive, and are subject to severe, repeated and chronic lung infections which are the usual cause of death. When CF was first described in the 1930s, life expectancy was less than five years. [click link for full article]

Damp and mould in the home can contribute to the onset of child asthma, according to a Finnish study. Up to one in five cases (20%) of child asthma may be caused this way, according to a team led by Juha Pekkanen (of the National Public Health Institute’s Department of Environmental Health in Kuopio). The team’s findings are to be published in the forthcoming issue of the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ). [click link for full article]