COMMENTARY: Dr. Admin Altevogt, from the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, and colleagues assessed L1 expression in tumor specimens from 58 women with ovarian cancer and 72 with uterine cancer. They also determined if soluble L1 could be detected in serum samples of these patients.

In both patient groups, L1 expression was associated with poorly differentiated tumors and with advanced disease stage, the researchers note. Moreover, such expression was a very strong predictor of poor prognosis (p > 0.00001).

L1 expression was tied to disease progression even when a histologic type with a usually good prognosis, such as endometrioid-type, was present.

A soluble form of L1 was found in serum samples from patients with stage III/IV disease, the researchers note. Although further studies are needed, soluble L1 could represent a useful marker for the detection or follow-up of patients with ovarian and uterine malignancies, they add.

"L1-based diagnosis and prognosis could make an important contribution towards a better management and treatment of this disease," the authors state.

COMMENTARY: Contact with equipment treated with an arsenic compound called chromated copper arsenate can increase the risk of the types of cancer by anywhere from two to 100 per million, a staff report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission concluded.

“It confirms what people outside the CPSC have suspected and some studies have shown — that arsenic does leach from this wood and there’s a risk associated with it for people who use it,” said Paul Bogart, a spokesman for an environmentalist group called the Healthy Building Network, which has petitioned the commission to ban the sale of arsenic-treated wood.

The increased risk is mostly due to arsenic residue that children get on their hands, then ingest because of hand-to-mouth contact, the commission staff concluded.

The amount of added risk varies depending on how much contact children have with the treated-wood equipment, the agency staff said. “While exposure to arsenic from (other) sources could be much higher than the exposure from playgrounds for some children, exposure to arsenic from CCA-treated playgrounds could be a significant source of arsenic for other children on those days that include a playground visit,” the agency’s chairman, Hal Stratton, said in a statement.

Chromated copper arsenate, or CCA, has been used to protect wood from leaching, erosion and pests for more than 70 years. Pressure-treated wood, as it is commonly known, is most often used outdoors in decks and playgrounds.

COMMENTARY: The report, published in the May 28 2002 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( http://www.pnas.org/ ) presented the results of in vitro experimentation that demonstrated the ability of sulforaphane to kill H pylori both inside or outside of the cell.

Cells lining the stomach act as reservoirs for the bacteria, rendering it more challenging to eliminate. Sulforaphane also helps prevent cancer by boosting the production of phase 2 enzymes within cells, which detoxify carcinogens and free radicals. When a carcinogen was administered to mice, sulforaphane blocked the formation of stomach tumors. Mice lacking the gene regulating phase 2 enzymes were not protected by the compound.

Research team leader and plant physiologist in the Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Jed Fahey, stated, "In some parts of Central and South America, Africa and Asia, as much as 80 percent to 90 percent of the population is infected with helicobacter, likely linked to poverty and conditions of poor sanitation. If future clinical studies show that a food can relieve or prevent diseases associated with this bacterium in people, it could have significant public health implications in the United States and around the world . . . We've known for some time that sulforaphane had modest antibiotic activity. However, its potency against helicobacter, even those strains resistant to conventional antibiotics, was a pleasant surprise."

These latest findings may lead to trials in humans to determine if sulforaphane-containing vegetables can help combat H pylori infection

For more information about sprouted greens:

• Live Cell For Type A
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• Live Cell For Type B

COMMENTARY: The study of men who received heart transplants from female donors revealed that primitive cells from the recipients migrated into the donor hearts, after which new muscle cells and small blood vessels formed. The researchers were able to pin down the phenomenon by finding a considerable number of cells in the donor heart that bore the Y chromosome--the "male" sex chromosome, which could only have come from the transplant recipients themselves.

Dr. Piero Anversa of New York Medical College in Valhalla said his team believes primitive cells moved to the donor hearts from the remaining portions of the transplant recipients' own hearts, although the study does not prove this. Anversa explained that his team could not rule out the possibility that the cells traveled to the heart from the bone marrow, which contains the stem cells that give rise to blood.

The study indicates that the heart possesses a population of cardiac stem cells...implying that the heart has the capacity to regenerate itself.

And that idea is at odds with the cardiology "dogma" that there is no such thing as cardiac stem cells--populations of immature cells within the heart that have the potential to divide, proliferate and replace mature cells killed off by heart attack and disease.

Now that there is strong evidence of the heart's regenerative capacity, scientists can study the possibility of harnessing this self-healing potential to treat damaged heart.

The study looked at autopsied tissue from eight men who died sometime after receiving a heart from a female donor. The patients had lived with their new hearts for anywhere from 4 to 552 days.

Anversa's team found that up to 20% of the cells in the men's heart muscle and small blood vessels called arterioles and capillaries bore the Y chromosome. Even the patient who died 4 days after his transplant had Y-bearing cells in the donor heart.

According to the researchers, this suggests that the recipients' own primitive cells moved into the foreign heart and matured to aid in the "remodeling" of the organ. In addition, when they looked at a small group of autopsied normal hearts, the investigators found small populations of immature cells. And if heart stem cells can indeed form new heart tissue, it is still unclear what "mobilizes" them into action. His team is currently using animal models to study what signaling mechanisms--such as growth factors--are needed.

If researchers can figure out how to mobilize self-repair cells in the heart, they could become an important weapon against a "host of disorders" including coronary artery disease and heart muscle conditions.

The therapeutic implications would be enormous since at least 600,000 Americans develop heart failure every year and many of them die within 2 to 3 years.

COMMENTARY: A survey by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration found 15 percent of infants were riding in the front seat, where they are at increased risk of injury from crashes or deploying air bags even if they are in infant seats.

The survey found 10 percent of 1- to 3-year-olds and 29 percent of 4- to 7-year-olds also were riding in the front seat. NHTSA and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children 12 and under ride in the back seat.

“There are new parents every day, and even those old parents who need to be reminded: The only way to keep these children safe is to put them in a child safety seat appropriate to their age in the back seat,” said Dr. Jeffrey Runge, NHTSA’s chief.

COMMENTARY: A landmark report from the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), on how eating habits influence cancer risk, concludes that maintaining a healthy weight probably plays a significant role in preventing several cancers. Since then, studies have demonstrated that excess calorie consumption can affect insulin metabolism, possibly increasing the risk of colon and other cancers.

Avoiding excess calories, on the other hand, reduces possible cancer-causing damage to our genes’ DNA and enhances its repair. Research at the National Cancer Institute, for example, shows that moderate restriction of calorie consumption reduces the number of pre-cancerous intestinal polyps in mice with a genetic tendency to develop these cancers.

Controlling excess weight seems to offer heart health benefits as well. We’ve known for some time that obesity is linked to high blood pressure and diabetes, both of which increase the risk of heart disease. One of the newer heart risks under study involves levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), which seems to be a marker of infections or inflammation in the body. Higher CRP is also often seen in conjunction with obesity, suggesting that obesity may somehow be associated with low-grade inflammation. A recent study in the journal Circulation, involving obese women with elevated CRP, showed that when they lost an average of 33 pounds, their CRP levels dropped 32 percent.

Experts are cautious about responding to this growing list of weight-related hazards with over-zealous approaches. Studies show that when people try to lose weight by overly restricting calories or the foods allowed, they often rebound with tendencies to binge.

Research shows that the increase in obesity in our country has come at a time of greatly increasing portion sizes, so simply cutting back to more appropriate portions may be all that’s needed.

AICR encourages consumers to use a common-sense approach to weight control with its “New American Plate.” This new approach to eating, which calls for at least two-thirds of our plates to be filled with vegetables, fruits and whole grains, will automatically lower our calorie counts. Even better, with this approach we also boost our intake of the nutrients, fiber and phytochemicals that help protect against cancer and heart disease.

COMMENTARY: The findings are based on a study of 88 subjects who were randomized to receive a multivitamin or placebo once daily for 6 months. CRP and vitamin levels were measured at baseline and at the end of the trial.

"The study was originally designed to assess the effects of multivitamin use on LDL and homocysteine levels. After some reports suggested that vitamin E may decrease CRP levels, I decided to reanalyze the blood samples from our study to determine the effect of multivitamin use on CRP levels," Dr. Church added.

To eliminate the potential confounding effects of perimenopause, the researchers limited their analysis to blood samples taken from men or postmenopausal women.

Dr. Church presented his team's findings at Nutrition Week 2003, an annual meeting sponsored by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

"In the multivitamin group, we observed a fairly large decrease in CRP levels," Dr. Church noted. After adjustment, the mean CRP decline was -0.58 mg/L (p = 0.02). In contrast, a slight increase in CRP levels (+0.18 mg/L) occurred in the placebo group.

The magnitude of the reduction is probably too great to be accounted for by the vitamin E present in the formulation, Dr. Church said. "Based on recent reports, I think the effect was probably due to the vitamin B6 and C present.

COMMENTARY: Most recently, researchers studying men in New Zealand, a country with the highest vasectomy rate in the world, found no association between vasectomy and prostate cancer, even 25 years or longer after the procedure had been performed.

In the current study, Dr. Martha K. Terris and colleagues, from Stanford University in California, compared the prostate cancer rates of 101 men with a vasectomy history with those of 202 matched control subjects. All of the men had been referred for prostate biopsy.

The prostate cancer rates in men with and without a vasectomy history were 45.5% and 48.5%, respectively (p = NS), the authors report in the October issue of The Journal of Urology.

Among men with prostate cancer, those with a vasectomy history had fewer poor prognostic indicators than those without this history.

This finding supports the theory that [men with a vasectomy history] are subject to more rigorous prostate cancer screening and are subsequently diagnosed with prostate cancer at an earlier age or stage.