Light-touch cancer cure
CANCERS and viruses could be killed by shining a light on them, if a chemical breakthrough comes to fruition. The discovery could create new ranges of chemotherapy drugs that do not harm patients’ bodies but are targeted at tumours and infections, and are switched on using rays of light.
Scientists at Purdue University, Indiana, say they have developed drugs based on the metal rhodium that can kill tumour cells and de-activate a virus closely related to the West Nile and yellow fever viruses. The drugs work in a similar manner to conventional platinum-based chemotherapy compounds, in that they bind themselves to DNA in tumour and virus cells and block their ability to reproduce. The problem with conventional drugs is that they also kill healthy cells.
The new drugs become lethal to DNA only when a specific part of the light spectrum shines on to them. The scientists say that patients could be injected with one of the drugs and then have a fibre-optic cable threaded into the arteries of their body until it reaches a tumour.
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The cable could then flood the tumour with light, thus switching on the drug at the right location. The researchers caution, in the journal Inorganic Chemistry, that the system will need years of development.
STRESSED IS BEST
PSYCHOLOGISTS have a crucial tip if you find yourself at the wrong end of a car accident: get the grumpiest witness you can find.
They report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that people who are in a bad mood give more accurate witness accounts than passers-by who are in a happy frame of mind.
The Australian researchers picked two groups of people, stressed one lot out and gave the others treats. Then they showed them a simulated bag-snatch and asked them to recall what they had seen. The stressed witnesses did better.
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“The finding makes sense in evolutionary terms,” the study says. “Animals that are wary of their environment are more likely to perceive threats to survival. A good mood signals a benign environment where we don’t need to be so vigilant.”
SCAN SCARES
WOMEN who sensibly go for regular breast scans should brace themelves for false alarms. One woman in five has a false-positive mammogram result over 20 years, say Norwegian researchers.
They write in the journal Cancer that the cumulative anxiety caused by all these unfounded scares “represents a significant hazard of such programmes”. That must sound like a huge understatement to anyone who has suffered sleepless nights over such a result.
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But the Oslo-based researchers say that their study of 83,000 women found that the false positives do not deter women from continuing to go for tests.
CREATINE ENERGY
CHRONIC fatigue syndrome sufferers could find relief from the dietary supplement creatine, which is known to improve athletic performance, says an American study.
The research, by Temple University, in Philadelphia, reinforces the idea that the syndrome has a physiological basis. It found, using MRI scans, that creatine boosts metabolic energy in sufferers, says the report in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
GO OLDIES
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INSPIRED by the Olympics but afraid that it’s too late in life to get race-fit? It’s not only Britain’s 800m Olympic gold medallist 34-year-old Kelly Holmes, who can do it, says a Yale study of amateur runners which found that older competitors improve their times much more than younger ones.
The study of 415,000 runners found that women athletes in their fifties improved their times by on average 2.08 minutes a year. Older men also improved — particularly those in their sixties and seventies.
And both sexes improved much more than their younger counterparts aged 20 to 30 who, on average, did not get much better at all. “Our data reflect the potential for improvement of the general health status of our ageing population,” the study reports in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
ANTIBODY: NICOLE KIDMAN
SHE’S a fine actor, but role model? Well, no. Nicole Kidman has slimmed so much that she has had to go into hospital to be checked for the bone-wasting disease osteoporosis. At 8st (51kg) and 5ft 10in (1.78m) she is the living rebuttal of the old saw that you can’t be too rich or too thin. Friends blame her emaciation on overwork, bad eating habits and a split with the has-been rocker Lenny Kravitz. But she maintains that she is still a glamorous example for womenkind, rather than an icon for self-starving teens. “I’m the same weight I’ve always been. But I’ve got a ballet dancer’s body,” she says. Who is Kidman kidding?