A round-up of today's other health news
Four simple steps to healthy living
Four simple lifestyle measures – not taking up smoking, keeping slim, eating a healthy diet and regular exercise – together reduce the risk of deadly chronic diseases by up to 80 per cent, a study has shown.
Researchers based the finding on results from a major public health investigation involving more than 23,500 German adults aged 35-65.
They concluded that the three chronic conditions that claim the most lives – heart disease, cancer and diabetes – can largely be prevented by healthy living.
The European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition – Potsdam (EPIC Potsdam) – study was designed to look at the effects of lifestyle on chronic disease.
Fighting cancer tumours with killer stings
Microscopic “nanobees” that literally sting tumours to death have been successfully used to fight cancer, scientists said yesterday.
US researchers unleashed swarms of the tiny artificial particles on human breast and skin tumours in mice.
Each spherical “nanobee”, measuring just three millionths of an inch across, was armed with a cancer-killing toxin found in bee venom.
Targeting cancer but not healthy cells, the nanobees delivered a lethal “sting”. The bee toxin, melittin, destroys cells by drilling holes through them.
After four to five injections of melittin-carrying nanobees over several days, the growth of breast cancer tumours in the mice was slowed by nearly 25 per cent. Melanoma – or skin cancer – tumours shrank in size by 88 per cent.
Prof Samuel Wickline, from the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Washington University School of Medicine, said: “The nanobees fly in, land on the surface of cells and deposit their cargo of melittin which rapidly merges with the target cells.
“We’ve shown that the bee toxin gets taken into the cells where it pokes holes in their internal structures.”