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A.
Pomegranate Juice Helps Keep PSA Levels Stable
Narrator: This is Science Today. Drinking an eight-ounce glass of pomegranate juice on a daily basis can keep PSA levels stable in men with prostate cancer. According to a three-year UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center study of 50 men, pomegranate juice intake slowed down the progression or growth of prostate cancer by a factor of almost four. Dr. Allan Pantuck, an associate professor of urology, led the study.
Pantuck: We look at the PSA doubling time, which is the time it takes for the cancer to progress or to get twice as large or twice as extensive. Thirty percent of the men on the study had some decrease of their PSA, but 83% had a slowing down of their doubling time.
Narrator: Pantuck has now begun a multi-center, placebo study of the benefits of pomegranate juice.
Pantuck: If it can slow down the progression slow enough, many people may be able to avoid going on to things like hormone therapies go on to avoid things like chemotherapies that have significant impact on quality of life. The best scenario would be that you could ultimately slow it down.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
New Drug Extends Lung Cancer Survival
Narrator: This is Science Today. A new, molecularly targeted drug has been found to extend the median survival rate of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer by twenty-two percent. Dr. Angela Davies of the University of California, Davis Medical Center, led this nationwide study.
Davies: This study demonstrated an eleven month median survival. When we compare the usual median survival for patients on front line chemotherapy trials, we were usually seeing survivals of about eight to nine months.
Narrator: The standard treatment for advanced lung cancer is two-drug combination chemotherapy. Davies and her colleagues added the drug bortezomib, which is currently used for a blood cancer called multiple myeloma, to get the boost in survival rates.
Davies: We now need to move forward with a randomized trial that would then compare the three drug combination to the two drug combination to determine whether this is something that should ultimately affect practice on a day-to-day basis.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
Studying Macular Degeneration on a Biological Level
Narrator: This is Science Today. Cell and molecular biologists at the Neuroscience Research Institute at the University of California , Santa Barbara are studying age-related macular degeneration on a biological level. Don Anderson, director of the institute's Center for the Study of Macular Degeneration, says ten years ago, there was very little research devoted to this blinding disease.
Anderson : What we decided to do was try to approach the problem from a cell biological level and the easiest way that we came up with approaching that was to focus on deposits that are characteristic of the disease called drusen. Our initial hypothesis was that if we were able to discern what the molecular composition of these drusen were, that that would give us insights into the disease process.
Narrator: Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in individuals over the age of sixty.
Anderson : By way of definition, a macula is Latin for spot and the spot in this case is a portion of the central retina and it lies just adjacent to the optic nerve.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
D. The Facts about Cervical Disc Disease
Narrator: This is Science Today. Cervical disc disease is a very broad term used to describe many different problems that involve the cervical spine, which is located in the neck. Dr. Kee Kim, co-director of the University of California , Davis Health System Spine Program, explains that there are three areas that can degenerate at each motion segment.
Kim: As we age, there is natural degenerative changes that occur in our body. We use the term arthritic changes – that's the term that a lot of people understand, where bone spurs can form, ligament can degenerate, disc can degenerate. As a result, that can lead to problems with pain.
Narrator: This pain sometimes goes away without therapy, but for patients who do not get better, standard treatment are medication, physical therapy or decompression and spinal fusion surgery. Now, Kim is part of a nationwide trial looking into using an artificial cervical disc.
Kim: I believe that there will be more patients, who when they undergo surgery, get artificial discs as opposed to fusion and that will clearly be the standard treatment in the near future.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Around-the-Clock Nursing Care Impacts Patient Mortality
Narrator: This is Science Today. More than half of all health care providers in this country are nurses and in hospitals, nurses constitute the bulk of care. Mary Blegen, a professor at the University of California , San Francisco School of Nursing, says physicians prescribe and diagnose care and they perform surgeries, but it's the nurses who provide around-the-clock nursing care and this in turn impacts patient mortality.
Blegen: There has been research that has shown that the more nurses are around, the lower the mortality rate or the fewer patients that will die because of that reason. Because they're there to watch, observe and notify other people as soon as things begin to look as though they're going downhill.
Narrator: Blegen, who heads the school's Center for Patient Safety, is leading one of nine nationwide projects looking into measuring nursing quality in hospitals.
Blegen: We're really combining the expertise and the interest in research with education and student training and then with actual projects that go on in hospitals or other healthcare settings to improve safety, so it has a pretty broad mission that will cover all of those.
Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
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