Features

Heart Health !

New Mystery of Coronavirus !

Human Evolution Risk !

Mother's Stress !

Social Media Addiction !

Breast Cancer Hope !

New Products of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

EDITORIAL TEAM

OMAR AKRAMUR RAB

MBBS, FCGP, FIAGP,

P G Dip. Business Management

MAHFUZUR RAHMAN

MBBS, MBA

Rubyeat Adnan

MBBS, MPH

EDITORIAL

Dear Doctor,

Hope that you are enjoying this online healthcare bulletin.
Our current issue focused on some interesting features like -

"Heart Health !", "New Mystery of Coronavirus !", "Human Evolution Risk !", "Mother's Stress !",  "Social Media Addiction !", "Breast Cancer Hope !".

In our regular feature, we have some products information of SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd. as well.

Please send your feedback !  We always value your comments !

Click on to reply mode.

On behalf of the management of SQUARE, we wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous life.

 Yours sincerely,

Editorial Team

Reply Mode      : e-square@squaregroup.com

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of its editor or SQUARE Pharmaceuticals Ltd.

                           Human Evolution Linked to Cancers Risk

A recent study suggests that an evolutionary genetic mutation unique to humans may be at least partly to blame. At some point during human evolution, the SIGLEC12 gene and more specifically, the Siglec-12 protein it produces as part of the immune system suffered a mutation that eliminated its ability to distinguish between self and invading microbes, so the body needed to get rid of it. But it's not completely gone from the population. It appears that this dysfunctional form of the Siglec-12 protein went rogue and has now become a liability for the minority of people who still produce it. In a study of normal and cancerous tissue samples, the researchers discovered that the approximately 30 percent of people who still produce Siglec-12 proteins are at more than twice the risk of developing an advanced cancer during their lifetimes, compared to people who cannot produce Siglec-12. Normally, genes that encode such dysfunctional proteins are eliminated by the body over time, and approximately two-thirds of the global human population has stopped producing the Siglec-12 protein. Where the gene still hangs around in humans, it was long thought be of no functional relevance, and there have been very few follow-up studies over the two decades since it was discovered. Meanwhile, chimpanzees still produce functioning Siglec-12. When the team set out to detect the Siglec-12 in non-cancerous tissue samples using an antibody against the protein, approximately 30 percent of the samples were positive, as expected from the genetic information. In contrast, the majority of advanced cancer samples from the same populations were positive for the Siglec-12 protein. Looking at a different population of patients with advanced stage colorectal cancer, the researchers found that more than 80 percent had the functional form of the SIGLEC-12 gene, and those patients had a worse outcome than the minority of patients without it. These results suggest that the minority of individuals who can still make the protein are at much greater risk of having an advanced cancer. The researchers also validated their findings in mice by introducing tumor cells engineered to produce Siglec-12. The resulting cancers grew much faster, and turned on many biological pathways known to be involved in advanced cancers, compared to control tumor cells without functioning Siglec-12. According to Author this information is important because it could be leveraged for future diagnostics and treatments.

Return to top

                                 Social media leads to depresion

Compared with participants who used less than 120 minutes per day of social media, for example, young adults who used more than 300 minutes per day were 2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months.We know from other large studies that depression and social media use tend to go together, but it's been hard to figure out which came first. This new study sheds light on these questions, because high initial social media use led to increased rates of depression. In 2018, Reseachers studied that they measured depression using the validated nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire and asked participants about the amount of time they used social media on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, and SnapChat. Their analyses controlled for demographic factors like age, sex, race, education, income and employment, and they included survey weights so the results would reflect the greater U.S. population.One reason for these findings may be that social media takes up a lot of time. Excess time on social media may displace forming more important in-person relationships, achieving personal or professional goals, or even simply having moments of valuable reflection.The authors suggest that social comparison may also underlie these findings.Social media is often curated to emphasize positive portrayals.This can be especially difficult for young adults who are at critical junctures in life related to identity development and feel that they can't measure up to the impossible ideals they are exposed to.The findings are of particular importance given that depression was recently declared to be the leading global cause of disability by the World Health Organization and accounts for more disability-adjusted life years than all other mental disorders.These findings are also particularly important to consider in the age of COVID-19,Now that it's harder to connect socially in person, we're all using more technology like social media. While I think those technologies certainly can be valuable, I'd also encourage people to reflect on which tech experiences are truly useful for them and which ones leave them feeling empty.

Return to top

                                   Surgery may offer survival advantage in certain metastatic breast cancers

Stage four breast cancer accounts for 6% of newly diagnosed breast cancer cases. Systemic therapy, which may include treatments like chemotherapy, hormone therapies and immunotherapies, is routinely part of treatment plans for those patients. The benefits of surgery to remove the primary breast cancer are currently only recommended for relieving symptoms of advanced breast cancer such as pain and bleeding. Surgery is the standard of care for some other types of cancers that have spread from the site of origin to another part of the body, lead author of the study said that previous studies evaluating surgical interventions for metastatic breast cancer had conflicting results which has led to a lack of consensus among clinicians and researchers. Results from previous trials evaluating surgical benefit in metastatic breast cancer patients have been questioned because of the small number of participants or the fact that patients weren't also receiving chemotherapy or other systemic therapies. They found another key factor missing from those studies was whether the biologic subtype of breast cancer affected the survival rates in relation to surgical intervention. These patients' cancer cells had a growth-promoting protein called HER2 and hormone receptors for estrogen and progesterone, which can fuel cancer growth. The researchers said knowing these characteristics of a cancer's biological subtype can help to determine which treatment plans may be effective. They studied patients who either had systemic therapy alone, had systemic therapy and surgery, or had systemic therapy, surgery and radiation. Then evaluated whether certain biologic subtypes and timing of chemotherapy were associated with survival advantages. Also evaluated whether the hormone status had an influence on surgical benefit in these treatment-responsive breast cancer patients. Some types of breast cancer, especially like triple negative, where the cancer is hormone receptor and HER2 negative, are not very responsive to treatment. So the goal was to see if surgery made a difference in metastatic breast cancers that were responsive to treatment. The researchers excluded patients who died within six months of their diagnoses, in order to ensure that treatment-responsive cancers were being studied. They found that patients with a surgical intervention tended to have a longer length of survival compared to patients with other treatment plans. Patients whose cancers were HER2 positive especially saw prolonged survival when their treatment plan included surgery. Researchers further analyzed the patients who received surgery to see whether receiving chemotherapy before or after surgery had an impact on their length of survival. They found that regardless of hormone receptor or HER2 status, patients who received systemic therapy including chemotherapy and targeted treatments before surgery tended to live longer than those who had surgery before systemic treatment. Researchers find that surgery may be beneficial for treatment-responsive metastatic breast cancer patients, they also uncovered that getting chemotherapy before that surgery had the greatest survival advantage in patients with positive HER2 and estrogen and progesterone receptor status. The researchers said that randomized, controlled trials evaluating the role of surgery after systemic therapy in a younger demographic with minimally metastatic cancers could be used to confirm their results, but said that patient resistance to randomization in trials like this have resulted in poor study recruitment. Therefore, they encourage clinicians to evaluate real-world evidence, including their study, to choose optimal treatment for metastatic breast cancer patients.

Return to top

Fondaparinux Sodium