Aspirin linked to lower skin cancer in women

Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation Aspirin has anti-inflammatory properties and researchers believe that may be the reason why women who have used aspirin for more than five years have 30% less risk of developing skin cancer. Further research needs to be conducted to see if the same applies to men. Image: Dirk Ercken/Shutterstock Women who use aspirin for five or more years have a 30% lower risk of developing melanoma skin cancer than women who don’t take aspirin, a new study has found. Previous studies have linked aspirin with a reduced risk of gastric, colorectal and breast cancer but the new study suggests its anti-inflammatory properties may play a role in skin cancer risk too. The study, published in Cancer, the journal of the American Cancer Society, examined data on 59,806 Caucasian women in the US aged between 50 and 79 years over an average period of 12 years. The results were adjusted for age, education, body mass index, smoking status, vitamin D intake, physical activity, history of non-melanoma skin cancer, history of melanoma, skin reaction to the sun, regional solar radiation, childhood and current summer sun exposure, sunscreen use, time since last medical visit and other factors. Women who took aspirin had a 21% lower risk of developing melanoma than women who did not take aspirin, the study found, and longer term use was linked with a further reduction in risk. Study co-author, Jean Tang, of Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, said other pain relief drugs like acetaminophen did not reduce melanoma risk in women. “Aspirin works by reducing inflammation and this may be why using aspirin may lower your risk of developing melanoma,” said Dr. Tang. In comments released by the Australian Science Media Centre, Associate Professor Steven Stacker said the findings were important. “For many years, doctors have observed the beneficial impact of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as aspirin, in cancer, without fully comprehending the biological processes involved,” he said. “Today, many research groups are pulling apart this link to understand these anti-cancer effects, in the hope they can be boosted and replicated through the development of new treatments.” Prof Mark Wahlqvist, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Monash University and Visiting Professor at the National Health Research Institute in Taiwan, said “more work needs to be done to extrapolate from the US population studied to Australians in general.” “This would be of great importance as melanoma incidence continues to rise. The authors have access to similar data sets for men and it will be important to know if the findings are gender-specific,” he said. “Aspirin-like activity is also found in food (after all, aspirin is a salicylate which comes from plants) and again, the study reported has a vast food data base which should be reconciled with the current findings,” he said. “The authors note a possible protective role for vitamin D and control for it, but no less important is it to know whether Vitamin D interacts with aspirin to allow its apparent effect on melanoma – this is a difficult public health issue given the importance of sun-light in ensuring vitamin D status.” Editor's Note: This article was originally published by The Conversation, here, and is licenced as Public Domain under Creative Commons. See Creative Commons - Attribution Licence.

Birth of Goddess Saraswatî*

At the beginning of creation there was chaos all over. Brahma did not know how to bring order. While thinking over the problem he heard a voice say that knowledge could help him achieve order. So from Brahma's mouth emerged the magnificent figure of Saraswati- the goddess of knowledge and wisdom. Dressed in white, she rode on a swan, with books in one hand and the veena, a musical instrument, in the other.

By way of sense, thought, understanding, and communication she helped Brahma see how to change chaos into creation. When she played the veena, he heard the soothing music amidst the roar of commotion. Chaos started taking shape; the sun, the moon, and the stars were born. The oceans filled and seasons changed. The joyous Brahma then named Saraswati, Vagdevi, the goddess of speech and sound. Thus Brahma became the creator of the world with Saraswati as his source of wisdom.

Scientists find healing 'switch'

Agency for Science, Technology and Research

Scientists from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) have identified a molecular “switch” that controls the migration of skin cells necessary for wounds to close and heal. This is especially significant for diabetics and other patients who suffer from chronic wounds, wounds that do not heal or take years to do so, which are vulnerable to infections and could lead to amputations. This switch mechanism may hold the key to developing therapeutics that will reduce or prevent chronic wounds. The scientists discovered that a tiny “micro-RNA” molecule, called miR-198, controls several different processes that help wound healing, by keeping them switched off in healthy skin. When skin is wounded, the manufacture of miR-198 quickly stops and the levels of miR-198 drop, switching on many wound healing processes. In the non-healing wounds of diabetics, miR-198 does not disappear and wound healing remains blocked. This therefore identifies miR-198 as a potential diagnostic biomarker for non-healing wounds. These findings were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature. The research leading to this discovery was carried out in collaboration with A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII), National University Hospital (NUH), Singapore and Jnana Sanjeevini Diabetes Center, Bangalore, India. Chronic wounds in patients with diabetes are a major global health burden and the most common cause of lower extremity amputations. In Singapore, diabetes is the fifth most common medical condition diagnosed and one in nine people aged 18 to 69 has diabetes. Unfortunately, chronic wounds are currently poorly understood and insufficiently treated.  Chronic wounds also tend to affect the elderly and disabled patients, especially those confined to a wheelchair or bed-bound.  Dr. Prabha Sampath, principal investigator at IMB and lead author of the paper, said, "Moving forward, we hope to translate this research into improved patient outcomes. We can now build on this research, to see how we can modulate the defective switch in chronic wounds by targeting miR-198 and its interacting molecules, to develop new strategies for treating chronic wounds. Our research provides a comprehensive understanding of the mechanism of the wound healing process. Professor Birgitte Lane, Executive Director of IMB, said, “This switch appears to be an entirely new regulatory component in wound healing, and probably a very important one. Poor wound healing is a major healthcare burden, and this discovery is particularly timely in the face of aging populations and the sharp global rise in diabetes. The finding gives us a platform from which to develop therapies that could significantly reduce chronic wounds and improve healthcare." The information necessary to expressmicroRNA-198 (miR-198) and follistatin-like 1 (FSTL1) protein are found in a single “message” produced by the cell. However, miR-198 and FSTL1 protein cannot be produced at the same time – it can only be one or the other. These two molecules also have opposite roles: miR-198 (found in unwounded skin) inhibits skin cell migration and wound healing, whereas FSTL1 protein (expressed after injury) promotes skin cell migration and wound healing. A regulatory switch dictates their expression, and hence controls the “see-saw” between inactive resting skin cells and the cell migration necessary for wound healing. Dr. Sampath and her team showed that healthy unwounded skin contained high levels of miR-198 but no FSTL1 protein. They demonstrated that these high levels of miR-198 prevent skin cell migration by suppressing several genes, such as PLAU, LAMC2 and DIAPH1 [4], which are needed for different aspects of the wound healing process. However upon injury, miR-198 is switched off in the wound by a signal from transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1). This allows FSTL1 to now be made instead, and the skin migration genes to be unblocked, promoting migration of skin cells into the wound area to drive skin wound healing. The scientists further examined skin samples of chronic non-healing ulcer wounds from patients with diabetes mellitus. They observed that, unlike healthy skin that had been injured, there remained high levels of miR-198 (inhibiting skin cell migration and wound healing) and an absence of FSTL1 protein (promoting skin cell migration upon wounding), indicating that this “switch” is defective in chronic wounds. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.