Word: colonization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...enough to make you reach for a bowl of ice cream. For years researchers have said that maintaining a diet that's high in fiber--found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains--should lower your risk of developing colon cancer. Now comes word that a study of nearly 89,000 women, published in last week's New England Journal of Medicine, has found that fiber makes no difference. A smaller study of men in 1997 arrived at a similar conclusion. This is the sort of neck-snapping nutritional news that drives consumers crazy. First something is good for you; then...
Dosing up on calcium may help your colon. A study out last week says calcium supplements (1,200 mg daily) may reduce the odds of developing new polyps. The polyps, called adenomas, may be a precursor to colon cancer. How does calcium work? Researchers theorize that it binds with compounds that would otherwise irritate the lining of the bowel...
Still more concerns, legal or otherwise, could arise with the increasing availability of tests for so-called low-penetrance genes, such as those associated with breast or colon cancer. These don't necessarily mean that the carrier will be stricken but suggest an increased risk, especially in the presence of certain "co-factors" like poor diet, alcohol or smoking. Such tests are already available for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast-cancer genes but at a cost of about $2,700 each, and with their limited predictive abilities, only a few are performed. Still, they raise critical questions for any woman...
...year 2025, and some things haven't changed. The sky is still blue. The Dow is poised to set another record. And Jose Rodriguez (Michigan State, class of '04) has just learned that he has colon cancer. But he's not too concerned. Thanks to the genetic revolution that swept over the pharmaceutical industry 30 years earlier, scientists have developed a variety of anticancer drugs that work far better, and with fewer side effects, than the old poison-and-burn treatments of the late 20th century...
Finding a likely target, of course, doesn't guarantee success. Consider colon cancer: scientists believe at least three things have to go wrong for colon cancers to form. They liken the situation to a car accident. One of the genes that tells cells to divide (the accelerator) must get stuck in the "on" position. Another gene that tells cells to slow down (the brake) must be disabled. And the molecules that fix any mistakes in the DNA code (the repair crew) have to go on strike. In half of all colon cancers, the accelerator is a gene called ras, which...