Botox sponge treats intrinsic rhinitis

Treating intrinsic or allergic rhinitis by injecting botulinum toxin (botox) may soon be history, for a new study has shown that sponges soaked in botox are equally effective in treating the condition.

The study offers a potential needle-free treatment to the millions of sneezing and sniffling rhinitis patients. Rhinitis patients suffer from an inflamed inner lining of their nose, causing itching, congestion and sneezing.

Rainer Laskawi worked with a team of researchers from the University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany, to test the effectiveness of the botox sponge. "Intrinsic rhinitis affects a lot of patients and can be quite disabling for the patient. Botox injections can help, and we wanted to explore a less invasive alternative,” he said.

The researchers inserted sponges into the patients’ nostrils for 30 minutes, which were soaked with botox directly after the insertion.

The patients then kept a ‘nose diary’ for the next twelve weeks, detailing sneezes per day, tissues used and a ‘congestion score’. A group of patients who received the treatment scored better on all aspects.

"We’ve shown that the minimally invasive application method of BTA with a sponge is a safe, painless method which can lead to a long lasting reduction of nasal hypersecretion,” Laskawi said.

The study has been published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Head & Face Medicine.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Placebo effect is in the spine as well as the mind

It's not all in the mind -- the so-called placebo effect is real and reaches right down to the spine, German scientists said on Thursday.

Using modern imaging technology the researchers found that simply believing a pain treatment is effective actually dampens pain signaling in a region of the spinal cord called the dorsal horn, suggesting a powerful biological mechanism is at work.

"It is deeply rooted in very, very early areas of the central nervous system. That definitely speaks for a strong effect," lead researcher Falk Eippert of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf told Reuters.

Eippert and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to study changes in spinal cord activity. They applied painful heat to the arms of 15 healthy men and compared the spinal cord responses when they thought they had been treated with either an anesthetic cream or a placebo. Both creams, in fact, were inactive but the fMRI scans showed nerve activity was reduced significantly when subjects believed they were getting the anesthetic.

The ability of sham medicines with no active ingredient to produce real clinical benefits has long perplexed doctors and frustrated drugmakers.

Patients are typically given either an experimental drug or a dummy in clinical trials and the fact that those on placebo often get better, too, makes it hard to determine whether a new drug is working. The placebo effect is particularly strong when treating central nervous system conditions, like depression and pain.

Traditionally, experts have viewed the effect as psychological, but the new German research is the latest in a growing body of evidence that there is an important physical component.

Just what turns down pain signaling in the spine when a placebo is given is unclear, although Eippert suspects a range of chemicals including natural opioids, noradrenaline and serotonin may be involved.

Writing in the journal Science, Eippert and colleagues said their work "opens up new avenues for assessing the efficacy and possible site of action of new treatments for various forms of pain, including chronic pain."

Source:www.reuters.com

US Regulators Approve GSK Cervical Cancer Vaccine

A cervical cancer vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline has been authorised for sale in the United States, the British drug giant announced Friday.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of Cervarix in girls and young women aged 10 to 25, it said, three years after rivals Merck and Sanofi-Pasteur launched their vaccine on the US market.

"The approval of Cervarix will bring an important new cervical cancer vaccine to girls and young women," said Deirdre Connelly, president of North American Pharmaceuticals at GlaxoSmithKline, in a company statement.

GSK added that the vaccine, which is administered in three doses over a maximum of six months, would be available in the United States by the end of the year.

Cervarix protects against two types of the human papillomavirus (HPV) that cause cervical cancer, types 16 and 18.

US drugs giant Merck and Sanofi-Pasteur, the vaccinations unit of European laboratory Sanofi-Aventis, have sold their vaccine Gardasil in the United States since June 2006. It protects against HPV types six, 11, 16 and 18.

Source:www.google.com

Antidepressant increases suicidal thoughts

Nortriptyline, a popular antidepressant, causes a ten-fold increase in suicidal thoughts in men when compared to its competitor escitalopram, a new study has found.

Published in the open access journal BMC Medicine , the research was carried out by Dr. Nader Perroud from the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, who headed up GENDEP, an international team.

Perroud said: "Suicidal thoughts and behaviours during antidepressant treatment have prompted warnings by regulatory bodies". He continued: "the aim of our study was to investigate the emergence and worsening of suicidal thoughts during treatment with two different types of antidepressant."

Both escitalopram and nortriptyline have their effect through the mood modulating neurotransmitter systems. The former is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), preventing serotonin from re-entering the cell and thereby prolonging its effect on nerve synapses. The latter is a tricyclic antidepressant that inhibits the reuptake of noradrenaline, and to a lesser extent, that of serotonin.

The study was carried out on 811 individuals with moderate to severe unipolar depression. Whilst an overall trend in reduction of suicidal thoughts was observed, men who took nortriptyline were found to have a 9.8-fold increase in emerging suicidal thoughts and a 2.4-fold increase in worsening suicidal thoughts compared to those who took escitalopram.

Perroud concludes, "Our findings that treatment-emerging and worsening suicidal thoughts may also be associated with psychomotor activation triggered by antidepressants needs to be investigated in future studies. The study also refutes the idea that newer antidepressants such as the SSRIs are worse than older medications in terms of increasing suicidal thoughts."

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Swine flu may cause blood clotting in lungs: Study

A Michigan study states that all those severely down with the H1N1 influenza, swine flu, are at a higher risk of developing blood clots in their lungs (i.e. pulmonary embolism). The findings of the study suggested that in the wake of H1N1 virus's potential complications, medical practitioners, especially the radiologists, will have to be more aware to look closely for the risks of pulmonary embolism in severely sick patients.

Experts say that a blood clot in lung can also cause low oxygen levels in the blood and damage vital organs in the body because of lack of oxygen. The patient can feel light headed or chest pain and can also die as a result. However, they say that blood-thinning drugs can reduce the risk of death in such conditions.

Study and its findings:

Researchers based at the University of Michigan, U.S., examined the medical condition of 66 patients diagnosed with the H1N1 swine flu. Of these, 14 patients were severely ill with the H1N1 infection. Due to their severe medical condition, they had to be admitted to the intensive-care unit.

In order to identify the risk caused by the lethal H1N1 virus, all 66 patients underwent CT scans--medical imaging method using computer processing--to look for any complications caused by the pandemic flu. Reports of the CT scans detected pulmonary embolisms in five of the 14 intensive-care unit patients. However, the researchers maintained that initial standard chest X-rays were normal in more than half of the patients with H1N1 infections.

"These findings indicate that imaging studies would have to be repeated in severely ill patients to monitor disease progression," said study co-author Dr. Ella Kazerooni, director of the University of Michigan's division of cardiothoracic radiology. "It's important to heighten awareness not only among the radiologists, but also among the referring clinicians."

The researchers noted that more sophisticated CT scans are needed to diagnose the potentially fatal condition since the standard chest X-rays cannot effectively scan the lungs.

Source:www.themedguru.com

Chilli Peppers Help Relieve Nerve Pain

Peripheral pains often accompany disorders like diabetes, AIDS, shingles and arthritis; cancer patients can have peripheral neuropathies after receiving their therapies.

Now a team at Oxford University has found that 40 percent people can get some relief from pain by having topical capsaicin cream containing medication.

Sheena Derry and Andrew Moore led the researcher, which compromised nine studies with 1,600 adult volunteers.

The team said that capsaicin cream could be used when the treatment has not been affective. The report has been published in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library.

However, Scott Zashin, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the Southwestern Medical School at the University of Texas, had a different take on the use of capsaicin.

He said: “One lack in this study is a failure to compare capsaicin creams to common counterirritants, such as Ben Gay or Icy Hot. The counterirritants create a warm or cool feeling to distract from the pain and they can be used on an as-needed basis, while capsaicin must be used regularly.”

Zashin said the report ignored the “the fact that there are little data looking at the benefit-to-risk ratio of the high dose capsaicin. In addition, patients receiving the high-dose formulation required pretreatment with a local anesthetic preparation. It is unclear if this product is any better than other over-the-counter pain gels and may be more irritating with side effects such as burning.”

Source:http;//timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Unsafe abortion kills 70,000 a year

About 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer harm as a result of unsafe abortions in countries with restrictive laws on ending a pregnancy, according to a report.

There were 41.6m terminations worldwide in 2003, compared with 45.5m in 1995. But in 2003, says the report, 19.7m of these were unsafe, clandestine abortions. The numbers of those have hardly changed from 1995, when there were 19.9m.

Almost all the unsafe abortions were in less developed countries with restrictive abortion laws.

"Virtually all abortions in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean were unsafe," says the report. In Asia, safe procedures outnumbered unsafe because of the large number of legal abortions in China. Most of those in Europe and almost all in North America were safe.

The figures are hard to obtain in countries with restrictive laws from hospitals dealing with women damaged by backstreet or self-induced abortion. But the institute, which has been monitoring the numbers for many years, is confident of the picture it paints and hopes it will influence policy makers.

"Our hope is that the new report will help inform a public debate in which all too often emotion trumps science," said the institute president, Dr Sharon Camp.

Fundamental to turning the tide is preventing unwanted pregnancy, but in many countries there is little advice on family planning and contraceptive products are in short supply. "Women will continue to seek abortion whether it is legal or not as long as the unmet need for contraception remains high," Camp said. "With sufficient political will we can ensure that no woman has to die in order to end a pregnancy she neither wanted nor planned for."

The US has always been the biggest funder of family planning in developing countries, but a significant amount of it stopped under the presidency of George Bush, who reinstated a policy known as the "global gag rule" on arrival in office in January 2001.

It removed funding from any family planning organisation overseas that had anything to do with abortion, including counselling. Although European governments, including the UK, stepped up contributions, funds were short at a time when more couples were becoming interested in smaller families. "It really was a lost decade," said Camp.

President Barack Obama has rescinded the policy and more US funds are expected, but the process of ordering increased contraceptive supplies from manufacturers and getting them to where they are needed will take time.

Where contraceptive use has risen, such as in the former Soviet bloc countries, abortion rates have invariably fallen. Worldwide, the unintended pregnancy rate has dropped from 69 for every 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1995 to 55 for every 1,000 in 2008. The proportion of married women using contraception increased from 54% in 1990 to 63% in 2003.

However, only 28% of married African women use contraceptives. Lack of availability is the biggest issue.

The report points to a global trend towards the liberalisation of abortion laws, which has allowed women with an unwanted pregnancy to end it safely. Nineteen countries have relaxed their restrictions since 1997. But in three countries, Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua, tougher legislation has been introduced, the latter two prohibiting abortion even when the woman's life is at risk.

"We have seen an increase in women's deaths and teenage suicides in Nicaragua," said Dr Kelly Culwell, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation at the report's launch.

Camp deplored the exit of the pharmaceutical companies from research and development work on contraceptive products. "There used to be 13 major pharmaceutical companies with full-blown programmes of contraceptive R&D. Now there are none," she said.

Yet there was a real need for products women could use if they were having occasional rather than regular sex apart from the condom, which requires the consent of the man.

Source:www.guardian.co.uk

Exercise may ease fatigue during chemotherapy

People with cancer often take chemotherapy drugs to help rid their body of cancer cells. But chemotherapy can also affect healthy cells, which can cause many side effects, and make people feel generally unwell. Fatigue is one of the most frequent and burdensome side effects of chemotherapy.

The study was done in two hospitals in Copenhagen, and was published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), which is owned by the British Medical Association. This six-week study found that people who followed an exercise programme while having chemotherapy were likely to feel less tired and they also reported improved activity levels, vitality, and emotional wellbeing. Fitness also improved, with muscle strength increasing by an average of 30 percent, and breathing capacity expanding by about 10 percent.

The programme consisted of nine hours of supervised exercise a week. It combined high-intensity physical training (including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training), with relaxation, body-awareness training (focusing on breathing and posture, for example), and massage.

Both people with advanced and earlier-stage cancer benefited from the six-week exercise programme, say the researchers. But despite these improvements, people doing exercise weren't any more likely to rate their overall health and quality of life as having improved. This may be because of the extremely disruptive effect cancer and its treatment can have on a person's health and life. Six weeks of an exercise programme might not be enough to make a difference in overall wellbeing, say the researchers.

This study was a randomised controlled trial, which is the best type of study for finding out if a treatment works. It compared results from a group of chemotherapy patients who did exercise, with another group who did not. With 269 patients in all, it was also quite large.

Source:www.guardian.co.uk

Docs find new mutation that causes diabetes

When 16-year-old Haritha was taken to her family physician for treatment of a boil that did not heal for long, she didn’t realize it was the beginning of a journey that would turn her family’s life upside down. Her blood test revealed that she was diabetic. The physician referred her to a diabetes centre for further investigation.

Doctors at the centre not only confirmed that Haritha had the disorder, but also that her younger sister, Harini, was diabetic. The Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, attached to the hospital, zeroed in on the cause — a genetic mutation, traced for the first time.

It was not the commonly seen Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. We found that the girls and six other family members had MODY (maturity-onset diabetes of the young). And the mutations had occurred in the gene involved in controlling insulin production,” said diabetologist Dr V Mohan. The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

MODY is a hereditary form of diabetes caused by genetic changes that lead to disruption of insulin production and, therefore, an increase in sugar levels in the blood. In this type, children inherit the mutated gene from one of the parents.

There are six types of MODY and treatment and symptoms of each type vary. Of the six types, the first three (MODY 1-3) are common. “All the eight members of the family had MODY 3 but the gene mutation they had was new. Here there is a change in one amino acid,” said V Radha, who heads the department of genetics at the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation. Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

US FDA approves CSL Behring's Berinert to treat hereditary angioedema

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Berinert, the first treatment for acute abdominal attacks and facial swelling associated with a rare and potentially life-threatening genetic disease called hereditary angioedema (HAE).

Berinert is approved for adults and adolescents with HAE, which can occur spontaneously or during stress, surgery, or infection in patients diagnosed with HAE. The symptoms during abdominal attacks include severe abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, cramps, and diarrhoea.

"Berinert will enhance the treatment options for individuals who experience acute abdominal attacks and facial swelling associated with hereditary angioedema," said Karen Midthun, acting director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.

Berinert is manufactured by CSL Behring, Inc., Marburg, Germany, is a protein product derived from human plasma. It regulates clotting and inflammatory reactions that, when impaired, can lead to local tissue swelling. In a clinical trial of 124 adults and adolescents with C1 esterase, inhibitor deficiency, Berinert was shown to be effective at treating the symptoms of acute moderate to severe abdominal attacks and facial swelling in patients with HAE.

Berinert is contraindicated in patients with a history of life-threatening hypersensitivity reaction to C1 esterase inhibitor preparations. The most serious adverse reaction reported in clinical studies was an increase in the severity of pain associated with HAE. The most common adverse reactions include subsequent HAE attack, headache, abdominal pain, nausea, muscle spasms, pain, diarrhoea and vomiting.

CSL Behring is a leader in the plasma protein therapeutics industry. Committed to saving lives and improving the quality of life for people with rare and serious diseases, the company manufactures and markets a range of plasma-derived and recombinant therapies worldwide.

Source:www.pharmebiz.com

Cells governing body clock tracked

Scientists have found the brain cell responsible for sending us to sleep and keeping us awake. With this ground breaking discovery, the scientists could gain control over the biological clock which plays a pivotal role in the cell division, heartbeat rates as well as innumerable of other functions.

Two types of cells in SCN:

Experiments conducted on mice have revealed that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), part of the brain that controls the body clock, contains two kinds of cells. Only one kind of cells controls our circadian rhythm, which is also termed as the 24 hour body clock in layman’s language. These clock cells, so to say, are home to a gene called per1. 

The non-clock cells, on the other hand, do not have per1 gene. Hitherto, researchers working on jet lags had been analyzing electrical signals from both these types of cells and had more often than not been bamboozled by the findings.

Dr Hugh Piggins of the University of Manchester and colleagues, who conducted the experiments, claim that their findings could pave the way for development of drugs aimed at moderating or controlling the daily body clock. Such drugs would specifically target the per1 cells.

The complexity surrounding SCN:

Questioned on weather such experiments could be conducted on the human beings, Dr Piggins said, "The SCN is located very deep in the brain and difficult to get at. You could not carry out these experiments on humans.”

The researchers found that the per1 cells code the time of day by being silent. This state of silence is contrary to what the scientists have continued to believe for years.

Dr Piggins said, "SCN clock cells in the brain have special properties to allow them to survive in unusual states. It is the cells that do not make per1 that behave in the conventional way."

“What is interesting is that there could also be per1 genes in other parts of the brain which could completely change our knowledge of this mysterious organ," noted Dr Piggins.

Beneficial for other medical conditions:

The findings of the present research may also assist efforts to treat conditions like Alzheimer's disease and mood disorders.

Co-researcher Professor Daniel Forger, a mathematician at the University of Michigan, opined, “Knowing what the signal is will help us learn how to adjust it, in order to help people.

"We have cracked the code, and the information could have a tremendous impact on all sorts of diseases that are affected by the clock," added the Professor.

The findings of the study have been published in the journal Science.

Source:www.themedguru.com

Treatment For Miscarriage Doesn't Affect Long Term Fertility

The type of treatment a woman receives after an early miscarriage does not affect subsequent fertility, with around 80% of women having a live birth within five years of their miscarriage, concludes a study published on http://www.BMJ.com.

Fifteen per cent of pregnancies end in early miscarriage. For decades the standard management of early miscarriage was surgical evacuation of retained products of conception. But this was increasingly questioned and now women are usually offered expectant (watch and wait) and medical management as well.

Previous studies, including the largest published trial (the MIST trial), have suggested that all three methods are probably equivalent in terms of gynaecological infection, but their long term effects on fertility are not known.

So researchers based in the South West of England compared fertility rates for the three management methods (expectant, medical or surgical).

They surveyed 762 women who had taken part in the original MIST study, and who had randomly received surgical, medical or expectant management for an early miscarriage (less than 13 weeks gestation).

Among the survey respondents, 83.6% reported a subsequent pregnancy, with 82% having a live birth.

Time to subsequently giving birth was very similar in the three management groups: 79% of those randomised to expectant management, 78.7% of the medical group and 81.7% of the surgical group all had a live birth five years after their miscarriage.

However, older women and those suffering three or more miscarriages were significantly less likely to subsequently give birth.

The authors conclude that method of miscarriage management does not affect subsequent pregnancy rates, with around four in five women having a live birth within five years of a miscarriage.

"Women can be reassured that long term fertility concerns need not affect their choice of miscarriage, management method," they say.

Source:www.medicalnewstoday.com

J. & K. Strike: 350Junior Doctors Resigned?

The government in the Jammu district so far failed to meet the demands of the junior doctors as earlier hundred of doctors had tendered en-masse resignation in connection for the acceptance of their demands. 

“So for 350 doctors from Jammu have tendered resignations and their strike has entered the sixth consecutive day. Doctors in Srinagar have also didn’t go to work to express solidarity with the Jammu doctors community,” well-placed sources said.

The standoff between the doctors and the government further deepened when the later threatened to terminate fifteen doctors, all members of Doctors’ Joint Action Committee, the Association of the doctors spearheading the strike.

In the meantime, the emergency services at government medical college Srinagar has also paralyzed after junior doctors joined ongoing strike call by their counterparts in GMC Jammu.

The impasse between government and doctors witnessed much hype during last one week with both sides blaming each other of resorting to pressure tactics.

While the government claims that it was seriously considering their demands, doctors allege that it has failed to meet the ultimatum of September 30 served by DJAC earlier.

The doctors’ community vowed that their strike would go on till the acceptance of that what they called “genuine demands.”

Source:www.sananews.com.pk

New Optical Technique - Easy Way To Detect TB Bacteria In Fluids

Now a group of researchers at Colorado State University (CSU) has demonstrated a sensitive new way to use light to detect traces of TB bacteria in fluids. Their work may one day help health care workers identify people who are latently infected. Moreover, the technology may be amenable for widespread use in the developing world, where most cases of TB occur.

Krapf, Smith and their colleagues have developed a technique that can sensitively detect different molecular markers indicating a TB infection that would be cheap to use and no harder to administer than a common pregnancy test, making it ideal for use in the developing world. The Colorado researchers envision a device that would simply require someone to smear a drop of blood or urine on a glass slide, insert it into a machine and read a simple display that would indicate whether that person is infected or not.

Such a device could easily be built with existing off-the-shelf technology, says Krapf, adding that it would be no more complicated than the internal workings of a standard DVD player. The device relies on specialized surface chemistry that avoids protein adsorption, except for those molecules that need to be detected. Then, the presence of these molecules is recorded by fluorescence using a red diode laser.

The CSU development could one day play a role in curbing the spread of TB. Currently, finding people who are infected is not so simple. Doctors can spot suspected cases by taking chest X-rays, which may reveal evidence of infection in the lungs. Or they can turn to a century-old technique called a sputum smear, where a sample of coughed fluid is stained and examined under a microscope for indications of the infection. Better yet, if doctors can grow cultures of TB bacteria from lung fluid, they definitively know that a person is infected.

These tests may not detect latent TB infections, however, because people who are latently infected may not have enough bacteria in their lungs to detect. For people with latent infections, other tests exist e.g. skin test exists, but it is only sensitive enough to detect about half of all cases, says Krapf. Other more sophisticated methods that rely upon detecting specific markers in the blood are more sensitive, but they require special facilities and training that would be far too expensive for widespread use in the developing world.

Krapf and his colleagues have been able to demonstrate the feasibility of detecting markers of TB infections at great sensitivity in saline solutions -- they were even able to detect a single molecular marker of a TB infection in solution. They have not yet built a functioning device that can detect hidden TB infections in blood or urine samples, and they have not yet tested the technology on samples collected in the field. Before any such detector is available for use in the field, it would have to be rigorously tested in clinical trials.

Source:www.sciencedaily.com

Red Wine Chemical May One Day Treat Diabetes

The much touted compound resveratrol shows some promise as a future treatment for type 2 diabetes, but drinking wine or taking resveratrol supplements isn’t likely to do diabetic people much good, researchers say.

Resveratrol, found in red wine, was found to lower blood sugar levels and improve insulin levels when injected directly into the brains of mice fed very high-calorie diets in a study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSW).

The finding suggests that the brain plays a key role in resveratrol’s beneficial effect on diabetes and that the benefits may occur independently of diet and body weight.

If this is true, new type 2 diabetes treatments targeting the brain may be possible, lead researcher Roberto Coppari, PhD, tells WebMD.

But drinking red wine is not likely to improve blood sugar and insulin levels because resveratrol does not cross the blood-brain barrier very efficiently.

“We don’t want to send the message that you can treat diabetes by drinking red wine,” Coppari tells WebMD. “Two or three glasses a day wouldn’t be nearly enough for the brain to accumulate the amount of resveratrol delivered in our study. It would take many, many bottles, and clearly that wouldn’t be good for you.”

Source:http://diabetis.webmd.com

In women antioxidants may raise skin cancer !

A new French study has shown that antioxidant supplements not only do not prevent skin cancer, they may even boost the risk, at least in women.

The new study, published in the September issue of The Journal of Nutrition, has focused on the effects of antioxidant doses on skin cancer, showing that antioxidants highly increase the risk of all types of skin cancer.

The study also suggests that antioxidants will not help those whose skin cancer has already started to develop.

Antioxidant nutrients are believed to reduce the risk of disease by cutting down on the unhealthy effects of "free radical" molecules that damage cells.

Pointing to the fact that the study does not take into account the sunscreen use, Dr. Ariel Ostad, New York City dermatologist and spokesman for the Skin Cancer Foundation, has said that the results may have been different if the participants tended not to use sunscreen. 

"Sunscreens are by far the most powerful" weapon in preventing skin cancer, he explained.

Source:www.presstv.ir

Skin cancer gene 'inherited' in families

While ultraviolet exposure and the environmental effect had long been linked to skin cancer, recent studies suggest the condition runs in families.

According to a study published in Journal of Investigative Dermatology, genes account for about half of the risks that an individual faces in developing the skin malignancy.

Individuals with a sibling or parent affected with a type of non-melanoma skin cancer are more vulnerable to developing skin cancers of various types, not just the ones their relatives had. The familial influence is believed to be stronger among those with tumors located at body parts more exposed to the sun such as the face.

Compared to having a non-identical twin with melanoma, giving birth to an identical twin with the disease also increases an individual's risk of developing the skin disease by nearly 10-fold.

Scientists said family history can be used to assess an individual's possible risks of developing skin cancer.

Source:www.presstv.ir