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From vision problems to a pins-and-needles numbness that won't go away, certain symptoms could signal multiple sclerosis — and that it's time to see your doctor.

It’s more important than ever to be aware of the warning signs of multiple sclerosis, a chronic and often disabling autoimmune disease. While more than 400,000 people in the United States and 2.1 million people worldwide have MS, someone gets newly diagnosed every hour, according to the National MS Society.

Do you know what symptoms to watch for? According to Tanuja Chitnis, MD, assistant professor of neurology and director of the Partners Pediatric MS Center at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children, early symptoms of MS can include blurred vision, loss of vision, and/or numbness or tingling that lasts for several days. Dr. Chitnis indicates that while any symptoms of multiple sclerosis — including problems with motor skills, bladder control, and coordination and balance — can manifest at any point in the course of the disease, she has noticed that blurred vision and numbness tend to be symptoms common to the initial diagnosis and earlier stages of MS.

Symptoms That Could Mean MS

Everyone has experienced the temporary pins-and-needles numbness that accompanies resting on your arm or leg in the wrong way, but this feeling tends to go away within a few minutes as blood flow returns to the area, Chitnis says. The key to determining whether a symptom might be due to multiple sclerosis, she says, is timing; MS symptoms develop over the course of several days, and can last for several days to a few weeks.

Vision Loss
Eye issues are often the first sign of multiple sclerosis. Before he received his MS diagnosis, for example, Jeffrey Gingold noticed that his vision was beginning to rapidly decline in one eye. Gingold was 36 at the time, making such dramatic vision loss extremely unusual. He scheduled an appointment with his regular eye doctor, and remembers the ophthalmologist saying, "You either have MS or you have a brain tumor." An MRI confirmed that it was multiple sclerosis.

Balance
Balance and dizziness are also common initial signs of multiple sclerosis. Rick Sommers, a fit and athletic guy, was diagnosed with MS in 1994. "I was training for a marathon and my balance was off; I felt lightheaded," he remembers. "I went to a doctor who thought it was an inner ear infection." He adds wryly, "I was misdiagnosed." In fact, his balance issues were Sommers' first symptoms of MS.

Numbness/Tingling
After his initial balance difficulties, Sommers began to notice tingling and numbness in his right side, which motivated him to see a neurologist. The neurologist ordered an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), and found lesions in Sommers' brain that indicated multiple sclerosis was what was causing his symptoms.

Heat Intolerance
Heat intolerance is another telltale sign of multiple sclerosis. If you feel dizzy, faint, or unusually uncomfortable in warm temperatures or when engaging in body-warming activities like soaking in a hot tub, exercising, or sunbathing, it could be a sign of multiple sclerosis. Heat intolerance also tends to make other symptoms of multiple sclerosis more pronounced.

Other MS Symptoms
MS symptoms are varied and numerous. In addition to those described above, common symptoms include fatigue, pain, bowel and urinary problems, sexual dysfunction, difficulty swallowing and speech problems, cognitive (thought process) issues, and depression — among others.

Some of these symptoms are common to many disorders, and Chitnis emphasizes the importance of timing in figuring out if the symptoms could be caused by MS. If you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, for a period of more than 24 hours, there is a chance that multiple sclerosis is the cause.

Of course, any symptom that interferes with your job performance, daily functioning, or quality of life is worth discussing with your doctor, whether or not you suspect it might be related to multiple sclerosis. For many diseases, the earlier they are caught, the more effective treatment will be. Multiple sclerosis is no exception. There are now treatments available that can effectively slow disease progression, and initiating them as early as possible is generally the best course you can take.

What are radiation models of cancer?

Adrian: What we are trying to do is take a cancer model like the PDX model (patient-derived tumor xenograft), which is a human-derived cancer growing in an in vivo model and apply radiation to that model. What we are doing is very similar to how you would look at any other molecular targeted therapies for cancer but, in this case, we’re actually going to be using radiation in the delivery.

You can look at the effectiveness of radiation in an orthotopic tumor model rather than in a xenograft for example and really look at both basic schemes and combination therapies such as radiation combined with molecular targets. If you are using molecular targets such as drugs, then you can also assess the effect of radiation on the outcomes if the drug is delivered before radiation compared with if it is delivered afterwards.

Jean-Pierre: Generally, with drug discovery and development, most new drug candidates would be tested using an animal model. The idea is to learn a great deal about the molecule before it is tested in a human clinical trial. You learn about toxicity, efficacy and so forth. However, the traditional models were very poorly predictive, so you couldn’t really learn much about the drug candidate in question using older animal models.

With the new models, the more we test and use them, the more we realize that they are very, very predictive of how a compound is going to behave when used clinically.

Questions such as:
what is the best indication?
the best cancer to target?
which patient would benefit from a particular drug?

can all be answered.

That said, up until now, those models were mostly validated to be used with molecules or a combination of molecules but no good models were available for combining molecules and radiation.

With this collaboration between Xstrahl and CrownBio and with the use of their instruments together with our PDX technologies, we want to create those very predictive models, so that by the time a compound enters a human clinical trial, researchers really can be very knowledgeable about it and know how to develop it clinically and which patients might benefit the most from the therapy.

Scientists have detected significant differences in endometrial thickness and hormone levels in women with and without BRCA1/2 mutations that may play a role in cancer susceptibility or development.

“Our findings suggest that BRCA1/2 germline mutations are driving carcinogenesis only in part via altered molecular pathways (eg, those involved in DNA repair) in the organ at risk, and that BRCA1/2-associated changes in the endocrine system are additional factors,” write Martin Widschwendter (University College London, UK) and co-authors.

“These insights could act as a major impetus for novel chemoprevention trials using strategies that can exploit the hormonal dysregulation in carriers of BRCA1/2 mutations,” they suggest in The Lancet Oncology.

The researchers analyzed ultrasound data from the UK Familial Ovarian Cancer Screening Study for 228 women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and 754 women without, focusing on the follicular phase (days 10–14) and luteal phase (days 21–26) of the menstrual cycle.

After adjusting for age and menstrual cycle day, follicular phase endometrial thickness was significantly greater in BRCA1/2 carriers than controls (odds ratio [OR]=1.11), while luteal phase endometrial thickness was significantly lower (OR=0.90).

Premenopausal estradiol and progesterone levels were also determined in 70 samples from 59 mutation carriers and 339 samples from 283 controls. During the luteal phase, median progesterone titers were a significant 121% higher, and estradiol titers a significant 33% higher, in BRCA1/2 carriers than controls.

This means that 59% of women with a BRCA1/2 mutation had serum progesterone concentrations in the top quartile for the women without a mutation, the team says. The results were not explained by differences in use of oral contraceptives between the patient groups.

“[O]ur findings provide novel insights into the high penetrance for breast cancer (via higher progesterone and oestrogen titres) and also possibly ovarian cancer (via higher oestrogen titres and potentially lower titres of anti-Müllerian hormone) in carriers of BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations,” Widschwendter et al comment.

In an accompanying comment, however, Martha Hickey (University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) says it is “unclear” why the BRCA1/2 DNA repair genes should affect ovarian sex steroid production.

In addition, she notes that higher levels of circulating estradiol but not progesterone have previously been linked to premenopausal breast cancer risk.

“The complex relation between gene mutations, ovarian cancer risk, endocrine function, endocrine production, and receptivity in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers still need to be established,” Hickey writes.

“These provocative findings might open a new direction in mechanistic studies that increase understanding of cancer mechanisms in high-risk women.”

Licensed from medwireNews with permission from Springer Healthcare Ltd. ©Springer Healthcare Ltd. All rights reserved. Neither of these parties endorse or recommend any commercial products, services, or equipment.

When it comes to general health for women, breast care is very important. There are many who look at general aspects of staying healthy like eating right; maintaining their weight etc., but not all of them understand the importance of healthy breasts. Breasts are made up of fat, ligaments and milk producing lobes. While there are women who ensure that their teenage daughters wear the right bras to ensure that their breasts are firm and remain in the right shape. But, what do the mothers of such young girls do for their own breasts.

This is a very important question and every woman must ask herself.

Just as the kind of care the young teenage girls need to keep their breasts in shape and doesn’t let them grow out of proportion, the aging women or even the middle aged women must also start caring for their breasts in order to avoid any problems, minor or major.Breasts care does not mean that you have to go to specialty clinics and pay too much money; you can find wonderful results without having the need to use any needles, machines or other procedures. Rely on home remedies for breast care and you are bound to find some wonderful results.