The good news eating healthy diet loaded with fruits
Cataracts, in which a clear lens becomes cloudy, are the leading cause of impaired vision. More than half of all aged 75 or older Americans have a cataract or have had cataract surgery. The first symptoms may be difficulty seeing at night followed by increasingly blurred and dimmed vision.
Earlier research by Dr. Barbara Klein and colleagues had shown that certain sun-sensitizing medications might be linked to cataracts in men. To see if this was true in all people, the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine eye specialist and her colleagues analyzed the medical records of 2119 patients followed over 15 years.
They found that for varying levels of sunlight exposure, people who used a number of drugs including the painkiller naproxen, the diabetes drug glyburide, the antibiotic ciprofloxacin, the antidepressant amitriptyline, and the blood pressure medication hydrochlorothiazide had about a 26 percent chance of developing a condition known as a cortical cataract.
That compared to about 22 percent of those who did not use these medications, they report in the August issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology. The drugs were not tied to two other types of cataracts.
Still, Klein was reluctant to make too much of the results. I dont want to scare the pants off people, she told Reuters Health when asked if the data warranted warning about cataract risks with the use of these drugs and sun exposure.
Much more research has to be done to meticulously measure drug dosage and duration and sun exposures before definitive conclusions can be drawn, she cautioned.
In the other study, Julie Mares, of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and colleagues wanted to know if eating a healthy diet might protect against cataract formation. Nothing so far has been discovered that can prevent cataracts they are a natural consequence of aging, Mares told Reuters Health.
Delaying cataracts in an increasingly aging population could reduce a significant burden on the healthcare system, Mares and colleagues write in the June issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology after finding a healthy diet may delay cataracts at least 2 and a half years.
While the biggest risk for getting cataracts is getting older, smoking is the most common modifiable risk factor reported in population studies. Sun exposure and poor diets have also been associated with increased risk but previous research on diets has usually focus on a limited number of vitamins or minerals at a time.
The researchers analyzed data from 1808 women enrolled in the Womens Health Initiative Observational Study for an association between eating a healthy diet and the development of cataracts.
The women, all aged 50 to 79, answered questions about their diets, supplement use, smoking, exercise, and other behaviors. They also underwent eye exams.
Cataracts were common in the women and occurred more often as they got older. Overall, 41 percent of the women 736 had evidence of cataract severe enough to warrant surgery in at least one eye or reported having had cataract surgery.
After taking age, smoking, and other factors into account, researchers found the women who ate the diets highest in fruits and vegetables and lowest in fats had a 37 percent lower risk of cataracts than women in the study who ate less healthy diets.
By another measure, if you take two women of the same age, the woman with the lowest healthy diet score would be about 1 and a half times more likely to have a cataract at any given age, Mares said.
The authors conclude that eating a healthy diet along with avoiding obesity and smoking may substantially lower the need for and economic burden of cataract surgery in aging American women.
The study doesnt directly prove cause and effect, but so many arrows point in this direction that sometimes we dont need clinical trials to hit us over the head to suggest that small changes we do on a day-to-day basis can have a large impact on our health in the future, Mares said.
The more than half of Americans who have cataracts or have had surgery for them might be cut to roughly 40or 40 rather than 50 of every 100 Americans — if those of us with poorer than average diets ate healthy diets and cut further still if we did not smoke, Mares said.
Despite the limitations of her study of drugs and sun exposure, the other studys finding that diet might prevent some cataracts is exciting, Klein said.
Anything you can do to delay putting a knife in someones eye is a good thing, Klein said.
SOURCE here here Archives of Ophthalmology, June and August 2010. source
They said analysis available data drugs class known
They said an analysis of available data on drugs in the class known as angiotensin-receptor blockers showed patients were 1.2 percent more likely to be diagnosed with a new cancer over four years than others who did not take the drugs.
Most patients in the trials 86 percent took German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheims telmisartan, sold as Micardis, which has annual sales of more than 1.5 billion.
The increased risk of new cancer occurrence is modest but significant, Dr. Ilke Sipahi and colleagues from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and colleagues wrote in the journal Lancet Oncology.
There were not enough data in the studies to say if individual drugs in the class raise the risk or if it is a so-called class effect shared by all such drugs.
Even so, Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said in a commentary the findings were disturbing and provocative, raising crucial drug safety questions for practitioners and the regulatory community.
He said regulators need to look more closely at the risk of cancer with ARB use and that doctors should be more cautious about prescribing ARBs, and especially Micardis.
Privately held Boehringer Ingelheim defended the safety of its drug, saying in a statement its own internal safety data analysis of primary data contradicts the conclusions of an increased cancer risk.
Nissen did a similar analysis that raised alarms about heart risks from GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug Avandia.
Currently, there are no major safety concerns linked with taking angiotensin-receptor blockers or ARBs, which work by blocking receptors for angiotensin II, a hormone that increases blood pressure.
But a 2003 study in patients with heart failure did find that the drug Atacand, or candesartan, made by the Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca, significantly raised the risk of fatal cancers compared with a dummy pill.
PUBLICLY AVAILABLE DATA
Sipahi and colleagues did a so-called meta-analysis, pooling all publicly available data from randomized trials of ARBs published before November 2009.
Other drugs in the class include Merck amp Cos Cozaar, sold generically as losartan Diovan or valsartan made by Swiss drug firm Novartis irbesartan, jointly marketed by Sanofi-Aventi and Bristol-Myers Squibb as Avapro Daiichi Sankyos Benicar or olmesartan and Solvay Pharmaceuticals Teveten or eprosartan.
Overall, they found that patients taking the drugs had 7.2 percent risk of having a new cancer diagnosis, compared with 6 percent risk for patients in the control groups.
When they looked at cancer types, only lung cancer stood out, with 0.9 percent of patients taking blood pressure drugs developing a new lung cancer compared with 0.7 percent of patients in the control arm.
The drugs did not appear to increase the risk of death from cancer, but the team said cancers can develop slowly and cancer deaths might not show up in the relatively short studies.
Just three out of seven FDA-approved drugstelmisartan, losartan, and candesartan — were studied, and it is not clear what affect other drugs in the class might have on cancers.
Nevertheless, they said given how widely the drugs are used, the risk is worth further study.
Boehringer Ingelheim said its own analysis of data from three large trials showed no increased cancer risk associated with Micardis. But in one study, called ONTARGET, there was a slight increased risk in one treatment arm when the drug was taken in combination with common blood pressure drugs known as ACE-inhibitors, such as ramipril.
The company said the product label does not recommend the drug be used in combination with ACE-inhibitors.
Nissen said the study is limited by the fact that the trials were not designed to look at cancer risks.
But he said the drugs are often overprescribed because of aggressive marketing, and patients might fare just as well taking inexpensive ACE inhibitors instead.
Other experts stressed that patients need to keep taking their blood pressure medications.
At the moment there isnt enough evidence to draw any firm conclusions about how blood pressure drugs might affect cancer risk and this will need further investigation, Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK, said in a statement.
Additional reporting by Kate Kelland in London, editing by Philip Barbara source
One memo under logo of mcneil consumer healthcare
Simply visit each store, locate the product and, if any is found, purchase all of the product.
The Motrin recall came to light during a congressional hearing concerning JampJs widespread April recall of its Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec products for infants and children.
As part of its investigation into the April recall, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform began probing a recall of some adult versions of pain reliever Motrin. The documents obtained by Reuters refer to this recall taking place in 2009.
During a May 27 hearing, Committee chairman U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns cited a document it had received from the Food and Drug Administration and said it showed that rather than issue a public recall, McNeil allegedly sent contractors out to stores to buy the product back and told the stores not to mention a recall.
After the FDA confronted McNeil about this, McNeil announced a recall of the affected products. This phantom recall warrants further investigation by this Committee, Towns said.
On Friday, Committee spokeswoman Jenny Rosenberg said, The Committee is deeply concerned about Johnson amp Johnsons response and cooperation with our investigation.
In response to Reuters questions about the documents, JampJ spokeswoman Bonnie Jacobs said The FDA was kept fully informed of McNeils plans and actions throughout the process. McNeil agreed to a recall as soon as the agency requested it, she said.
In the internal McNeil document, dated April 1, 2009, instructing Inmar Field Analysts to buy Motrin from store shelves, provided a product code and other information specific to the product in question. The memo said It is not necessary to check for any other product. Only the product code and lots indicated above.
That memo was attached to an email exchange between Inmar and JampJ employees, in which one Inmar employee responded to a request to purchase two lots of Motrin
This adds a new dynamic that we need to discuss. If the product is in dispensers we will have to remove all the products and physically review them. This will take time and may draw suspicion to what we are doing.
Another document, an email from the FDA to JampJ, focused on the word retrieval.
It seems that your company is doing a recall even though you are calling it a retrieval, FDA investigator Neisa Alonso wrote in the July 16, 2009 email.
JampJ REFUTES CLAIMS
On Friday, JampJ disputed allegations that the company had executed a phantom recall. JampJ spokeswoman Jacobs said that because there was no safety risk, the company had sought to remove the affected product from a unique channelmainly convenience stores and gas stations — with as little disruption and consumer confusion as possible.
The product was recalled because McNeils internal tests showed that some tablets might not dissolve as quickly as intended, she said, adding There was no patient health or safety risk, nor any consumer complaints.
Jacobs said that wholesalers had been told that the product would be removed from store shelves.
The FDA was kept informed of the survey and product retrieval and after it was essentially complete the FDA requested that we conduct an additional step, which was to conduct a formal recall, and we agreed, Jacobs said.
A New York Times report on Friday quoted Committee Chairman Towns, a New York Democrat, as saying the committee was not getting the kind of information and cooperation from Johnson that I would like. He was cited as saying that JampJ had used delaying tactics in its dealings with the committee and in some instances had provided misinformation.
That might compel the committee to take more aggressive action as it looks into drug quality and safety issues raised by the recall, Towns was quoted as saying.
Committee spokeswoman Rosenberg confirmed that Towns remarks in the report were accurate.
The report cited Jacobs as saying the company had been very cooperative with the committee and confirmed it had provided about 20,000 pages of documents, made its executives available for interviews and answered queries in a timely manner.
JampJ shares closed down 4 cents at 58.46 on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange, on a slightly positive day for the broader market.
Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf Editing by Michele Gershberg, Lisa Von Ahn, Dave Zimmerman source
They said reducing stress during breast cancer treatment
They found women who took part in a support group where they were taught to cope with their stress through relaxation techniques and problem solving lived an average of six months longer than other women.
If you have someone who can provide effective, research-supported ways to reduce your stress, not only will that affect your mental health. It will likely affect your symptoms and your recovery, said Barbara Andersen, a psychology professor at Ohio State University in Columbus.
The study is rare because while it makes sense that therapy might ease some of the stress of cancer treatment, few studies have shown it can boost a womans survival.
The findings appear in the journal Cancer Clinical Research.
The study included 227 women with newly diagnosed Stage II or III breast cancer.
Women in the study got either a psychological assessment or therapy that helped them understand their stress, learn ways to cope with it, stay on their cancer treatment, improve communication with their doctor and generally feel better emotionally during their treatment and recovery.
It was far more than the popular notion of support groups of patients in a room talking about their troubles, Andersen said in a telephone interview.
Certain patients talked about things that were stressful to them, but they also learned really effective ways to cope with that stress.
For example, women were taught relaxation techniques that helped lower stress levels. They were counseled on how to assess the individual strengths of people in their support networkknowing which people can be counted on for emotional support and which would be most reliable if the woman needed a ride to therapy.
NEW TOOL
The support group met weekly for four months, than monthly for a total of a year. In prior findings from the study, the team found that women who had taken part in the support group had stronger immune systems and were 45 percent less likely to have their breast cancer come back after 11 years of follow up.
The latest phase of the study looked at the group of women whose cancer did return. Of these 62 women, those who had gotten talk therapy were 59 percent less likely to die from their breast cancer during the study period.
The survival benefit was above and beyond improvements in drug treatments.
Andersen said these results show enduring benefits from the support group that had never before been considered or seen.
An intervention that increased survival would be incredibly valuable. It represents a new tool for improving the lives of women with breast cancer, Sarah Gehlert of Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement.
Andersen said most women with breast cancer would not be able to take part in such a support group at the moment, but she hopes the findings will encourage insurance companies to pay for them, and for hospitals to begin offering such services.
Editing by Cynthia Osterman source
The united nations affiliated group unitaid
The United Nations-affiliated group UNITAID, in an open letter published in the online edition of the medical journal the Lancet, urged Bristol-Myers chief executive Lamberto Andreotti to ensure that babies continue to have access to its drug, didanosine, which is made at a company plant in France slated to close this month.
The plant makes the drug in a small 25 milligram dosage form given to babies to control their infections. The medicine, sold under the brand name Videx, is a member of the class of HIV treatments known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or NRTIs, and was approved by U.S. regulators in 1991.
Closing this factory means that 4,000 to 7,000 babies currently enrolled in treatment plans in developing countries through UNITAID could be left without the medicines they need, said the open letter.
The letter said the drug is the last therapeutic option for the babies and there will likely be a shortage of the 25-milligram dosage between Junewhen the Bristol factory is closed — and when a new Bristol-Myers factory in the United States begins making the drug next year.
Bristol-Myers spokeswoman Sonia Choi said production is expected to resume immediately upon anticipated regulatory approval of the new U.S. plant in February 2011.
Choi said Bristol-Myers is closing its plant in Meymac, France this month as part of an effort to streamline manufacturing operations.
Before closing, she said the company ramped up production of the medicine to create an inventory of the drug equal to twice the demand for the medicine in 2009.
But she said there will likely still be a supply strain because of an unexpected recent surge in demand for the product, although the company is now still able to fulfill current demand.
Were doing everything we can to ensure minimal disruption, she said.
Choi said generic forms of the medicine are made at the same 25 milligram dose by other drugmakers, but have not been included in a list of drugs pre-qualified by the World Health Organization for use by U.N. agencies.
Reporting by Ransdell Pierson editing by Andre Grenon source
The drug worked best in tumors were non squamous
The drug worked best in tumors that were non-squamous, had mutations in a gene called KRAS, or did not have genetic mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor, according to data presented here at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
The trial showed that treatment with ARQ197 and Tarceva improved overall survival by 24 percent compared to treatment with Tarceva and a placebo, but the results were not statistically significant.
In the sub-group of patients with non-squamous lung cancer, those given the combination therapy lived 47 percent longer. Non-squamous is the most common type of non-small cell lung cancer.
ARQ197 is part of a potential new class of cancer drugs designed to block a protein, called C-met, involved in cancer cell growth and survival.
ArQule said in March that the drug, in combination with Tarceva, led to a 66 percent improvement in the amount of time patients lived without their cancer worsening, compared with use of Tarceva alone, but the results were not statistically significant.
Data presented on Saturday showed that patients with normal, or wild-type, epidermal growth factor receptor, who were treated with ARQ197 lived an average of 13.7 weeks without cancer progression, compared to 8.1 weeks for the control group.
Patients with mutations to the KRAS gene lived an average of 9.7 weeks when treated with ARQ197 and only 4.3 weeks when treated with Tarceva alone.
This really does validate C-met as a viable drug target, said George Zavoico, an analyst at McNicoll, Lewis and Vlak.
Tarceva, which is designed to target EGFR, is sold by Roche AG and OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc.
Future trials are still under discussion, said Dr. Joan Schiller, chief of hematology and oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a trial investigator.
There are a number of possible study designs, she said.
ArQule, in partnership with Japans Daiichi Sankyo, is testing ARQ197 in several different types of cancer.
Reporting by Deena Beasley, editing by Matthew Lewis source
Particulate mattertiny specks of soot
Particulate mattertiny specks of soot, dust, and other pollutants in the air that can be breathed deep into the lungs — has been consistently linked to increases in deaths from heart disease and clogged arteries, Dr. Martine Dennekamp of Monash University in Melbourne and her colleagues note.
But studies looking at whether air pollution specifically ups the risk of heart attack or cardiac arrest have had mixed results.
Airborne particles are harmful to people with existing health problems, the researchers add, but they could also trigger heart attack or even sudden death in people with no apparent symptoms of cardiovascular disease.
To investigate, Dennekamp and her team looked at 8,434 cases of sudden cardiac arrest among people 35 and older that occurred in metropolitan Melbourne between 2003 and 2006.
After a rise in concentration of the tiniest airborne particles particles less than 2.5 microns across, known as PM2.5, the likelihood of cardiac arrest rose, and stayed higher than average for two days. For every 4.26 micrograms per cubic meter increase in PM2.5 concentrations, the risk of cardiac arrest was 4 percent higher than average for the next 48 hours.
An individuals risk of suffering sudden cardiac arrest is quite low the American Heart Association estimates that theres about one cardiac arrest per 2,000 people every year in North America. And the study does not prove that pollution causes more cardiac arrests, as the researchers did not find out whether participants in the study also smoked or had other risk factors for heart disease.
Carbon monoxide levels also were associated with increases in cardiac arrest risk, although the effect wasnt as strong as it was for PM2.5. None of several other pollutants the researchers measured, including larger airborne particles, affected risk. The effect was strongest for people 65 to 74 years old, and weakest for those 75 and older.
Australia currently has an advisory standard limiting PM2.5 concentrations to 25 micrograms per cubic meter or less, the researchers note.
Given that an increase of less than 5 micrograms per cubic meter was tied to significant health effects, they add, the present study suggests an increase in the risk of cardiac effects at concentrations below the current air quality standards in Australia.
SOURCE here AirPollutionasaTriggerfor.99685.aspx Epidemiology, online May 19, 2010. source
They said gen probes progensa pca3 test caught about half
They said Gen-Probes Progensa PCA3 test caught about half the actual cases of prostate cancer in men who had abnormal PSA levels or digital rectal exams, and had about a 20 percent false positive rate.
Thats pretty good, actually, said Dr. David Crawford of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who helped lead the study.
Trying to diagnose prostate cancer is one of the most maddening tasks a doctor has. The prostate is a walnut-shaped gland that produces semen and it is hard to get to.
Digital rectal exams can tell a specialist that the prostate is getting bigger, but that happens with normal aging as well as with cancer. A blood test for prostate specific antigen or PSA shows when PSA rises, but PSA goes up with either cancer or just normal enlargement of the prostateor even if the gland is inflamed, such as from an infection.
Biopsies are difficult and painful to do and may take a portion of healthy prostate, missing any tumors entirely.
And prostate tumors can grow slowly. A study last year estimated that more than 1 million men in the United States alone had been needlessly treated for prostate tumors that likely would never have killed them.
The Progensa test looks for a genetic material called PCA3. It is a string of RNA that does not appear to have any function but that is overexpressed, or overactive, in prostate cancer.
Lightly touching the prostate can cause its release and it can then be detected in the urine using the test.
Crawford and colleagues tested Progensa in about 1,900 men who had high PSA readings, an abnormal digital rectal exam or both and who were scheduled to have biopsies.
It reflects on the aggressiveness of the cancer, Crawford said. If you had no cancer your PCA3 was at 25 or 20. If you had precursors such as high grade PIN prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia your score was about 38 to 40 and men who had cancer scored about 50 to 55.
The test had a specificity of 78 percent, meaning that 78 percent of the men who had cancer indicated by the test actually did. This compares to just 21 percent for PSA alone, the researchers told a meeting of the American Urological Association in San Francisco.
If the PCA3 is abnormal, above about 35, you have got an 80 percent chance of having cancer, Crawford said.
The test had a sensitivity of 49 percent, meaning it correctly identified 49 percent of cancers. This is far less sensitive than PSA, which catches 87 percent of tumors, but if the two tests are used together they can help rule out the need for unnecessary surgery or radiation.
Among the 1,946 men studied, 42 percent turned out to have prostate cancer.
The test was approved for use in Europe in 2006 but is not yet approved in the United States.
Editing by Sandra Maler source
In a report on aids in eight sub saharan african countries
In a report on AIDS in eight sub-Saharan African countries, it said major donors have decided to cap, cut or halt spending on HIV treatment and AIDS drugs in the past year and a half.
Major donors include the United States, the World Bank, the health funding agency UNITAID, and backers of the Global Fund.
How can we give up the fight halfway and pretend that the crisis is over said Mit Philips, a health policy analyst for MSF and one of the authors of the report.
There is a real risk that many … will die within the next few years if necessary steps are not taken now.
An estimated 33 million people around the world are infected with the human immunodeficiency virus HIV that causes AIDS, and more than half of the 9.5 million people who need AIDS drugs cannot get them, according to the United Nations.
The MSF report said that the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, known as PEPFAR, cut its budget for buying AIDS drugs in 2009 and 2010 and froze its overall HIV/AIDS budget.
In Washington, PEPFAR officials denied that the programs budget had been frozen overall, and said that PEPFAR drugs have actually been reaching a growing number of patients, due in part to improved program efficiencies on the ground and reduced costs for some medications.
The metric for success is not dollars spent but actual lives saved, and the number of people PEPFAR directly supports on treatment has continued to increase dramatically each yearin 2009 alone, from approximately 1.6 million to nearly 2.5 million, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Eric Goosby said in a statement.
Nevertheless, other donors like UNITAID and the World Bank have also announced reductions in coming years in funding for AIDS drugs in Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo DRC, it said.
The Global Fund, the largest funding body in the fight against HIV/AIDS, is also facing shortfalls. The United States, the Netherlands and Ireland have said they will be cutting their contributions.
Such cuts are already having an impact in places like South Africa, Uganda, and in the DRCwhere the number of new patients able to start treatment with antiretroviral ARV AIDS drugs has been cut six-fold, according to the MSF report.
As a result, already fragile health systems would come under more pressure from a growing number of patients requiring more intensive care as their disease progresses.
ARV treatment is lifesaving but also lifelong, the report said. This means that the number of patients under treatment increases cumulatively each year, thus requiring incrementally growing and sustainable funding.
additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington Reporting by Kate Kelland Editing by Maria Golovnina and Paul Simao source
A team roches biotechnology unit genentech california
A team at Roches biotechnology unit Genentech in California compared all the genetic changes in a single patients lung tumor with healthy tissue from the patient, a 51-year-old man who had smoked an average of 25 cigarettes per day for 15 years before the tumor was removed.
What they found were as many as 50,000 genetic mutations.
Fifty thousand is a huge number. No one has ever reported such a high number, said Zemin Zhang of Genentech, whose findings appear in the journal Nature.
This is likely associated with the smoking history of the patient. It is very alarming, Zhang said in a telephone interview.
Smoking is the biggest single cause of lung cancer, and studies suggest mutations occur with each cigarette smoked.
Zhang said the ratio between the number of cigarettes the person smoked before his tumor was removed and the number of mutations in the tumor suggest that for every three cigarettes he smoked, one genetic mutation occurred.
Its a lot more complicated than that, Zhang said, noting that there are DNA repair mechanisms in the body that help protect against the damage of smoking, but these become less efficient over time.
Zhang said the team was so surprised by the findings they made extra checks to see if they got it wrong. They also looked for anything unusual about the smoker whose tumor they studied. There is nothing unusual about this sample, he said.
The findings may be sobering for those contemplating taking up smoking. If you imagine over a lifetime you are going to develop this many mutations in the genome, some people may think twice about it, he said.
ADVANCES IN GENE SEQUENCING
The study was made possible by advances in gene sequencing technology that allows researchers to look at entire genomes, rather than searching for a handful of genes that appear to be especially important in certain cancers.
This new way of studying cancer is painting a much more complex picture of the disease.
For example, the team discovered areas of the genome needed to make proteinswhich are important for cell survival — had far lower rates of mutations, suggesting these areas are better protected, Zhang said.
But he noted the findings only reflect one mans genome. Obviously, wed love to have multiple fully sequenced genomes in multiple tumors, he said.
However, it already offers a much broader view of the genetic changes in lung cancer.
The price of sequencing an entire genome is falling rapidly. The latest machines from companies like Illumina and Life Technologies Corp can map out a patients entire DNA code for as little as 5,000 IDnN26244408.
Many companies are developing machines that can do the job for 1,000.
Zhang said his team worked with a private company called Complete Genomics in Mountain View, California. I think this provides a preview of what whole genome sequencing can tell us about the cancer genome, he said.
Editing by Maggie Fox source