The Health and Beauty Odyssey

The Health and Beauty Odyssey Health/beauty

Pap tests could one day tell women if they have breast or ovarian cancer
Two studies found genetic-based changes in the cervix that can detect other cancers.
Experts have identified changes in a woman’s cervix that can help detect tumors elsewhere in the body. These tests involve scraping cells from the cervix to detect any abnormalities that could cause cervical cancer. But researchers from Innsbruck University and gynecological cancer research charity The Eve Appeal found the cells from this test can also give clues and alerts for other types of cancers. With development, they state that the method used could one day predict the risk of developing ovarian, breast, womb, and cervical cancers from a straightforward smear pap test.
They developed their system using a process known as DNA methylation — epigenetic modifications to DNA that don’t alter the genetic sequence but do determine whether a gene expresses or stifles its function: in this case, forming or preventing cancer in the body. These modifications leave ‘methylation markers or signatures’ on genomic regions that scientists can read to determine what has occurred within a person’s body throughout their lifetime. Akin to the rings of a tree, this method can provide chronological clues as to what has happened in our biological life.

Researchers created the test, dubbed WID (Women’s Risk Identification), to analyze markers left by cancerous activity in the DNA of cervical cells. By calculating a woman’s WID, they hope to identify those with a high risk of developing ovarian, breast, womb, or cervical cancers: providing an early-warning system for medical teams to increase treatment outcomes.

The team was able to spot these modifications because they matched DNA markers found in diseased cervical, breast, ovarian, and womb biopsy tissue (a highly invasive procedure) to those found in the easier to access cells of the cervix — whose similar biological structures undergo the same hormonal changes as the tissues these cancers flourish in.
Finding cancer through the cervix
The first study examined cervical cell samples collected from 242 women with ovarian cancer and 869 healthy controls. To develop the WID risk scale, the scientists measured 14,000 epigenetic changes to identify ovarian cancer’s unique DNA signature to spot the presence of the disease in epithelial tissue scraped from the cervix.

They then validated the signature in an additional cohort of 47 women who had ovarian cancer and 227 healthy subjects. Results identified 71% of women under 50 and roughly 55% of the volunteers older than 50 who had previously tested positive for the disease — giving the tests an overall specificity of 75%. A test’s specificity is its ability to correctly identify people without the disease.

Professor Martin Widschwendter of the University of Innsbruck and UCL, heading up the research, said the findings suggest their WID index is picking up cancer predisposition, adding that the results were similar to a study on women with cancer of the womb. He is adamant their test cannot predict ovarian, with more studies needed.

A possible screening method for an undetectable cancer
In the second study, the same team analyzed epigenetic changes in cervical cell samples provided by 329 women with breast cancer against those from the same 869 healthy volunteers in the first study. Using the WID index, they were able to identify women with breast cancer based on a unique epigenetic signature. The group once again confirmed these markers in a smaller consort of 113 breast cancer patients and 225 women without this condition.

The researchers also used the patterns to predict whether patients had breast cancer-but they didn’t say exactly how accurate the tests were. Instead, they stressed that further trials are needed-with the hope that clinicians could use their WID as a regular test for women in the future-specifically for those under fifty years of age who do not have access to screening for this disease.

“This research is incredibly exciting,” said Liz O’Riordan, a breast cancer surgeon who was also diagnosed with this disease. “At the moment, there is no screening test for breast cancer in women under the age of 50. If this test can help pick up women with a high risk of developing breast, ovarian, cervical, and uterine cancer at a younger age, it could be a game-changer.”

The team adds that these findings are also crucial for ovarian cancer, whose symptoms can be as benign as a bloated abdomen. The biggest killer of women out of gynecological-based tumors, this disease is diagnosed late by clinicians in an alarming 3 out of four cases.

But for now, Widschwendter says, the findings suggest that the molecular signatures in cervical cells may detect the predisposition to other women-specific cancers rather than providing a solid prediction of the disease.

Because of the pandemic, women have stopped taking pap tests
A pap smear test detects abnormal cells on the cervix, which is the entrance to the uterus from the va**na. Removing these cells can prevent cervical cancer, which most commonly affects s*xually-active women aged between 30 and 45. In most cases, the human papillomavirus causes this cancer after being acquired through unprotected s*x or skin-to-skin contact. To summarise, the whole point of these tests is to detect women at risk of developing cancer and encourage them to carry further health check-ups, not to find those displaying cancer symptoms.

Around the world, the number of women taking smear tests has dropped substantially during the pandemic. In England, for instance, one of the countries with the highest testing rates, just 7 out of 10 eligible women got a cervical check-up — and conditions are expected to worsen due to a new policy brought in by the UK government at the start of 2022, which saw all eligible women in Wales have their wait times increased from three to five years in between tests. The government expects to roll out the policy in England this year after the pandemic caused the delay of its initial release. Experts insisted the move was safe, but campaigners hit back at the plans, arguing it would cause preventable deaths by delaying the detection of cancer or pre-cancerous issues.

Stop feeling dizzy after suddenly standing up with these two simple movements
You can avoid the dizziness induced by standing up by raising your knees while seated or clenching your lower limbs.
Abruptly standing up after sitting or lying down can induce a form of low blood pressure that can make us feel light-headed or woozy. It’s a common phenomenon with an uncommon name: orthostatic hypotension.

Although it’s generally harmless and short-lived, orthostatic hypotension can sometimes cause people to faint and some individuals experience it routinely, which affects their daily function. If severe, the dizzying phenomenon can also be a sign of an underlying health condition.

Satish Raj, a heart rhythm cardiologist at the University of Calgary in Canada, works with severe cases of orthostatic hypotension on almost a daily basis at his clinic. Apart from telling them to drink more water or switch medication, there wasn’t much he could do to improve the patients’ symptoms, so he wondered if he could devise a new intervention.

When we stand up after sitting or lying down for a while, blood rushes towards our legs because of gravity. But the body also has to work to push blood upward to supply the brain with oxygen. The sudden activation of the leg muscles causes blood vessels to open wider for a few moments in order to compensate for the abrupt uptick in demand, which can cause a rapid drop in blood pressure and accompanying dizziness.

Raj and colleagues believed this orthostatic hypotension could be avoided if the muscle reflex was activated early. They put this idea to the test in an experiment involving 22 volunteers with severe orthostatic hypotension who performed two simple types of movements.

One method involved raising the knees one at a time for up to 30 seconds while seated before standing up. The other involved tensing the lower limbs, by crossing the legs and clenching the thighs and butt.

Doctors overlook a curable cause of high blood pressure
A hormonal abnormality is gaining recognition as a common cause of hypertension, but few patients are screened for it.
n early 2013, after Erin Consuegra gave birth to her second child at age 28, her health nosedived. She developed worrying symptoms, including extreme fatigue, fluttery heart beats, and high blood pressure. She said her doctor prescribed blood pressure medication and chalked it up to stress.

But Consuegra, an elementary school teacher by training, didn’t buy it. “It’s like, you think staying home all day with two kids is causing these real medical issues?” she said. “It was offensive to just write it all off to stress and anxiety.”

Researching her symptoms online and through family members in the medical field, Consuegra learned of a little-known syndrome called primary aldosteronism, in which one or both adrenal glands, small structures that sit atop the kidneys, overproduce a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone increases blood pressure by sending sodium and water into the bloodstream, increasing blood volume. It also lowers potassium, a mineral that Consuegra was deficient in.

Her primary care physician agreed to run a blood test to screen for the condition but insisted that the result was normal and balked at Consuegra’s request to see a specialist. “She took it as me questioning her,” Consuegra said. Getting a referral, she added, “took a lot of fighting, a lot of tears, a lot of advocacy on my part.”

Consuegra’s story has a relatively happy ending. Doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center eventually diagnosed her with primary aldosteronism and found a small noncancerous tumor, or adenoma, in one of her adrenal glands — known to often be a cause of the condition. After doctors removed the gland in July 2014, her symptoms disappeared.

Millions of other patients are not so lucky. More than six decades after primary aldosteronism was first described in the medical literature, less than 1 percent of cases are diagnosed and treated despite evidence that it is a common cause of high blood pressure, or hypertension.

The syndrome shows up in people with mild, moderate, and severe hypertension — and even in those with normal blood pressure — according to a comprehensive 2020 study. “The prevalence of primary aldosteronism is high and largely unrecognized,” the study authors wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine, adding that it may account for high blood pressure that has no identifiable cause and is typically attributed to genetics, poor diet, lack of exercise, and obesity.

Closing the diagnosis and treatment gap poses a series of challenges, experts say. Many physicians haven’t gotten the message that primary aldosteronism is common, so they don’t look for it. Screening tests can be tricky to interpret and miss a lot of cases. Complicating matters, primary care groups, whose members treat the bulk of hypertension, have so far declined to help develop relevant guidelines. Research on the syndrome lags behind other diseases, and only a few health systems have a cadre of knowledgeable specialists who provide coordinated care.