Amy Brock's Blog (5)

A new study appearing in the medical journal Stroke (a publication of the American Heart Association) looks at the brain's amazing capacity to respond to injury. Detailed MRI images of stroke patients showed that Constraint Induced (CI) therapy produces a significant increase in the amount of gray matter present in the brains of patients. Constraint-induced movement therapy (CI) forces the use of the affected side by… Continue

The American Association for Cancer Research has made a concerted effort to give the public a window into the fast-moving world of cancer biology. With an extensive series of free webcasts, you can get up to speed on the latest thinking in issues such as drug resistance, clinical trials, treatment strategies, prevention, diagnosis and more. I'm find… Continue

There's a good deal of research that supports a link between chronic alcohol consumption and elevated risk of cancers (including those of the respiratory tract, digestive tract, liver, colon, rectum, and breast. But what's emerging now is new information about the specific genetic differences that influence a person's risk level. The revolution in "personalized medicine" has been slower to arrive than many expec… Continue

Lesley wrote about the importance of lifestyle factors in her blog entry on "What if preventing cancer were really that easy?" We've all heard that a healthy diet is a central ingredient in reducing cancer risk. Researchers at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are reporting that it isn't just what foods you eat but how much you consume compared with your activity level that can impact tumor formation. Dietary en… Continue

This week approximately 17,000 cancer researchers and clinicians gather in San Diego for the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR). I'll be kicking off this blog with reports on some of the new research that's presented. I hope I'll be able to give you some snapshots of the very latest findings in the cancer field. I'll try to include a mix of therapies in the pipeline, new technologies and detection strategies, clinical trials, approaches to prevention and resea… Continue