New Initiative from Genetic Alliance Aims to Increase Awareness of Family History

December 8, 2011 | by

Genetic Alliance, a non-profit health advocacy organization, has started an initiative to empower the public with regard to family health history, called Does It Run In The Family. Because family health history provides individuals and their health care providers with important information about disease risk, doctors advise patients to collect information from their family members. However, few patients actually collect and maintain this information

From Does It Run In The Family:

In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a survey of over 4,000 people. Ninety-seven percent (97%) thought that it is important to know your family health history. But only 30% had ever collected health information from their family members!…Genetic Alliance and partners created the Does It Run In the Family tool to help people collect their family health history information and share it with relatives and healthcare providers. The goal of the booklets is for individuals, families, and communities to use their new knowledge about family health history to increase their communication about health and become healthier people.

By helping patients know which questions to ask family members — and by putting information online and eliminating the need to send paper records back and forth — Does It Run In The Family aims to make collecting a family history a relatively painless part of the health care process.

Source: Does It Run In The Family

A Brief History of The War on Cancer

November 1, 2011 | by

We’ve been fighting the war on cancer for forty years and although there has been a decrease in U.S. cancer deaths, the global burden of cancer has doubled over the last three decades [1]. Indeed, the leading cause of death in the world today is cancer, followed by heart disease and stroke [2,3]. Cancer also has the greatest economic impact from premature death and disability of all causes of death worldwide, costing $895 billion in 2008 [3]. That number is just the cost of loss of productivity; it doesn’t include the direct costs of treating cancer.

Man’s Best Friend: a Canine Biosensor for Cancer?

August 19, 2011 | by

Man’s best friend may someday turn out to be a physician’s tool for the detection of several types of cancer.

NBC Nightly News aired an intriguing story last night about dogs who have the ability to detect ovarian cancer [1]. The story referenced a new study published in the European Respiratory Journal that focused on canine scent detection for the diagnosis of lung cancer [2].

Genetic Signatures that Distinguish Cancer and Non-cancer Patients

March 24, 2011 | by

A group of researchers led by scientists from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have developed a new technology that detects distinct genetic changes differentiating cancer patients from healthy individuals [1]. The technology is described in a recent study published in the journal Genes, Chromosomes and Cancer and may one day serve as the basis for a cancer predisposition test.

Brain Awareness Week: Staying Sharp

March 18, 2011 | by

As Brain Awareness Week comes to a close here at Highlight HEALTH, we wanted to leave you with a video from the Dana Foundation that addresses the science behind the healthy brain practices that may help us stay sharp as we get older — the lifestyle factors that may contribute to the maintenance of cognitive function.

Don’t forget that we’re giving away several publications for Brain Awareness Week; in particular, the bookmark was created to be paired with the Staying Staying Sharp booklet (link below) and video (below).

Brain Awareness Week

Dr. Jordan Grafman, chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, is your guide as we cover what to expect from the aging brain and what you can do to “stay sharp”.