UC Davis is searching for new and more effective methods to deal with oral cancer.

Researchers have begun using a fluorescent oral probe to aid in the detection of malignant tissues. The probe allows doctors to differentiate between healthy and malignant tissue, along with having the capacity of working as a screening device. Although still a prototype, the fluorescent probe is showing that it can be helpful to doctors both prior to and during surgery.

“The big picture is to improve the ability to diagnose tumors at an earlier stage,” said Dr. Gregory Farwell, a head and neck surgeon at the UC Davis Medical Center.

Farwell said that people’s ability to survive oral cancer is significantly increased if the cancer is detected at an early stage. He said that oral cancer is primarily caused by smoking, drinking and human papillomavirus (HPV). Farwell said oral cancer through HPV usually takes 10 to 20 years to develop.

43,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer each year. While the cancer is not the most prevalent in the United States, Farwell said it is a major problem worldwide, especially in countries like India and China.

He said this probe could be of great utility for efficiently diagnosing different stages of cancer.

“It is a very effective way to discriminate between normal tissue and tumor tissue,” Farwell said. “We’re showing better results in distinguishing differences in tissue. It can even help discriminate between pre-cancer and advanced cancer.”

The probe, which is relatively small, uses a laser light to interact with the tissue in order to receive the signals indicating whether or not it is malignant.

Farwell explained that this tissue distinction by the probe is crucial when it comes to tissue in the mouth.

“Our hope is that this technology can leave more of the patient’s tissue in place because taking out an extra centimeter could be the difference in impacting swallowing, speech, or disfigurement,” he said.

Farwell believes the probe has the potential to have widespread impact on oral cancer, as there are not many light-based probes out today. This can lead the probe to have an ever-increasing influence in the field.

Laura Marcu, a biomedical engineering professor at UC Davis, has been researching the probe’s effects with Farwell for four years. She believes that the probe is helpful in terms of screening for oral cancer, but that its primary benefit comes from its assistance during surgery.

“It can increase specificity in screening and identifying patients who have malignant transformations in oral cavities,” Marcu said.

Marcu, like Farwell, said the main causes of oral cancer can be attributed to smoking primarily, but that cancerous diagnoses as a result of HPV are increasing. She believes that it is important to treat the cancer early, and that the fluorescent probe can help.

“It’s not just the fact that [oral cancer] is deadly, but that it impacts the oral cavities, causing the diminishment of the person’s life,” she said.

Marcu said that many people are developing oral cancer in their 30s as a result of HPV. Farwell said this could also be attributed to the sexual revolution of the late 20th century.

HPV, a sexually transmitted virus, is similar to the virus strain of cervical cancer that women develop, Farwell said. He believes that HPV will receive much more attention from the public in the next few years, due to the drastic increases -that are rapidly approaching tobacco in terms of figures for cases of oral cancer caused – of HPV-induced diagnoses.

Research results are already being published, as the probe has been the focus of increased attention. If successful, the probe could greatly increase the number of screenings for oral cancer by practitioners and dentists alike.

Farwell believes that the progress made with this probe is a reflection of the quality of the UC Davis Medical Center.

“It is a great example of the collaborative atmosphere we have in place here; a place where doctors from various backgrounds can work together for a common goal,” Farwell said.

For more information on the research being done by the UC Davis Medical Center, visit ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/medicalcenter.

ERIC C. LIPSKY can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

This week, director of the UC Davis John Muir Institute of the Environment, Mark Schwartz, organized meetings with a panel of conservation experts to discuss how students can jump into the biodiversity and conservation fields.

Over the course of the day, the panelist’s responses to questions and advice revolved around one overarching theme: conservation is not only about the physical sciences.

“Effective conservation requires a strong grounding in environmental sciences, as well as an ability to think like a sociologist and work like an entrepreneur,” Schwartz said. “Universities struggle with how best to prepare graduate students to enter the world of conservation. Today, business management and conflict-resolution training have become as important as population genetics and statistics.”

Although the field is constantly changing, there are still some basic steps that will lead to a successful and gratifying career in conservation, said Eleanor Sterling from the American Museum of Natural History.

First step: get hands-on experience in the field before pursuing a career in conservation.

“I hugely recommend internships,” Sterling said. “An intern makes maybe $1000 a month now.”

However, the right kind of internship is necessary to accurately gauge personal passion and learn more simultaneously.

“Students come to me to learn on the job, but I don’t have the time to teach them,” Sterling said. “What I want is a student that has a specific skill set to apply.”

“The best way to accomplish that is when a conservation company has a question and a university has a student that can answer it,” Sterling said.

Second step: think about what needs to be done and find a way to implement it.

“If you have a good idea, a functional business model and you’re a good communicator, all you need to do is find someone to listen and get a job,” said Peter Kareiva, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

“This is a good time because it’s a time period of ferment – everything is experimentation,” Kareiva said. “A single individual can make a difference.”

Third step: stay positive and expand social horizons.

“You need to be optimistic,” Kareiva said. “And you need to get out of your comfort zone and not just talk to like-minded people.”

Kent Redford, vice president for conservation strategy, notes that positivity also helps the field grow.

“We as human beings are particularly bad at dealing with uncertain situations,” Redford said. “It’s always, ‘why you need to stop what you’re doing and why it’s your fault.’ ”

“We need a positive vision of the future. Conservation biologists have too long fancied themselves as professional mourners at the bedside of a dying earth,” he said.

Experts said expanding social connections is also a key factor of success in conservation.

“The most important thing is to build social capital,” Sterling said. “Fellow students, professors and other people in school. You could find yourself working with them decades later.”

Overall, the panel of scientists wanted to make sure students knew that conservation included professionals in the social sciences.

“Many of us are trained in the social sciences and politics, not just the arcane scientific studies,” Redford said. “These lessons won’t be found published, though; it’s community knowledge. Go seek it out.”

DINA MORCOS can be reached at features@theaggie.org.

Eating nuts helps lower bad cholesterol

It turns out airplane snacks may actually benefit your health.

In a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, eating just 2.4 ounces of any kind of nuts helped lower total cholesterol and “bad” LDL cholesterol, and increased the ratio of total cholesterol to “good” HDL cholesterol.

Researchers took the results from 25 clinical trials with a total of 58 participants. Eating nuts decreased bad cholesterol by 10.2 milligrams per deciliter or about 7.4 percent and a decline of 10.9 milligrams of total cholesterol, about 5.1 percent.

The reason for the healthy benefits stem from the nuts’ rich supplies of unsaturated fats, which are known to lower cholesterol, said Dr. Joan Sabaté, the lead author of the study and professor of nutrition at Loma Linda University in California.

Source: nytimes.com

Pee the key to fight or flee

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. have found evidence that the smell of a protein in urine makes mice fearful when it comes from cats and rats, a new study says.

Published in Cell, the study provides clues as to why some animals choose to flee in one instance and fight in another. Scientists suggest that animals have adapted a sensory communication system to interpret the smells of danger.

When mice smell a certain protein component, they will either fight or flee depending on which animal it came from. Mice that smell a predator’s urine will often flee from danger. However, when the protein comes from another mouse, the smell prompts aggression to other mice.

Source: sciencenews.org

Viewing the victims of sudden death could improve life of mourner

Viewing a family member’s dead body could be beneficial to the healing process, investigators said. In incidents where death came suddenly, such as suicide or car accidents, the majority of participants interviewed said they did not regret their decision to view the corpse, even when it was bruised or decomposing.

Those who regretted seeing the body said they were pressured by authorities to identify the body or were ill prepared for what it would look like. For the rest, viewing of the body drove home their loss, making it easier for them to move on in the long run.

Little research has been done on the mourning process of family members, though researchers hope the information will help cope with the large number of fatal accidents that occur each year.

Source: sciencenews.org

-Complied by NICK MARKWITH and BECKY PETERSON

Dr. Brassington turned the little mirror toward me so I could see my teeth.

“See those little grooves?” he asked.

Those couldn’t be cavities.

“You’ve been clenching your teeth,” he said, “and now you’ve got dents in your molars.”

Brassington explained that I had probably been clenching my teeth at night without even realizing. But he was wrong. Last year, during a stressful patch of schoolwork and social-drama, I had been clenching my teeth nonstop. It was a reaction to tension, but doing so caused more tension. And because of the clenching, I got splitting headaches and jaw pain.

Stress: a side-effect of the glorious college experience. We are told to combat stress by studying steadily instead of cramming and by finding ways to relax. For me, this advice does as much good as Seinfeld’s dad’s “SERENITY NOW!” mantra.

Stress starts in the brain, but it takes over the whole body. While college students complain about stress, scientists research it. Turns out there are different kinds of stress – good and bad – and different physical reactions to stress.

Dr. Blythe Corbett, assistant clinical professor in the UC Davis department of psychiatry, explained a typical reaction to a sudden, stressful event.

“There’s not just one reaction,” Corbett said. “There’s a whole cascade of hormones in the body.”

Let’s say you have a pop quiz in your English lit class. Your brain reacts to this news by firing up the “HPA axis.” The HPA axis is the combination of your hypothalamus (in your brain), your pituitary gland (beneath your brain) and your adrenal gland (near your kidneys). While you are sitting in class – stressing out because you can’t remember who wrote Paradise Lost – these parts of your neuroendocrine system are producing powerful stress hormones. Stress hormones, like cortisol, re-route energy to your muscles.

At the same time, your “sympathetic nervous system” kicks in. This involuntary part of your nervous system increases your heart rate, lung function and even dilates your pupils so you can see better.

These physical reactions don’t do much good during exams, but Corbett explained that stress evolved to help animals survive.

“A certain level of stress really helps us to prepare,” Corbett said. “It’s adaptive.”

If you were a hunter-gatherer in the olden-days, an effective reaction to stress would help you escape hungry lions or approaching floods. While humans rarely have to escape predators anymore, the effects of stress are still helpful; soldiers on a battlefield are able to respond to danger quickly because of stress hormones and the sympathetic nervous system.

This sudden-event kind of stress is called metabolic stress. Corbett explained that the stress that college students feel most often is called psychological stress.

“There’s a psychological or emotional response to [the stress], as opposed to your body responding to a life threatening event,” Corbett said.

Psychological stress is an ongoing problem – the kind of tension that builds as you fall behind on reading and anticipate finals. As my dentist noticed, too much psychological stress has physical effects. Sleep disruption, high blood pressure, weight loss or weight gain are also associated with chronic psychological stress.

I asked Corbett if humans ever just adapt to chronic stress. Maybe, like with caffeine intake, we can get used to the high levels of stress hormones and stop noticing?

Nope.

“There’s a dampening of the system,” Corbett said.

Constant tension doesn’t strengthen us; it just wears away at our ability to deal with anxiety and leads to conditions like depression.

Again, a little bit of psychological stress can be a good thing. That nagging feeling is a great motivator. Without stress, I would have trouble starting essays or going jogging.

I admit- it’s hard to find the right balance.

Picture me with a giant, blue, plastic mouth-guard. That’s what I had to wear at night – for weeks – in order to cure my teeth-clenching problem.

Now I just chew on ballpoint pens.

MADELINE McCURRY-SCHMIDT also de-stresses by singing Disney songs at the top of her lungs. Hakuna matata. To express condolences to her roommates, e-mail Madeline at memschmidt@ucdavis.edu.