link to the article!
My honors article for this week is about how gene expression variations is a role in susceptibility to disease, and particularly breast cancer. People heterozygous to certain alleles could be used as a new way to look at susceptibility to breast cancer. For this research experiment they looked at the different allelic expression of 12 different genes that are possibly related to breast cancer susceptibility in both breast tissue and in fresh blood. The results were that most of the allele expressions were comparable between breast tissue and blood. The results point to the use of allelic expression in blood as a replacement for breast tissue.
It was very interesting to read about this topic for my article since this is what we have been learning about in biology class. Everything in this paper really clicked and the results made sense. I think this article is relevant to breast cancer research because the article mentioned how hard it was to get live breast tissue to sample. Fresh blood would be a lot easier to obtain and maybe will be used to look at peoples genetic risk in more detail. While we still work on finding a cure, knowing your genetic risk could be beneficial to patients and doctors to make sure that if cancer does appear, it could be eliminated even sooner. These alleles could even be used to figure out how breast cancer is caused and even lead to a cure.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Honors- Breast Cancer
link!
The article that I read this week was about how the mammographic breast density is a high risk factor for breast cancer. In this article, the scientists presented two new ways to estimate the mammographic breast density based on an MRI. The study was done on women between the ages of 31-49 who are genetically at risk for breast cancer. The researchers assessed a lot of different factors like the MRI to the mammographic measures, hormonal factors, genetics and risk using "linear and Poisson regression". The results showed that the MRI percent dense volume was connected with the mammographic percent dense area, but overall it wasn't as connected as they had first thought. Both did have connections to hormonal factors. They concluded that the MRIs and mammographic breast density are connected but not in equal measures and that the MRI has potential to be a predictor of breast cancer risk.
This work is relevant to the world of breast cancer research because finding new connections is huge and puts new pieces of the puzzle together. If there is further research done and the MRI becomes and predictor of breast cancer risk, women could be monitored just as closely as those who are at a genetic risk. I thought it was really interesting that the two different tests (mammograohic and MRI) both had connections to hormonal factors. I think that this article has a lot of potential on several topics. The connections to hormonal factors seemed like a pretty big connection to me. I think that researchers should build on this article and keep doing research on topics related to this.
The article that I read this week was about how the mammographic breast density is a high risk factor for breast cancer. In this article, the scientists presented two new ways to estimate the mammographic breast density based on an MRI. The study was done on women between the ages of 31-49 who are genetically at risk for breast cancer. The researchers assessed a lot of different factors like the MRI to the mammographic measures, hormonal factors, genetics and risk using "linear and Poisson regression". The results showed that the MRI percent dense volume was connected with the mammographic percent dense area, but overall it wasn't as connected as they had first thought. Both did have connections to hormonal factors. They concluded that the MRIs and mammographic breast density are connected but not in equal measures and that the MRI has potential to be a predictor of breast cancer risk.
This work is relevant to the world of breast cancer research because finding new connections is huge and puts new pieces of the puzzle together. If there is further research done and the MRI becomes and predictor of breast cancer risk, women could be monitored just as closely as those who are at a genetic risk. I thought it was really interesting that the two different tests (mammograohic and MRI) both had connections to hormonal factors. I think that this article has a lot of potential on several topics. The connections to hormonal factors seemed like a pretty big connection to me. I think that researchers should build on this article and keep doing research on topics related to this.
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