Beringer Vineyards helps fight childhood cancer
Saturday update Beringer Vineyards, the oldest continuously operating winery in Napa Valley, has joined forces with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the fight against childhood cancer as the exclusive wine sponsor for the first annual star-studded Estrellas por la Vida (Stars for Life) gala fundraiser.
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Nobody wants to get cancer. That being said, we should all be aware of what the risk factors are for certain cancers. If you think you are at a higher risk for a specific type of cancer you should become familiar with what factors tend to increase the likelihood that you will develop the disease. Say, for instance, that prostate cancer runs in your family. You should know that there are many different factors that increase your risk, especially since there are some factors that you have control over.
There are several main factors that you do not have control over. One of those factors is your age. Men over the age of 50 have a higher chance of being diagnosed with this cancer. More than 70 percent of men with prostate cancer are over the age of 65. Race is another factor that you cannot control. Prostate cancer is 60 percent more common among African-American men than among Caucasian men. If you have a family history of this disease, you definitely have an increased risk of developing the disease yourself. A man’s risk of developing it is more than doubled if he has a father or brother that has the disease. Although, just because a relative has prostate cancer, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily will get it as well. Sometimes the cancer is simply sporadic, meaning that it can develop in one male relative, but not another. Only five to ten percent of those cases are determined to be hereditary. This would be a family with three or more affected relatives within the immediate family or a family where each of three generations are affected.
» Read more: The Many Risk Factors of Prostate Cancer
Jenny Felth, Joachim Gullbo, and colleagues note that cardiac glycosides are a family of naturally-derived drugs used to treat congestive heart failure and abnormal heart rhythms. Scientists have suspected for some time, based on previous research, that these heart drugs may have promise for fighting many different types of cancer. Despite this, knowledge on effects in colon cancer or combination effects with other anti-cancer drugs is lacking. But scientists know little about their potential anticancer effects and have not tested these substances against colon cancer.
As part of a larger study to screen and identify natural substances with activity against colon cancer, the scientists picked several cardiac glycosides for further study. They tested five of these heart drugs against laboratory cultures of human colon cancer cells and found that they were all effective, to varying degrees, at killing the cancer cells.
» Read more: Heart Drugs Show Promise for Fighting Colon Cancer