Monday 3 February 2014

WORLD CANCER DAY


WORLD CANCER DAY

Cancer is a disease which is very difficult to cure even you can say incurable disease. Still we can fight with It. Now a day’s many different kinds of cancer viruses are detected, so it’s very difficult to fight with all. But it’s not impossible. There are many reasons behind cancer, so first you should know what cause cancer so that you will aware of that. We celebrate Feb 4 – world cancer day, as cancer is a kind of incurable & painful disease. So through this day we aware people how to take care of them. We can’t kill all cancer virus even we can’t change gene mutation but we can change our life style, we can stay away from those things what cause cancer.
So please read this article of cancer awareness, hope it will help you a lot . I am not a doctor but whatever knowledge I have or I gained from different sources I wanna share with you all. So please read & take care yourself, stay healthy. Health is a big issue in everyone’s life. You can compromise with wealth not with health. So be careful.

Even this time I have chosen a project which is based on cancer cure , i choose this because cancer is a big issue right now. My project is on nano-robot for cancer curing. As day by day cancer is becoming a general issue, so if we wanna fight with them we have to take steps wisely. We have to take help of engineering. As medicinal treatment is very difficult to fight with disease. So its better fight with them through some other agents like nano robot. As medicine work slowly, so it’s better to take the help of machine like robot. Which can help us many ways? I am working on project based on bio-nano robot for cancer detecting & curing , I don’t know how much I’ll  be success here as it’s a experimental issue , hope if I’ll get a chance to do something more then I’ll work on it. I wanna help mankind through my knowledge. I m not worry as I couldn’t get medical, here also I can help people through my bio + engineering knowledge. I am trying my best. Maybe this time I get less success (in my project) as it’s a graduation level & I have no much vast idea. I wish, god help me so that I can help people in future.

WISH & WORK IS IN MY HAND.
I don’t know my future.

CAUSES OF CANCER

Some general things which causes cancer

acetaldehyde, acrylamide, acrylonitril, abortion, agent orange, alar, alcohol, air pollution, aldrin, alfatoxin, arsenic, arsine, asbestos, asphalt fumes, atrazine, AZT, baby food, barbequed meat, benzene, benzidine, benzopyrene, beryllium, beta-carotene, betel nuts, birth control pills, bottled water, bracken, bread, breasts, brooms, bus stations, calcium channel blockers, cadmium, candles, captan, carbon black, carbon tetrachloride, careers for women, casual sex, car fumes, celery, charred foods, cooked foods, chewing gum, Chinese food, Chinese herbal supplements, chips, chloramphenicol, chlordane, chlorinated camphene, chlorinated water, chlorodiphenyl, chloroform, cholesterol, low cholesterol, chromium, coal tar, coffee, coke ovens,  crackers, creosote, cyclamates, dairy products, deodorants, depleted uranium, depression, dichloryacetylene,  DDT, dieldrin, diesel exhaust, diet soda, dimethyl sulphate, dinitrotouluene, dioxin, dioxane, epichlorhydrin, ethyle acrilate, ethylene, ethilene dibromide, ethnic beliefs,ethylene dichloride, Ex-Lax, fat, fluoridation, flying, formaldehyde, free radicals, french fries, fruit, gasoline, genes, gingerbread, global warming, gluteraldehyde, granite, grilled meat, Gulf war, hair dyes, hamburgers, heliobacter pylori, hepatitis B virus,  hexachlorbutadiene, hexachlorethane, high bone mass, hot tea, HPMA, HRT, hydrazine, hydrogen peroxide, incense, infertility, jewellery, Kepone, kissing, lack of exercise, laxatives, lead, left handedness, Lindane, Listerine, low fibre diet, magnetic fields, malonaldehyde, mammograms, manganese, marijuana, methyl bromide, methylene chloride,  menopause, microwave ovens, milk hormones, mixed spices, mobile phones, MTBE, nickel, night lighting, night shifts, nitrates, not breast feeding, not having a twin, nuclear power plants, Nutrasweet, obesity, oestrogen, olestra, olive oil, orange juice, oxygenated gasoline, oyster sauce, ozone, ozone depletion, passive smoking, PCBs, peanuts, pesticides, pet birds, plastic IV bags, polio vaccine, potato crisps (chips), power lines, proteins, Prozac, PVC, radio masts, radon, railway sleepers, red meat, Roundup, saccharin, salt, sausage, selenium,  semiconductor plants, shellfish, sick buildings, soy sauce, stress, strontium, styrene, sulphuric acid, sun beds, sunlight, sunscreen, talc, tetrachloroethylene, testosterone, tight bras, toast, toasters, tobacco, tooth fillings, toothpaste (with fluoride or bleach), train stations, trichloroethylene, under-arm shaving, unvented stoves, uranium, UV radiation, Vatican radio masts, vegetables, vinyl bromide, vinyl chloride,  vinyl fluoride, vinyl toys, vitamins, vitreous fibres, wallpaper, weedkiller (2-4 D), welding fumes, well water, weight gain, winter, wood dust, work, x-rays.

What causes cancer important issues?


There are about 200 different types of cancer. It can start in any type of body tissue. What affects one body tissue may not affect another. For example, tobacco smoke that you breathe in may help to cause lung cancer. Overexposing your skin to the sun could cause a melanoma on your leg. But the sun won't give you lung cancer and smoking won't give you melanoma.
Apart from infectious diseases, most illnesses (including cancer) are multifactorial.
The fundamental cause of cancer is damaged or faulty genes – the instructions that tell our cells what to do. Genes are encoded within DNA, so anything that damages DNA can increase the risk of cancer. But a number of genes in the same cell need to be damaged before it becomes cancerous.
Most cancers are caused by DNA damage that accumulates over a person's lifetime. Cancers that are directly caused by specific genetic faults inherited from a parent are rare. But we all have subtle variations in our genes that may increase or decrease our risk of cancer by a small amount.
So cancer risk isn't "all in the genes", and it's not all down to lifestyle - it's a combination of the two. We can't change our genetic makeup, but we can all take steps to reduce our risk of cancer. There are many factors involved. In other words, there is no single cause for any one type of cancer.


Cancer causing substances (carcinogens)

A carcinogen is something that can help to cause cancer. Tobacco smoke is a powerful carcinogen. But not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer. So there must be other factors at work as well.

Age

Most types of cancer become more common as we get older. This is because the changes that make a cell become cancerous in the first place take a long time to develop. There have to be a number of changes to the genes within a cell before it turns into a cancer cell. These changes can happen by accident when the cell is dividing. Or they can happen because the cell has been damaged by carcinogens and the damage is then passed on to future cells when that cell divides. The longer we live, the more time there is for genetic mistakes to happen in our cells.

Genetic make up

There need to be a number of genetic mutations within a cell before it becomes cancerous. Sometimes a person is born with one of these mutations already. This doesn't mean they will definitely get cancer. But with one mutation from the start, it makes it more likely statistically that they will develop cancer during their lifetime. Doctors call this genetic predisposition.
The BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer genes are examples of genetic predisposition. Women who carry one of these faulty genes have a higher chance of developing breast cancer than women who do not.
The BRCA genes are good examples for another reason. Most women with breast cancer do not have a mutated BRCA1 or BRCA 2 gene. Less than 3% of all breast cancers are due to these genes. So although women with one of these genes are individually more likely to get breast cancer, most breast cancer is not caused by a high risk inherited gene fault.
This is true of other common cancers where some people have a genetic predisposition – for example, colon (large bowel) cancer.
Researchers are looking at the genes of people with cancer in a study called SEARCH. They also hope to find out more about how other factors might interact with genes to increase the risk of cancer.

The immune system

People who have problems with their immune systems are more likely to get some types of cancer. This group includes people who
·     Have had organ transplants and take drugs to suppress their immune systems to stop organ rejection
·     Have HIV or AIDS
·     Are born with rare medical syndromes which affect their immunity
The types of cancers that affect these groups of people fall into two, overlapping groups
·     Cancers that are caused by viruses, such as cervical cancer and other cancers of the genital or anal area, some lymphomas, liver cancer and stomach cancer
·     Lymphomas
Chronic infections or transplanted organs can continually stimulate cells to divide. This continual cell division means that immune cells are more likely to develop genetic faults and develop into lymphomas.

Smoking, bodyweight, diet and physical activity

Many cancer cases are linked to lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol, diet, or being overweight. In the western world, many of us eat too much red and processed meat and not enough fresh fruit and vegetables. This type of diet is known to increase the risk of cancer. Drinking alcohol can also increase the risk of developing some types of cancer. There is more information about this on the page about diet causing cancer.
Sometimes foods or food additives are blamed for directly causing cancer and described as carcinogenic. This is often not really true. Sometimes a food is found to contain a substance that can cause cancer but in such small amounts that we could never eat enough of it to do any harm. And some additives may actually protect us. There is more about food additives in the page about diet causing cancer.

Day to day environment

By environmental causes we mean what is around you each day that may help to cause cancer. This could include
·     Tobacco smoke
·     The sun
·     Natural and man made radiation
·     Work place hazards
·     Asbestos

Some of these are avoidable and some aren't. Most are only contributing factors to causing cancers – part of the jigsaw puzzle that scientists are still trying to put together. There is more about this in the page about causes of cancer in the environment.



 Cancer cell

Cancer Cell Properties

Cancer cells have characteristics that differ from normal cells. They all acquire the ability to grow uncontrollably. This can result from having control of their own growth signals, losing sensitivity to anti-growth signals, and losing the ability to undergo apoptosis or programmed cell death. Cancer cells don't experience biological aging and maintain their ability to undergocell division and growth.

Cancer Viruses

Researchers have long attempted to elucidate the role that viruses play in causing cancer. Worldwide, cancer viruses are estimated to cause 15 to 20 percent of all cancers in humans. Most viral infections however, do not lead to tumor formation as several factors influence the progression from viral infection to cancer development. Some of these factors include the host's genetic makeup, mutation occurrence, exposure to cancer causing agents, and immune impairment. Viruses typically initiate cancer development by suppressing the host's immune system, causing inflammation over a long period of time, or by altering host genes.
These cancers and viruses are linked
·     Cervical cancer, and other cancers of the genital and anal area, and the human papilloma virus (HPV)
·     Primary liver cancer and the Hepatitis B and C viruses
·     Lymphomas and the Epstein-Barr Virus
·     T cell leukemia in adults and the Human T cell leukaemia virus
·     HPV also probably leads to or pharyngeal cancer and non melanoma skin cancers in some people
There will be people with primary liver cancer and with T cell leukaemia who haven't had the related virus. But infection increases their risk of getting that particular cancer. With cervical cancer, scientists now believe that everyone with an invasive cervical cancer has had an HPV infection beforehand.
Many people can be infected with a cancer causing virus, and never get cancer. The virus only causes cancer in certain situations. Many women get a high risk HPV infection, but never develop cervical cancer. 
Another example is Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). These are some facts about EBV
·     It is very common – most people are infected with EBV
·     People who catch it late in life get glandular fever and have an increased risk of lymphoma
·     In sub Saharan Africa, EBV infection and repeated attacks of malaria together cause a cancer called Burkitt's lymphoma in children
·     In China, EBV infection (together with other unknown factors) causes nasopharyngeal cancer
·     In people with AIDs and transplant patients EBV can cause lymphoma
·     About 4 out of 10 cases of Hodgkin's lymphoma and a quarter of cases of Burkitt's lymphoma (a rare type of non Hodgkin's lymphoma) seem to be related to EBV infection

 Human tumor viruses

 

Although it is convenient to consider human tumor viruses as a discrete group of viruses, these six viruses, in fact, have very different genomes, life cycles, and represent a number of virus families. The path from viral infection to tumorgenesis is slow and inefficient; only a minority of infected individuals progress to cancer, usually years or even decades after primary infection. Virus infection also is generally not sufficient for cancer, and additional events and host factors, such as immunosuppression, somatic mutations, genetic predisposition, and exposure to carcinogens must also play a role.

Hepatitis B and C viruses

 

Hepatitis C virus is an enveloped RNA virus of the flavivirus family. It is capable of causing both acute and chronic hepatitis in humans by infecting liver cells. It is estimated that approximately 3 percent of the world’s population are hepatitis C carriers . Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus results in cirrhosis, which in turn can lead to primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Between 1 and 2 percent of infected patients with subsequent compensated cirrhosis will develop primary hepatocellular carcinoma per year . Transmission of the virus occurs through the blood, with shared needles in intravenous drug abuse, sexual activity, and parturition being the primary routes.
The hepatitis B virus of the family hepadnaviridae is, by contrast, a DNA virus, but the features of its resulting disease share many similarities with hepatitis C virus. Hepatitis B virus also is a blood-borne pathogen that can result in acute and chronic hepatitis. Chronic hepatitis, that is, infections lasting more than three months, can lead to cirrhosis and liver failure. Chronic infection also can lead to the development of hepatocellular carcinoma . Hepatitis B infections is a significant global health problem with an estimated 2 billion people infected and 1.2 million deaths per year attributed to subsequent hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma .

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8)

 

EBV and HHV-8 (also known as Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus) are both herpesviruses that possess large double-stranded DNA genomes. As with all herpesviruses, they encode enzymes involved in DNA replication and repair and nucleotide biosynthesis. They also both possess the ability to establish latency in B lymphocytes and reactivate into the lytic cycle. Both also are associated with naturally occurring tumors in humans.
EBV is a ubiquitous virus that is most commonly known for being the primary agent for infectious mononucleosis. Up to 95 percent of all adults are estimated to be seropositive, and most EBV infections are subclinical. EBV also is associated with a number of malignancies: B and T cell lymphomas, Hodgkin’s disease, post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease, leiomyosarcomas, and nasopharyngeal carcinomas. Of these cancers, Burkitt’s lymphoma, post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease, and leiomyosarcomas show an increased frequency in patients with immunodeficiency, suggesting a role for immunosurveillance in the suppression of malignant transformation.

Human Papillomavirus (HPV)

HPV are small non-enveloped DNA tumor viruses that commonly cause benign papillomas or warts in humans. Persistent infection with high-risk subtypes of human papillomavirus (HPV) is associated with the development of cervical cancer. HPV infects epithelial cells, and, after integration in host DNA, the production of oncoproteins, mainly E6 and E7, disrupts natural tumor suppressor pathways and is required for proliferation of cervical carcinoma cells . HPV also is believed to play a role in other human cancers, such as head and neck tumors, skin cancers in immunosuppressed patients, and other anogenital cancers.
Cervical cancer is the second leading cause of cancer mortality in women worldwide, causing 240,000 deaths annually . Of approximately 490,000 cases reported each year, more than 80 percent occur in the developing world, where effective but costly Pap smear screening programs are not in place . Early precancerous changes and early cancers detected by Pap smears are effectively treated and cured with surgical therapy or ablation. In the absence of effective screening, the disease is detected late. Traditional therapeutic options for cervical cancer that have advanced beyond definitive surgical treatment are chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which are associated with many toxicities and do not offer a lasting cure.

Human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-1)

 

HTLV-1 is a slow transforming, single stranded RNA retrovirus and is associated with adult T-cell leukemia . It possesses a diploid genome similar to other retroviruses: two long terminal repeats flanking gag, pol, and env genes as well as a number of accessory genes. HTLV-1 has a worldwide distribution, with an estimated 12 to 25 million people infected. However, disease is only observed in less than 5 percent of infected individuals. It is transmitted through blood transfusions, sexual contact, and during parturition. HTLV-1 displays a special tropism for CD4 cells, which clonally proliferate in adult T cell leukemia, though how this is effected is not known.
HTLV-1 infection has a very long latency period of 20 to 30 years, but once tumor formation begins, progression is rapid. Standard chemotherapy often can bring about an initial response with a partial or complete remission; however, relapse is common, and median survival is eight months. The HTLV-1Tax gene has been postulated to play an important role in tumorgenesis  through the activation of viral transcription and the hijacking of cellular growth and cell division machinery, but the mechanisms leading to adult T cell leukemia are not well understood. It has been suspected that HTLV-1 infection may not be sufficient to transform, and recent evidence suggests that the decreased diversity, frequency, and function of HTLV-1 specific CD8 T cells in the host may play an important part in the development of adult T-cell leukemia . Therefore, targeted therapies using peptide, recombinant protein, DNA, and viral vectors with the goal of generating neutralizing antibody against HTLV-1 and multivalent cytotoxic T cell response against Tax are under investigation . 

Cancer Viruses: Transformation

Transformation occurs when a virus infects and genetically alters a cell. The infected cell is regulated by the viral genes and has the ability to undergo abnormal new growth. Scientists have been able to discern some commonality among viruses that cause tumors. The tumor viruses change cells by integrating their genetic material with the host cell's DNA. Unlike the integration seen in prophases, this is a permanent insertion in that the genetic material is never removed. The insertion mechanism can differ depending on whether the nucleic acid in the virus is DNA or RNA. In DNA viruses, the genetic material can be directly inserted into the host's DNA. RNA viruses must first transcribe RNA to DNA and then insert the genetic material into the host cell's DNA.



Cancer Viruses: Classes


There are two classes of cancer viruses: DNA and RNA viruses. Several viruses have been linked to certain types of cancer in humans. These viruses have varying ways of reproduction and represent several different virus families.


DNA Viruses

·         The Epstein-Barr virus has been linked to Burkitt's lymphoma. This virus infects B cells of the immune system and epithelial cells.
·         The hepatitis B virus has been linked to liver cancer in people with chronic infections.
·         Human papilloma viruses have been linked to cervical cancer. They also cause warts and benign papillomas.
·         Human herpes virus-8 has been linked to the development of Kaposi sarcoma. Kaposi sarcoma causes patches of abnormal tissue to develop in various area of the body including under the skin, in the lining of the mouth, nose, and throat or in other organs.

RNA Viruses

·         Human T lymphotrophic virus type 1 (HTLV-I), a retrovirus, has been linked to T-cell leukemia.
·         The hepatitis C virus has been linked to liver cancer in people with chronic infections.

Bacterial infection

Bacterial infections have not been thought of as cancer causing agents in the past. But studies have shown that people who have helicobacter pylori (H pylori) infection of their stomach develop inflammation of the stomach lining, which increases the risk of stomach cancer. Helicobacter pylori infection can be treated with a combination of antibiotics.
Research is also looking at whether substances produced by particular types of bacteria in the digestive system can increase the risk of bowel cancer or stomach lymphomas. Some researchers think that particular bacteria may produce cancer causing substances in some people. But research into this issue is at an early stage.
If bacteria do play a part in causing cancer this could be important in cancer prevention. Bacterial infections can often be cured with antibiotics, so getting rid of the infection could be a way to reduce the risk of these types of cancer.
Bacteria
Associated with
Salmonella typhi
is associated with gallbladder cancer.
Streptococcus bovis
is associated with colorectal cancer.
Chlamydia pneumonia
is associated with lung cancer.
Mycoplasma
may also have a role in the formation of different types of cancer.
Helicobacter pylori
has been linked with certainty to stomach cancer and may be related to MALT lymphoma, but may also protect certain individuals from esophageal cancer.

PS -Got these information from different sites & books  

Cancer slogan – Fight until they get tired to kill you. (MINE)

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