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Effects of an integrated yoga program in modulating perceived stress levels, anxiety, as well as depression levels and radiation-induced DNA damage were studied in 68 breast cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy. Two psychological questionnaires-Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)-and DNA damage assay were used in the study. There was a significant decrease in the HADS scores in the yoga intervention group, whereas the control group displayed an increase in these scores. Mean PSS was decreased in the yoga group, whereas the control group did not show any change pre-and postradiotherapy. Radiation-induced DNA damage was significantly elevated in both the yoga and control groups after radiotherapy, but the postradiotherapy DNA damage in the yoga group was slightly less when compared to the control group. An integrated approach of yoga intervention modulates the stress and DNA damage levels in breast cancer patients during radiotherapy.

BackgroundSevere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in later February 2003, as a new epidemic form of life-threatening infection caused by a novel coronavirus. However, the immune-pathogenesis of SARS is poorly understood. To understand the host response to this pathogen, we investigated the gene expression profiles of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) derived from SARS patients, and compared with healthy controls.ResultsThe number of differentially expressed genes was found to be 186 under stringent filtering criteria of microarray data analysis. Several genes were highly up-regulated in patients with SARS, such as, the genes coding for Lactoferrin, S100A9 and Lipocalin 2. The real-time PCR method verified the results of the gene array analysis and showed that those genes that were up-regulated as determined by microarray analysis were also found to be comparatively up-regulated by real-time PCR analysis.ConclusionsThis differential gene expression profiling of PBMCs from patients with SARS strongly suggests that the response of SARS affected patients seems to be mainly an innate inflammatory response, rather than a specific immune response against a viral infection, as we observed a complete lack of cytokine genes usually triggered during a viral infection. Our study shows for the first time how the immune system responds to the SARS infection, and opens new possibilities for designing new diagnostics and treatments for this new life-threatening disease.

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MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are members of a family of non-coding RNAs of 8-24 nucleotide RNA molecules that regulate target mRNAs. The first miRNAs, lin-4 and let-7, were first discovered in the year 1993 by Ambros, Ruvkun, and co-workers while studying development in Caenorhabditis elegans. miRNAs can play vital functions form C. elegans to higher vertebrates by typical Watson-Crick base pairing to specific mRNAs to regulate the expression of a specific gene. It has been well established that multicellular eukaryotes utilize miRNAs to regulate many biological processes such as embryonic development, proliferation, differentiation, and cell death. Recent studies have shown that miRNAs may provide new insight in cancer research. A recent study demonstrated that more than 50% of miRNA genes are located in fragile sites and cancer-associated genomic regions, suggesting that miRNAs may play a more important role in the pathogenesis of human cancers. Exploiting the emerging knowledge of miRNAs for the development of new human therapeutic applications will be important. Recent studies suggest that miRNA expression profiling can be correlated with disease pathogenesis and prognosis, and may ultimately be useful in the management of human cancer. In this review, we focus on how miRNAs regulate tumorigenesis by acting as oncogenes and anti-oncogenes in higher eukaryotes.