Bush Considers
AIDS National
Security Threat

In what could become a significant national security threat, a U.S. intelligence report predicts that over 75 million people will have the AIDS virus in five of the world’s most populous countries by 2010.
HIV will devastate the economies and weigh down the health services of China, Russia, India, Nigeria and Ethiopia, according to a report released Monday by the National Intelligence Council, entitled “The Next Wave of HIV/AIDS.”

The five countries are home to 40 percent of the world’s population.

“Their governments are at a critical phase of determining their response,” said David F. Gordon, a principal author of the report, during a briefing at CIA headquarters. “The disease is building up a significant momentum in each of the five countries.”

Thailand, Brazil and Uganda were highlighted for their success in slowing down HIV infections, primarily through educational awareness programs. South Africa, however, did little to combat its crisis, and infection rates soared in the 1990s, the report noted.
The report said that all five countries need “dramatic shifts in priorities” in order to control their AIDS epidemics by 2010.

Cancer and Alcohol
Make a Deadly Cocktail

Excessive drinking may shorten the lives of cancer patients. A Washington State University study found that drinking can double the weight loss that a cancer patient normally losses thereby decreasing their life span.

The university’s research team injected some mice with melanoma cells and left others cancer-free. Some mice were then fed water while others were fed alcohol. The alcohol-fed mice with cancer lost nearly twice as much weight as the water-fed mice with cancer. The weight loss was not attributed to decreased food intake or dehydration.


Vitamin D May Be Crucial in Preventing Colon Cancer

A study detailing just how vitamin D helps to prevent colon cancer is being published in the current issue of the journal, Science. While it has long been suspected that vitamin D was connected with reduced rates of cancer, until now scientists have not been able to pinpoint just how or why.

Their study showed a specific type of bile acid called lithocholic acid (LCA) activates the vitamin D receptor. LCA is a known carcinogen. Once the vitamin D receptor is on, this triggers other proteins that detoxify the bile acid and removes the LCA.
Once researchers understood that, they wondered if a drug that acts like Vitamin D might also help in reducing colon cancer by turning on the vitamin D receptor and triggering the removal of LCA. They would have to proceed carefully because high levels of vitamin D or drugs that mimic vitamin D have been known to lead to dangerously high levels of calcium in the blood.

Understanding the relationship between Vitamin D, bile acids and colorectal cancer is critical to cancer prevention in the future.

LCA is produced as a by-product when intestinal bacteria digest primary bile acids, which are produced in the liver. Primary bile acids are what help the body digest dietary fats. This is the link between high fat “Western” diets and, bile acids like LCA, and colon cancer that scientists have been searching for.
Humans with defective vitamin D signaling pathways have a higher rate of colon cancer, something else that has remained unexplained until now. Proving why was no easy task, though.

David J. Mangelsdorf from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center explains how they did it in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute News.
“…Researchers showed that the vitamin D receptor strongly binds to LCA. But the researchers also needed to demonstrate that binding LCA actually activates a key gene, called CYP3A, which triggers the cell’s detoxification machinery. The scientists attached a “reporter” gene to CYP3A in human cells in culture to detect cancer.