FC Barcelona’s Medical Services announce that Barça Manager, Tito Vilanova, has a suffered parotid ailment relapse. Vilanova will undergo surgery on Thursday. Later on he will receive chemotherapy and radiation treatment for approximately six weeks. The treatment may be compatible with Vilanova’s work life.
Scientists from the Colorectal Cancer Laboratory at the Barcelona Institute of Biomedical Research (IRB) have discovered the essential process that allows colon cancer cells to metastasise. They have concluded that tumour cells need to form alliances with healthy cells in order to be able to colonise other organs. Tumour cells can survive in the transition period during the metastasis process thanks to a protein (interleukin-11), which is produced by healthy cells that are exposed to another protein (TGF-beta) present in the tumour’s microenvironment. This discovery may lead to new treatments and diagnostic proceedings for colon cancer patients. A test to predict relapse cases and target treatments is likely to be ready in 5 years. The study has been published by the prestigious journal Cancer Cell.
The New York-based centre is considered the world’s best hospital in the fight against cancer. Dr. Baselga will direct a team of 834 doctors attending more than 123,000 patients per year. The Catalan doctor is currently Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Associate Director of the MGH Cancer Center, and Scientific Director of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona. Furthermore, Dr. Baselga holds a Chair of Medicine at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). The Catalan doctor will combine his new job in New York, which will start on January 1st, with his position in Barcelona’s centre.
Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic has coordinated a world pioneer medical study with 60,000 patients. The study has compared the effectiveness of early detection of colon cancer by using a colonoscopy or a specific analysis searching blood in the patients’ faeces. The findings have proven that both diagnostic tests are equally reliable. Considering the differences between the financial costs of both tests, health risks, and comfort, colonoscopy might only be used for confirmation or treatment purposes. In addition, from now on all people older than 50 might be regularly checked in an easier and cheaper manner.
Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Greater Barcelona has become the first facility in the world to assist a woman who lost her two ovaries to get pregnant. A decade ago she had to have her ovaries completely removed because of two tumours. Ovarian tissue was frozen, kept for ten years and now re-implanted. The patient has had her period again and, thanks to in vitro fertilisation, is now pregnant.
Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to adapt a series produced and broadcast by Catalonia’s public TV station. The American name will be ‘The Red Band Society’ and Marta Kauffman, creator of ‘Friends’, might be in charge of the script. The main characters in the series are a group of teenagers with cancer, who develop a friendship and explore their imagination in hospital. ‘Polseres vermelles’ was a huge success on Catalan television and the second season is in production.
The Catalan Government is obliged to reduce the public deficit and the public healthcare system is also subsequently affected by the budget cuts. Doctor and nursing unions are mobilised, while salary reduction and temporary lay offs are being discussed. Waiting lists have increased due to some hospital services being partially and temporarily closed, especially during the summer months. Many citizens have been protesting, in different demonstrations. The Catalan Health Ministry announced new maximum waiting times for severe interventions. In addition, some hospitals are reopening some operating rooms.
The study by the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute has managed to demonstrate that a molecule similar to glucose can cause the death of cancerous cells. The research would enable to shortly develop treatments for the alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma.
"This could mean a breakthrough in the fight against cancer," said the head of the study Juan Angel Recio from Barcelona-based Vall d’Hebron Research Institute.
Catalan researchers participated in an international study which analysed of more than 20,000 women from various countries. They have found that using intrauterine contraceptive devices (IUD) reduces the risk to suffer cervical cancer by half.
Researchers from Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic and the University of Oviedo (Asturias) have sequenced Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia’s entire genome for the first time. Mutations in four genes have been identified as one of the illness triggers. The study was published last Sunday in the prestigious journal ‘Nature’.
An international study led by a Catalan team of researchers finds that the vaccine is not only effective in women between the ages of 9 and 26 , but in women older than 26. Women up to 45 years old could use this preventative vaccine. The study is published this Wednesday in the ‘British Journal of Cancer’.
The new drug, called ‘Eribulin’, improves the survival rate of patients with a metastasis from breast cancer by 20%. The drug has been developed by a multinational team lead by staff from Barcelona’s Vall d’Hebron Hospital. The study has been published in the reference medical journal ‘The Lancet’.
A new technique has been put into place that enables more precise irradiations, affecting surrounding organs less and thus minimising secondary effects. The Catalan monographic hospital is the 2nd in Spain to use this technique.
The new Research Unit for Molecular Therapy at the Vall d'Hebron Hospital will be able to treat 400 patients a year. It will study each particular tumour differently, on a case per case basis, and analyse it?s genome.