Health & Science

Hope for a breast cancer vaccine

Breast cancer strikes 200,000 women in the U.S. each year and claims 40,000 lives. But a team of Cleveland Clinic scientists has developed a vaccine against breast cancer that works in mice and that could—maybe—open the door to routine immunization for women. “If it works in humans the way it works in mice, this will be monumental,” immunologist and study author Vincent Tuohy tells BBC.com. “We could eliminate breast cancer.” Developing a cancer vaccine is tricky: The drug has to trigger an immune reaction against the body’s defective cells, which have grown out of control, without harming healthy tissue. Previous research has identified a protein, called alpha-lactalbumin, common to many breast cancer cells; the protein isn’t found in normal breast cells except when women are breast-feeding. Through “an application of immunologic judo,” Tuohy says, the Cleveland group developed a vaccine that targets the protein; none of the mice in their study injected with the vaccine developed breast cancer, while all the others did.

But even if the vaccine proves effective in subsequent studies, it’s a long way from mice to an actual human vaccine—at least 10 years. Tuohy hopes to start a human trial next year to test for side effects, dosage, and the immune system’s response, and to follow that with a trial in women highly predisposed to breast cancer. “It looks to me to be extremely promising,’’ he says. “Until I see a better idea I’d like to try this.”

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Pinning down acupuncture

Acupuncture “just got a little less alternative,” says Nature News. In China, it’s believed that acupuncture needles stimulate the flow of chi, a vital life energy, through invisible channels in the body. That explanation has never satisfied Western scientists, even though the treatment is used by millions of people worldwide for pain relief and treatment of disease. Now a University of Rochester study has found a possible explanation for why acupuncture can relieve pain. The researchers found that when acupuncture needles were inserted into the feet of mice, levels of a natural painkiller and anti-inflammatory compound called adenosine rose dramatically at the point of insertion. For the treatment to work, however, the needles have to be rotated periodically; this injures the tissue slightly and triggers the adenosine response. The findings illustrate “a clear biological mechanism behind acupuncture,” says neuroscientist and study author Maiken Nedergaard.

The racial limits of empathy

Empathy, a new study finds, is skin-deep. When people see someone else experiencing pain, they subtly respond as if they, too, have been harmed—a phenomenon called pain empathy. But Italian scientists have found that pain empathy is greatly diminished if the two people belong to different races. In the study, two groups of subjects—one of African descent, the other, Italian—were asked to watch brief videos in which a hand was pricked by a needle. One video showed a white hand being stuck; the other, a black hand. When subjects saw a hand being pricked, they registered a sympathetic pain reaction in sensors placed on their hands—but only if the hand they watched belonged to someone of their own race. Subjects who’d expressed more prejudice in a questionnaire also showed less empathy toward opposite-race hands they saw in the videos. Intriguingly, both whites and blacks reacted empathetically when they saw a purple hand being pricked. “This is quite important, because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play,” study author Salvatore Aglioti tells CNN.com. Although empathy in the real world is more complex, says co-author Alessio Avenanti, the findings raise the possibility that racial differences might unconsciously hinder the ability of doctors to empathize with some of their patients, “and may contribute to the causes of racial disparities in health care.”

Money’s hidden cost

Yet more evidence for the universal truth that money does not buy happiness. A study by Belgian psychologists found that richer people aren’t as capable as poorer ones of savoring small pleasures, be it a piece of chocolate or the thought of completing a task or enjoying a hike. A group of volunteers from all economic strata were asked to ponder scenarios in which they traveled, took a sunny walk, or tasted a bar of chocolate. Questioned afterward, those with more money derived less pleasure from these imagined experiences. More provocatively, subjects who were shown an image of a stack of money at the start of the experiment showed an equally diminished ability to savor small pleasures. When they were given an actual piece of chocolate to eat, those who’d seen the picture of the money first gobbled down the candy 50 percent faster than their counterparts—in 32 seconds on average, compared with 45 seconds—and afterward expressed less satisfaction with it. The results suggest that above poverty level, the acquisition of money has little bearing on one’s happiness, says DiscoverMagazine.com, because wealth makes “delights that were already accessible seem less enticing.”