
Oral vaccination against pancreatic tumours
The world’s first gene cancer therapy study of an innovative oral vaccine is underway at the Surgical Clinic of Heidelberg University Hospital.

The world’s first gene cancer therapy study of an innovative oral vaccine is underway at the Surgical Clinic of Heidelberg University Hospital.

A €35,000 DRG reimbursement for TAVI has put Germany in the lead for this procedure – and prompted sharp competition and disputes between cardiologists and cardio-surgeons, Holger Zorn reports.

Stroke survivors who like art have a significantly higher quality of life than those who do not, according to new research. Patients who appreciated music, painting and theatre recovered better from their stroke than patients who did not.

Using a mathematical formula that carefully measures the degree to which HIV infection of immune system cells is stalled by antiretroviral therapy, AIDS experts at Johns Hopkins have calculated precisely how well dozens of such anti-HIV drugs work, alone or in any of 857 likely combinations, in suppressing the virus.

Every year in Germany, four million wounds leave a legacy of 30 000 amputations and six billion Euros in treatment costs. These shocking figures drew wound experts to the Pflege Kongress 2012 (2012 Care Congress) held in Berlin.

People who donate a portion of their livers for transplant to a relative or friend whose liver is failing can generally expect to live long, healthy lives and recover safely from the donation surgery, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.

Changing the organ donation process in this country from opt-in — by, say, checking a box on a driver’s license application— to opt-out, which presumes someone’s willingness to donate after death unless they explicitly object while alive, would not be likely to increase the donation rate in the United States, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

Step by step, the Helsinki Declaration is being implemented: Great Britain and the Netherlands have made it law. In Germany, it is voluntary. Report: Susanne Werner

The European Research Council (ERC) has earmarked about €2.5 mio. to fund the research being conducted by gastroenterologist and biochemist Professor Dr. Dr. Detlef Schuppan at Mainz University Medical Center. Professor Schuppan is a specialist in liver diseases ranging from fibrosis to cirrhosis (the terminal stage of fibrosis) to hepatic cancer.

Prostate cancer is the most frequent cancer in men with about 49,000 newly diagnosed cancers in Germany and 6,000 in the Netherlands, annually.

Ian Mason reports from Chicago

According to a study published by Cancer Research UK scientists the survival rates of bladder cancer patients treated with radiotherapy are the same as those of patients undergoing radical cystectomy. The researchers investigated the medical records of 169 patients with invasive bladder cancer that were treated in Leeds between 1996 and 2000.