Lipton lovers, beware! With gallons guzzled throughout the year and a guaranteed summer heat-beater, iced tea is the go-to refreshing soda substitute for many. With over 80 percent of the tea drank in the United States each year being iced tea, its popularity is growing with new tea infusions and more bottles being produced to keep up with demand. However, men need to beware, as new evidence suggests that iced tea can make them at higher risk for kidney stones. Lemonade, anyone?

The demographic being targeted for this new study are men over the age of 40 who hold a higher risk for kidney stones. Kidney stones are little crystals developed in the kidneys that travel through the urinary tract into the bladder causing extreme pain. Side effects of a kidney stone can include nausea and vomiting as well as added kidney pressure depending on the size and length of time it stays within the body blocking the flow of urine. Kidney stones affect about 10 percent of the population and while women aren’t immune, men are four times more at risk of developing them.

Kidney stones have a higher concentration during summer months when heat and humidity are at their highest. Because dehydration is common when it’s hot out, the kidneys don’t have enough fluids to cleanse out of the body and the kidneys start slowing down causing deficiencies and a buildup of chemicals within the kidneys due to dehydration can form painful stones.

If you want to avoid kidney stones just follow these six steps to a healthier you. Keep hydrated with fluids to decrease saturation in your urine, the best fluids to drink are water and lemonade. Iced Tea and sodas are to be avoided because of their mineral  content. High protein foods like spinach, nuts and rhubarb and high protein diets also contribute to stone formation, as well as an over-consumption of vitamin C. High risk adults for kidney stones shouldn’t use large quantities of antacids. If you already have a stone or are prone to kidney stones, taking vitamin B and magnesium should help reverse the formation of new stones and lessen the pain of passing stones through your system.

Some men have likened the pain of kidney stones to child birth—and I’m sure there are women who would refute that claim—however I haven’t had the pleasure of having either a kidney stone or a child so I can’t weigh in. Even though my risk is significantly lower than the average middle-aged man, you can bet I will be refilling my water bottle and adding a lemon wedge from time to time just in case.

Stem cells can generate into many types of cells in the body. In a recent study Genentech scientists in San Francisco say they have grown entire prostates in mice using only a single adult stem cell.  The success of the study was made possible by identification of a genetic signature which distinguished stem cells from other cells. The information has not been confirmed in humans, but understanding normal cells should help with the understanding of how prostate cancer develops.

Some scientists consider that stem cells in normal tissues produce cancer. Study co-author Leisa Johnson, a senior scientist with Genentech said that has not been proven. Stem cells have several surface markers, but they are also on other cells, making identification difficult. The study authors found a new marker, CD117, combined with previously known prostate stem cell cancer markers. This allowed identification of a single, normal prostate stem cell. That cell was able to generate a functional prostate and was capable of renewing itself. This holds the promise of treatments and even cures for many diseases.

Johnson explained that it is important to define a normal cell compartment that can generate a tissue. Once that knowledge is available it would be able to identify the compartment that goes awry if cancer initiates. What is resistant, what is regenerating a tumor, is the same cell responsible for generation of normal tissue?

According to Paul Sanberg, professor of neurosurgery and director of the University of South Florida Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair in Tampa “It’s another step showing that stem cells can be a root case of cancer, so it gives targets for treatment.”

Wei-Qiang Gao, Ph.D. also of Genentech said that same kind of cells carrying the same CD117 marker can be found in humans. According to Gao and colleagues two different research teams recently reported growing mouse mammary glands from a single stem cell. The finds add to this “hallmark advancement in the stem-cell research field.” Researchers grew their transplant cells in gel in the lab, and when the gels were placed inside the kidneys of immune-deficient mice, they grew into functional prostrate tissue.

Stem cells have had scientists extremely interested in recent years because of the potential to grow specific cells to replace damage or diseased tissue. The interest has also generated a lot of public controversy because the biggest focus has been on embryonic cells. Embryonic cells are “pluripotent” and can become any tissue in the body. There are “unipotent” adult stem cells which are already programmed to divide into specific cells. These were the cells used in this research. Isolating “unipotent” cells and getting them to regenerate into the desired tissue has been a major hurdle. Future medical research will show whether tailor made transplants can be grown from a patient’s own cells by using the findings of this study.

Smoking prevalence has been declining in countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but these declines are matched by increasing rates in most other countries.

The Healthy People 2010 goal in the United States is to decrease prevalence from 24 percent to 12 percent by the year 2010. This goal can only be achieved by helping current smokers to quit. Increasing the incidence of quitting is achieved through medications, counseling strategies, and public health approaches.

In the United States smoking became increasingly popular from the early 1900s through the mid-1960s, but it then declined substantially. During the 1950s, the link between smoking and respiratory diseases and cancer became known. In 1964, the first surgeon General’s Report on smoking noted the substantial health hazards associated with smoking. Cigarette smoke contains more than 4,000 chemicals, of which forty-three are known to cause cancer. Among the more toxic chemicals in tobacco are ammonia, arsenic, carbon monoxide, benzene. Cigarette smoking is now known to cause herat disease, stroke, multiple cancers and adverse reproductive outcomes. Smoking causes about 21 percent of all deaths from heart disease, 86 percent of deaths from lung cancer, and 81 percent of all deaths from chronic lung disease.

Nicotine is highly addictive and causes persistent and compulsive smoking beehavior. Most users make four to six quit attempts before they are able to remain nicotine-free. Smoking cessation produces major and immediate health benefits by reducing mortality and morbidity from heart disease, stroke, cancer, and various lung diseases.

A team of scientists has discovered a potential treatment for a group of tumours that have resisted previous targeted therapy approaches.

While conducting a study, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute , Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center  Cancer Center found that combining two different kinase inhibitors – drugs that interfere with specific cell-growth pathways – led to significant tumour shrinkage in mice with lung -cancer driven by mutations in the K-Ras gene.

In addition to their association with nearly 30 percent of cases of non-small-cell lung cancer, K-Ras mutations are involved in many cases of colon cancer and most pancreatic cancers, which are extremely resistant to treatment.

“Finding a way to effectively treat K-Ras-mutated cancers would be a huge advance in solid tumour oncology, since these mutations are common in several incurable cancers,” Nature quoted Jeffrey Engelman, MD, PhD, of the MGH Cancer Center, one of the report’s co-lead authors, as saying.

“Cancers with K-Ras mutations have been resistant to all targeted therapies to date, and it is exciting to learn that a combination of PI3K and MEK inhibitors, two families of drugs currently in clinical development, may be highly effective in these cancers,” Engelman added.

The current study began with a focus on the PI3K signaling pathway, which is key to cell survival and known to control cellular motility and adhesion. PI3K mutations have caused tumour development in laboratory studies, but their role had not yet been studied in an animal model.

For the study, the researchers developed a transgenic mouse in which administration of the drug doxycycline induces the expression of cancer-associated PI3K mutations, leading to development of lung tumours. Treatment of those animals with an investigational PI3K inhibitor did lead to rapid tumour regression.

Since previous studies suggested that PI3K inhibition might also block K-Ras-induced tumour development, the researchers also tested the PI3K inhibitor in mice with K-Ras-stimulated tumours.

That treatment was ineffective, but since -Ras also activates the MEK/ERK signalling pathway, the researchers treated the animals with an investigational MEK inhibitor and with a combination of both drugs.

Treatment with the MEK inhibitor alone caused only a modest reduction in tumour size, but combined treatment with both agents caused the K-Ras-stimulated lung tumours to virtually disappear.