A blog reader (thanks!) sent me the abstract of a brand new study discussing Serenoa repens, more familiarly known as saw palmetto, and its murderous effect on multiple myeloma cells. Sherlock is on holiday, and by the time she returns to Florence, Stefano and I will be on holiday, so I won’t be able to read the full study until September…in the meantime, though, we can feast our eyes on the abstract: http://tinyurl.com/mxrysb

Important excerpt: saw palmetto induced growth arrest of a variety of human leukemia cells including U266 and RPMI 8226 multiple myeloma cells […]. It killed U266 (=myeloma) cells in a time- and dose-dependent manner. More details can be found in the abstract (inhibition of STAT3 signaling, etc.).

According to a 2009 UK drug safety study (http://tinyurl.com/m9ejra), saw palmetto is one of the most widely used herbal preparations for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). As for side effects, Currently available data suggest that S. repens is well tolerated by most users and is not associated with serious adverse events. The majority of adverse events are mild, infrequent and reversible, and include abdominal pain, diarrhoea, nausea and fatigue, headache, decreased libido and rhinitis. We found no evidence for drug interactions with S. repens.

Great. Another promising substance just joined my to-be-tested list…!

One of my fellow myeloma bloggers did a really sweet thing for me and two other bloggers (see: http://lacootina.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-good-company.html): he honored us at a “Relay for Life” event. These, he explained to me, are community based events to raise money for the American Cancer Society. It is a 24 hour event, so families bring tents and kids and organize teams. There’s music, games, etc.  There must be a team member walking all the time, you sign up for hour or so shifts including through the wee hours of the morning. The bags are honoring survivors or in memory of those who died of cancer. There is a candle inside that is lit after dark and burns all night long. The track where everyone is walking is illuminated by thousands of these decorated bags. Inside there is a can of food, which is later donated to a local relief agency.

Well, I was overwhelmed…a bit embarrassed, too, I admit!…but certainly…honored! Thank you, my friend! 😀

This morning, my student “Colleague C” told me a long story involving her parents, grandparents and other close relatives. At one point she brought her uncle and aunt into the picture, “…and after that my uncle and my…ehm…,” she paused, thought for a moment, then lapsed into Italian to ask me: “come si dice ‘zia’ in inglese?” Then a triumphant smile passed over her face, as though she had just remembered the English equivalent of “zia.”

And she exclaimed, “ah yes…and after that my uncle and my uncless…”

I have been neglecting my blog, for which I apologize. It has been a busy time (birthdays and translations, mainly), plus the weather has been very hot and damp here in Florence, which makes it very difficult to do much of anything…

But I plan to post about the full nail fungus treatment study in the next few days…I am going through it right now, in my snippets of time. In the meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this image of a puffin carrying some sand eels back to its burrow, a rather blurry photo taken by yours truly on Skomer Island on July 5th.

A blog reader/friend (thanks!) sent me an amusing little something that I decided to publish today, the hottest or second-hottest day of the summer in Florence so far… 

“Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. It is yet another example of why people learning English have trouble with the language. There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word,  and that word is ‘UP.’  It is listed in the dictionary as being used as an [adv], [prep], [adj], [n] or [v].

It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP, and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report? We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car. 

At other times the little word has a really special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this up is confusing: a drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP…about UP! 

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP , look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add  UP to about thirty definitions. 

If you are UP  to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. 

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth. When it does not rain for awhile, things dry UP. 

One could go on & on, but I’ll wrap it UP, for now….my time is UP, so…time to shut UP! 

Oh wait…one more thing: what is the first thing you do in the morning & the last thing you do at night?  U…P.” 😉

No kidding.

A longtime myeloma list friend/blog reader, thanks!, sent me the link to a new “Blood” study (http://tinyurl.com/lkmrz5) on an antifungal substance called ciclopirox olamine, or CPX, which has been found to decrease cell growth and viability of malignant leukemia, myeloma, and solid tumor cell lines as well as primary AML patient samples at low micromolar concentrations that appear pharmacologically achievable. Furthermore, oral CPX decreased tumor weight and volume in 3 mouse models of leukemia by up to 65% compared to control without evidence of weight loss or gross organ toxicity. (hmmm, I am not entirely sure that I like the sound of “gross organ toxicity”…)

But get this: oral CPX has the ability to target leukemia stem cells. It targets STEM cells. Yes, the bloody evil STEM CELLS! I had to read that part at least twice before it sank in. Well…well…and…WELL!

I don’t know much about this substance, except what I read in the abstract (for instance that it is also an iron chelator)…but a quick bit of online poking led me to a couple of interesting studies, such as http://tinyurl.com/mxn3be. Unfortunately, I had to stop doing more research on this topic and, in fact, don’t have the time right now (=I have a complicated legal translation to do, sigh and double-sigh!) to connect the dots that I feel are lying just beyond my reach…(of course, I could be entirely wrong about the existence of any dots…aaah, if only I had more time…)

Well, as soon as possible, I will ask Sherlock if she would kindly get me the full study…in the meantime, based on what the study abstract tells us, CPX sounds like a very promising substance, to say the least…! I mean, holy cats, let’s say that you have toenail fungus AND myeloma…well, with CPX you might be able to treat both conditions…what an amazing thought…!

And now, before diving back into the peculiar and rather maddening world of Italian-English legalese, I would like to wish my Mom a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Auguri, mamma, ti voglio tanto beneee! Un bacione!

My darling cousin (grazieee!) sent me the link to a nutty but entertaining video…these people clearly do NOT have pets–my furry little ray of sunshine, Peekaboo, would have taken care of all those balls and weird knick knacks in no time.

I kept expecting something useful to happen…such as coffee machines turning on, pancakes being flipped, but no, as you will see…hum, well, I won’t spoil it for you by revealing too much. Watch this video, which gets crazier and crazier: http://tinyurl.com/mh62jf

Again, thanks to my cousin, here is an extraordinary video about an autistic artist, Stephen Wiltshire, drawing Rome from memory in just three days. Lovely (real) aerial views of Italy’s capital, too: http://tinyurl.com/y45nuh Enjoy!

P.S. Yesterday, after returning from our relaxing weekend in the mountains, I spent too much time in front of the monitor and developed a whopping headache. Uffa. So I am staying away from the computer today…and postponing my bits and pieces of serious research…pazienza…

I must say, I am not a huge fan of magic tricks, but my cousin (thanks!) sent me the link to one that really fooled me…until I saw how it was done, that is. Thought I would share it: http://tinyurl.com/2bgczv

And my niece (thanks, sweetie) sent me the link to an amazing awwww story. Before you click on this link, though, a word of advice–keep some Kleenex handy: http://tinyurl.com/6alnmo I know, I know, it looks really fake, but it’s not (check Snopes if you don’t believe me: http://tinyurl.com/5nwlhx).

Finally, those interested in Nigella sativa (see my Page on “Black Cumin”) should check out this June 2009 study on thymoquinone and pancreatic cancer cells: http://tinyurl.com/mffcmr Wow.

Okay, that’s it. Stefano and I are spending the weekend in the mountains…near Florence…and will be back on Sunday evening. So have a super weekend…and…see you on Monday or thereabouts…! 😆

It’s hard to know where to begin telling you about our in-many-ways-wonderful-but-in-others-dreadful weekend trip to Wales. Let’s see…how about from the drenching downpour that dumped seemingly endless buckets of water on our boat to Skomer Island on Saturday morning? Or from the climb up the steep island cliff, a climb made even more taxing by the blinding sheets of rain and the heavy water-sogged jeans clinging to our legs and dripping water inside our by-then-useless gore-tex boots?

 

Hmmm, let’s begin with early Saturday morning in Martin’s Haven…where we waited in line for the Skomer boat to pick us up. It was a very short line…the huge crowds that I had read about and expected were nowhere to be seen…I counted no more than a dozen cheerful and friendly Brits. We later understood that most day trippers had been discouraged, rightly so!, by the dismal weather reports. Looking around, I noticed that everyone else, even those staying just for one night (like us), had huge clunky bags compared to our small light knapsacks…how odd, I thought…

 

It was only when the above-described deluge began that I realized how dumb we had been. Our fellow travelers had at least two or three changes of WARM easy-to-dry clothes, whereas we had only one miserable little change of clothes (=heavy cotton, which takes forever to dry), and, duuuh, no extra shoes except flip flops…During the crossing, almost everything–our towels, extra socks, underwear/knickers and pyjamas–got soaked…everything except our sleeping bags, which I had had the unusual foresight to stuff inside a big plastic bag.

 

As if being wet wasn’t bad enough, on Saturday evening the temperature on the island dropped to the point where Stefano and I also got a bit chilled….so while the others went off in their warm dry clothes to watch the Manx Sheerwaters fly about at midnight, we had to give up by 10:30 PM and go to bed, shivering and cursing our stupidity…but I would like to note that, in spite of my weakened immune system, I didn’t get even the slightest of sniffles. I was and am fine. Just fine. Thanks to curcumin? Probably. My poor Stefano instead developed a cough and is currently on antibiotics (he is not a regular curcumin-taker…).

 

Well, we soon found out that the weather can change rapidly on Skomer. In a matter of minutes, terrific offshore winds could blow in terrific offshore rainstorms, which usually lasted long enough for us to get soaked to the bone…again. No matter…this taught us a few useful lessons for our next trip to Skomer:

 

1.    come better equipped, with waterproof pants and warmer clothes, even in July.

2.    keep an eye on the more weather-savvy Brits. Whenever they stop snapping photographs and speed off toward the island farmhouse, make haste to follow them. At one point, you see, Stefano and I were so busy taking photos of adorable puffins that we didn’t notice that everyone else had disappeared…then, all of a sudden, whoosh splat splat!!!, our still-damp pants got thoroughly soaked again.

3.    don’t lose sight of the horizon. At the first sign of a dark cloud, sprint for shelter.

 

Luckily, it didn’t rain all the time. The sun came out here and there. As soon as it did, we would rush downstairs to put on our waterlogged socks and boots and head toward the Wick, where the main island puffin population lives. We didn’t see any chicks but heard that a woman photographer got a photo of a puffling (baby puffin) being fed by a parent. Drat.

 

Ah, that reminds me of an amusing occurrence. Whenever we ran into other photographers, a couple of whom, judging by their expensive equipment and demeanour, were certainly professionals, we would exchange pleasantries, such as “hello…sooo, what did you get?” I would answer, elatedly “I got a shot of a puffin carrying some fish in its beak! How about you?” Invariably, the response would be something like “oh, that’s lovely…hum, well, I got a shot of a puffin standing on its head and sipping a frozen margarita through a straw while reading a local newspaper and smoking a cigar…” Yep, I was always put to shame. After a couple of times, I stopped asking…

 

Aside from the amazingly unpredictable weather, my most vivid memory of Skomer is of puffins at our feet…yes indeedie, they came so close that we could have reached down to pat their cute little heads (we didn’t, of course!, but the temptation was enormous…).

 

Puffins at our feet, tilting their heads to look up at us (=two tall peculiar featherless and wingless creatures), inquisitively and with no trace of fear or distrust. Quite a different experience compared to the one we had on the Farne Islands last year…undoubtedly because, even with the day trippers, there was only a handful of people on Skomer (again, probably due to the poor weather conditions).

 

And, once the few hardy day trippers had left on the 2:30 PM boat, on a couple of occasions Stefano and I found ourselves alone at the Wick…just the two of us, surrounded by puffins strutting about, diving off the cliffs, landing clumsily on land with their beaks filled with sand eels, whizzing past us like flying bullets, tenderly “kissing” their partners, tugging away at weeds, picking up small stones with their beaks…and delighting us beyond measure…