Cholesterol

So far this year, the number of patients appears likely to match or exceed the total for last year.

The van costs about $450,000 a year to run.

Program director Janet Rizan said it receives about $125,000 a year in grants to cover its mammogram services.

Regular van stops include the Center for Pan Asian Community Services and a refugee resettlement agency in Stone Mountain, which also draws African-Americans from south DeKalb.

Program coordinator Genia Morse said most people hear about the service through word of mouth.

The van's staff, some of them bilingual, tries to explain where people can go for follow-up care because the program isn't designed to offer ongoing care.

"We really work with people that many times are not familiar with our health care system," said Morse.

"Many times they come to us and they just don't know where to turn." The people who lined up Thursday included a second-grader whose school nurse said she needed a vision screening, a construction worker who wanted to get a tetanus shot and a woman worried about pain in one of her breasts.

As for Celio, she found out that her baby, Celeste, had a virus that was probably close to running its course.

A nurse offered her the name of an over-the-counter medicine she could buy.

The nurse also gave her the name of a clinic with a Spanish-speaking staff that charges on a sliding scal...

Sirica and his colleagues the direct effect of such obstruction on bile duct cancer cell growth and aggressiveness had not been previously investigated.

These new findings are highly significant for two reasons, says Dr.

Sirica.

First, they establish an important correlation between bile duct obstruction and bile duct cancer, suggesting growth regulatory mechanisms that could be highly significant in the progression of the cancer and that could become good molecular targets for drug therapy.

Second, they establish a unique preclinical model of how bile duct cancer in liver progresses that can be used to rapidly test and evaluate novel molecular treatment strategies.Such strategies are badly needed for this understudied cancer, adds Dr.

Sirica.

The incidence and mortality of cholangiocarcinoma, the primary cancer of the bile ducts, is increasing worldwide.

Some 3,500 new cases are now diagnosed annually in the United States.

Survival rates remain dismally low because most patients have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis and thus are poor candidates for the current best treatment, surgical resection.

Although there are some known risk factors for the disease (such as primary sclerosing cholangitis), the cause of mos...

The study showed 10 percent of children with healthy weight had at least one risk factor.

And 25 percent of overweight children had two or more risk factors.

There are other health consequences that can become potential problems for children and teens as well.

They include type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, poor self-esteem and social discrimination.In addition to the health problems during their youth, children and teens could experience various chronic diseases as adults including hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease.Overweight adolescents are at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese as adults.

About one third of all severely obese adults were overweight as children.Maintaining a healthy weight during childhood and adolescence may reduce the risk of becoming overweight or obese as an adult.It is important to try and encourage children and teens to keep up healthy eating habits, participate in daily physical activity, and limit television viewing.

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