<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b1d4886bb3f7671c037bc3-768-1024/melanoma-normal-mole.jpg" alt="melanoma normal mole" border="0" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melanoma_vs_normal_mole_ABCD_rule_NCI_Visuals_Online.jpg">National Cancer Institute</a></span></p><p class="caption">The left column shows examples of melanomas. The right column shows examples of normal moles. These examples are not comprehensive, and you should have a dermatologist take a look at any moles you're concerned about.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20% of Americans will develop skin cancer at some point in their lives <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/what_cdc_is_doing/indoor-tanning.htm" target="_blank">if current trends continue</a>.</p><p>While not all skin cancers are deadly, melanoma, the most dangerous and third-most-common kind, is extremely deadly if not found early. <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/skincancer-melanoma/detailedguide/melanoma-skin-cancer-key-statistics" target="_blank">The American Cancer Society estimates</a> that in the United States in 2016, about 76,380 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed, and 10,130 people are expected to die from the disease.</p><p>Fortunately, melanoma is easy to treat if caught early enough, and it usually provides a telltale sign that you should talk to your doctor about: a mole, blemish, or mark on your skin. There's an easy way to evaluate those moles, which can be remembered with the acronym ABCDE.</p><p>We had Dr. Amy Derick, a clinical instructor of dermatology at Northwestern University, walk us through these common guidelines.</p><h2>Know Your ABCDEs</h2><ul><li><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">A stands for asymmetry.</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> If one half of a mole looks different from another, that's a sign that the mole could be cancerous.</span></li><li><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">B stands for border irregularity.</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Irregular, poorly defined, or blurred borders can be a sign of melanoma.</span></li><li><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">C is for color.</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Particularly dark or multicolored moles may be risky.</span></li><li><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">D stands for diameter.</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Moles larger than pencil erasers are noteworthy, though melanoma can be smaller too.</span></li><li><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">E is for evolution, or change.</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> A mole that's changing in size, shape, or color is definitely one that should be checked out.</span></li></ul><p>If anything seems amiss or if you are unsure whether a mole is risky or not, you should see a board-certified dermatologist. A dermatologist will be able to spot reasons for concern much more easily than you, so do not attempt to diagnose yourself - or assume you're in the clear.</p><p>There are some apps that say that they can evaluate a mole for you, but Derick says she wouldn't trust them with your life. Even if an app can tell you that a mole might be risky, it can't confirm that by taking a biopsy like a doctor can.</p><p>Still, there is some action you can take on your own. The American Academy of Dermatology recommends that you conduct <a href="http://www.aad.org/spot-skin-cancer/understanding-skin-cancer/how-do-i-check-my-skin/how-to-perform-a-self-exam" target="_blank">a monthly self-examination</a>, taking note of the moles you already have on your body and carefully examining any new ones that show up. A partner can help check spots that are harder for you to see.</p><p>This infographic from the AAD shows how to check your skin for a potential melanoma.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img style="line-height: 1.5em;" src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b1bfba6bb3f7a54d867669-1200-3000/how to spot skin cancer infographic.jpg" alt="how to spot skin cancer infographic" border="0" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.aad.org/spot-skin-cancer/understanding-skin-cancer/how-do-i-check-my-skin/how-to-spot-skin-cancer-infographic">American Academy of Dermatology</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Spotting skin cancer early is essential because that means the cancer can be removed before it spreads. Most skin cancers are caused by exposure to ultraviolet light from the sun. People with lighter skin that burns easily are <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/basic_info/risk_factors.htm" target="_blank">more susceptible</a> to various skin cancers, though anyone's skin can be damaged by sunlight.</p><p>The two most common types of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, both usually occur on parts of the skin that are frequently exposed to the sun - the head, neck, face, hands, arms and legs - though they can develop elsewhere. They don't spread as quickly as melanoma but can still spread to other parts of the body. Basal cell carcinoma grows wide and deep, which can be disfiguring if it's not removed at an early stage. </p><p>Many screenings focus on melanoma since it can spread much more quickly. If removed early the cure rate is almost 100%, but as the cancer spreads to nearby skin, lymph nodes, or internal organs, 5-year <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/skincancer-melanoma/detailedguide/melanoma-skin-cancer-survival-rates" target="_blank">survival rates drop rapidly</a>. The American Academy of Dermatology says that if people are <a href="http://www.aad.org/dermatology-a-to-z/diseases-and-treatments/m---p/melanoma" target="_blank">familiar with warning signs and regularly examine their skin</a>, along with visiting their doctors, the number of melanoma deaths could be much lower.</p>

Should you worry about that mole? Here's how to tell

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c2f8070d4beaf46210182d8-2400/2017-12-05t162318z1606157895rc1fbf931cb0rtrmadp3usa-stocks.jpg" border="0" alt="Pfizer" data-mce-source="Lucas Jackson/ Reuters" data-mce-caption="A logo of Pfizer is displayed on a monitor outside of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., December 5, 2017." /></div></div></div></p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Developing drugs to treat cancer is a major part of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's future strategy.</li><li>Pfizer already has a presence in breast cancer and prostate cancer, but is working to expand that. The company projects that oncology franchises could bring in at least $5 billion annually in the next several years.</li><li>Andy Schmeltz, Pfizer's global head of cancer, told Business Insider about the "recipe" that will help set the company apart. </li></ul><p>Sitting in his spacious, wood-accented midtown office, Pfizer cancer chief Andy Schmeltz gestures to a diagram that charts out drug giant Pfizer's agenda for the next several years.</p><p>It shows the pharmaceutical company's ambitious "15 in 5" plan, laying out the 15 franchises that could become billion-dollar sellers for the company - far more than the five and two produced in prior five-year spans.</p><p>It's also impossible not to notice how many of the drugs treat cancer. At a third of the list, Pfizer hopes oncology could bring in at least $5 billion each year by 2022, with at least a billion in sales expected in total from four new cancer drugs that were recently approved.</p><p>"We're glad you noticed," Schmeltz said, smiling.</p><p>A common stereotype in the healthcare industry goes something like this: Small, adaptable biotech companies come up with innovative new drugs, and then large, slow-moving pharmaceutical companies sweep in and buy them.</p><p>The perception has held particularly strong for Pfizer, which ranks as one of the biggest US drugmakers, with a nearly $250 billion market cap and up to $55.5 billion in expected 2018 revenue. Pfizer is perhaps best known for products like the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra and Lipitor, for high cholesterol. </p><p>The 170-year-old drug behemoth is on a mission to change that, though, with oncology set to play a key role. As part of its focus on producing more cutting-edge medicines, Pfizer recently announced a spin-off of its consumer health business with GlaxoSmithKline, including popular brands like <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-and-glaxosmithkline-will-spin-off-advil-chapstick-and-emergen-c-2018-12">Advil, ChapStick and Emergen-C.</a> </p><p>The company "gets the rap, historically, of being large and slow and, to be honest with you, if you go back not too many years, had a reputation for questionable [research and development] productivity," Schmeltz told Business Insider last month. But "when we see the <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> moving in a particular direction, we can really move quickly."</p><h2>A 'recipe' for cancer investments</h2><p>Pfizer is currently focused on two types of cancer: breast cancer, including its flagship medication Ibrance, and prostate cancer, through its drug Xtandi.</p><p>Schmeltz, a 16-year Pfizer veteran who came up through the commercial side of the company and started as global president of Pfizer Oncology a year ago, points to Ibrance as one of his first examples of how quickly Pfizer can move.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/5c2f891ed4beaf47e538ed54-638/schmeltz photo - for web use - 8sept20160653.jpg" border="0" alt="Andy Schmeltz, Pfizer cancer chief" data-mce-source="Pfizer" data-mce-caption="Andy Schmeltz is the head of Pfizer's global oncology business." /></div></div></div></p><p>The breast cancer drug, which is jointly commercialized with Japan's Astellas Pharma, had its first major data presentation just three years before its US approval in 2015, Pfizer says. Today, about 73% of women with breast cancer are eligible for Ibrance or a medication like it, the drugmaker says.</p><p>The drug giant has also got ambitions in renal cell carcinoma (Sutent, Inlyta and Inlyta plus <span>Bavencio</span>), lung cancer (Xalkori, Lorbrena and Vizimpro) and hematology, Schmeltz said, plus targeted immunotherapy approaches with avelumab. </p><p><strong><em>Read more:</em> </strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pharmaceutical-drugs-investors-to-watch-next-year-2018-12"><em>From the gene therapy that spurred a $9 billion acquisition to a CBD medication for rare types of childhood epilepsy, here are the 12 promising drugs to watch in 2019</em></a></p><p>Morgan Stanley analyst David Risinger, who has called Ibrance Pfizer's top growth driver, said late last month that "its oncology pipeline includes a collective group of new cancer drugs that add up to blockbuster sales potential."</p><p>Not all Pfizer's investments have panned out. Two late-stage ovarian cancer studies failed in recent months. The cancer drug Bavencio has also had failures when tried in other types of cancers.</p><p>Pfizer is also active in longer-term research, the third prong of the company's strategy, which it hopes will produce the next big medical innovations.</p><p>Other companies working in oncology - and there are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gilead-new-ceo-daniel-oday-challenges-2018-12">a growing number</a> - have become leaders in immuno-oncology, using the body's immune system to fight cancer, or focus on blood cancers.</p><p>But part of what Schmeltz calls "the right recipe" means doing the opposite, or investing in a balanced way across different anti-cancer approaches.</p><p>Today, that means using roughly half of Pfizer's resources to invest in categories like small molecule, targeted and precision therapies, or drugs that target specific cancer-linked molecules, and roughly half in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizers-cancer-drug-combination-trials-with-immunotherapy-and-targeted-drugs-2018-5">immuno-oncology approaches</a>, according to Schmeltz, "rather than disproportionately going in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/yale-scientist-cancer-research-trend-wrong-2018-12">one direction</a> or the other."</p><p>"We're trying to be thoughtful that, given the unmet need in oncology, you can't have deep expertise and capability in everything across oncology," he told Business Insider.</p><p><em><strong>Read:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/yale-scientist-cancer-research-trend-wrong-2018-12">A Yale scientist who pioneered a cutting-edge approach to cancer treatment is warning that the field is going off-course - and that drug giants could be making it worse</a></em></p><h2>Building from breast and prostate cancer</h2><p>The pharmaceutical giant also plans to keep leading in breast and prostate cancer, Schmeltz said.</p><p>If ongoing studies testing Ibrance in early breast cancer and as an add-on therapy are successful, they "could really expand the utility of Ibrance to women with breast cancer before the cancer has metastasized, which really could make a profound difference for them," he said, referring to the process by which cancer spreads in the body.</p><p>Those results are expected around 2020 or later. Including a form of metastatic breast cancer that Ibrance is already approved for, success could mean roughly doubling the number of women eligible for the drug, according to Schmeltz.</p><p>The same strategy applies in prostate cancer as well. Pfizer acquired Xtandi as part of a $14 billion <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-pfizer-acquired-cancer-drugmaker-medivation-for-14-billion-2016-8">acquisition of Medivation</a> back in 2016. It started off in the metastatic disease, and recently got a US approval in a non-metastatic form of the disease.</p><p>The drug is also being studied in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer and non-metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer - all paving the way to a wider potential patient population, Schmeltz said.</p><p><strong><em>Read more:</em> </strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizers-cancer-drug-combination-trials-with-immunotherapy-and-targeted-drugs-2018-5"><em>Pfizer executives are changing their tune on an approach for a promising new way to treat cancer, and it could be where the field is headed</em></a></p> <p class="tagline">Get the latest Pfizer stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/pfe-Quote"> here.</a></p>

The drugmaker famous for Viagra has a new strategy for fighting cancer that could generate $5 billion a year. We got a look inside.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b1d4886bb3f7671c037bc3-768-1024/melanoma-normal-mole.jpg" border="0" alt="melanoma normal mole"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melanoma_vs_normal_mole_ABCD_rule_NCI_Visuals_Online.jpg">National Cancer Institute</a></span></p><p class="caption">The left column shows examples of melanomas. The right column shows examples of normal moles. These examples are not comprehensive, and you should have a dermatologist take a look at any moles you're concerned about.</p></img></div><p></p></div></div>Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 20% of Americans will develop skin cancer at some point in their lives <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/what_cdc_is_doing/indoor-tanning.htm" target="_blank">if current trends continue</a>.</p><p>While not all skin cancers are deadly, melanoma, the most dangerous and third-most-common kind, is extremely deadly if not found early. <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/skincancer-melanoma/detailedguide/melanoma-skin-cancer-key-statistics" target="_blank">The American Cancer Society estimates</a> that in the United States in 2015, about 73,870 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed, and 9,940 people are expected to die from the disease.</p><p>Fortunately, melanoma is easy to treat if caught early enough, and it usually provides <strong>a telltale sign that you should talk to your doctor about</strong>: a mole, blemish, or mark on your skin. There's an easy way to evaluate those moles, which can be remembered with the acronym ABCDE.</p><p>We had Dr. Amy Derick, a clinical instructor of dermatology at Northwestern University, walk us through these common guidelines.</p><h2>Know your ABCDEs</h2><p><strong>A stands for asymmetry.</strong> If one half of a mole looks different from another, that's a sign that the mole could be cancerous.</p><p><strong>B stands for border irregularity.</strong> Irregular, poorly defined, or blurred borders can be a sign of melanoma.</p><p><strong>C is for color.</strong> Particularly dark or multicolored moles may be risky.</p><p><strong>D stands for diameter.</strong> Moles larger than pencil erasers are noteworthy, though melanoma can be smaller too.</p><p><strong>E is for evolution, or change.</strong> A mole that's changing in size, shape, or color is definitely one that should be checked out.</p><p>If anything seems amiss or if you are unsure whether a mole is risky or not, you should see a board-certified dermatologist. A dermatologist will be able to spot reasons for concern much more easily than you, so do not attempt to diagnose yourself - or assume you're in the clear.</p><p>There are some apps that say that they can evaluate a mole for you, but Derick says she wouldn't trust them with your life. Even if an app can tell you that a mole might be risky, it can't confirm that by taking a biopsy like a doctor can.</p><p>Still, there is some action you can take on your own. The American Academy of Dermatology recommends that you conduct <a href="http://www.aad.org/spot-skin-cancer/understanding-skin-cancer/how-do-i-check-my-skin/how-to-perform-a-self-exam" target="_blank">a monthly self-examination</a>, taking note of the moles you already have on your body and carefully examining any new ones that show up.</p><p>This infographic from the AAD shows how to check your skin for a potential melanoma.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53b1bfba6bb3f7a54d867669-1200-3000/how to spot skin cancer infographic.jpg" border="0" alt="how to spot skin cancer infographic" style="line-height: 1.5em;"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.aad.org/spot-skin-cancer/understanding-skin-cancer/how-do-i-check-my-skin/how-to-spot-skin-cancer-infographic">American Academy of Dermatology</a></span></p></img></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Spotting skin cancer early is essential because that means the cancer can be removed before it spreads. Most skin cancers are caused by exposure to ultraviolet light from the sun. People with lighter skin that burns easily are <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/basic_info/risk_factors.htm" target="_blank">more susceptible</a> to various skin cancers, though anyone's skin can be damaged by sunlight.</p><p>The two most common types of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, both usually occur on parts of the skin that are frequently exposed to the sun - the head, neck, face, hands, arms and legs - though they can develop elsewhere. They don't spread as quickly as melanoma but can still spread to other parts of the body. Basal cell carcinoma grows wide and deep, which can be disfiguring if it's not removed at an early stage.</p><p>Many screenings focus on melanoma since it can spread much more quickly. If removed early the cure rate is almost 100%, but as the cancer spreads to nearby skin, lymph nodes, or internal organs, 5-year <a href="http://www.cancer.org/cancer/skincancer-melanoma/detailedguide/melanoma-skin-cancer-survival-rates" target="_blank">survival rates drop rapidly</a>. The American Academy of Dermatology says that if people are <a href="http://www.aad.org/dermatology-a-to-z/diseases-and-treatments/m---p/melanoma" target="_blank">familiar with warning signs and regularly examine their skin</a>, along with visiting their doctors, the number of melanoma deaths could be much lower.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/surviving-shark-attack-fight-back-2015-6">Punching a shark in the nose is not your best defense</a></h3>        <div>            <div>    <script src="http://player.ooyala.com/v3/6e12e8b3387a44daacfb73afba25a76e"></script>    <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="0zaml4bToGmvfMip1m2QaqHWY6EvR9fb" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>    <script>    if (typeof RunFunctions === 'undefined') { var RunFunctions = []; }     RunFunctions.push(function()    {         var ooyalapopvideo = OO.Player.create('ooyalaplayer_popvideo', '0zaml4bToGmvfMip1m2QaqHWY6EvR9fb',{ autoplay: 'false' });     });    </script>    <noscript><div>Please enable Javascript to watch this video</div></noscript></div>        </div>        <script>(function() { function createPlayer() { OO.ready(function() { RunFunctions.forEach(function(ooyalaFunction) { ooyalaFunction(); }); RunFunctions = [];}); } createPlayer(); }()); </script>    </div>

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/577282444321f1e2008b474b-2400/diabetes.jpg" alt="diabetes" data-mce-source="Beawiharta Beawiharta/Reuters" data-mce-caption="A paramedic checking the blood sugar levels of a diabetes patient." data-link="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZEAK7K7K" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0BXZEAK7K7K">Beawiharta Beawiharta/Reuters</a></span></p><p class="caption">A paramedic checking the blood sugar levels of a diabetes patient.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>Black people are nearly twice as likely as white people to develop type 2 diabetes.</strong></li><li><strong>A groundbreaking new study looks at the environmental factors that may be to blame.</strong></li><li><strong>Exposure to toxic, endocrine-disrupting chemicals can cause the disease, which disrupts the way the body turns glucose into usable energy.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><span><br />Health experts have known the statistics for years: b</span><span>lack and Latino Americans are almost twice as likely to have diabetes as their white counterparts.</span></p><p><span>But a clear explanation for this racial disparity has remained a mystery until now.</span></p><p><span>A groundbreaking study published in <a href="http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2017/10/20/dc16-2765">Diabetes Care</a> last month reveals that the higher prevalence of diabetes in minority populations around the US could have more to do with where people live than the color of their skin. </span></p><p><span>The report reexamined 50 years' worth of scientific studies on toxic chemicals known as endocrine-disruptors. The authors found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to those chemicals, which leak from gas plants and are found in in ozone pollution from cars. </span></p><p><span>According to a <a href="http://catf.us/resources/publications/files/FumesAcrossTheFenceLine.pdf">report</a> released last week by the Clean Air Task Force and NAACP, "more than 1 million African-Americans live within a half mile of existing natural gas facilities, and the number is growing every year." </span></p><p><span>The report also said ozone smog in many predominantly black neighborhoods is too high.</span></p><p><span>"Many social and cultural factors have combined to contribute to the fact that these groups have traditionally lived in degraded areas where toxic exposures are more likely to occur," Daniel Ruiz, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and a co-author on the paper, said <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-11/uoia-die111317.php">in a release</a>. Ruiz tells Business Insider that he was surprised to find exposure to all kinds of toxic chemicals was higher in low-income neighborhoods and "black and brown communities," from sources like traffic and industrial pollution, to toxic chemicals in consumer products like plastics.</span></p><p><span>The body's endocrine system is involved in some of its most important daily tasks, including processing glucose from food and turning it into fuel. But when that system doesn't function properly, blood sugar can spike, and the energy from food stays in the blood instead of being distributed to cells. </span></p><p><span>Some people are born with this issue - that's type 1 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes can develop for a variety of reasons, inlcuding diet and exercise choices, but increasingly, evidence suggests it can also be due to exposure to air pollution, pesticides, certain plastics, and chemicals used in natural gas production.</span></p><p><span>Not only are black Americans 77% more likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than their white counterparts, but the disease is also more likely to be debilitating for them. The <a href="http://main.diabetes.org/dorg/PDFs/Advocacy/fact-sheet-advocacy-african-american.pdf">American Diabetes Association</a> says black people with diabetes are 2.6 times more likely to have end-stage renal disease than white people with the disease. </span></p><p><span>The recent study is part of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/science/skin-color-race.html?_r=0">growing pile</a> of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2089102/">evidence</a> that racial health disparities may not be about skin color at all. </span></p><p><span>The study authors caution that more research is needed to know exactly how much pollution exposure contributes to diabetes in minority populations, but say this initial evidence should prove helpful to physicians and nurses. </span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gi-surgery-help-treat-type-two-diabetes-science-2016-6">Doctors are recommending a radical new approach to treat diabetes - and it could be a game-changer</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/YMxosmPh-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

Neighborhoods exposed to pollution and toxic chemicals could be breeding grounds for diabetes

<p><div class="image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/52c71faf69bedd91160e77d3-865-648/cancer-cells-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Cancer cells" /><p class="source"><a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-1285039p1.html">jovan vitanovski/Shutterstock</a></p><p class="caption"><keyword id="6355291" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Cancer">cancer</keyword> cells</p></div></div></div>Researchers and drug companies are ganging up for a new push against cancer</p>
<p>"THERE is no treatment." This is the conclusion of an Egyptian papyrus, written around 3000BC, that is the oldest known description of the scourge that is now called "cancer". And so, more or less, it remained until the 20th century, for merely excising a tumour by surgery rarely eliminates it. Only when doctors worked out how to back up the surgeon's knife with <keyword id="14721" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Drugs">drugs</keyword> and radiation did cancer begin to succumb to treatment--albeit, to start with, in a pretty crude fashion.</p>
<p>Now, however, that crudeness is rapidly giving way to sophistication, as a new wave of cancer treatments comes to market. In 2012 more than 500 potential cancer drugs were under investigation, according to a survey by IMS Health, an American research group--over five times as many as were being developed in the next biggest category, diabetes.</p>
<p>Three trends are helping to fill this cancer-drug cornucopia. One is the increase in demand as people live longer, and thus become more likely to develop cancer. According to the World Health Organisation, there were 14m new cases of cancer around the world in 2012. In 2030 there will be nearly 22m. The second trend is the rising price of cancer drugs, particularly in America, the biggest market. More expensive drugs increases profitability. The third is a rapid expansion of scientific knowledge about cancer, the result of both the plummeting cost of genetic sequencing (see chart) and a better understanding of how to recruit the immune system to attack the disease.</p>
<p><div class="image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><img src="http://static6.businessinsider.com/image/52c71d3b6da811a32e0e77cb-580-562/20140104_stc094.png" border="0" alt="Economist Cancer Drugs" /><p class="source"><keyword id="425741" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="The-Economist">The Economist</keyword></p></div></div></div>Or, rather, the diseases. For there are hundreds of kinds of cancer. Their common factor is that they are all caused by cells dividing interminably because something has gone wrong with the victim's genes. The problem may be extra copies of a crucial gene, damage to a gene, modifications that affect a gene's function, or the merger of two chromosomes to create a novel gene not seen in healthy cells. Sometimes these problems are inherited. More often they arise when cellular wear and tear goes unrepaired, a process exacerbated by certain chemicals and radiation.</p>
<p>Understanding the genetic changes that cause particular cancers may suggest ways to attack them with specially tailored drugs. The first example of such a targeted treatment came in 2001, when Novartis launched Gleevec, a treatment for chronic myeloid leukaemia. Gleevec blocks the activity of a protein called BCR-ABL, which is the product of an abnormal gene created by a merger of chromosomes 9 and 22. Before Gleevec, less than a third of those diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia were still alive five years later. After it became available, that figure jumped to 90%.</p>
<h3>New magic bullets</h3>
<p>Gleevec's success inspired others to search for targeted cancer drugs. For example, Pfizer came up with crizotinib (sold under the brand name Xalcori), for lung-cancer patients with a mutated version of a gene called ALK, which encodes a protein that instructs lung cells to divide uncontrollably. And Roche developed vemurafenib (sold as Zelboraf), which goes after another rogue protein, generated by a mutated version of a gene called BRAF. It tells skin cells to reproduce, causing melanoma.</p>
<p>Though much better than older cancer drugs, Gleevec and its successors are not perfect. Many cancers are driven by more than one mutation. Cells also tend to pick up new mutations as they divide. Cancer cells divide a lot, so mutations can accumulate rapidly. And sometimes, to add to the problem, one of the enabling mutations of a cancer is of a gene involved in the DNA-repair mechanism, which a healthy cell would use to deal with mutations. BRCA1 and BRCA2, both often implicated in breast cancer, are DNA-repair genes.</p>
<p>DNA sequencing means it is becoming possible to track mutations, one tumour at a time. This helps in understanding how cancers in different tissues work and it also holds out the hope of treatments tailored even more closely to an individual's needs.</p>
<p>The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), is doing this for 50 different sorts of cancer, with a global team studying the genomes of more than 25,000 individual tumours. Researchers working on the Cancer Genome Atlas, an American effort that is part of the ICGC, published a series of papers in 2013 showing some of the complex relationships. Chris Sander of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, in New York, used an algorithm based on tumours' genetic and epigenetic characteristics to describe 31 subclasses of cancer. Tumours from one type of lung cancer, for example, share traits with those of head and neck cancer. Li Ding, of Washington University, in St Louis, examined more than 3,000 tumours across 12 types of cancer. She reported 127 mutated genes that seem to propel cancer, with most tumours having between two and six mutations.</p>
<h3>Dual roles</h3>
<p>Identifying common genes is only the start. Some mutations seem to play starring roles in one cancer while being supporting characters in another. For example, Dr Ding discovered that the BRAF mutation, known to be present in about half of melanomas, was also found in other cancers, such as 7% of lung adenocarcinomas and 4% of colon and rectal carcinomas.</p>
<p>Even though there remains more basic science to be explored, the genetic approach points to a new way of matching patients to drugs. At the moment, many targeted cancer drugs are accompanied by a diagnostic test for the relevant mutation. The falling cost of sequencing means that a patient might now be tested for hundreds of mutations or even his full "exome" (the DNA that encodes proteins, less than 2% of the total). This means that someone who became resistant to one treatment could immediately be given another, based on the results of such tests. He might even be given a cocktail of treatments in the way that a cocktail of antiretroviral drugs is used to suppress HIV.</p>
<p>Cheaper sequencing is also changing the way that clinical trials are conducted. In November a group of academic researchers and companies, in collaboration with America's National Cancer Institute, announced the Master Protocol trial. This will examine five potential treatments for squamous-cell carcinoma, a type of lung cancer. Rather than hunting separately for five groups of patients with the mutations relevant to each drug, the researchers will use a test from Foundation Medicine, a company that screens patients for abnormalities in 236 genes linked to cancer. They will then match volunteers with each of the five drugs. This approach cuts the administrative time and hassle of what would otherwise be a huge undertaking.</p>
<p>The other novel approach to treating cancer is to rally the immune system to join the fight. Ipilimumab, a drug to treat melanoma, was launched in 2011 by Bristol-Myers Squibb, branded as Yervoy. It is a so-called "checkpoint inhibitor", which by removing a blocking mechanism allows immune-system cells called T-lymphocytes to attack cancer cells (as they are pictured doing on the previous page). The results in some people have been remarkable, but not so in others.</p>
<p>Now other checkpoint inhibitors are being developed. Nivolumab, also from Bristol-Myers Squibb, MK-3475 from Merck, and MPDL3280A from Roche also unleash the immune system on cancer cells. These drugs, moreover, could be effective in more than one type of cancer. Ipilimumab may also fight lung cancer and prostate cancer. In June Roy Herbst, of Yale University, showed that MPDL3280A helped the immune system fight several different types of tumours.</p>
<p>Other medicines are at earlier stages of development. Bristol-Myers Squibb, for example, is testing a chemical that binds to interleukin-21 receptors on T-lymphocytes and other immune cells, helping the T-cells survive and boosting their activity. Unlike checkpoint inhibitors, which work by releasing the brakes on immune cells, this drug pushes the accelerator.</p>
<p>In the lab researchers are trying a variety of approaches. Luigi Naldini of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, in Milan, and his colleagues report this week in Science Translational Medicine that they genetically modified stem cells to make white blood cells that produced a certain protein, interferon, that helped clear tumour cells in mice.</p>
<p>It may, indeed, be possible to combine the two approaches of targeted drugs and immunotherapy. Bristol-Myers Squibb has already tried this, testing ipilimumab in combination with Roche's targeted melanoma treatment, vemurafenib. Researchers stopped the trial in April because of signs of liver toxicity, but that does not mean the general idea is unsound.</p>
<p>On December 5th, for example, GlaxoSmithKline announced partnerships with six academic research centres to develop new therapeutic drug combinations. Axel Hoos, the company's vice-president for oncology, says the firm may soon test a targeted drug in combination with an immunotherapy from another company.</p>
<p>This approach could lead to prescribable treatments arriving faster if promising combinations are tested before either component had been approved for use by itself--a process recently made easier by a change in the rules by the Food and Drug Administration, America's drug regulator.</p>
<p>Who is able to use these wonder drugs, if and when they become available, will depend on how deep are the pockets of those who are paying for them. In America a typical course of four doses of ipilimumab costs more than $100,000. Like all wars, the one against cancer is going to cost a lot of money, one way or another.</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p><img class="nc_pixel" src="http://pixel.newscred.com/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT1lNjE4ZTU3ZDExMDc5ZWNmOTZmODgxMDdjMjg4MTc2NyZub25jZT0yYzZkMzFiZi0wNGEyLTQyMWEtODMwOS1lZjI1MGVjNTQ2ZDEmcHVibGlzaGVyPThjMDBmYmVlNjFkNWJjZjBjNjA5MmQ4YjkyZWJiY2Ex" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /></p>

Cancer Drugs: Getting Close And Personal 

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/590c86a869e69a1e008b48ed-2400/rts157no.jpg" alt="trumpcare trump ryan health care ahca" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/archive/USA-HEALTHCARE-TRUMP-HP1ED541J400W.html">REUTERS/Carlos Barria</a></span></p><p class="caption">President Donald Trump (C) gathers with Vice President Mike Pence (R) and Congressional Republicans in the Rose Garden of the White House after the House of Representatives approved the American Healthcare Act, to repeal major parts of Obamacare and replace it with the Republican healthcare plan, in Washington, U.S., May 4, 2017. </p>The American Health Care Act, the GOP's Obamacare replacement plan, passed the House of Representatives on Thursday.<p>The bill raises concerns, especially from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-doctors-think-of-republican-healthcare-plan-2017-5">patient advocacy groups and physicians</a>, that under the AHCA, people with preexisting conditions will once again find health insurance inaccessible.</p><p>Preexisting conditions were a term used by insurance companies <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-conditions/index.html">before the Affordable Care Act</a> to classify certain diseases or health problems that could deny a person insurance coverage or make their coverage more expensive than those who were considered healthy.</p><h2>Before the ACA</h2><p>An estimated 27% of Americans under 65 have health conditions that could leave them uninsurable, according <a href="http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/pre-existing-conditions-and-medical-underwriting-in-the-individual-insurance-market-prior-to-the-aca/">to the Kaiser Family Foundation</a>. Some of the preexisting conditions that insurers declined coverage to before the ACA, according to KFF, included diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, which affects millions of Americans.</p><p><strong>These preexisting conditions included: </strong></p><p>AIDS/HIV, lupus, alcohol abuse/Drug abuse with recent treatment, Severe mental disorders such as bipolar disorder or an eating disorder, Alzheimer's/dementia, Multiple sclerosis, Rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and other inflammatory joint disease, Muscular dystrophy, cancer, severe obesity, cerebral palsy, organ transplant, congestive heart failure, paraplegia, coronary artery/heart disease, bypass surgery, paralysis, Crohn's disease/ ulcerative colitis, Parkinson's disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease /emphysema, pending surgery or hospitalization, diabetes mellitus, pneumocystic pneumonia, epilepsy, pregnancy or expectant parent, hemophilia, sleep apnea, hepatitis C, stroke, kidney disease, renal failure, transsexualism.  </p><p><strong>Other conditions that could make it harder to purchase a health insurance plan included, according to the KFF:</strong></p><p>Acne, allergies, anxiety, asthma, basal cell skin cancer (a type of skin cancer that doesn't tend to spread), depression, ear infections, fractures, high cholesterol, hypertension, incontinence, joint injuries, kidney stones, menstrual irregularities, migraine headaches, overweight, restless leg syndrome, tonsillitis, urinary tract infections, varicose veins, and vertigo.</p><p>Some insurance plans before the ACA also counted rape and domestic violence as preexisting conditions, though <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/04/health/pre-existing-condition-rape-domestic-violence-insurance/">CNN reports some states have banned that practice</a>.</p><h2><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/57b4703ddb5ce94f008b7336-2400/ap16223783230746.jpg" alt="obama affordable care act obamacare" /><p class="source"><span>Associated Press/Charles Dharapak</span></p><p class="caption">In this March 23, 2010, file photo President Barack Obama is applauded after signing the Affordable Care Act into law in the East Room of the White House in Washington.</p></h2><h2>Under the ACA</h2><p>One of the critical parts of the ACA was prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage or charging more for people with preexisting conditions. That went <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-conditions/index.html">into effect starting in 2014</a>, and it's still the case.</p><p>That means that if you had any of that litany of conditions listed above (let's say asthma), you still could have the same insurance as someone who managed to have a clean bill of heath, and someone who is a cancer survivor, pregnant, or obese. </p><h2>How preexisting conditions could return</h2><p>The version of the AHCA that just passed the House includes the<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/macarthur-amendment-ahca-trumpcare-obamacare-repeal-2017-4"> MacArthur amendment</a> which can allow states to avoid some of the regulations the ACA imposed. That policy, experts argue, could weaken the regulations around preexisting conditions.</p><p>Republicans, on the other hand, argue that the bill protects those with preexisting conditions.</p><p>"The amendment is very clear: Under no circumstance can people be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition," House Speaker Paul Ryan <a href="http://www.speaker.gov/general/verified-macarthur-amendment-strengthens-ahca-protects-people-pre-existing-conditions">said in a release</a>.</p><p>But the difference between being denied coverage and not being able to afford coverage is the gray area that has people concerned.</p><p>"The various patchwork solutions offered by lawmakers would still leave the millions of patients we represent, who have serious and chronic health conditions, at risk of not being able to access life-saving treatments and care," a group of 10 patient advocacy organizations said <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-doctors-think-of-republican-healthcare-plan-2017-5/#10-patient-advocacy-groups-there-is-no-substitute-for-fundamental-unequivocal-protections-for-people-with-pre-existing-conditions-1">in a release Wednesday</a>.</p><p>The bill now has to pass the Senate, and Senate Republicans has signaled potentially scrapping the House's bill and coming up with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/senate-plan-for-healthcare-bill-ahca-2017-5">one of their own</a>.</p>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-cassini-saturn-finale-closest-images-2017-4">NASA just got its closest look at Saturn yet - here's what it saw</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video                    

Acne, pregnancy, and sleep apnea - here's every condition that could get you denied health insurance under 'Trumpcare'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/53bda8026da811665d9dd023-1200-900/lululemon-bag.jpg" border="0" alt="lululemon bag sunscreen" /><p class="source"><span><a href="http://i.imgur.com/xIzthVj.jpg">reddit</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Even if you're not accustomed to getting medical advice from shopping bags, you might be alarmed by a message that's been <a href="http://imgur.com/xIzthVj?tags" target="_blank">spotted</a> on bags from yoga store <a href="http://lululemon.com/community/blog/the-truth-about-sunscreen/" target="_blank">Lululemon</a>: "Sunscreen absorbed into the skin might be worse for you than sunshine."</p>
<p>It's even part the <a href="http://lululemon.com/about/manifesto" target="_blank">official manifesto</a> of the company, whose eccentric founder - no longer with the company - is known for harboring a number of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/12-utterly-bizarre-facts-about-the-rise-of-lululemon-2012-4?op=1">strange beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>The warning first came to our attention when a Reddit user <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/biology/comments/25q83c/is_this_remotely_true_found_on_a_bag/" target="_blank">posted it</a> to <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/biology/">/r/biology</a> with a reasonable question: "Is this remotely true?"</p>
<p>The short answer is that while people have raised legitimate questions about possible harmful effects of sunscreen, the harms that come from too much sun exposure are clear, known, and often deadly. There's no contest.</p>
<p>In fact, researchers are aware of consumers' simmering fears about sunscreen and have looked closely at the evidence on both sides. In a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x/full" target="_blank">2011 study</a> on "sunscreen controversies," a team of doctors from Memorial Sloan-Kettering did a thorough review of previous research in order to answer the three main questions people have about sunscreen:</p>
<ol>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Does it protect against skin cancer? (Yes.)</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Does it cause Vitamin D deficiency? (No.)</span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Are toxic chemicals in sunscreen harmful to human health? (No.)</span></li>
</ol>
<p>Vitamin D is indeed important. But fair-skinned people get a daily dose in just <a href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002405.htm" target="_blank">15 minutes</a> - something even vigilant sunscreen application isn't likely to interfere with.</p>
<p>The researchers also take care not to dismiss concerns about some ingredients, like oxybenzone, in sunscreens. They discuss at length the growing body research around the effects of such compounds, which have been tied to changes in hormone activity, among other things.</p>
<p>But while caution is not unfounded and there is still more work to be done, most evidence suggests that when used on human skin in appropriate amounts, these ingredients are safe.</p>
<p>Importantly, there's a cost-benefit analysis required here. <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/health-effects-of-the-sun-and-vitamin-d-2014-6">Sunshine is good within reasons</a>, of course, but we know the many very real and very dangerous effects of overexposure to the sun, while we cannot conclusively say anything about how sunscreen itself may be harming people in practice.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After reviewing all the evidence, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering researchers conclude that the benefits of sunscreen far outweigh any risks. "Our research revealed that topical use of sunscreen protects against squamous cell carcinoma, does not cause vitamin D deficiency/insufficiency in practice and has not been demonstrated to adversely affect the health of humans," they write.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0733863514000266" target="_blank">follow-up study</a> published in July 2014 came to the very same conclusion.</span></p>
<p>In other words: Sunshine is worse for you than sunscreen, not the other way around.</p>
<p>When we reached out to Lululemon to ask about the anti-sunscreen advice on the bags, which have at other times admonished shoppers to "<a href="https://goodoldlululemon.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/imgp7808.jpg" target="_blank">wear sunscreen</a>," they sent us this statement:</p>
<blockquote class="blockquote">Thanks for reaching out for clarification.  The manifesto design that goes on our bags is a collection of statements that are ever-evolving and intended to spark conversation that is relevant at the time. To clarify, the manifesto design on our <a href="http://www.lululemon.com/about/manifesto" target="_blank">webpage</a> is the most up-to-date and has been used on our most recent release of manifesto print bags.</blockquote>
<p>The company has certainly succeeded in sparking conversation, but consider this a friendly reminder that health advice is best sought from doctors, not yoga bags.</p>

There's A Piece Of Horrible Health Advice On The Lululemon Bag

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc5e559f1bc588b47f8-1200/img2837.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 2" data-mce-source="Caroline Walsh" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>When she was 24 years old, Caroline Walsh started having disturbing symptoms, like forgetfulness and sudden behavior changes.</strong></li><li><strong>Doctors incorrectly diagnosed her several times before</strong><strong> she was properly diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis, a disease in which the body attacks itself and targets the brain.</strong></li><li><strong>New research suggests the disease may affect up to 90,000 people each year.</strong></li></ul><hr /><p><br />There's a blank year in 26-year-old Caroline Walsh's once-spotless memory.</p><p>She's pieced parts together from stories her friends have told her and a collection of photos on Facebook. But she cannot remember the day it all began - when her father found her in the middle of a seizure, her body writhing on the floor. She also can't remember waking up with her hands tied to a hospital bed, begging her sister to help her escape, or the next day when she proclaimed she was the Zac Brown Band.</p><p>Instead, Walsh's first recollection of that time is of a recovery room filled with family and flowers. By then, her doctors had diagnosed her with a mysterious disease called autoimmune encephalitis, or AE. While there's lot we still don't know about the condition, experts believe it's part of a larger class of illnesses in which the body turns on itself. A <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.25131/full">new study from Mayo Clinic researchers</a> suggests it's a lot more common that previously thought. In fact, AE may occur just as frequently as cases of regular encephalitis, the brain swelling caused by viral infections. If that's the case, it could be impacting roughly 90,000 people around the world every year.</p><p>In Walsh's case, the disease attacked her brain, setting off a chain reaction of symptoms that mimicked those of other mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia. If treated properly and early enough, people with AE can make a near-complete recovery. But if they go undiagnosed or land in a psychiatric ward, they can die.</p><h2>Something brewing</h2><p>A stroll down a real street called Memory Lane in London leads you to the London Institute of Psychiatry, where J.A.N. "Nick" Corsellis sliced into the brains of three corpses and found the first evidence of AE.</p><p>Deep in the dense part of the brain called the limbic system, the normally lithe network of rubbery-smooth tissue had become puffy and inflamed. It was as if something had attacked it from within.</p><p>Most of the people these brains once belonged to had been diagnosed with cancer, then seemed to make a full recovery. But their personalities <a href="https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-abstract/91/3/481/258399/LIMBIC-ENCEPHALITIS-AND-ITS-ASSOCIATION-WITH?redirectedFrom=fulltext">began to change</a>. A partner or friend was usually the first to notice an odd shift in their behavior - usually a progressive increase in forgetfulness, though others experienced a sudden bout of mania or depression. A 58-year old bus driver found himself waking up most days not knowing where he was.</p><p>Corsellis saw inflammation in parts of the brain linked with memory and mood, but he couldn't explain what had caused the swelling that triggered the symptoms.</p><p>"The first question to arise ... is whether the assertion of a connection between carcinoma [cancer] and 'limbic encephalitis' is now justified, even if it cannot be explained," he wrote in a 1968 paper in the journal Brain. It was first time the condition was mentioned in a scientific journal.</p><p>Walsh's symptoms became noticeable one day at work when she started repeating herself. She joked with a co-worker that she was coming down with early-onset Alzheimer's.</p><p>"I was just getting very confused all the time," Walsh said.</p><p>The next week, more mysterious problems cropped up - Walsh had a knack for remembering names, but one day when she met up with some new friends, she introduced herself half a dozen times and struggled to commit anyone's name to memory.</p><p>"They'd say it and then a couple minutes later I'd have no clue what their name was or what we were even talking about," she said.</p><p>At the office the next day, things got worse. "My personality was just off. I thought it was work. I pulled my boss aside into a conference room and I started to cry, which was just not me," she said. When she wasn't feeling stressed and anxious, she felt depressed.</p><p>"Something was just brewing, I could feel it," she said.</p><h2>When the body attacks itself</h2><p>Our immune system is our body's defense against the outside world.</p><p>Most of the action is coordinated by white blood cells, which direct the lines of attack like football coaches, churning out antibodies that target the opponent for destruction.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54f9f56e6da811f201915b99-2400/shutterstock133426889.jpg" alt="white blood cell" data-mce-source="Shutterstock" data-mce-caption="A new way of boosting white blood cells." /><p class="source"><span>Shutterstock</span></p><p class="caption">A new way of boosting white blood cells.</p></div><p></p></div></div>But sometimes the process can go awry. In generating an immune response against a virus or other disease, the body can wind up up attacking itself - such issues are known as autoimmune diseases.</p><p>It's as if "some wires get crossed," <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brendan_Kelley">Brenden Kelley</a>, a neuroradiologist at Henry Ford hospital in Detroit who's part of the small community researching autoimmune encephalitis, told Business Insider last year.</p><p>Sometimes, this abnormal response can be caused by a virus like the flu or a bacterial infection. Other times, certain types of cancer appear to be the source.</p><p>"In picking targets that match the cancer, the body may also pick targets that match places in your body that don't have cancer," Kelley said.</p><p>The Mayo Clinic's new <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.25131/full">study, published in February in the journal Annals of Neurology,</a> suggests that cases of autoimmune encephalitis aren't nearly as rare as researchers once believed. By drawing on data from the Rochester Epidemiology Project, a medical records database in Olmsted County, Minnesota, the researchers were able to estimate that roughly 1 million people across the globe had autoimmune encephalitis at some point in their life. Each year, roughly 90,000 people may develop AE, they estimated.</p><p>"No prior studies evaluated this," Eoin Flanagan, the lead author on the paper and an autoimmune neurology specialist at the Mayo Clinic, <a href="https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/when-the-body-attacks-the-brain-immune-system-often-to-blame-for-encephalitis-study-finds/">said in a statement</a>.</p><p>Kelley, who is working on his own forthcoming study of the frequency of AE in young people, said his work echoes Flanagan's findings.</p><p>"You can't diagnose something you don't know about, or that you don't recognize," Kelley told Business Insider.</p><p>Last summer, he <a href="http://www.ajnr.org/content/38/6/1070">published a study in the American Journal of Radiology</a> to help radiologists like himself better diagnose and understand diseases like AE.</p><h2>Knee deep in the water</h2><p>Three months after Walsh first started noticing changes in her personality, she relocated to her childhood home outside of Boston, and saw two doctors who both incorrectly diagnosed her with the flu.</p><p>Then one morning around 4 a.m., as her dad got ready for work, he heard a loud crash. He found his daughter on the ground, her limbs thrashing. He screamed her name, but she didn't respond.</p><p>The most common cause of the type of seizure that Walsh had - known as a grand mal seizure (literally "great sickness" in French) - is epilepsy. Other causes can include extremely low blood sugar, high fever, and stroke.</p><p>At the hospital, Walsh's doctors tested her extensively. But even lumbar punctures or "spinal taps" - how doctors first spot autoimmune encephalitis in many cases - didn't show enough characteristic markers of inflammation to draw a definite conclusion.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc2e559f122008b4f90-1000/img2836.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 1" data-mce-source="Caroline Walsh" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>When Walsh's sister Alana arrived at the hospital, Caroline was lying motionless on her hospital bed under the harsh lighting. Her hands had been encased in heavily padded mitts that looked like boxing gloves, and were fastened to the railings on her bed to keep her from pulling out the IV tubes keeping her hydrated. She asked Alana to come closer so she could whisper something into her ear.</p><p>"You have to fight 'em, you have to get me out of here," Caroline said, motioning her head towards the nurses as she eyed them suspiciously.</p><p>When Alana asked her sister what she was talking about, Caroline explained that she'd been abducted while she was asleep and was now being held hostage at the hospital.</p><p>A few hours later, after drifting into the sleepy, dazed state she was in for much of her hospital stay, she woke with a jolt and proclaimed she was the country singer the Zac Brown Band. She started belting out her favorite song of his, a catchy tune about taking a break from reality called "Knee Deep."</p><p><em>"Gonna put the world away for a minute," </em>she sang, getting louder with every verse. <em>"Pretend I don't live in it."</em></p><p>When her family couldn't stop Caroline's crooning, Alana got up and closed the doors to her room in an attempt to keep her from waking up everyone on the ward. Caroline continued.</p><p><em>"Mind on a permanent vacation, t</em><em>he ocean is my only medication, w</em><em>ishin' my condition ain't ever gonna go away."</em></p><p>Over the next week, Walsh proceeded to seize more than a hundred times. Alana recalls that nearly every time she sat down to talk with her, Caroline would seize half a dozen times. They weren't massive seizures like the one that had landed her in the hospital, but small, barely perceptible ones.</p><p>"You'd know because her eyes would drift away and she'd stare in one spot, she was having little ones almost every minute," Alana said. "She was very shaky and confused; her heart rate was extremely high, and the doctors just seemed so confused by everything every time we talked to them."</p><p>Eventually, the doctors decided to put Walsh in a medically-induced coma.</p><h2>Smoke from the fire</h2><p>In children, infections like strep throat appear to be a trigger of AE. <a href="http://nyulangone.org/doctors/1962593632/susan-schulman">Susan Schulman</a>, a pediatrician in New York, told Business Insider last year that she had seen hundreds of cases of a related condition, called PANS (pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome), in her patients. Her first case, in 1998, was a five-year old girl from Brooklyn who flew into a panic about keeping special holiday clothes separate from her regular clothes.</p><p>"She was driving her mother crazy," Schulman said last year. At first, she believed the girl had <a href="http://pedsinreview.aappublications.org/content/34/1/19">childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder</a>, but medication made the child's symptoms worse. She later returned to Schulman's office with a nasty case of strep throat and strangely, after Schulman treated the strep with antibiotics, the OCD symptoms vanished.</p><p>"I said you know what, that's odd," Schulman said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bcbe559f122078b4ebf-1200/img2827.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 3" data-mce-source="Caroline Walsh" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Around the same time, an NIH pediatrician named Susan Swedo published an <a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.155.2.264">article in the American Journal of Psychiatry</a> describing 50 cases of a phenomenon she called "pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections." Schulman realized that the sudden psychiatric symptoms she had observed in her young patients - which ranged from OCD to rage and paranoia - were likely connected to their infections.</p><p>"I see infection as the match that lights the autoimmune reaction. The inflammation is the fire; the symptoms you see is the smoke coming out of the fire," Schulman said.</p><p>Autoimmune conditions that affect the brain only represent a fraction of all autoimmune diseases. Scientists have identified as many as <a href="https://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_info/Autoimmune/default.asp#2">80 others</a>, which range from type 1 diabetes, which develops when the body attacks its insulin-producing cells, to multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis. More are being recognized each year.</p><p>Through his research, Kelley hopes to find out what autoimmune diseases that affect the brain have in common so the team can figure out what causes them.</p><p>"A lot of these conditions are variants on the same theme," he said.</p><p>In Walsh's case, "these are people who tend to not have a lot of other medical problems and then all of a sudden they feel like they're going crazy, they're losing themselves," Kelley said. "It tends to be very clear that something's not right, but precisely what's going on can be difficult to piece together."</p><h2>Putting the pieces together</h2><p>When Walsh woke up in her hospital room, she wasn't sure why she was there.</p><p>"I was like why are all these people in my room? Why is it decorated with all of these flowers?," she recalled.</p><p>A day or so before, a specialist had diagnosed Walsh with autoimmune encephalitis and started her on a regimen of powerful steroids, now considered one of the best treatments for the disease. The drugs began to reduce the inflammation in her brain. The affected area was Walsh's hippocampus, the region responsible for making and storing memories.</p><p>"I just remember I kept asking, 'What?' you know, 'Wait, why am I here?' and they would tell me, but I kept forgetting," she said.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc9e559f199048b4f26-1200/img2828.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 4" data-mce-source="Caroline Walsh" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>The treatment for autoimmune encephalitis can vary based on the trigger, but timing is always key. If doctors treat whatever is triggering the condition, many people with the disease can go on to lead fairly normal, full lives.</p><p>"It's a race against time in a way," Kelley said.</p><p>In patients whose autoimmune encephalitis seems to be triggered by cancer (as opposed to Walsh's, which may have been set off by the flu), the treatment focuses on treating or removing the cancer first. "When you remove the cancer, you remove the stimulus," Kelley said.</p><p>As Walsh began to regain her ability to remember, she realized she'd have to re-learn a lot of basic things.</p><p>"I remember going to get up to use the bathroom, and one of the nurses went to bring me a wheelchair and I was like, 'Oh no I don't need that,'" Walsh said. "So then I just thought about standing and suddenly I just had no idea, I couldn't function to walk."</p><p>She regained those skills over the next 10 days at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, the same place the survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing were brought after the attack. There, Walsh re-learned how to put one foot in front of the other and how to hold a spoon.</p><p>She now works part-time as a nanny and volunteers with Spaulding and the Boston Boys and Girls Club. Instead of going back to sales, she plans to work with children in some capacity. She recently attended a Spaulding fundraising event with her sister, Alana, where she bumped into the physical therapist who helped her walk in a straight line for the first time.</p><p>"We were in our dresses and we were both dancing together," Walsh said, "and Alana was like, 'You know she taught you to walk again?'"</p><p> </p><p><em>This story was originally published in May 2017, and has been updated to include recent findings on the prevalence of autoimmune encephalitis.</em></p>     <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-tell-you-have-cold-flu-just-allergies-symptoms-2016-10">How to tell if you have a cold, flu, or just allergies</a></h3>        <div>            <iframe class="bijwplayerclass" data-player="jwplayer" src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/zLb1FuGJ-CEZHWCBG.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" style="margin:0px;" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><script>function receiveMessage(event){ console.log(event.data.fullscreen); Android.fullscreen(event.data.fullscreen); }window.addEventListener("message", receiveMessage, false);</script>        </div>    </div>

A 24-year old got a mysterious disease where her body attacked her brain - and scientists are learning it's more common than they thought

<img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc5e559f1bc588b47f8-1200/img2837.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 2" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p><p class="caption">Caroline, in the middle, with her family.</p>There's a blank year in 25-year-old Caroline Walsh's once-spotless memory.<p>She's pieced parts together from stories her friends have told her and a collection of photos on Facebook. But she cannot remember the day it all began - when her father found her in the middle of a seizure, her body writhing on the floor. She also can't remember waking up with her hands tied to a hospital bed, begging her sister to help her escape, or the next day when she proclaimed she was the Zac Brown Band.</p><p>Instead, Walsh's first recollection of that time is of a recovery room filled with family and flowers. By then, her doctors had diagnosed her with a mysterious disease called autoimmune encephalitis, or AE for short. While there's lot we still don't know about the condition, experts believe it's part of a larger class of illnesses in which the body turns on itself.</p><p>In Walsh's case, the disease attacked her brain, setting off a chain reaction of symptoms that mimicked those of other mental illnesses like depression and schizophrenia. If treated properly and early enough, people with AE can make a near-complete recovery. But if they go undiagnosed or land in a psychiatric ward, they can die.</p><h2>Something brewing</h2><p>A stroll down a real street called Memory Lane in London leads you to the London Institute of Psychiatry, where J.A.N. "Nick" Corsellis sliced into the brains of three corpses and found the first evidence of AE.</p><p>Deep in the dense part of the brain called the limbic system, the normally lithe network of rubbery-smooth tissue had become puffy and inflamed. It was as if something had attacked it from within.</p><p>Most of the people these brains once belonged to had been diagnosed with cancer, then seemed to make a full recovery. But their personalities <a href="https://academic.oup.com/brain/article-abstract/91/3/481/258399/LIMBIC-ENCEPHALITIS-AND-ITS-ASSOCIATION-WITH?redirectedFrom=fulltext">began to change</a>. A partner or friend was usually the first to notice an odd shift in their behavior - usually a progressive increase in forgetfulness, though others experienced a sudden bout of mania or depression. A 58-year old bus driver found himself waking up most days not knowing where he was.</p><p>Corsellis saw inflammation in parts of the brain linked with memory and mood, but he couldn't explain what had caused the swelling that triggered the symptoms.</p><p>"The first question to arise ... is whether the assertion of a connection between carcinoma [cancer] and 'limbic encephalitis' is now justified, even if it cannot be explained," he wrote in a 1968 paper in the journal Brain. It was first time the condition was mentioned in a scientific journal.</p><p>Walsh's symptoms became noticeable one day at work when she started repeating herself. She joked with a co-worker that she was coming down with early-onset Alzheimer's.</p><p>"I was just getting very confused all the time," Walsh says.</p><p>The next week, more mysterious problems cropped up - Walsh had a knack for remembering names, but one day when she met up with some new friends, she introduced herself half a dozen times and struggled to commit anyone's name to memory.</p><p>"They'd say it and then a couple minutes later I'd have no clue what their name was or what we were even talking about," she says.</p><p>At the office the next day, things got worse. "My personality was just off. I thought it was work. I pulled my boss aside into a conference room and I started to cry, which was just not me," she says. When she wasn't feeling stressed and anxious, she felt depressed.</p><p>"Something was just brewing, I could feel it," she says.</p><h2>When the body attacks itself</h2><p>Our immune system is our body's defense against the outside world.</p><p>Most of the action is coordinated by white blood cells, which direct the lines of attack like football coaches, churning out antibodies that target the opponent for destruction.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/54f9f56e6da811f201915b99-2400/shutterstock133426889.jpg" alt="white blood cell" /><p class="source"><span>Shutterstock</span></p><p class="caption">A white blood cell.</p>But sometimes the process can go awry. In generating an immune response against a virus or other disease, the body can wind up up attacking itself - a larger class of illnesses known as autoimmune diseases.<p>It's as if "some wires get crossed," says <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brendan_Kelley">Brenden Kelley</a>, a neuroradiologist at Henry Ford hospital in Detroit who's part of the small community researching autoimmune encephalitis.</p><p>Sometimes, this abnormal response can be caused by a virus like the flu or a bacterial infection. Other times, certain types of cancer appear to be the source.</p><p>"In picking targets that match the cancer, the body may also pick targets that match places in your body that don't have cancer," says Kelley.</p><h2>Knee deep in the water</h2><p>Three months later, Walsh relocated to her childhood home outside of Boston, and saw two doctors who both incorrectly diagnosed her with the flu.</p><p>Then one morning around 4 a.m., as her dad, a Boston police officer, got ready for work, he heard a loud crash. He found his daughter on the ground, her limbs thrashing. He screamed her name, but she didn't respond.</p><p>The most common cause of the type of seizure that Walsh had that day - known as a grand mal seizure (literally "great sickness" in French) - is epilepsy. Other causes can include extremely low blood sugar, high fever, and stroke.</p><p>At the hospital, Walsh's doctors tested her extensively, doing multiple lumbar punctures or "spinal taps," a painful, dangerous procedure that involves collecting and analyzing the protective fluid surrounding her brain and spinal cord. In most cases, this is where doctors will first spot autoimmune encephalitis, Kelley says.</p><p>But sometimes, as in Walsh's case, the characteristic markers of inflammation are too subtle to draw a definite conclusion.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc2e559f122008b4f90-1000/img2836.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 1" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p><p class="caption">Caroline at the hospital.</p>When Caroline's sister Alana arrived at the hospital, Caroline was lying motionless on her hospital bed under the harsh lighting. Her hands had been encased in heavily padded mitts that looked like boxing gloves, and were fastened to the railings on her bed to keep her from pulling out the IV tubes keeping her hydrated. She asked Alana to come closer so she could whisper something into her ear.<p>"You have to fight 'em, you have to get me out of here," said Caroline, motioning her head towards the nurses as she eyed them suspiciously.</p><p>When Alana asked her sister what she was talking about, Caroline explained that she'd been abducted while she was asleep and was now being held hostage at the hospital.</p><p>A few hours later, after drifting into the sleepy, dazed state she was in for much of her hospital stay, she woke with a jolt and proclaimed she was the country singer the Zac Brown Band. She started belting out her favorite song of his, a catchy tune about taking a break from reality called "Knee Deep."</p><p><em>"Gonna put the world away for a minute," </em>she sang, getting louder with every verse. <em>"Pretend I don't live in it."</em></p><p>When her family couldn't stop Caroline's crooning, Alana got up and closed the doors to her room in an attempt to keep her from waking up everyone on the ward. Caroline continued.</p><p><em>"Mind on a permanent vacation, t</em><em>he ocean is my only medication, w</em><em>ishin' my condition ain't ever gonna go away."</em></p><p>Over the next week, Walsh proceeded to seize more than a hundred times. Alana recalls that nearly every time she sat down to talk with her, Caroline would seize half a dozen times. They weren't massive seizures like the one that had landed her in the hospital, but small, barely perceptible ones.</p><p>"You'd know because her eyes would drift away and she'd stare in one spot, she was having little ones almost every minute," says Alana. "She was very shaky and confused; her heart rate was extremely high, and the doctors just seemed so confused by everything every time we talked to them, they were like she can't be going into these seizures all the time, it's just too much."</p><p>Eventually, the doctors decided to put her in a medically-induced coma.</p><h2>Smoke from the fire</h2><p>In children, infections like strep throat appear to be a trigger of AE. <a href="http://nyulangone.org/doctors/1962593632/susan-schulman">Susan Schulman</a>, a pediatrician in New York, says she's seen hundreds of cases of a related condition, called PANS (pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome), in her patients. Her first case, in 1998, was a five-year old girl from Brooklyn who flew into a panic about keeping the clothes she wore on the Jewish holiday of Shabbat separate from her regular clothes.</p><p>"She was driving her mother crazy," Schulman says. At first, she believed the girl had <a href="http://pedsinreview.aappublications.org/content/34/1/19">childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder</a>, but medication made the child's symptoms worse, and she returned to Schulman's office with more intense OCD symptoms and a nasty case of strep throat. Strangely, after Schulman treated the strep with antibiotics, the OCD symptoms vanished.</p><p>"I said you know what, that's odd," Schulman says.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bcbe559f122078b4ebf-1200/img2827.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 3" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p>Around the same time, an NIH pediatrician named Susan Swedo published an <a href="http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.155.2.264">article in the American Journal of Psychiatry</a> describing 50 cases of a phenomenon she called "pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections." Schulman realized that the sudden psychiatric symptoms she had observed in her young patients - which ranged from OCD to rage and paranoia - were likely connected to their infections.<p>"I see infection as the match that lights the autoimmune reaction. The inflammation is the fire; the symptoms you see is the smoke coming out of the fire," Schulman says.</p><p>Autoimmune conditions that affect the brain only represent a fraction of all autoimmune diseases. Scientists have identified as many as <a href="https://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_info/Autoimmune/default.asp#2">80 others</a>, which range from type 1 diabetes, which develops when the body attacks its insulin-producing cells, to multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis. More are being recognized each year.</p><p>Kelley and others at Henry Ford are currently researching autoimmune diseases that affect the brain. By working with scientists who specialize in the brain and the immune system, Kelley hopes to find out what these conditions have in common so the team can eventually figure out what causes them.</p><p>"A lot of these conditions are variants on the same theme," he says. </p><p>In Walsh's case, "these are people who tend to not have a lot of other medical problems and then all of a sudden they feel like they're going crazy, they're losing themselves," Kelley says. "It tends to be very clear that something's not right, but precisely what's going on can be difficult to piece together."</p><h2>Putting the pieces together</h2><p>When Walsh woke up in her hospital room, she wasn't sure why she was there.</p><p>"I was like why are all these people in my room? Why is it decorated with all of these flowers?," she recalls.</p><p>A day or so before, a specialist had diagnosed Walsh with autoimmune encephalitis and started her on a regimen of powerful steroids, now considered one of the best treatments for the disease. The drugs began to reduce the inflammation in her brain. In Walsh's case, the affected area was her hippocampus, the region responsible for making and storing memories.</p><p>"I just remember I kept asking, 'What?' you know, 'Wait, why am I here?' and they would tell me, but I kept forgetting," she says.</p><img src="https://static-ssl.businessinsider.com/image/59160bc9e559f199048b4f26-1200/img2828.jpg" alt="caroline walsh 4" /><p class="source"><span>Caroline Walsh</span></p><p class="caption">Caroline at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital.</p>In patients whose autoimmune encephalitis seems to be triggered by cancer (as opposed to Walsh's, which may have been set off by the flu), the treatment focuses on treating or removing the cancer first. "When you remove the cancer, you remove the stimulus," Kelley says.<p>The treatment for autoimmune encephalitis can vary based on the trigger, but timing is always key. If doctors treat whatever is triggering the condition, many people with the disease can go on to lead fairly normal, full lives.</p><p>"It's a race against time in a way," Kelley says.</p><p>As Walsh began to regain her ability to remember, she realized she'd have to re-learn a lot of basic things.</p><p>"I remember going to get up to use the bathroom, and one of the nurses went to bring me a wheelchair and I was like, 'Oh no I don't need that,'" says Walsh. "So then I just thought about standing and suddenly I just had no idea, I couldn't function to walk."</p><p>She regained those skills over the next 10 days at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center, the same place the survivors of the Boston Marathon bombing were brought after the attack. There, Walsh re-learned how to put one foot in front of the other and how to hold a spoon.</p><p>Walsh now works part-time as a nanny and volunteers with Spaulding and the Boston Boys and Girls Club. Instead of going back to sales, she plans to work with children in some capacity. She recently attended a Spaulding fundraising event with her sister, Alana, where she bumped into the physical therapist who helped her walk in a straight line for the first time.</p><p>"We were in our dresses and we were both dancing together," Walsh says, "and Alana was like, 'You know she taught you to walk again?'"</p>  <h3>More from Erin Brodwin:</h3><ul><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/rare-disease-body-attacks-brain-2017-5" rel="nofollow">A 24-year old got a mysterious disease where her body attacked her brain - and everyone thought it was in her mind</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shark-video-california-oc-hides-bigger-threat-2017-5" rel="nofollow">A video of 15 sharks circling near paddleboarders in California hides a bigger problem</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/seaweed-tastes-like-bacon-review-2017-5" rel="nofollow">We tried the seaweed that 'tastes like bacon' and is healthier than kale - here's the verdict</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/microdosing-lsd-effects-risks-science-2017-5" rel="nofollow">Scientists are about to find out how Silicon Valley's LSD habit really affects productivity</a></li><li><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/healthiest-fast-food-chipotle-panera-shake-shack-2017-5" rel="nofollow">15 of the healthiest fast-food menu items</a></li></ul>            <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-cassini-saturn-dive-video-grand-finale-2017-5">NASA released its first incredible video of our closest look at Saturn yet</a></h3>                                    Please enable Javascript to watch this video                    

You Searched For "clear cell renal cell carcinoma" and got 10 results

Should you worry about that mole? Here's how to tell

Kevin Loria

The drugmaker famous for Viagra has a new strategy for fighting cancer that could generate $5 billion a year. We got a look inside.

Emma Court

Should you worry about that mole? Here's how to tell

Kevin Loria

Neighborhoods exposed to pollution and toxic chemicals could be breeding grounds for diabetes

Hilary Brueck

Cancer Drugs: Getting Close And Personal

The Economist

Acne, pregnancy, and sleep apnea - here's every condition that could get you denied health insurance under 'Trumpcare'

Lydia Ramsey

There's A Piece Of Horrible Health Advice On The Lululemon Bag

Lauren F Friedman

A 24-year old got a mysterious disease where her body attacked her brain - and scientists are learning it's more common than they thought

Erin Brodwin

A 24-year old got a mysterious disease where her body attacked her brain - and everyone thought it was in her mind

Erin Brodwin

Some members of multilevel-marketing company Young Living are making questionable claims about 'essential oils' curing cancer and coronavirus

Nicole Einbinder