Health Highlights: Aug. 5, 2008

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors ofHealthDay:

Study Reveals New Genetic Clues About Cancer

A genetic anomaly in people with a higher-than-normal risk of developing cancer has been identified by Canadian researchers. They said the findings may lead to the development of a blood test that can detect tumors at an early stage when they're most treatable and could improve understanding of how cancers are contracted in the general population.

The study included people in families with a rare inherited disorder called Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS), which increases the risk of developing certain types of cancer in childhood and early adulthood. The researchers found that people with LFS have greater variation in their DNA than people without the condition, theCanadian Pressreported.

People with LFS have more copy number variations (CNVs), the duplication or deletion of large segments of DNA, said the researchers. They also noted that most people with LFS have a mutation in a gene that normally stabilizes DNA. The study found that people with this mutation in blood cells had a much higher rate of CNVs than people without the mutation.

"So it would imply that people who have a mutation in this gene and are susceptible to cancer have inherently regions of their DNA which are duplicated or deleted and therefore are unstable. And that may have something to do with the mechanism by which they develop cancer," said study leader Dr. David Malkin of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, theCPreported.

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Another Malaria Vaccine To Begin Human Testing

A malaria vaccine that showed promise in tests on animals is ready for testing in people, according to an international team of scientists. Currently, there is no vaccine for malaria.

The new vaccine worked well in mice and is expected to begin small-scale human safety trials next year,BBC Newsreported.

The vaccine targets the "blood stage" of malaria, in which parasite numbers rapidly increase in the bloodstream after bursting out of cells. The researchers believe the vaccine can trigger a massive immune response against the malaria parasite at this stage. In mice, the vaccine reduced malaria parasite levels by 70 percent to 85 percent. The findings appear in the journalNature.

Some experimental malaria vaccines are already being tested on people in malaria-affected countries,BBC Newsreported.