Cancer incidence and mortality projections in the UK until 2035.

BACKGROUND: Cancer incidence and mortality projections are important for understanding the evolving landscape for cancer risk factors as well as anticipating future burden on the health service. METHODS: We used an age-period-cohort model with natural cubic splines to estimate cancer cases and deaths from 2015 to 2035 based on 1979-2014 UK data. This was converted to rates using ONS population projections. Modified data sets were generated for breast and prostate cancers. RESULTS: Cancer incidence rates are projected to decrease by 0.03% in males and increase by 0.11% in females yearly between 2015 and 2035; thyroid, liver, oral and kidney cancer are among the fastest accelerating cancers. 243 690 female and 270 261 male cancer cases are projected for 2035. Breast and prostate cancers are projected to be the most common cancers among females and males, respectively in 2035. Most cancers' mortality rate is decreasing; there are notable increases for liver, oral and anal cancer. For 2035, there are 95 961 female deaths projected and 116 585 male deaths projected. CONCLUSIONS: These findings stress the need to continue efforts to address cancer risk factors. Furthermore, the increased burden of the number of cancer cases and deaths as a result of the growing and ageing population should be taken into consideration by healthcare planners.

Does Congenital Deafness Affect the Structural and Functional Architecture of Primary Visual Cortex?

Deafness results in greater reliance on the remaining senses. It is unknown whether the cortical architecture of the intact senses is optimized to compensate for lost input. Here we performed widefield population receptive field (pRF) mapping of primary visual cortex (V1) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in hearing and congenitally deaf participants, all of whom had learnt sign language after the age of 10 years. We found larger pRFs encoding the peripheral visual field of deaf compared to hearing participants. This was likely driven by larger facilitatory center zones of the pRF profile concentrated in the near and far periphery in the deaf group. pRF density was comparable between groups, indicating pRFs overlapped more in the deaf group. This could suggest that a coarse coding strategy underlies enhanced peripheral visual skills in deaf people. Cortical thickness was also decreased in V1 in the deaf group. These findings suggest deafness causes structural and functional plasticity at the earliest stages of visual cortex.

Engineering the microflora to vaccinate the mucosa: serum immunoglobulin G responses and activated draining cervical lymph nodes following mucosal application of tetanus toxin fragment C-expressing lactobacilli.

The delivery of antigens to mucosal-associated lymphoid tissues in paediatric and immunocompromised populations by safe, non-invasive vectors, such as commensal lactobacilli, represents a crucial improvement to prevailing vaccination options. In this report, we describe the oral and nasal immunization of mice with vaccines constructed through an original system for heterologous gene expression in Lactobacillus in which the 50 000-molecular weight (MW) fragment C of tetanus toxin (TTFC) is expressed either as an intracellular or a surface-exposed protein. Our data indicate that L. plantarum is more effective in this respect than L. casei and that, under the experimental conditions investigated, delivery of TTFC expressed as an intracellular antigen is more effective than cell-surface expression. Immunization of mice with live recombinant lactobacilli induced significant levels of circulating TTFC-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) following nasal or oral delivery of vaccine strains. In addition, following nasal delivery, secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) was induced in bronchoalveolar lavage fluids, as were antigen-specific antibody-secreting cells and antigen-specific T-cell activation in draining lymph nodes, substantiating their potential for safe mucosal delivery of paediatric vaccines.