Ten Tasmanian devil joeys discovered during pouch check of endangered marsupials
Researchers at Aussie Ark have found 10 Tasmanian devil joeys during the first pouch check of the endangered marsupial's 2025 breeding season, which runs from February to June each year.
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
I'm the healthiest person I know, but I've been hit with bowel cancer at 39 - my surgeon revealed intriguing reason why
A fit and healthy 39-year-old mother has been given a devastating bowel cancer diagnosis—and surgeons believe the food she ate as a child may have triggered the disease. Danni Duncan, a fitness coach from Melbourne, Australia, said she developed bowel cancer that has started to spread to nearby organs, despite living an extremely healthy lifestyle. 'I am the freaking healthiest person I know, I do more things for my health than anyone I know,' she said in a clip posted to her Instagram page. She added: 'The last four years I have eaten 80-90 per cent whole foods, we use non toxic products at home, I don't drink much alcohol, exercise every day and eat a high fibre diet.' The mother-of-three said, with no family history of the disease, she had been floored by the news, given to her after a colonoscopy last month. But she said that her surgeon had revealed why her, and an increasing number of young people like her, are at risk of developing the deadly cancer. 'He said chemicals in your foods, carcinogens through red meat, burnt, barbecued, bacon, ham, they are environmental factors which we got exposed to in the 90s and we didn't know the long term affects until now,' she said. Ms Duncan added that exposure to cleaning products as a child were another 'environmental factor' the medic had listed as a potential cause. In the wake of her diagnosis, she has urged parents like her to 'stop feeding kids ultraprocesed foods'. 'It does matter what you feed your kids, stop feeding your kids things that are not good for them, that are processed, that are full of s***,' she said. 'You might think they're fine, they're fine now, but what are you really doing to your kids? 'What detriment are you doing to your kids later on, without even realising it?' Ms Duncan had very little symptoms of the cancer, with the first sense something was wrong being strange, persistent fatigue. Tests later revealed this was being caused by internal blood loss triggered by the tumour growing in her bowel. She has since had surgery to remove the cancer, with the procedure also excising parts of her intestines and her entire appendix. In a follow-up post, Ms Duncan said tests of the removed tissue had revealed that her cancer was stage 2. This means that the disease has started to spread outside the bowel lining, almost reaching nearby organs. However it has not yet grown into the lymph nodes, which is the typical route by which cancer spreads widely around the body. However, Ms Duncan recently informed her followers that medics have told her that there were signs that the cancer had been growing towards her lymph nodes, so she will need further consultations. Ms Duncan isn't alone in being a young healthy person to be given a life-changing bowel cancer diagnosis. Experts have noted a concerning, mysterious rise in bowel cancer cases among young adults.. A recent global study of the diseas e found rates of bowel cancer in under 50 year-olds are rising in 27 of the 50 nations. England is averaging a 3.6 per cent rise in younger adults every year—one of the highest increases recorded. While the disease is linked to obesity, experts have noted that the disease seems to also be occurring in fit and healthy patients like Ms Duncan. Some experts believe the explanation must lie in an environmental factors young people have been exposed to more than previous generations. While no 'smoking gun' has been found there are multiple theories. One of these is the ultra-processed foods, also called UPFs, mentioned by Ms Duncan's surgeon. Others include microplastics, pollution, with one recent study pinning the surge on exposure to in food. Links between UPFs—which contain preservatives, emulsifiers, artificial colourings not found in a domestic kitchen— have not been proven. Part of the problem is that the system used to classify if a food is a UPF is a food processing score. This means both a junk food meal packed with salt, sugar and additives is just as much a UPF as a supermarket loaf of brown bread, despite the latter having some health benefits. Therefore, unpicking which UPFs or their ingredients may be linked to bowel cancer risk is tricky. Charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) states the current evidence linking UPFs to any cancer is 'weak' in part due to the aforementioned issues. However, the charity does add that diet and specific foods we eat are linked to the disease. It estimates that 13 per cent of bowel cancer cases diagnosed in the UK each year are caused by eating processed red meat. A further 11 per cent are linked to being overweight and obese due to poor diet and a lack of exercise. And 28 percent, nearly one in three, are linked to be people eating too little fibre, a nutrient UPFs are generally lacking. CRUK, while acknowledging the rise of bowel cancer cases in young adults, stresses that rates are still low, with only around one in 20 cases diagnosed in the UK each year in patients under the age of 50. There are around 2,600 new bowel cancer cases in people aged 25-49 in Britain every year, and around 44,100 new cases among all ages. Symptoms of the bowel cancer include changes in bowel movements such as diarrhoea or constipation, needing or feeling the need to empty your bowels more or less frequently, blood in the stool, stomach pain, bloating, unexpected weight-loss and fatigue. Stomach pain, a lump in the stomach, bloating, unexpected weight-loss and fatigue are among other common signs. Around 44,000 cases of bowel cancer are diagnosed every year in the UK, with about 130,000 in the US. The disease kills almost 17,000 Britons each year, with the death toll rising to about 50,000 in America. Overall, just over half of bowel cancer patients are expected to be alive 10 years after their diagnosis. However, survival rates vastly improve if the disease is caught early. For stage two patients, like Ms Duncan, 85 per cent are expected to survive at least five years after being diagnosed. This drops to 65 per cent for stage three patients and only 10 per cent for stage four, where the disease has spread across the body.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
ASKAP J1832: Scientists discovers mysterious pulsating star in space
Scientists say they've spotted a mysterious object in space behaving in a very strange star, which has been named ASKAP J1832, is acting unlike anything seen before, according to Nasa around 15,000 light years from Earth, it is pulsing every 44 even more strange is that it is doing it with both radio waves and X-rays. What did scientists find? A team of astronomers looked at data from Nasa's space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Australia to study the discovered object, which has been called ASKAP found that the star belongs to a class of objects called "long period radio transients" - that means it sends out radio waves of different levels over tens of minutes - in this case every 44 they also found that it is also sending X-rays every 44 minutes to Nasa, this combination of factors is "unlike anything astronomers have seen in the Milky Way galaxy."Experts are trying to work out what type of object ASKAP J1832, however they think it might be one of two could be a magnetar - which is a neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field, with an age of more than half a million it could also be possibly an unusual white dwarf star which has a companion star.
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
This common prescription drug could reduce deaths by sepsis, study finds
Critically ill patients with sepsis who are given statins may be more likely to survive, new research suggests. Researchers set out to explore whether the cholesterol-busting drugs may bring additional benefits for patients. The new study examined information on sepsis patients who received statins during a stint in intensive care and compared it with patients in a similar situation who did not receive statins. Some 14.3 per cent of 6,000 sepsis patients who were given statins died within 28 days. This is compared with 23.4 per cent of 6,000 patients who did not receive statin therapy. The research team from China said that this equates to a 39 per cent reduced risk of death within a month. The research, based on data from thousands of patients at a hospital in Israel between 2008 and 2019, also found that 7.4 per cent of statin patients died while in the intensive care unit compared with 13.6 per cent of those who did not receive statins. And during their overall hospital stay, some 11.5 per cent of sepsis patients who were given statins died, compared with 19.1 per cent of sepsis patients who did not take statins. However, it appeared that those who were not prescribed statins had a slightly shorter hospital stay compared with those who did receive them – an average of eight days compared with almost 10 days. 'We found that statin users exhibited decreased 28-day all-cause mortality,' the authors wrote in the journal Frontiers in Immunology. Sepsis is a life-threatening reaction to an infection that occurs when the immune system overreacts and starts to damage the body's tissues and organs. In the UK, 245,000 people are affected by sepsis every year. UK sepsis experts said that 'anything which might reduce the burden of a condition which claims one in five lives worldwide needs to be rigorously explored' as they called for larger trials to confirm the findings. Statins are known as cholesterol-busting drugs because they can help lower the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol in the blood. But experts said that they also have other benefits, including reducing inflammation and antibacterial effects. The research team called for larger trials to confirm their findings. 'Our large, matched cohort study found that treatment with statins was associated with a 39 per cent lower death rate for critically ill patients with sepsis, when measured over 28 days after hospital admission,' said Dr Caifeng Li, the study's corresponding author and an associate professor at Tianjin Medical University General Hospital in China. 'These results strongly suggest that statins may provide a protective effect and improve clinical outcomes for patients with sepsis.' Commenting on the study, Dr Ron Daniels, founder and chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust, said: 'It has been known for some time that the anti-inflammatory properties of statins confer a survival benefit on those who take them if they develop sepsis. 'Whilst previous studies have failed to show a similar survival benefit in treating people with sepsis with statins, this new study supports calls for a large, multi-country, randomised control trial. 'Anything which might reduce the burden of a condition which claims one in five lives worldwide needs to be rigorously explored.'
