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Male pattern baldness affects around 40% of men

Genes that may increase by seven-fold the risk of early baldness amongst men have been uncovered by a team of international researchers.

Analysis of the DNA from 5,000 volunteers with and without male-pattern baldness found two stretches of the genome linked with the condition.

One in seven men have both genetic variants, Nature Genetics reported.

Being able to predict hair loss early could boost development of preventive treatments, the researchers said.

An initial study in more than 500 men with early onset hair loss and 500 men without the condition highlighted the two genetic regions which substantially increased the risk of baldness.

One was the androgen receptor gene and has already been linked to male-pattern baldness.

The other region is on chromosome 20 and is nowhere near any known gene.

Male pattern baldness, or androgenic alopecia, was already k nown to be hereditary and partly caused by male sex hormones.

More work is needed to work out how this influences risk of baldness, the researchers said.

Their findings were confirmed by the researchers in other groups of people with androgenic alopecia - including women in which they found a weaker association - in the UK, Iceland and the Netherlands.

Inheritance

A second study also published in Nature Genetics found a similar link between hair loss and chromosome 20.

The German researchers said the androgen gene which until now had been the only gene identified with baldness was on the X chromosome which is inherited from the mother.

But chromosome 20 is inherited from both mother and father and may provide an explanation for similarities in hair loss between father and sons, they said.

Dr Tim Spector, from Kings College London, said they found around 14% of men carry both genetic variants.

“At the moment we have a fairly good diagnostic tool for people who might want to know whether they will lose their hair before they are 50.

“There probably won’t be many people who want to use that at the moment because there aren’t any preventive treatments.”

He added he hoped it would stimulate pharmaceutical companies to develop creams, gels or pills to prevent hair loss before it starts.

“The other thing is understanding how these genes actually work - it’s likely to provide use with new targets for gene therapy which is actually quite easy to deliver to the hair follicle.”

Professor Val Randall, from the Centre for Skin Sciences at the University of Bradford said the work was very exciting, although it was debatable whether men would benefit from finding out about their hair loss risk.

However she added: “It is always easier to prevent than replace hair growth.

“Male pattern baldness has a strong inherited aspect and understanding that may well lead to better treatments and novel approaches.”

Listening to music through earphones at high volumes can damage hearing

One in 10 people with personal MP3 or CD players could suffer permanent hearing loss because their music is too loud, according to an EU study.

Scientists say those who listen at high volume for more than one hour per day over five years risk permanent harm.

They say up to 10 million people across Europe, including many children and adolescents, could be affected.

The European Commission will now look into whether technical improvements could minimise hearing damage.

Between 50 and 100 million people are estimated to use personal music players on a daily basis.

The Commission asked the independent committee to conduct the study because of concerns over widespread use of music players among young people.

EU safety standards restrict the noise level of personal music players to 100 decibels but there is increasing concern about excessive exposure to music at high volumes.

Many listeners turn up the volume above harmful levels of over 89 decibels to block out noise from traffic or public transport.

Irrevocable damage

The EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks concluded that between five and 10 per cent of listeners, equating to 2.5 to 10 million people, could be at risk.

EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner Meglena Kuneva, said, “I am concerned that so many young people, in particular, who are frequent users of personal music players and mobile phones at high acoustic levels, may be unknowingly damaging their hearing irrevocably.”

The Commission will now look into whether technical improvements could minimise hearing damage and consider changes to safety standards to protect youngsters.

Last year, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People found more than half of young people who use MP3 players listen for longer than that.

It tested the volume levels of 110 listeners and found 72 were above 85 decibels.

By Amanda Hargreaves
Producer, Through the Looking Glass
Binocular instabillity may be more common than thought Imagine what it is like not to be able to read without getting a headache from trying to focus on the print, which seems to dance and blur before your eyes.

Or even how it feels not to be able to meet someone’s eyes and hold their gaze, because you are seeing two faces and four eyes.

If you are one of the 15% of the population who suffer from a condition called binocular instability, then that is the reality - but you may not even realise you have it.

Binocular vision involves the control and co-ordination of both eyes.

Although each eye sees two separate images, these images are blended in the brain into one single picture.

The eyes are rarely completely straight. In most of us, they drift slightly and this is controlled without us even noticing.

If our eyes drift too much, this can cause headaches and discomfort, especially when reading.

The result is delayed processing of information at the most basic level.

It is a condition that makes reading and learning arduous.

Yet it can be cured simply and cheaply with eye exercises and spectacles.

‘I want to see properly’

Megan Slater, 15, is now undergoing treatment after years of failing at school: “I want to be able to see properly - I don’t want to be frustrated.

“When I get frustrated the teachers tell me to calm down and I just get really angry.”

Brigid Sundaram remembers having problems when she was at university, studying biochemistry.

“I had to read a lot of papers with tiny print,” she said.

“After 20 minutes I’d usually be asleep in the library, it was exhausting.

“I’ve always had to work harder than anyone else to achieve the same results.”

Brigid struggled for years at school and university before finally getting the help she needed.

The reason is that the condition isn’t easily spotted in a routine eye test.

You could have 20/20 vision and still have binocular instability.

Diagnosis a problem

According to Nadia Northway, who runs the Visual Stress Clinic at Glasgow Caledonian University, diagnosis is a problem.

She is one of only 1,500 specially trained orthoptists who can spot the subtleties of binocular instability.

Orthoptists only practice in hospitals and are therefore hard to access.

On the High Street, only some optometrists have the special training required to diagnose the condition.

Funding is another key issue.

Professor Bruce Evans, director of research at the Institute of Optometry, has been campaigning for proper funding for the detailed eye test required to diagnose binocular instability.

He said: “We have had sympathy from politicians, but so far no promises of proper funding for this. It has been a very frustrating process.”

Significant problem

There is no doubt in the mind of Nadia Northway about the impact of the condition.

“This is affecting a sizable number of our children,” she said.

“Given that one in 16 people leave school with inadequate literacy skills and at least half of those may have vision problems, we should be campaigning in the streets about this.”

And the condition also runs in families, so if the problem isn’t spotted, you and your relatives could spend years battling against this hidden disability without knowing what the problem is.

After all, how does a five-year-old child know how reading should feel?

The child would probably just assume that everybody finds it tiring and painful.

Brigid Sundaram realised that all three of her children had the same symptoms as herself, and sure enough they were all diagnosed with Binocular Instability and Visual Stress, also known as Meares-Irlen Syndrome.

Both problems often co-exist and have very similar symptoms.

And the scale of the problem is still revealing itself.

According to research that Nadia Northway is currently carrying out on adults with literacy problems, as many as 80% appear to have binocular instability and/or visual stress.

“When you extrapolate from those figures what that means for the general population, it’s likely that as many as one third of us may have one or other of these conditions” said Nadia.

Edi Stark presents Through the Looking Glass on Monday 13 October on BBC Radio 4 at 2100 BST.

By Jane Elliott
Health reporter, BBC News

Gerald hopes his wound has finally healed Gerald Bryan has spent the last 67 years worrying about a leg wound he sustained during WWII.

His ulcerated leg has flared up regularly, causing him years of intense pain.

The former commando was recently told the infection had finally got so bad that he might have to lose his one remaining leg.

But he is now celebrating what he hopes is a cure after treatment at the Wound Healing Centre, in Eastbourne, Sussex.

War veteran

Gerald, aged 87, from Berkshire was shot in both ankles in 1941, fighting the Vichy French in Syria, and had to lose his right leg.

“I was shot through both legs with what was, I think, a very heavy calibre machine gun bullet.

“It entered my left leg, made a neat hole through the middle of the tibia, came out of that leg with a very much bigger exit wound and when it hit my right leg it really mashed the bone.

“I was taken prisoner by the Vichy French and my right leg was amputated, but they did a great job on my left leg and managed to save it,” said Gerald.

But the wound was unstable and has caused him a number of problems over the years.

Repeated problems

Shortly before the end of the war Gerald was accepted for a post in the Colonial Service, which ran the British colonies and protectorates, the doctor there warned him that he faced a life-time of problems.

“He said - ‘the treatment for that is bandage-and-a-damn’.

“When I asked what he meant he said: “Bandage the wound every day and curse it every evening!”

Gerald suffered a number of wound infections over the following years, but the most serious was a bone infection in 2004, when there were fears he could lose his leg.

Regular treatments help the wound to heal

“To avoid surgery I had 14 days of intravenous injections and then I stayed on antibiotics for months.

“Doctors said the bone infection appeared to be dealt with, but there was a 30% risk it would start up again within two years.

“They said I needed was an orthopaedic surgeon to open up the wound and scrape all the dead bone away, and then a plastic surgeon to take a chunk out of my thigh and stick that onto the wound.”

Gerald was told doctors could only do this twice, but that if that failed he would have to lose the leg.

“I said but ‘I have only got one leg and I can’t spare that’ and I was able to persuade the physician to give me antibiotics instead,” he said.

Although the bone infection healed, the wound remained a problem and Gerald got into a pattern of needing two dressings a week and antibiotics once a month.

‘Miracle worker’

Then Gerald was referred to wound specialist Sylvie Hampton at Eastbourne’s Wound Healing Clinic, for regular injections of collagen, a protein which binds tissue.

“The wound started immediately to get better, and within two weeks had gone down to half the original size,” he said.

And although Gerald did have a set-back he now hopes the wound is finally closed.

Gerald lost a leg in WW2

“I have to thank Sylvie for being in better shape than I have been for a long time.

“When the thing is open you can’t swim, you can’t have a bath - altogether it is not a happy time.”

Ms Hampton is managing director of the Tissue Viability Consultancy Services (TVCS) which runs the Eastbourne clinic, set up with the help of the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA).

It has been carrying out trials into new ways of treating wounds, as well as helping NHS patients.

Ms Hampton said: “Everyone who works in the centre has a speciality in wound care. Generally, you do not get that.

“We have a lot of specialist knowledge, and also we have all the equipment we need to be able to diagnose and treat.

“And we can use whatever dressings we think are appropriate. Within the health service you can not always do that.”

She added: “If you had a heart attack you would go and see a heart specialist, and people should be at dealing with wounds in the same way.”

The clinic has treated 220 people in the eight months it has been open.

Ms Hampton is now hoping she will be able to set up more wound healing centres throughout the UK and overseas.

Dedication

Dr David Becker, of University College London, who has carried out research in the area of wound healing said he believed it was not the treatments being offered that were the key, but the fact that they were able to offer a dedicated service.

“A common feature of clinical trials for treatments of chronic wounds is that you find that if the wounds get looked after to a very high standard every day.

“They often tend to heal in the control groups as well as the experimental treated groups.

“For most chronic wound patients, the wounds would not be treated so often and to such a high standard of care as they seem to be getting from TVCS.

“What I think we have here is not a miracle but a high standard of care with daily treatments - and as their stats show many people respond.”

Increasingly bacteria are resistant to drugs such as vancomycin

UK researchers are using microscopic “nanoprobes” to find new drugs to tackle antibiotic resistance.

The tiny ultra-sensitive probes can measure how well a drug binds to bacteria and its ability to weaken and destroy the bug.

The researchers tested the silicon-based technology on vancomycin, one of the few remaining antibiotics against infections such as MRSA

The initial results are published in Nature Nanotechnology.

It is the first time this type of nanotechnology has been used in screening for new drugs.

The probes are no wider than a human hair - which may seem big by nanotechnology standards - but they are able to detect minute changes at the molecular level.

Antibiotics such as vancomycin bind to the bacterial cell wall, disrupting it and causing the bacteria to break down.

When bacteria become resistant, small changes occur in the structure of their cell wall making it far harder for the antibiotic to latch on and weaken the structure of the cell.

‘Surface stress’

The researchers from the London Centre for Nanotechnology coated a series of the nanoprobes with the proteins that make up bacterial cell walls.

Like a tiny row of diving boards, the probes bend in response to the “surface stress” that occurs when the antibiotic binds to the cell.

The system was able to detect that it is 1,000 times harder for vancomycin to attach to resistant bacteria than to non-resistant bacteria.

They are now screening other potential antibiotics with the goal of finding a drug that is able to bind strongly to resistant bacteria and cause substantial structural weaknesses to the cell wall.

Study leader Dr Rachel McKendry said: “There has been an alarming growth in antibiotic-resistant hospital ’superbugs’ such as MRSA and vancomycin resistant Enterococci (VRE).

“This a major global health problem and is driving the development of new technologies to investigate antibiotics and how they work.”

She added that different drugs caused different structural weaknesses in the cell wall - some of which were more effective than others - and the nanotechnology they were using could help to pinpoint those that were likely to cause the most destruction.

Professor Jeff Errington, director of the Institute for Cell and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Newcastle said the technology was very interesting and obviously highly sensitive.

But he said it did not solve the problem of finding new antibiotics to test in the first place.

“The bottleneck is in finding new molecules that kill bacteria by novel pathways,” he said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street headed for a huge rebound Monday as investors, hoping that the stock market is finding some footing after eight sessions of devastating losses, sent stock futures indexes sharply higher. The market appeared relieved by pledges of further coordinated actions by European and U.S. authorities to aid the crippled banking system, including plans by the Treasury to buy U.S. bank stocks.

Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 344, or 4.1 percent, to 8,714. Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures rose 45.10, or 5.06 percent, to 936.10. Nasdaq 100 index futures rose 56.50, or 4.41 percent, to 1,339.00.

Dave Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Canaccord Adams in New York, said that while the market is expecting a snapback rally after steep declines logged since last month, sustainable gains could prove more elusive.

“Everybody knew that we were going to have an up day eventually,” he said. “When everybody expects something it never really comes true.”

He said that while he’s still expecting a rally, it likely will come with more volatile trading.

Investors in Asia and Europe were already buying, grabbing stocks after last week’s rout and action by major governments over the weekend to bolster investor confidence.

In Asia, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surged 10.2 percent. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday. In afternoon trading in Europe, Britain’s FTSE 100 jumped 3.46 percent, Germany’s DAX index rose 6.84 percent, and France’s CAC-40 jumped 6.09 percent.

Still, while the markets were upbeat early Monday, they were also well aware that there is much to be done to heal the banking system and the credit markets that have come to a virtual halt. Moreover, even if there is heavy buying when trading opens Monday, Wall Street can expect to see back-and-forth trading in the coming days and weeks as investors remain nervous. But many observers had said the market was overdue for some version of a bounce-back after one of the worst-ever week’s on Wall Street.

The Bush administration is working on implementing its $700 billion financial rescue plan. The White House is consulting with six private law firms to determine the best way to buy ownership stakes in a broad number of banks. The plan to buy shares of banks is aimed at getting capital to financial institutions faster than purchasing their soured mortgage-backed assets.

“Everybody is basically waiting on the decision on where they’re going to inject cash,” said Rovelli. He said with the bond markets closed for the Columbus Day holiday, U.S. government officials are likely holding off on announcement of details about where it might invest money until all major global markets are open.

Neel Kashkari, the assistant Treasury secretary who is interim head of the program, said officials have been developing rules to govern the purchase of soured assets. The announcement contained few details about the government will sweep up bad assets and take stakes in banks.

The Federal Reserve also said it would make enough U.S. dollar funds were available to meet demand.

Investors awaited digested word from the Bank of England that it would use up to $63 billion to the three largest British banks to help shore up their balance sheets.

The Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank jointly announced plans to work together to provide as much short-term funding as necessary to help revive lending. The Bank of Japan said it was considering taking similar steps.

After a series of weekend meetings in Washington of heads of the Group of Seven nations, the gains in markets in Asia and Europe signaled that investors found comfort from the actions and pledges coming from government officials.

The surge in stock futures comes after a dismal week on Wall Street that erased an estimated $2.4 trillion in shareholder wealth. The Dow, after eight consecutive daily losses that totaled just under 2,400, or 22.1 percent, finished at its lowest level since April 2003, and also suffered its worst weekly percentage loss ever, a fall of 18.2 percent.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 lost 15.3 percent last week and the Nasdaq composite index fell 15.3 percent.

Investors worried that banks’ reluctance to lend to one another would imperil economic activity by making it harder and more expensive for businesses and consumers to get a loan.

Early Monday, Wall Street found some relief from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s announcement that it closed on its $9 billion investment in Morgan Stanley a day earlier than expected. Morgan Stanley lost nearly 60 percent of its value last week as investors worried that the deal would fall apart. The agreement gives Morgan a much-needed injection of cash.

Morgan Stanley shares rose 28.2 percent to $12.41 in premarket electronic trading.

The dollar was mixed against other major currencies.

Light, sweet crude rose $4.49 to $82.19 in premarket electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after oil fell to its lowest level in 13 months last week.

—

On the Net:

New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com

Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Thabo Mbeki’s spokesman says the former president is flying to Zimbabwe to help resolve a deadlock in power-sharing talks to end that country’s crisis.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe announced at the weekend that he is allocating all key ministries in the proposed unity government to his party.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai threatened Sunday to ditch the agreement if Mugabe refuses to cede control of key ministries.

Mbeki spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said the former South African president flies to Zimbabwe on Monday afternoon.

African leaders asked Mbeki to mediate over disputed results of elections in which Tsvangirai’s party won most votes.

Mbeki persuaded the rivals to share power on Sept. 15 but they cannot agree Cabinet posts.

By Linda Pressly
BBC Radio current affairs reporter

On Friday 5 October last year, Tom Clabburn did not wake up for school. There were no signs that Tom was ill

Tom was just 14 when he died suddenly and completely unexpectedly from an undiagnosed heart condition.

He was a bright, funny, active, and seemingly healthy teenager - the kind of boy everyone liked.

In the UK, 12 young people die from an undiagnosed heart condition every week. They are people who inherited a structural abnormality or an electrical fault of the heart.

This new figure has been collated by the charity CRY - Cardiac Risk in the Young - and denotes deaths among people up to the age of 35.

It is based on data from the Office of National Statistics for 2005, and represents an increase of 50% on the previous estimate of eight deaths a week.

Dr Sanjay Sharma, a consultant cardiologist at King’s College Hospital in London, is in charge of CRY’s heart screening programme and analysed the figures.

He said: “Maybe 12 a week doesn’t seem very many when you consider the thousands dying from heart attacks or heart failure in the UK every year.

“But what horrified me, was the age of these people - a lot of them were under eighteen.”

CRY runs a national cardiac screening programme for anyone who may be at risk.

‘Awareness must be raised’

Some people - like Tom - have no symptoms before they die. But many youngsters do get warning signs.

Chest pains or undue breathlessness when exercising, heart palpitations, bouts of dizziness or blackouts - all of these may indicate a heart defect.

Dr Sanjay Sharma says he was ‘horrified’ by the age of those affected

And because these conditions are genetic, Dr Sharma believes there are other people who should consider heart screening too.

These would include anyone who has a close relative - a parent, sibling or child - with a potentially hereditary heart condition, and anyone who has a close relative who died suddenly under the age of forty.

It is quite likely sudden death may indicate an undiagnosed heart problem.

“We have to raise awareness about this in the general population”, says Dr Sharma. “Most importantly we have to get the message out to GPs - they are the ones on the front line.”

Exercise clue

Dr Sharma sees over 30 patients a week in his clinics at both King’s College Hospital and University Hospital in Lewisham. All of them are under 35. Treatment will vary according to how serious the condition is.

He says: “We can now identify those at high risk, and we supply those patients with defibrillators.

“Some people will be treatable with drugs. For others it may just be a question of lifestyle modification.

“For instance, someone might get minor symptoms but only when they exercise. If we can persuade them not to exercise so vigorously, that may be all that’s needed.”

Since they lost Tom, his family have campaigned to raise awareness about heart defects in young people.

“The death of a child is just too huge for most people to comprehend”, says Tom’s mum, Claire Prosser.

“When Tom died, CRY understood what we were going through.

“If we can prevent even one family from going through what we have, it will be worthwhile.”

‘Life After Tom’ will be broadcast on Monday 13th October on BBC Radio 4. It tells the story of Tom’s mum, Claire Prosser, as she begins to rebuild her life without her son.

CHICAGO (AP) — The nation’s leading pediatricians group says children from newborns to teens should get double the usually recommended amount of vitamin D because of evidence that it may help prevent serious diseases.

To meet the new recommendation of 400 units daily, millions of children will need to take daily vitamin D supplements, the American Academy of Pediatrics said. That includes breast-fed infants - even those who get some formula, too, and many teens who drink little or no milk.

Baby formula contains vitamin D, so infants on formula only generally don’t need supplements. However, the academy recommends breast-feeding for at least the first year of life and breast milk is sometimes deficient.

Most commercially available milk is fortified with vitamin D, but most children and teens don’t drink enough of it - four cups daily would be needed - to meet the new requirement, said Dr. Frank Greer, the report’s co-author.

The new advice is based on mounting research about potential benefits from vitamin D besides keeping bones strong, including suggestions that it might reduce risks for cancer, diabetes and heart disease. But the evidence isn’t conclusive and there’s no consensus on how much of the vitamin would be needed for disease prevention.

The new advice replaces a 2003 academy recommendation for 200 units daily.

That’s the amount the government recommends for children and adults up to age 50; 400 units is recommended for adults aged 51 to 70 and 600 units for those aged 71 and up. Vitamin D is sold in drops for young children, capsules and tablets.

The Institute of Medicine, a government advisory group that sets dietary standards, is discussing with federal agencies whether those recommendations should be changed based on emerging research, said spokeswoman Christine Stencel.

The recommendations were prepared for release Monday at an academy conference in Boston. They are to be published in the November issue of the academy’s journal, Pediatrics.

Besides milk and some other fortified foods like cereal, vitamin D is found in oily fish including tuna, mackerel and sardines.

But it’s hard to get enough through diet; the best source is sunlight because the body makes vitamin D when sunshine hits the skin.

While it is believed that 10 to 15 minutes in the sun without sunscreen a few times weekly is sufficient for many, people with dark skin and those in northern, less sunny climates need more. Because of sunlight’s link with skin cancer, “vitamin D supplements during infancy, childhood and adolescence are necessary,” the academy’s report says.

Recent studies have shown that many children don’t get enough vitamin D, and cases of rickets, a bone disorder often associated with malnourishment in the 1800s, continue to occur.

Greer, a University of Wisconsin pediatrician, acknowledged that most studies suggesting vitamin D may play a much broader role in disease prevention have been observational, not the most rigorous kind of medical evidence.

Nonetheless, many doctors consider the research compelling and many have begun to offer patients routine vitamin D testing.

Adrian Gombart, a vitamin D researcher at Oregon State University, said the new recommendations are safe and conservative but that 400 units “is probably not enough.”

Gombart’s lab work in human tissue has shown that vitamin D helps increase levels of a protein that kills bacteria. He said many experts believe that between 800 and 1,000 units daily would be more effective at helping fight disease.

Several members of an academy committee that helped write the guidelines have current or former ties to makers of infant formula or vitamin supplements.

—

On the Net:

Academy: http://www.aap.org

Institute of Medicine: http://www.iom.edu

By Jane Elliott
Health reporter, BBC News

The 3D machine allows students to practise

In a lecture theatre at Kingston University the students don their 3D goggles.

“It’s a bit like going to the Imax cinema,” quips one student.

But the sophisticated equipment, costing 300,000, has a much more serious purpose - to train radiotherapy students to treat cancer.

It is a 3D simulation of radiotherapy treatment in which students are able to use a remote control to “give” the right dose in the right place on the image of a cancer patient’s body, which beamed onto a large screen.

Seeing inside the body

The intricate machinery produces three-dimensional images of both the patient and the machine.

Geraldine Francis, head of Kingston’s school of radiography, said the equipment would allow students to make mistakes without endangering patients.

“They need to make mistakes because they will learn more effectively: they wouldn’t be allowed to make a mistake in a department, ” she said.

“They can do what they need to in a safe environment.

“They can make mistakes, crash the machine, take as long as they need to practise, because you cannot practise on a patient.

Gaining experience

Mrs Francis said using the technique should mean students can work with real patients much sooner.

“The overall period of training will not change, but they will be able to help in clinics and relieve pressures sooner.

“Before, putting across concepts has been difficult because it is difficult to visualise what we do.

“Now they can see where doses are being given within the body, and can see structures like the kidney and the spinal cord, which are meant to be avoided.

“They can also see how we can adapt the procedures to make sure patients get the right amount of radiation in a safe and accurate way.”

Students can see which parts of the body to target

The equipment has been paid for by the Department of Health as part of a 5m programme across England to improve radiotherapy training.

By 2016, the number of radiotherapy treatments required by patients will almost double.

The system is getting a good response from the students who have had a chance to use it.

Getting skilled

Sophie Main, a third-year student said: “I think it is fabulous and I definitely think it will benefit first year students .I do feel the benefits.

“It allows us to see into the patient so we can see where the beams are being directed and what each beam is doing.

Users have to wear 3D goggles

“It also allows us to have a go and practise, meaning that we don’t have to take up too much of the radiologists’ time or leave the patient feeling uncomfortable on the bed while we set up.”

Third year student Anne Lewis agreed.

“When you are in the first year, before you go into the units, it is difficult to visualise. But with this you can see inside the patient.

“It’s like being at the Imax. It is really clever,” she said.

Superintendent radiographer at the Royal Marsden Hospital Sarah Armstrong said the training would help increase confidence.

“In the past, it could be quite daunting for undergraduates furthering their training at the Royal Marsden to find themselves handling a 2 million piece of equipment for the first time, but now they will have some knowledge of the apparatus before they arrive,” she said.