Four years ago, Janelly Martinez-Amador was confined to a bed, unable to move even an arm or lift her head. At age 3, the fragile toddler had the gross motor skills of a newborn and a ventilator kept her alive.

She was born with thin, fragile bones, and by 3, she had no visible bones on X-rays. Initially, doctors weren’t sure she would survive her first birthday. In May, Janelly will turn 7, and is developing bone with the help of an experimental drug therapy and her care team at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt.

Darren Oliver photo

Rain didn’t deter the nearly 200 people who came out for the 2013 Upper Cumberland MS Walk in Cookeville Saturday, April 27 at Cane Creek Park. The event is an annual fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a nonprofit organization whose ultimate goal is to eradicate MS.

A new study by researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Shanghai Cancer Institute found women who ate more soy food prior to a diagnosis of lung cancer lived longer than those who consumed less. The study, conducted in Shanghai, China, was published in the March 25 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Lead author Gong Yang, M.D., MPH, research associate professor at VUMC said, “To our knowledge, this is the first study to suggest an association between high soy consumption before a lung cancer diagnosis and better overall survival.”