Subscribe

Renegade
Neurologist
RSS Feed

Search

 Wellness Health
Visit Our Sponsor »

Archive for the 'Cancer' Category

« Previous Entries

Younger Breast Cancer Survivors Risk Disease in Other Breast

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

Study suggests link to radiation therapy, but experts say treatments are safer today

From http healthday.com
Young women receiving radiation after having surgery for breast cancer are at increased risk of developing a new tumor in the opposite — or contralateral — breast, a new Dutch study suggests.

And the risk jumps even higher if the woman also has a significant family history of breast cancer.

The study, appearing online in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, looked at fairly recent radiation techniques (1970 to 1986), but experts pointed out that these techniques are continually being refined and improved.

“It’s a very interesting study, [but] radiation techniques have changed dramatically over the last 25 years and a lot of these patients were treated with much older techniques,” said Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La.

The risk of contralateral breast cancer was also greatest when three or more family members had a history of breast cancer, indicating that some of the women in the study might have the risk-raising BRCA1 or 2 genetic mutations. These mutations weren’t tested for in the study.

“Today, we’re able to better identify women who may not be breast-conservation candidates,” Brooks said.

Study author Maartje J. Hooning, of the department of medical oncology at Erasmus Medical Center Daniel den Hoed Cancer Center in Rotterdam, said that even though “radiation techniques of today will lead to a lower dose to the contralateral breast than the techniques presented in our study, treating clinicians should be aware of the existing dose-response relationship for risk of contralateral breast cancer. Especially in young women, the radiation dose to the contralateral breast should be kept as low as possible.”

According to the American Cancer Society, radiation therapy is usually employed to destroy lingering cancer cells after a lumpectomy (also known as breast-conserving surgery), after a mastectomy involving a tumor larger than 5 centimeters in size, or when cancer is found in the lymph nodes.

In general, according to the study, women diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast have three to four times the risk of developing a new cancer in the other breast.

Much of this increased risk has been attributed to genetic predisposition, hormonal risk factors and other common causes. But there remains the possibility that treatment regimens for the first breast cancer, including chemotherapy and radiation, might also play a part.

For this study, the researchers looked at more than 7,000 one-year survivors of breast cancer who had been under the age of 71 when they were diagnosed. All were treated from 1970 to 1986 in the Netherlands.

Overall, radiation therapy did not significantly increase the risk of a new cancer in the opposite breast.

However, women treated with radiation before they turned 45 had a slightly increased risk of a new tumor in the other breast, while women receiving radiation before they were 35 had a 78 percent increased risk.

Women receiving post-lumpectomy radiation before the age of 45 had a 1.5-fold increased risk of contralateral breast cancer when compared with women who had undergone post-mastectomy radiation, according to the study.

Younger women with a strong family history of breast cancer who had also undergone post-lumpectomy radiation had a 3.5-fold increased risk of contralateral breast cancer, the study found.

“Now that we know that young patients with affected relatives are at increased risk of contralateral breast cancer following radiation therapy, we should define in more detail the subgroup that is genetically susceptible to radiation-induced breast cancer,” Hooning said.

Share this Article:

Mailing List:

Posted in Cancer, Men & Women | No Comments »

Silicone Breast Implants Might Raise Risk of Rare Lymphoma

Friday, November 7th, 2008

But researchers stress absolute chances of disease are still small

From healthday.com
Women with silicone breast implants may have a higher risk of developing a rare form of lymphoma, new research suggests.

But the absolute risk of developing this cancer is still tiny, amounting to about 0.1 to 0.3 per 100,000 women with implants each year, according to the Dutch authors of a study published in the Nov. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Doctors should be aware of this . . . but it’s not something women should worry about,” said Dr. Mitchell Smith, head of the lymphoma service at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “People with implants have a one in many hundreds of thousands or one in a million chance of developing this cancer.”

More importantly, Smith said, the finding might help scientists understand the biology of this particular malignancy.

Silicone breast implants have engendered decades of controversy. In 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lifted a 14-year ban on their commercial use, giving approval to two companies, Allergan Inc., of Irvine, Calif., and Mentor Corp, of Santa Barbara, Calif., to market the implants to all women aged 22 and older.

Neither company responded to requests from HealthDay for comment on the finding.

The implants had been removed from the market in 1992, following suspicions that they might cause cancer or certain autoimmune diseases. There were also concerns that the implants might interfere with the accuracy of breast cancer screening, or that ruptures would cause other health problems.

Researchers have identified previous cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in women with breast implants, and most of these were anaplastic large T-cell lymphoma (ALCL).

Normally, ALCL is exceedingly rare, representing 3 percent or less of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma in adults, and there are no known risk factors.

The authors of this study, at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, searched a national database in the Netherlands for all cases of lymphoma in the breast diagnosed between 1990 and 2006.

They found 11 patients with ALCL, five of whom had had breast implants one to 23 years before their diagnosis. This was out of a total population of 8 million Dutch women over 17 years.

Compared with women who had other types of lymphoma in the breast, women with silicone breast implants had an 18-fold greater risk for developing ALCL.

The authors hypothesized that an immune system response related to placement of the implants or toxic damage from the implants might explain the association.

“There has been a lot of information about silicone and autoimmune disorders,” Smith said. “Lymphomas do occur in other immune-deficiency states where you have chronic stimulation of parts of the immune system. It makes some sort of sense that this could happen.”

Share this Article:

Mailing List:

Posted in Cancer, Men & Women | No Comments »

Traditional Chinese Medicine herb is a potent cancer killer

Saturday, November 1st, 2008

From worldhealth.net
Researchers have used an herb used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to develop a compound that is 1,200-times more effective at killing cancer cells than current chemotherapy drugs.

Tomikazu Sasaki and colleagues at the University of Washington attached a chemical homing device to the anti-malarial drug artemisinin, which is derived from the sweet wormwood plant (Artemisia annua L). Tests showed that the compound was highly selective and effective at killing human leukemia cells. Preliminary results suggest that the compound is similarly effective at selectively killing human breast and prostate cancer cells.

The compound works by exploiting the high iron content of cancer cells. Artemisinin is highly toxic in the presence of iron, and the reaction that occurs between it and iron leads to the generation of free radicals, which ultimately kill off the cell. Artemisinin is actually very effective at killing cancer cells on its own; however by adding the chemical homing device the scientists were able to significantly improve its selectivity for cancer cells.

The majority of chemotherapy drugs that are currently available are non-selective, which means that they are extremely toxic to healthy cells, typically destroying one healthy cell for every five to ten cancer cells. However, the new compound selectively targets cancer cells, and was shown to destroy just one healthy cell for every 12,000 cancer cells. Thus suggesting that the compound would have minimal side effects.

Sweet wormwood has been used in TCM, where it is known as qing hao, for more than 2,000 years.

Share this Article:

Mailing List:

Posted in Alternative Therapies, Cancer | No Comments »

Study Suggests Red Wine May Protect Against Lung Cancer

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

But authors say research, which focused on men, doesn’t mean it’s OK to smoke
healthday.com

Men who drink a moderate amount of red wine may lower their risk of lung cancer, even if they smoke, researchers report.

“An antioxidant component in red wine may help to prevent lung cancer,” said lead researcher Chun Chao, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research and Evaluation. “The findings provide an impetus for future research to find out if there is something in red wine that may help to either prevent or treat lung cancer.”

But the researchers cautioned that the findings don’t mean that it’s OK to smoke.

For the study, Chao’s group collected data on 84,170 men who participated in the California Men’s Health Study. Among these men, the researchers identified 210 cases of lung cancer.

The researchers found that there was, on average, a 2 percent lower risk of lung cancer associated with each glass of red wine consumed per month.

The greatest reduction was among men who smoked and drank one to two glasses of red wine a day. These men lowered their risk for lung cancer by 60 percent, Chao’s group found.

The reduction wasn’t as pronounced among nonsmokers who drank one to two glasses of red wine a day. And no reduction in risk for lung cancer was associated with white wine, beer or liquor, the researchers said.

Despite the findings, Chao warned against thinking that smoking and drinking red wine can actually prevent lung cancer.

“Men who smoke should stop smoking,” she said. “Even men who drink one or two glasses of red wine per day still face a greater risk of lung cancer than do nonsmokers. This study should not be used as an excuse to drink more red wine. Moderation is always the best course.”

The findings were published in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer, doesn’t think that one study proves that red wine will protect you from lung cancer.

“It’s an interesting study, and it raises interesting questions about whether or not there is a cancer protective effect in red wine,” he said. “It is important that this be looked at further to see if that association holds up.”

Lichtenfeld noted that there have been previous reports of a benefit of red wine for cancer prevention that didn’t pan out. “Before we get overly excited about this, we really need to see these effects replicated,” he said.

“Clearly, we aren’t recommending that smokers go out and start consuming large amounts of red wine as a potential protection from getting lung cancer,” he added. “There are other research reports that show that any alcohol, including red wine, can increase the risk of other cancers such as breast cancer.”

Share this Article:

Mailing List:

Posted in Alcohol, Cancer | No Comments »

Family History Key Player in Brain Cancer Risk

Sunday, October 5th, 2008

Having immediate relatives with tumors boosts one’s risk for same, study says

From healthday.com
Having a family history of cancerous brain tumors puts you at a higher risk of developing the same kind of tumors, a new study says.

The research, published in the Sept. 23 issue of Neurology, looked at the medical records and family histories of 1,401 people with either astrocytomas, tumors in the brain or spinal cord, or glioblastomas, a more aggressive and deadly category of astrocytomas.

Those whose immediate relatives had glioblastomas had twice the risk of also developing them. People with immediate relatives who had astrocytomas were nearly four times more likely to develop the same kind of tumor.

“Our study suggests that people with a family history of brain tumors should make their doctor aware of this and tell them about any other risk factors they have,” study author Dr. Deborah Blumenthal, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said in a news release issued by the journal’s publisher.

“Hopefully, studies like these will eventually help us to identify genes that may be responsible for these types of brain tumors,” she said.

Share this Article:

Mailing List:

Posted in Cancer, Medical Research | No Comments »

« Previous Entries