July 19, 2007, 10:01 PM CT

Impact of False-positive Cancer Tests

According to a new study in Value in Health, women coping with the strain of being mistakenly diagnosed with breast cancer have not been adequately studied in the past. The focus of the study is a new survey that accurately assesses the negative effects of false diagnosis and provides useful information to health care practitioners and researchers.

"We know that having a false alarm at a breast cancer screening causes significant negative psychological harm," says Dr. John Brodersen, co-author of the study. "Unfortunately, previous studies of the long-term psychological consequences of these false alarms have used inadequate measures".

The survey, developed by Brodersen and his colleagues, focuses on six psychosocial dimensions; anxiety, behavioral impact, sense of dejection, impact on sleep, breast examination and sexuality. The survey showed that women who had an abnormal screening mammography later confirmed to be false-positive were negatively influenced in all six categories.

"This is an urgent issue to be addressed, because one-in-four women following the European Union-recommended biannual breast cancer screening program over a 20-year period will experience a false-positive screening mammogram," says Brodersen. "Thousands of women experience false-positive screening results. Therefore, women should be better informed both before breast cancer screening and during the screening process. This should include a discussion about the implications of a false-positive result, as well as the benefits of early detection of breast cancer"......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:04:18 GMT

"Tarts" cancer jab will "ruin lives"

"Gardasil is almost 100% effective against Human Papilloma Virus, the main cause of cervical cancer, which can be fatal, and genital warts. It is now being prescribed in Britain , with calls for the 'wonder drug' to be administered wholesale to school-girls. Cervical cancer charity Jo's Trust has called for a nation-wide programme of vaccination in secondary schools to be launched by the end of the year, even though no tests have been done on girls of that age and long-term side-effects are as yet unknown.

The use of the vaccine which prevents cervical cancer has been condemned by a Christian prayer and lobby group."
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today:

'The best way of not getting cervical cancer and genital warts is to stay a virgin and marry a virgin. Why don't these officials want young people to do that? Why don't we raise their expectations and ours and treat them with some respect?' (Christian Voice)Madness.

I saw Alice, a sixteen year old girl, this morning. She is not a tart. She is a schoolgirl. She has not been able to have a Gardasil immuisation because of prudery and government delay (Patricia saving pennies again) and now she cannot even get contraception.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, Alice had intercourse with her boyfriend. The condom split.

This has not happened to her before. She went to the local chemist to get the "morning after pill". The well known high street chemist that she visited charges £25 to provide one levonorgestrel pill. (Levonelle 1500)

Alice is a school girl. She is hard up. She did not have £25 and nor did her boyfriend. Together, they could only raise £11.

Alice's parents do not know she is sexually active. In fact, they think she is not. She was nervous about coming to the family doctor because I know her parents. And her sister. However, she is a sensible girl, and realised that it was essential that she got the morning after pill so she set off to school very early this morning and was waiting at the door of the surgery when I arrived.

In 2006 there were approximately 194,000 abortions in the UK, nearly five percent more than the previous year.

Contraception is supposed to be free in the UK. Chemists are allowed to sell the morning after pill without prescription to make it easier for young girls like Alice to get help.

And it is easier.

If they can afford it.

Utter madness.Labels: gardasil, morning after contraception Posted by: Dr John Crippen      Read more     Source

June 15, 2007, 12:24 AM CT

Target tumor microenvironment to stop cancer growth

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) researchers led by Daniel Nolan and Assistant Professor Vivek Mittal have found that bone marrow (BM) derived endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play a critical role in the early stages of tumor progression and that eliminating EPCs stops cancer growth. Using sophisticated high-resolution microscopy and flow cytometry, they zeroed in on the earliest stages of cancer progression and identified the role of EPCs in generating blood vessels that allow cancers to grow. If we selectively blocked the EPCs, tumors were unable to make blood vessels and could not sustain their own growth, said Vivek Mittal, CSHL Assistant Professor.

The findings open an entirely new field of research on how vascular progenitor cells control tumor growth and underscore their potential for cancer therapeutics. Published on June 15, 2007 in Genes & Development, the CSHL study settles a dispute in the field of angiogenesis that has resulted from years of inconsistent findings about the existence of EPCs in cancer tumors. Until now, this field of research that focuses on new blood vessel development has been split between researchers who have suggested the existence of EPCs and those who have vehemently disputed their presence.

The CSHL research posits that those who did not find evidence of EPCs in tumors were probably looking for them in later stages of tumor progression when EPCs are diluted by host endothelial cells. The new results show that EPCs are only present in the earliest stages of tumor progression, before the formation of blood vessels. We found that the role of EPCs is to direct the formation and organization of the vascular structure that ultimately feeds the tumor as it grows, said CSHL researcher Daniel Nolan......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

June 13, 2007, 1:24 PM CT

Prostate cancer risk in BRCA2 carriers

Carriers of a BRCA2 variation specific to Iceland are more likely to develop aggressive and lethal prostate cancer than noncarriers, as per a research studypublished online June 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute

Mutations in the BRCA2 gene are linked to increased prostate cancer risk, but it has been unclear whether they are correlation to progression of the disease.

Laufey Tryggvadttir of the Icelandic Cancer Registry and his colleagues compared survival and disease progression in patients with prostate cancer with the Icelandic BRCA2 999del5 founder mutation and those without the mutation. Using a pool of male relatives of women with breast cancer, scientists identified patients with prostate cancer diagnosed in Iceland between 1955 and 2004. The mutation was present in 30 patients (5.7%).

The mutations carriers were younger at the time of diagnosis and had more advanced staged cancer, higher-grade tumors, and shorter median survival time (2.1 years vs. 12.4 years) compared with noncarriers.

The authors conclude that it is of great importance to study whether these results can be confirmed for carriers of mutations at other locations within the BRCA2 gene. Finally, the results indicate that in the search for new methods to predict prostate cancer progression, it may be fruitful to look for gene or protein expression patterns in prostate cancers resembling the patterns seen in BRCA2 mutation carriers......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

May 22, 2007, 9:51 PM CT

Stem cells provide clues to cancer spread

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how cancers spread in what could lead to new ways of beating the disease.

The University of Manchester study used embryonic stem (ES) cells to investigate how some tumours are able to migrate to other parts of the body, which makes the treatment of cancer much more difficult.

Dr Chris Ward, in the Universitys Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences, studied a crucial change that makes cancer cells able to start moving and spread into other tissues.

Normal cells, as well as early cancer cells, are called epithelial cells because they bind tightly to each other forming stable layers of tissue. However, as a tumour becomes more advanced, some of the cells change to become mesenchymal.

Mesenchymal cells do not bind to each other, forming more disorganised tissues in which the cells can move around. Since this crucial change known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition, was first observed in the early embryo, Dr Ward theorised that embryonic stem cells might undergo a similar process.

Dr Ward, whose findings are reported in the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell, said: "We have shown that ES cells spontaneously change in a manner that is remarkably similar to the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. They lose the proteins that cells use to bind to each other and have other protein alterations that are characteristic of spreading cancer cells......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

May 21, 2007, 12:30 AM CT

Role of age, gender, race and weight on cancer risk

While cancer has been studied extensively to determine the major contributing factors for risk and ultimate outcome, a number of variables still remain and doctors are puzzled by new cases that do not fit "old" protocol. Research presented today at Digestive Disease Week 2007 (DDW) demonstrates improved results in determining these risks, including the relative "weight" of being heavy on risk for colon cancer; possible risk of cancer surgery among elderly individuals; and how race determines incidence as well as therapy decisions. DDW is the largest international gathering of physicians and scientists in the fields of gastroenterology, hepatology, endoscopy and gastrointestinal surgery.

"Drilling down into clinical trials data for different types of patients can lead to varying and important conclusions," said Marcia R. Cruz-Correa, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry, University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center. "In these instances, management of risk factors for colon cancer and therapy decisions for a particular sub-group of patients can be influenced by these analyses".



Racial and Geographic Disparities in the Utilization of Surgical Therapy for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (Abstract #276)

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a cancer of cells in the liver, is on the rise in part due to the high prevalence of chronic hepatitis C infection, which increases the risk for the disease. Surgery is the only potential curative therapy for HCC and this study sought to determine the patterns of use for this therapy......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

May 6, 2007, 5:50 PM CT

MR imaging helps predict recurrence

MR images taken of patients with prostate cancer previous to therapy that show that the cancer has spread outside the prostate gland capsule help predict whether the cancer will return, as per a recent study conducted by radiologists at the University of California-San Francisco.

The study consisted of 74 men with biopsy-proven prostate cancer who underwent endorectal MR imaging of the prostate, said Antonio Westphalen, MD, lead author of the study. Tumor size, stage and extracapsular extension (cancer spread outside the prostate gland capsule) were all recorded.

"The study focused on patients who were treated with radiation treatment, more specifically, external beam radiation treatment, which is the therapy of choice of about one-third of patients with newly diagnosed prostate cancer," said Dr. Westphalen.

After a follow-up of an average 42 months, four patients developed metastases all four had extracapsular extension seen on MR imaging before therapy, Dr. Westphalen said. Three of them had more than 5mm of extracapsular extension at MR imaging, he said.

"The main goal of our study was to identify features on our imaging that would predict therapy failure, perhaps allowing for a more conscientious decision ahead of time. We observed that a subset of patients who presented with imaging signs of extracapsular extension previous to radiation were more likely to develop metastases in the future," said Dr. Westphalen......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

April 30, 2007, 6:54 PM CT

The Tungsten Nevada Leukemia Link

Tungsten began increasing in trees in Fallon, Nev. several years before the town's rise in childhood leukemia cases, according to a new research report.

The amount of tungsten in tree rings from Fallon quadrupled between 1990 and 2002, whereas the amount in tree rings from nearby towns remained the same, according to a research team led by Paul R. Sheppard of The University of Arizona's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.

This is the first study that has examined changes in levels of heavy metals in Fallon over time.

"Trees take up metals from the environment and those metals show up in the tree rings. By analyzing chemicals in tree rings, we can look back in time years, and even decades," said Sheppard, a UA assistant professor of dendrochronology.

"Tree ring values for the early 1990s for tungsten are roughly equivalent to nearby towns, but go up in Fallon in the mid-1990s while staying the same in other towns," he said.

Tungsten levels in Fallon trees began increasing in 1994, while levels in neighboring towns remained the same. Since 1997, 17 cases of childhood leukemia have been diagnosed in children who lived in the Fallon area for some time prior to diagnosis. Fallon's high incidence of leukemia has been acknowledged as a leukemia cluster by the Nevada State Health Division......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

April 25, 2007, 9:35 PM CT

Short chromosomes put cancer cells in forced rest

A Johns Hopkins team has stopped in its tracks a form of blood cancer in mice by engineering and inactivating an enzyme, telomerase, thereby shortening the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres.

"Normally, when telomeres get critically short, the cell commits suicide as a means of protecting the body," says Carol Greider, Ph.D., the Daniel Nathans chair of molecular biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins. Her study, appearing online this month at Cancer Cell, uncovers an alternate response where cells simply - and permanently - stop growing, a process known as senescence.

In an unusual set of experiments, the research team first mated mice with nonoperating telomerase to mice carrying a mutation that predisposed them to Burkitts lymphoma, a rare but aggressive cancer of white blood cells. Telomerase helps maintain the caps or ends of chromosomes called telomeres, which shrink each time a cell divides and eventually - when the chromosomes get too short - force the cell to essentially commit suicide. Such cell death is natural, and when it fails to happen, the result may be unbridled cell growth, or cancer.

The first generation pups born to these mice contained no telomerase and very long telomeres. These mice all developed lymphomas by the time they were 7 months old. The researchers then continued breeding the mice to see what would happen in later generations. By the fifth generation, the researchers discovered that the mice had short telomeres and stopped developing lymphomas......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source

April 23, 2007, 10:06 PM CT

Antioxidant is selective killer of leukemia cells

A naturally occurring compound found in many fruits and vegetables as well as red wine, selectively kills leukemia cells in culture while showing no discernible toxicity against healthy cells, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. These findings, which were published online March 20 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and will be in press on May 4, offer hope for a more selective, less toxic therapy for leukemia.

Current treatments for leukemia, such as chemotherapy and radiation, often damage healthy cells and tissues and can produce unwanted side effects for many years afterward. So, there is an intensive search for more targeted therapies for leukemia worldwide, said corresponding author Xiao-Ming Yin, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Leukemia is not a single disease but a number of related cancers that start in the blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Meaning literally white blood in Greek, leukemia occurs when there is an excess of abnormal white blood cells. There are both acute and chronic forms of leukemia, each with many subtypes that vary in their response to treatment. According to the National Cancer Institute, about 44,000 new leukemia cases will be diagnosed in the United States in 2007, and there will be about 22,000 leukemia-related deaths......... Posted by: Jesmi24      Read more         Source