Cancer

Fertility drugs not tied to long term breast cancer risk

According to long-term study data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, women who took fertility treatments were no more likely to develop breast cancer during 30 years of follow-up than those who never used the drugs, as reported in the Chicago Tribune.

Investigators analyzed records for 9892 women in the US who were followed for some 30 years after having been evaluated for infertility between 1965 and 1988.

Approximately 38 percent of the study participants were exposed to the fertility drug clomiphene, while roughly 10 percent were exposed to gonadotropins. In the 30 years of follow-up, 749 breast cancers were diagnosed among the study participants.

Results suggested that women who were exposed to either type of fertility drug were no more likely to develop breast cancer overall, than those who did not take the medicines to stimulate ovulation.

However, a higher risk of breast cancer was noticed among a small subset of women who had been prescribed the highest doses of clomiphene, although researchers said the reasons for this are unclear.

The authors cautioned that further study of women who receive fertility treatments is needed, because many women included in the current study had not yet reached the age range when breast cancer diagnoses are most common.

Source: First Word

IBM’s Watson supercomputer takes aim at brain cancer

IBM’s Watson supercomputer is being re-tasked to help clinicians create personalized treatments for a common form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma. The project, which is a collaboration between IBM and the New York Genome Center (NYGC), hopes to make use of Watson’s artificial intelligence to analyze vast quantities of data in order to suggest a personalized life-saving treatment based on the patient’s individual case.

Over the years, Watson has become faster and more compact. It differs from most ordinary computers in that, rather than simply observing patterns in data, Watson will actively learn and apply information to come to a reasoned hypothesis along with a level of confidence. Thus its cognitive process is more like that of a human being than a conventional computer. Furthermore, with the new Watson Discovery Advisor, the processing power and vast medical knowledge of Watson is accessible to clinicians via the cloud, allowing them to draw on the supercomputer’s analytical prowess from wherever they may be.

This is not the first time that Watson has been tasked with aiding in treatment for individuals suffering from cancer. The supercomputer was recently at work at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where it aided and received tutelage from the staff, amassing an impressive medical database.

How will it work?
Watson’s general knowledge is about as comprehensive as it gets, having access to the entire volume of Wikipedia as well as a wealth of information from other sources. However, it is Watson’s ability to understand natural language and sift through vast quantities of case studies and articles, learning as it goes, that will be the key to allowing doctors to tailor patient specific treatments. IBM is hoping to utilize the NYGC’s expertise in the field of genomics to further develop and streamline Watson’s cognitive reasoning in the field of oncology.

Watson will interpret genomic data from a set of patients diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer responsible for the deaths of around 13,000 Americans each year. The cloud-based prototype will attempt to expose the underlying genetic characteristics of this malignant cancer, using a combination of modern genomic analytics and its extensive bio-medical literature database.

Dr. Robert Darnell, CEO, President and Scientific Director of the NYGC, stated regarding the difficulties of targeted treatment that “The real challenge has been making sense of massive quantities of genetic data and translating research findings into better treatments and outcomes for patients.”

This is where Watson excels, applying its substantial computing power to observe gene sequence variations between ordinary and cancerous tumors. It consults clinical records and medical literature as it does so, swiftly giving doctors a variety of treatments to choose from, tailored to the patient’s individual instance of cancer.

Watson’s ability to achieve this task at a much higher speed than is otherwise possible, will prove to be greatly beneficial to those suffering from glioblastoma, as the general prognosis (depending on the spread of the cancer) is often less than one year. Ordinarily a significant portion of this time is spent interpreting the data manually to divine the best course of treatment. However, with Watson’s computing power, this can be achieved in a fraction of the time, allowing clinicians to begin life-saving treatment much sooner.

Dr. John E. Kelly, Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research, believes that application of the cloud-based system will eventually extend beyond the targeted treatment of glioblastoma, stating that “With this knowledge, doctors will be able to attack cancer and other devastating diseases with treatments that are tailored to the patient’s and disease’s own DNA profiles. This is a major transformation that can help improve the lives of millions of patients around the world.”

The following video outlines how Watson will seek to streamline the current treatment process.

source: gizmag

Men living alone at high skin cancer death risk

Living alone? You may be at a higher risk of death from skin cancer, especially if you are male, an alarming study claims.

Single men of all ages are more likely to die of cutaneous malignant melanoma – a most aggressive form of skin cancer – as there are differences in prognosis depending on cohabitation status and gender.

“We are able to show that living alone among men is significantly associated with a reduced melanoma-specific survival, partially attributed to a more advanced stage at diagnosis,” said Hanna Eriksson from department of oncology-pathology at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

“Our study shows that this applies to men of all ages, regardless of their level of education and place of residence,” Eriksson added.

By using the unique data from the Swedish Melanoma Register, researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Linkoping University made a detailed study of the link between the prognosis of cutaneous malignant melanoma and whether the patient lives alone or with a partner.

The researchers examined the risk of dying from melanoma among more than 27,000 melanoma patients in relation to their cohabitation status at the time of diagnosis.

The analysis looked into factors already known to affect the prognosis such as the characteristics of the tumour, gender, educational level and body site of the tumour was.

The researchers also found that older women living alone have a more advanced disease at diagnosis but for single living women as a group, there was no effect on the melanoma-specific prognosis.

According to the researchers, one possible explanation, particularly for the men and older women diagnosed with melanoma in later stages, are differences in taking on board information about the disease.

But it could also relate to insufficient access to skin examinations, said the study published in the scientific Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Source: Times of India

Skin cancer: Genetic mutations ‘warn of risk’

Scientists say they have taken a step forward in understanding why some people are at greater risk of skin cancer because of their family history.

A newly identified gene mutation causes some cases of melanoma, a type of skin cancer, says a UK team. The discovery will pave the way for new screening methods, they report in Nature Genetics.

The risk of melanoma depends on several factors, including sun exposure, skin type and family history. Every year in the UK, almost 12,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma.

About one in 20 people with melanoma have a well-established family history of the disease. A team led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, found that people with mutations in a certain gene were at extremely high risk of melanoma.

The mutations switch off a gene known as POT1, which protects against damage to packets of DNA, known as chromosomes.

Co-author Dr David Adams, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, said the discovery should lead to the ability to find out who in a family was at risk, and who should be screened for skin cancer.

He told the BBC: “The mutations in this gene result in damage to the end of the chromosomes and chromosomal damage in general is linked to cancer formation – that’s the pathway for it.”

Early detection
A number of gene mutations have been identified as increasing the risk of melanoma, but others remain unknown.

Prof Tim Bishop, Director of the Leeds Institute of Cancer and Pathology, said the finding increased understanding of why some families had a high incidence of melanoma.

“Since this gene has previously been identified as a target for the development of new drugs, in the future it may be possible that early detection will facilitate better management of this disease,” he said.

The team found cancers such as leukaemia were common in these families, suggesting the gene may underlie other cancers and not just melanoma.

Dr Safia Danovi of Cancer Research UK said: “This is a step forward for people with a strong family history of melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer.

“But it’s important to remember that, for most of us, avoiding sunburn and sunbeds is the best way to reduce the risk of this disease.”

Source: BBC

Treat sexual problems in lung cancer patients on priority: Experts

Raising an issue that has been ignored for long in the case of lung cancer patients, experts have urged physicians to pay more attention on how such patients suffer difficulties with sexual expression and intimacy.

“It is time that doctors and scientists paid more attention to this important issue,” suggested Stephane Droupy from University Hospital of Nimes, France.

He was addressing the gathering at the fourth European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) here Friday.

Researchers have estimated that sexual dysfunction affects between 40 and 100 percent of patients who undergo cancer treatment.

Studies reveal that these problems may persist in due course rather than improving.

“We still have to do a lot of work on the awareness of sexual problems after cancer – lung cancer in particular. We hope that our session at ELCC would help begin the discussion about how best to help this group of patients,” Droupy added.

The emotional and physical consequences of lung cancer, as well as the impact of treatments, can all affect sexuality, he said.

For example, patients often experience a loss of libido when they learn they have cancer. The feelings of grief and depression can also diminish desire.

The physical changes that result from cancer and the impact of treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy can also have negative impacts on sexual expression, he noted.

Unlike other cancers, where survival is improving, lung cancer management often focuses on short-term quality of life improvement and palliative care.

“Sexuality is then even more difficult to protect or reconstruct in a short period of time when all efforts are made to stay alive,” Droupy added.

Another important step is for doctors and patients to have open and honest discussions about what the patient is going through.

“We know that sexuality is important for quality of life and marital relationships, yet health care professionals frequently avoid taking the sexual history of a cancer patient,” said Luca Incrocci, a radiation oncologist and sexologist from Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

The 4th European Lung Cancer Conference is being held here March 26-29.

Source; The daily News and Analysis

Gene linked to deadly breast cancer found

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease.

Their research suggests that targeting the gene may be a new approach to treating the disease.

About 42,000 new cases of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) are diagnosed in the United States each year, about 20 percent of all breast cancer diagnoses. Patients typically relapse within one to three years of being treated.

Senior author Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, wanted to know whether the gene – already understood from her prior work to be a critical regulator of immune and metabolic functions – was important to cancer’s ability to adapt and thrive in the oxygen- and nutrient-deprived environments inside of tumors.

Using cells taken from patients’ tumors and transplanted into mice, Dr. Glimcher’s team found that the gene, XBP1, is especially active in triple negative breast cancer, particularly in the progression of malignant cells and their resurgence after treatment.

“Patients with the triple negative form of breast cancer are those who most desperately need new approaches to treat their disease,” Dr. Glimcher, who is also a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell said.

“This pathway was activated in about two-thirds of patients with this type of breast cancer. Now that we better understand how this gene helps tumors proliferate and then return after a patient’s initial treatment, we believe we can develop more effective therapies to shrink their growth and delay relapse,” the researcher added.

The study is published in the journal Nature.

Source: yahoo news

Study suggests breast gene may be linked to high-risk uterine cancer

Women with a faulty breast cancer gene might face a greater chance of rare but deadly uterine tumors despite having their ovaries removed to lower their main cancer risks, doctors are reporting.

A study of nearly 300 women with bad BRCA1 genes found four cases of aggressive uterine cancers years after they had preventive surgery to remove their ovaries. That rate is 26 times greater than expected.

“One can happen. Two all of a sudden raises eyebrows,” and four is highly suspicious, said Dr. Noah Kauff of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

His study, reported Monday at a cancer conference in Florida, is the first to make this link. Although it’s not enough evidence to change practice now, doctors say women with these gene mutations should be told of the results and consider having their uterus removed along with their ovaries.

“It’s important for women to have that information … but I think it’s too early to strongly recommend to patients that they undergo a hysterectomy” until more research confirms the finding, said Dr. Karen Lu, a specialist in women’s cancers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

She plans to study similar patients at her own hospital, the nation’s largest cancer center, to see if they, too, have higher uterine cancer risks.

About 1 in 400 women in the U.S., and more of eastern European descent, have faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes that greatly raise their risks for breast and ovarian cancer. Doctors advise them to be screened early and often for breast cancer, and to have their ovaries out as soon as they have finished having children to help prevent ovarian and breast cancer, because ovarian hormones affect breast cancer as well.

But the role of BRCA genes in uterine cancer isn’t known, Kauff said.

His study looked at 1,200 women diagnosed with BRCA gene mutations since 1995 at Sloan Kettering. Doctors were able to track 525 of them for many years after they had surgery that removed their ovaries but left the uterus intact.

The vast majority of uterine cancers are low-risk types usually cured with surgery alone. Aggressive forms account for only 10 to 15 percent of cases but more than half of uterine cancer deaths.

Researchers were alarmed to see four of these cases among the 296 women with BRCA1 mutations. None were seen in women with BRCA2 mutations, Kauff said.

The study was discussed Monday at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s annual meeting in Tampa, Fla.

Last year, the actress Angelina Jolie revealed she had preventive surgery to remove both breasts because of a BRCA1 mutation. Her mother had breast cancer and died of ovarian cancer, and her maternal grandmother also had ovarian cancer.

Source: Oneida daily dispatch

Pancreatic cancer and diabetes may be linked

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Australian researchers have found that there is an association between pancreatic cancer and diabetes, reports PTI.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne reviewed data from 1973 to 2013 to conclude there was a time-dependent link between being diagnosed with diabetes and pancreatic cancer. The review of 88 international studies to date, is the largest analysis on the topic published, researchers said.

Dr Mehrdad Nikfarjam, liver, pancreas and biliary specialist from the Department of Surgery at the University of Melbourne said pancreatic cancer was often diagnosed when at an advanced, incurable stage.

“This is an important paper that highlights for doctors and in patients with newly diagnosed diabetes without an obvious cause, a diagnosis of underlying pancreatic cancer should be considered,” Nikfarjam said.

“The study revealed the risk of pancreatic cancer was greatest after the diagnosis of diabetes but remained elevated long after the diagnosis. The presence of diabetes remains a modest risk factor for the development of a cancer later in life,” he added.

“The priority on screening should be on patients with new-onset diabetes but can later be expanded to long-standing diabetic patients,” said Nikfarjam.

“New onset diabetes is more prevalent in people over the age of 55. It may be important to consider screening all newly diagnosed diabetics for pancreatic cancer, particularly those without significant risk factors for developing diabetes in the first place,” he said.

The study was published in the journal Annals of Surgical Oncology.

Source: The free Press Release

Mom of Newborn Twins Fights Rare Placenta Cancer

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Jenna Hinman is fighting for her life in a medically-induced coma after she gave birth to healthy twins at 30 weeks pregnancy, only to discover she had a rare cancer of the placenta that has filled her lungs with tumors.

The 26-year-old mother is in “critical but stable” condition at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y. The twin baby girls, Kinleigh and Azlynn are doing fine at 2 pounds, 9 ounces, and 3 pounds, 6 ounces, respectively.

“We’re hanging in there,” her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. Brandon Hinman, told ABCNews.com. “We are just taking it day to day, but we are starting to get some positive results and are pretty happy about that. The chemo is starting to have an effect.”

“The twins are doing well and don’t have breathing tubes anymore,” said Hinman, 30, who is stationed at Fort Drum. “Both are feeding and right where they need to be at 30 weeks.”
Crouse Hospital spokesman Bob Allen said her treatment was “a highly rare situation here, not just because of the pregnancy-related cancer, which is a big piece of it, but the fact that she is on ECMO technology.”

ECMO or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a therapy that uses a pump to circulate blood through an artificial lung back into the bloodstream. The most common conditions that may require ECMO are: heart malformations, severe air leak problems and severe pulmonary hypertension, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Jenna Hinman, a recreational therapist, began to go into labor on March 3 and was rushed to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Hospital in Watertown, N.Y., where the twins were delivered by emergency C-section. The same day, the twins were transported to Crouse Hospital in Syracuse where its Walter R.G. Baker Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is the only one in the in central New York designated as a regional perinatal center.

The new mother had only a quick visit with the babies before they were taken to the Crouse NICU. When Jenna Hinman began coughing up blood, she, too was transferred to Crouse.

“She was really in distress with breathing difficulties,” Crouse Hospital spokesman Cheryl Abrams told ABCNews.com. “It was a situation where the babies were in distress, too.”

At first doctors suspected pneumonia, but three days later, they diagnosed stage 3 choriocarcinoma.

Choriocarcinoma is a malignant form of gestational trophoblastic disease (GTD), tumors that involve abnormal growth of cells inside a woman’s uterus. This particular type affects only about 2 to 7 of every 100,000 pregnancies in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.

Choriocarcinoma is much more likely than other types of GTD to grow quickly and spread to organs away from the uterus. About one-quarter of women who develop this disease miscarry.

Chief of Medicine for Crouse Hospital Dr. David Landsberg said stage 3 cancer had invaded Hinman’s lungs but had not gone to the brain. The cancer itself is “curable tumor,” he said.

“Placental tissue grows at a very rapid rate to support the fetus, which explains why the cancer is so aggressively metastatic,” he said. “It grows into the uterus and once it gets out, it’s looking for somewhere else to grow.”

Without ECMO, her condition would be “100 percent fatal,” said Landsberg. “The chemo will be the real cure. The ECMO is keeping her alive for the chemo to do its job.”

He said a cure was “on the edge of what is possible.”

Source: abc news

Colon cancer rates declining in older Americans

Colon cancer incidence rates have dropped 30 percent in the U.S. in the last 10 years among adults 50 and older due to the widespread uptake of colonoscopy, with the largest decrease in people over age 65. Colonoscopy use has almost tripled among adults ages 50 to 75, from 19 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2010.

The findings come from Colorectal Cancer Statistics, 2014, published in the March/April issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The article and its companion report, Colorectal Cancer Facts & Figures, were released today by American Cancer Society researchers as part of a new initiative by the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable to increase screening rates to 80 percent by 2018.

Colorectal cancer, commonly called colon cancer, is the third most common cancer and the third leading cause of cancer death in men and women in the United States. Its slow growth from precancerous polyp to invasive cancer provides a rare opportunity to prevent cancer through the detection and removal of precancerous growths. Screening also allows early detection of cancer, when treatment is more successful. As a result, screening reduces colorectal cancer mortality both by decreasing the incidence of disease and by increasing the likelihood of survival.

Using incidence data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries, as provided by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), researchers led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH found that during the most recent decade of data (2001 to 2010), overall incidence rates decreased by an average of 3.4 percent per year. However, trends vary substantially by age. Rates declined by 3.9 percent per year among adults aged 50 years and older, but increased by 1.1 percent per year among men and women younger than 50. That increase was confined to tumors in the distal colon and rectum, patterns for which a rise in obesity and emergence of unfavorable dietary patterns has been implicated.

Most strikingly, the rate of decline has surged among those 65 and older, with the decline accelerating from 3.6 percent per year during 2001-2008 to 7.2 percent per year during 2008-2010. The “larger declines among Medicare-eligible seniors likely reflect higher rates of screening because of universal insurance coverage,” the authors write. “In 2010, 55 percent of adults aged 50 to 64 years reported having undergone a recent colorectal cancer screening test, compared with 64 percent of those aged 65 years and older.”

Like incidence, mortality rates have also declined most rapidly within the past decade. From 2001 to 2010, rates decreased by approximately 3 percent per year in both men and women, compared with declines of approximately 2 percent per year during the 1990s.

“These continuing drops in incidence and mortality show the lifesaving potential of colon cancer screening; a potential that an estimated 23 million Americans between ages 50 and 75 are not benefiting from because they are not up to date on screening,” said Richard C. Wender, M.D., American Cancer Society chief cancer control officer. “Sustaining this hopeful trend will require concrete efforts to make sure all patients, particularly those who are economically disenfranchised, have access to screening and to the best care available.”

The data is being released at the launch of a nationwide effort to increase colorectal cancer screening rates to 80% by 2018. Public health leaders, including Assistant Secretary for Health Howard Koh, MD, MPH and American Cancer Society CEO, John R. Seffrin, PhD will join dozens of members of the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable (NCCRT) at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on March 17th at 1:00 PM EDT. The NCCRT, an organization co-founded by the American Cancer Society and the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will focus on dramatically increasing colorectal cancer screening rates in the U.S. over the next four years, and increasing awareness of the potential for early detection and prevention of this cancer.

Source: Science daily