ovarian cancer

10,000 Women Develop Cancer Because of Johnson & Johnson Baby Powder

The baby powder is usually found in every household, even when there is no baby. Most women use the talc-based powder because it makes the skin younger looking and soft. If you are one of them, you need to stop that. Baby powder, like that one from Johnson and Johnson, is increasing the risk by 33% of women of being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The epidemiologist Dr. Daniel Cramer thinks that minimum 10,000 women get ovarian cancer because they use this baby powder every day.

The shocking facts

The studies provided in 1982 have shown a connection between the baby powder and ovarian cancer. Discoveries have shown that women who use talc-based powders are 300 times more likely to develop ovarian cancer. This study hit general media by the New York Times and forced the company Johnson and Johnson to unveil the truth behind their powder.

Read the labels

If you have a baby powder in your house, get it and read the label and the warnings. Johnson and Johnson warn people to avoid the baby powder coming in contact with the eyes and also to avoid inhalation. There is nothing about talc particle’s aptitude to stay on your skin for years and to go to your ovaries. Nor does it say anywhere on the bottle that talc can cause inflammation and also the perfect place to grow cancer cells.

The big company admitted to being aware of this fact as outlined in the 1982 study. The company decided that they didn’t need to warn their customers of those dangerous side effects of the use of their baby powder. The worst thing that you can do is to use that powder on your baby. The American Academy of Pediatric has advised the parents against using the baby powder, especially with talc. This mineral can very easily become airborne and also can be inhaled by infants, and can cause the mucous membranes to dry up.

This affects the breathing and also can lead to wheezing in babies. Some cases of pneumonia in infants have been linked to the use of baby powder, but we have never seen that on the warning label.

Source: healthyfoodstar

Suffering from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)? Don’t lose hope

Suffering from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome Don't lose hope

Are you experiencing irregular periods, weight gain, hair growth on the body and face, thinning of the hair on the head? Don’t ignore the symptoms as chances are you may be suffering from a condition called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS).

What is PCOS?

PCOS is an endocrine disorder which is associated with an excess of androgens or male hormones in the body. It leads to the formation of small cysts in the ovaries. According to experts, nearly 40% percent of teenagers today suffer from PCOS due to sedentary life or consumption of high calorie, high carb diet.

It is more commonly found in women living in urban areas than women residing in rural places as it is majorly a lifestyle disease. The exact cause of the disease is not known.

Symptoms of PCOS

Symptoms of PCOS include irregular, missed or scanty menstruation cycle, weight gain, excessive hair growth on chin, lower abdomen, thighs, facial hair and thinning of hair on your head.

Why worry if you have PCOS?

One of the major effect that PCOS have on a female body is that it leads to imbalance of hormones which may again interfere with the growth and release of eggs from the ovaries, thereby preventing ovulation and may lead to infertility in some cases.

Also, since the body becomes resistant to insulin, a women is at risk of obesity, hypertension, cholesterol and uterine cancer.

Is it possible to have a baby with PCOS?

The good news is that one need not be depressed as PCOS can be managed with medicines to some extent. A women can easily conceive by adopting a healthy lifestyle, eating right and maintaining healthy weight.

Treatment of PCOS

Treatment of PCOS depends partially on the woman’s stage of life. For younger women, treatments can include inducing exercises in daily routine, diet modifications and medication. Experts also prescribe the usage of birth control pills to control the menstrual cycle thereby decreasing androgen levels in the female body.

Some other treatments like Progesterone therapy is also adviced by doctors.

Source: zee news

Irregular Periods: Risk Factor for Ovarian Cancer?

Women with irregular menstrual cycles may have more than double the risk of ovarian cancer compared to women who have regular monthly periods, new research suggests.

This finding suggests that women with irregular periods — including those with a condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome — might be a group that could benefit from early screening for ovarian cancer, said the study’s lead author, Barbara Cohn. She is director of child health and development studies at the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, Calif.

“Ninety percent of women who get ovarian cancer don’t have risk factors for it. Our study findings help to narrow the search,” said Cohn.

“If we can confirm what we have here and can learn more about the mechanism behind ovarian cancer, then we might be able to do something as simple as recommend birth control pills for women with irregular periods, provided they have no other risk factors against birth control pill use,” said Cohn.

However, the study design wasn’t able to show that irregular periods caused ovarian cancer or an increased risk, only that there was an association between the two.

The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 22,000 American women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, and more than 14,000 will die from the disease. One reason ovarian cancer remains so deadly is there are no reliable early detection tools for it. When found, it’s often in the later stages when treatment is less effective.

Some research has suggested that women who ovulate less frequently may have some protection against ovarian cancer. For example, women who take birth control pills, which prevent ovulation, have a lower risk of ovarian cancer. The new study sought to see if women who naturally have irregular periods, and perhaps ovulate less frequently, had a lower rate of ovarian cancer.

The study included more than 14,000 women who were part of the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan in Alameda, Calif., between 1959 and 1967. The researchers followed the women’s health over the next 50 years or until death. All had at least one child, and none used fertility drugs to conceive, according to the study.

An irregular menstrual cycle was defined as longer than 35 days even if it was regular, a cycle that was unpredictable from month to month (and the woman wasn’t in perimenopause when unpredictable cycles are normal), or if a woman didn’t ovulate, Cohn said. The women were around age 26 when they reported having irregular periods.

Although none of the women was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome when the study began because the disease wasn’t really recognized at the time, it’s likely that at least some of them had the hormonal disorder, Cohn said.

Polycystic ovarian syndrome is a common cause of irregular periods, but it’s possible that other abnormalities associated with the disorder might also explain the study findings, she said.

During the study, 103 women developed ovarian cancer, 20 of whom had irregular periods, said Cohn. And 65 died of ovarian cancer, 17 with irregular menstrual cycles. The average age of ovarian cancer death was about 69.

Women with irregular periods had a 2.4 times higher risk of ovarian cancer death than women who had normal cycles, the researchers concluded. In addition, women who had a first-degree relative (mother, sister or daughter) with ovarian cancer, a known risk factor for the disease, had almost three times the risk of death from ovarian cancer, said Cohn.

A lot of biological factors increase a person’s risk of ovarian cancer, said Dr. David Fishman, director of the Mount Sinai Ovarian Cancer Risk Assessment Program in New York City.

“This study’s findings are an interesting observation, but it’s not cause and effect, and I don’t want women to be afraid,” Fishman said. “Menstrual irregularities are very common, and most women with menstrual irregularities won’t have ovarian cancer.”

For women who have menstrual irregularities, this study reinforces the benefit of birth control pills to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, Fishman added.

Any woman who is concerned should talk to her doctor, he said. Her physician can let her know if she’s at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer. The study findings were scheduled for presentation Wednesday at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in San Diego.

Research presented at medical meetings should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Source; webmd

More Body Fat Raises Ovarian Cancer Risk, Study Suggests

The more a woman weighs, the greater her risk of ovarian cancer, a new report suggests.

It adds to strong suspicions that weight is somehow linked to ovarian cancer, one of the deadliest cancers and one that kills 14,000 U.S. women every year. And it adds ovarian cancer to a list of cancers affected by obesity or body fat, including breast cancer, colon cancer, endometrial cancer, kidney cancer and pancreatic cancer.

There’s also a link with height, although it’s not as strong as the evidence showing that weight, especially body fat, raises the risk, the American Institute for Cancer Research reports.

A team at the AICR looked at 25 studies with data on 4 million women, 16,000 of whom developed ovarian cancer.

“Greater body fatness is a probable cause of ovarian cancer in women,” the report concludes.

“This is an important finding because it shows a way for women to reduce their chances of getting ovarian cancer,” said Dr. Elisa Bandera of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, who helped write the study. “There is so much we don’t know about preventing ovarian cancer, but now we can tell women that keeping to a healthy weight can help protect against this deadly disease.”

Both the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute list obesity as a suspected cause of ovarian cancer.

But the AICR report suggests that a woman doesn’t have to be obese — with a BMI of 30 or greater — for the risk to start growing. Even overweight women have a higher risk, the data suggests, starting at a BMI of about 28, which is considered overweight but not quite obese. (There’s a BMI calculator here).

There are many reasons why fat may raise cancer risk. Fat cells secrete estrogen, a hormone that can help fuel cancer, and people who are overweight or obese have overall higher levels of inflammation, which can affect heart disease and cancer risk alike. Fat cells produce other hormones, such as leptin and growth factors, that may affect the out-of-control cell growth that underlies cancer.

It’s also possible that something else is driving both body growth and cancer — perhaps a genetic cause.

The AICR report looked for evidence of other causes of ovarian cancer but could not find enough evidence to implicate any specific foods such as eggs, milk, coffee, tea, meat, fats or vitamins.

Source: NBC news

Oh Baby: Giving Birth 10 Times May Reduce Mom’s Cancer Risk

Women who give birth to 10 or more children may have a reduced risk of cancer, a new study from Finland suggests. Researchers examined cancer risk in nearly 5,000 Finish women who gave birth at least 10 times before 2010.

Over a three-decade period, there were 656 cases of cancer in these women, about 200 fewer cases than would be expected based on cancer rates in the general Finnish population, the study found.

In fact, the rate of new cancer cases was 24 percent lower among women who delivered 10 or more babies compared to those in the general population, the researchers said.
This overall reduction in cancer risk came mainly from decreased rates of breast cancer and gynecological cancers, including ovarian and endometrial cancer (cancer of the uterus lining). For these cancers, the rate of new cancer cases was about 50 percent lower in women with 10 or more deliveries, compared to the general population.

The researchers aren’t sure whether the findings apply to women who have just one, two or three children, but plan to conduct another study to find out, said study researcher Dr. Juha Tapanainen, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Helsinki University Central Hospital.
Pregnancy and cancer risk

In the study, women who had 10 or more babies were about five years younger when they gave birth to their first child, compared to average Finnish women. It’s known that becoming pregnant at a young age helps protect against breast cancer, Tapanainen said.
Women who give birth before age 20 have about half the risk of breast cancer as those who give birth for the first time after age 30, according to the National Institutes of Health. Some researchers hypothesize that this is because pregnancy speeds up the process of breast cell maturation, and that mature cells are more resistant to cancer, Tapanainen said. So, women who have children at younger ages develop mature, cancer-resistant breast cells sooner.

Previous studies have also found that giving birth to at least five children reduces the risk of breast cancer. This may be because pregnancy halts the menstrual cycle, so the breast cells of women who have many pregnancies are exposed to less estrogen, according to the American Cancer Society. (Exposure to estrogen is thought to increase the risk of breast cancer.)

The halting of ovulation, and the hormone changes that period in life causes, may also play a role in the reduced risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers.
Many women in the new study who had 10 or more children were members of the Laestadian movement, which is part of the Lutheran Church in Finland, the researchers said. Women in this group are similar to average Finnish women in terms of their lifestyle, but their religion prohibits the use of contraceptives.

Studies on the effect of hormonal contraceptives on cancer risk have been inconclusive, but some studies suggest that the contraceptives reduce the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer. Thus, it’s possible that if Laestadian women in the study also took contraceptives, and still had multiple pregnancies, it would even further reduce their risk of these cancers, Tapanainen said.

Risks of many pregnancies

The study further linked having 10 babies with a reduced risk of basal cell skin cancer, and an increased risk of thyroid cancer. But the researchers don’t know the reason for this link.

Researchers noted that women who are able to have 10 or more children are likely healthier than women in the general population. But this factor alone is unlikely to explain the link between having 10 babies and the reduced risk of these cancers, Tapanainen said.

In general, the findings suggest that having more children doesn’t result in an increased occurrence of cancer, Tapanainen said. The protective effect is seen after five births, and is even greater with 10 births, Tapanainen said.
Despite the reduced risk of cancer, giving birth to five or more children does come with its own dangers, increasing the risk of pregnancy complications, such as premature birth and hemorrhaging after delivery.

Source: Yahoo news

New Test May Help Predict Survival From Ovarian Cancer

By counting the number of cancer-fighting immune cells inside tumors, scientists say they may have found a way to predict survival from ovarian cancer.

The researchers developed an experimental method to count these cells, called tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes (TILs), in women with early stage and advanced ovarian cancer.

“We have developed a standardizable method that should one day be available in the clinic to better inform physicians on the best course of cancer therapy, therefore improving treatment and patient survival,” said lead researcher Jason Bielas, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle.

The test may have broader implications beyond ovarian cancer and be useful with other types of cancer, the study authors suggested.

In their current work with ovarian cancer patients, the researchers “demonstrated that this method can be used to diagnose T-cells quickly and effectively from a blood sample,” said Bielas, an associate member in human biology and public health sciences.

The report was published online Dec. 4 in Science Translational Medicine.

The researchers developed the test to count TILs, identify their frequency and develop a system to determine their ability to clone themselves. This is a way of measuring the tumor’s population of immune T-cells.

The test works by collecting genetic information of proteins only found in these cells.

“T-cell clones have unique DNA sequences that are [comparable] to product barcodes on items at the grocery store. Our technology is comparable to a barcode scanner,” Bielas said.

The technique, called QuanTILfy, was tested on tumor samples from 30 women with ovarian cancer whose survival ranged from one month to about 10 years.

Bielas and colleagues looked at the number of TILs in the tumors, comparing those numbers to the women’s survival.

The researchers found that higher TIL levels were linked with better survival. For example, the percent of TILs was about three times higher in women who survived more than five years than in those who survived less than two years.

“We are hoping to investigate whether this is a general phenomena of all cancers,” Bielas said. “There is good evidence now that the same associations can be made for melanoma and colorectal cancer.”

This new technology potentially could be used to predict treatment response, cancer recurrence and disease-free survival earlier and more effectively than current methods, Bielas noted.

It could therefore be used to guide personalized medicine. For example, it could be used to determine which immune and chemotherapy drugs are best to treat a particular patient, Bielas suggested.

“Thus, TIL can be used to guide the selection of drugs for cancer therapy, thereby improving patient outcome. The implementation of this assay in the clinic should improve cancer diagnostics and ultimately save lives,” he said.

Because the test is still experimental, Bielas could not estimate what the test might cost if it were eventually approved and used widely in patients.

Right now the test isn’t ready for general use, according to Dr. Franck Pages, a professor of immunology at the Hospital European Georges Pompidou in Paris, and author of an accompanying journal editorial.

“The new technology does not obviously fulfill the requirements for an easy routine clinical use to quantify T-cell infiltration in a tumor,” Pages said, “but the technology could help in immunotherapy trials to determine the immunological response induced in the tumor.”

Another expert agreed that more work must be done before the test can be used clinically.

“It’s been known for some time that there is a correlation between the level of natural killer cells — T-cells — and the prognosis of patients,” said William Chambers, interim national vice president for extramural research at the American Cancer Society.

“There is going to be a need for other people to verify the findings from this study,” Chambers said. “There is also a need to figure out how this would fit in the context of any sort of clinical approach.”

source: Philly