Cancer

9 Ways to Prevent Skin Cancer

melanoma-monday

1. Reduce Sun Exposure

Especially between 11 am and 4 pm, when the sun’s UV rays are the strongest or when UV index is 3 or more.

2. Shade your Skin

  • Seek shade under trees, or create your own shade with a hat, shirt, or umbrella.
  • Wear clothing to cover your arms and legs. Make sure the fabric has a tight weave. Fabric that is wet or has a loose weave will allow more light to penetrate through to the skin.
  • Wear a wide brimmed hat and sunglasses with UV protection.

3. Beware of clouds

Up to 80% of the sun’s rays can penetrate light clouds, mist and fog. You can still get a sunburn on a cloudy day.

4. Remember about Reflection

Water, sand, snow and concrete can reflect up to 80% of the sun’s damaging rays.

5. Slop on the Sunscreen

Use sunscreens with an SPF of 15 or more that contain both UVA and UVB protection.

Apply sunscreen 15-30 minutes before going outside, and reapply every 2 hours (more often when working, playing, or swimming).

6. Avoid tanning salons and sunlamps

These lights emit mostly UVA radiation – up to 2 – 5 times as much as natural sunlight. UVA radiation causes sunburn, premature aging of the skin and skin cancer.

The UVB radiation from tanning lights is the main cause of sunburn and skin cancer and also contributes to premature skin aging.

For more information see youth tanning (link to being modified by the school team)

7. Protect Children

The most harmful effects of sun exposure occur during early childhood. Keep babies under 1 year out of direct sunlight. Once infants turn 6 months of age, begin using a sunscreen for added protection. It’s important to protect your child’s eyes by using plastic lens sunglasses that protect against UVA and UVB rays.

  • Children should have arms and legs covered when out in the sun.
  • Instead of wearing baseball caps, they should wear hats with a wide brim, which provides more sun protection.
  • When children are playing in the water, make sure to use waterproof sunscreen.

8. Protect your Eyes

Radiation from the sun can damage cells in the structures of your eyes. UV radiation from the sun may increase the risk of developing cataracts later in life. UV radiation can also contribute to the development of skin cancer on the eyelid or on the surface of the eye. This damage can be prevented by protecting your eyes with sunglasses that protect against 100% UVA and UVB rays. Wearing a hat with a wide brim all the way around when out in the sun. Legionnaire style caps (caps with a flap a back flap) are also recommended to help protect the neck, ears and face.

9. Spot Check Your Moles

  • Examine your moles and freckles every month to check for any changes. See your health care provider immediately if you notice:
  • a mole or discolouration that appears suddenly or begins to change
  • a sore that does not heal
  • areas of skin that are red and bumpy, bleed or are itchy

Source: health unit

Blue Pill May Boost Risk of Deadly Skin Cancer, Study Finds

Men who use Viagra to get a boost in the bedroom could find that the little blue pill also increases the risk of developing melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, a preliminary study finds.

Researchers found that men who took sildenafil, best known as Viagra, were about 84 percent more likely to develop melanoma than men who didn’t take the drug.

Because it’s just one early study, no one is suggesting that men stop taking Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction, said Dr. Abrar Qureshi, professor and chair of the dermatology department in the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

“But people who are on the medication and who have a high risk for developing melanoma may consider touching base with their primary care providers,” said Qureshi, co-author of the study of nearly 26,000 men published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Viagra may increase the risk of melanoma because it affects the same genetic pathway that allows the skin cancer to become more invasive, Qureshi said. Those who took the drug weren’t at higher risk of other, less-dangerous skin cancers, such as basal cell or squamous cell cancers.

About 76,100 new melanoma cases are expected to be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2014, and about 9,710 people will die, including about 6,470 men.

Qureshi and colleagues at several sites in the U.S. and China analyzed data about Viagra use and skin cancer from the Health Professionals’ Follow-up Study, a long-term study of male doctors and other health care workers.

The average age of men in the study was 65 and about 6 percent had taken Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction. If men had ever used Viagra, the risk of developing melanoma was about double than for those who never used the drug. That finding held true even when the researchers adjusted for a family history of skin cancer, ultraviolet light exposure in the states where the men lived, other kinds of cancer and major illnesses and other factors.

Primary care doctors who treat older men taking Viagra should check their patients for signs of skin cancer, said Dr. June Robinson of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who wrote an accompanying editorial.

She cautioned that the rate of increase in new melanoma cases in men actually slowed after Viagra entered the market in 1998, raising a “cautionary note” about the impact of sildenafil on melanoma.

“But its role in the biological behavior of melanoma in older men warrants further study,” she said.

Source: NBC 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

The weed that causes cancer may well kill it

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Tobacco has been associated with and much maligned for causing cancers. Researchers have now found that the tobacco plant’s defence mechanism could well work in humans to destroy invading cancer cells.

A molecule called NaD1 is found in the flower of the tobacco plant that fights off fungi and bacteria. This compound also has the ability to identify and destroy cancer, the team discovered.

“This is a welcome discovery whatever the origin,” Mark Hulett from La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science in Melbourne was quoted as saying.

The molecule, found in nicotiana sylvestris (flowering tobacco) plant, forms a pincer-like structure that grips onto lipids present in the membrane of cancer cells.

It then effectively rips them open, causing the cell to expel its contents and explode.

According to researchers, this universal defence process could also potentially be harnessed for the development of antibiotic treatment for microbial infections.

The pre-clinical work is being conducted by the Melbourne biotechnology company Hexima. “The preliminary trials have looked promising,” said Hulett.

The study was published in the journal eLife.

Source: Times of India

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

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

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

Middle-aged? Put down the meat

Eating a high-protein diet in middle age could increase your risk of diabetes and cancer, according to a study published this week in the journal Cell Metabolism. But don’t stay away from meat for too long – the same study showed those over 65 need more protein to reduce their mortality risk.

Insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1, is a protein in your body related to growth and development. Past studies have linked IGF-1 to age-related diseases, including cancer. Mice and humans with higher levels of IGF-1 often have a higher risk of developing these diseases.

Scientists believe protein intake plays a role in IGF-1 activity. Eating less protein, studies have shown, can lead to lower levels of IGF-1 in your body. So theoretically, protein consumption could be directly linked to disease incidence and death.

The study

Researchers analyzed survey data from 6,381 U.S. men and women aged 50 and above to understand the link between protein, certain diseases and mortality.

The study participants were split into three groups: a high-protein group who ate 20% or more of their daily calories from proteins; a moderate-protein group who ate 10 to 19% of their calories from proteins; and a low-protein group.

Researchers also looked at the differences in risk between those aged 50 to 65 and those over 65 years old.

The results

People between the ages of 50 and 65 who ate a high-protein diet had a 74% increase in overall mortality compared to those in the low-protein group. The meat lovers also had four-fold increased risk of dying from cancer during the study’s 18-year follow-up.

However, this risk was only seen in those who got their protein from animal sources such as meat, eggs and cheese; the link disappeared if the protein came from plants, such as nuts, seeds and beans.

People who were over the age of 65 and ate a high-protein diet saw the opposite effect. Researchers saw a 28% reduction in death from all causes in this group. Cancer deaths in this older, high-protein group, were also reduced.

Study participants of any age who ate a high-protein diet had a five-fold increased risk of dying from diabetes.

The scientists had IGF-1 data for more than 2,200 people in the study. Analyzing this information, they determined that for every IGF-1 increase of 10 ng/ml, those on a high-protein diet were 9% more likely to die from cancer than those on a low-protein diet.

The study authors concluded that high levels of animal proteins cause increased levels of IGF-1 and possibly insulin in the body, which leads to higher mortality for people ages 50 to 65.

Tumors in mice

Researchers also reported on a separate experiment, where lab mice were either on a high-protein or a low-protein diet. Mice on the low-protein diet had a lower cancer rate than those on a high-protein diet, even after being implanted with 20,000 melanoma cells. The low-protein mice also had smaller tumors on average than those on a high-protein diet by the end of the six-week experiment.

When the mice were switched from a high-protein diet to a low-protein diet, researchers saw a 30% decrease in their IGF-1 levels.

“Almost everyone is going to have a cancer cell or pre-cancer cell in them at some point. The question is: Does it progress?” study author Valter Longo said in a press release. “Turns out one of the major factors in determining if it does is protein intake.”

Takeaway

Eating more than 10% of your calories from animal proteins in middle age could increase your risk of dying from diseases such as cancer and diabetes. But after 65, you may need that extra protein to protect your body from becoming frail.

“The majority of Americans are eating about twice as much proteins as they should,” Longo said. “It seems that the best change would be to lower the daily intake of all proteins, but especially animal-derived proteins.”

Walter Willett, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s School of Public Health, says not much should be made of this study’s findings. It’s unreasonable to treat “animal protein” as one class, he says, as fish, poultry and red meat are all very different.

Willett also noted that the headline on the press release associated with this study – “Meat and cheese may be as bad for you as smoking” – is a vast overstatement. The researchers did not include data on smoking in their study.

The Institute of Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board recommends eating about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight every day in middle age. So a 160-pound person should eat about 55 to 60 grams of protein a day.

Source: abc news

 

3,000-year-old skeleton with cancer helps scientists understand disease evolution

A research team from Europe recently discovered a 3000 year old skeleton, which was believed to be a young adult male, inside in a tomb in Sudan, and it showed evidence that the person had metastatic carcinoma. The cancer had spread to various parts of the body, so this made it the oldest cancer sample that had ever been found, stated a Durham University press release.

Cancer had always been thought of as a present day condition and it seemed to have been basically non-existent during most of human history, despite being one of the top causes of death in modern times. The skeleton underwent investigation via radiography and also electron microscope scanning. By using these cutting-edge methods, the scientists were able to find that the skeleton was riddled with lesions and tumors that covered the collar bones, upper and lower arms, shoulder blades, ribs, vertebrae, thigh bones and the pelvis.

The findings might be able to aid researchers receive awareness into what was the cause of cancer in the past and how the disease has evolved. Scientists plan on using DNA studies of ancient remains to try and find cancer mutations. Records of cancer from the past have been extremely uncommon and medical researchers think that the modern way of life is behind why the number of cancer cases has risen so radically.

The cancer might have been caused from environmental pollutants such as parasites and wood fires and parasites, or it may have been inherited. It is also possible that some sort of schistosomiasis infection could have been a trigger, as this can cause bladder cancer and is known to be widespread in that area from about 15,000 B.C.

There is very little known about the evolution of cancer in ancient human populations apart from a few written references and a tiny number of skeletons that have cancer signs. Any understandings that scientists can gather from ancient human remains such as the ones found aid in the understanding of the history and evolution of modern diseases. The researches stated that the smaller lesions located on the bones could only have been caused by some sort of cancer from soft tissues in the body even though the precise origin was impossible to figure out from only the bones.

The male skeleton was thought to have been between the ages of 24 and 35 when he died. After this he was buried inside a painted sarcophagus. Before this discovery, there were only two other examples of possible metastatic cancer and they each dated much younger than this skeleton. Scientists believe that by taking an evolutionary line of attack to cancer, information that is discovered from ancient human remains might provide vital elements in finding different ways to look at one of the world’s biggest health problems.

The World Health Organization states that cancer takes the lives of nearly 14 million individuals each year. It is the hope of many researchers that these brand new findings are able to help scientists disentangle the primary causes of cancer so that the disease can be better treated and also stopped. Insights that are found from such remains really help researchers understand the evolution and history of modern diseases.

The research team found the skeleton, which was believed to be a young adult male, inside in a tomb in Sudan, and it showed evidence that the person had metastatic carcinoma. The cancer had spread to various parts of the body, so this made it the oldest cancer sample that had ever been found, stated a Durham University press release.

Source: Liberty voice