Tumour

Woman’s 90-Pound Mucus-Filled Tumor Surgically Removed

A woman who complained of a rapidly expanding waistline was surprised to discover an unusual cause of her girth: an 88-lb., mucus-filled ovarian tumor.

The 57-year-old Brazilian woman noticed her midsection grew over the course of a year, but other than a heavy feeling in her belly, and breathing that was slightly faster than normal, she had few other symptoms, according to a report of her case, published March 4 in the Journal of Medical Case Reports.

Massive size

The woman — an overweight, postmenopausal 57-year-old from Brazil — first contacted doctors about her rapidly growing waistline in 2003. She had slightly shallow breathing, and a 52-inch (132 centimeters) waistline.

An ultrasound of her stomach revealed a huge, mucus-filled mass. The tumor was so big that it had shoved her uterus to the side, squished her abdominal contents and extended all the way up to her diaphragm.

When doctors began operating on the woman to remove the mass, they found it was a 16.5-inch by 15.7-inch by 11-inch (42 cm by 40 cm by 28 cm), mucus-filled tumor that weighed as much as a small woman, or 88 lbs. (40 kilograms).

The tumor had some signs of early-stage cancer, so the woman underwent several rounds of chemotherapy. Surgeons also removed part of her fallopian tubes, uterus and lymph nodes.

Ten years later, the patient is doing fine and has no more symptoms. Though it’s unusual for such masses to grow so large, Herman said he has seen similar cases. He once operated on a young woman whose ovarian cyst grew to between 20 and 25 lbs. (9 to 11 kg).

“I had to roll it off the table; it was so heavy,” Herman said. Women may miss the symptoms of ovarian cysts because they think they’re just putting on weight, he said.

Source: Yahoo news

Skin cancer may up risk of other cancers

People who have had common skin cancers may be at an increased risk of developing melanoma and 29 other cancer types, a new study has warned. Individuals who had nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) were at increased risk for subsequently developing other cancer types, and this association was much higher for those under 25 years of age, researchers said.

NMSC is the most common type of skin cancer. It is relatively easy to treat if detected early, and rarely spreads to other organs, they said. “Our study shows that NMSC susceptibility is an important indicator of susceptibility to malignant tumours and that the risk is especially high among people who develop NMSC at a young age,” said Rodney Sinclair, professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne in Australia.

“The risk increases for a large group of seemingly unrelated cancers; however, the greatest risk relates to other cancers induced by sunlight, such as melanoma,” said Sinclair. Compared with people who did not have NMSC, those who did were 1.36 times more likely to subsequently develop any cancer, including melanoma and salivary gland, bone, and upper gastrointestinal cancers.

Survivors younger than 25 years of age, however, were 23 times more likely to develop any cancer other than NMSC. In particular, they were 94 and 93 times more likely to get melanoma and salivary gland cancer, respectively. “Our study identifies people who receive a diagnosis of NMSC at a young age as being at increased risk for cancer and, therefore, as a group who could benefit from screening for internal malignancy,” said Sinclair.

Researchers hypothesised that people who develop skin cancers later in life do so as a result of accumulated Sun exposure, while those who develop skin cancer at a younger age may do so as a result of an increased susceptibility to cancer in general. To investigate this, they stratified the risk ratios by age and discovered that young people with NMSC are more cancer-prone.

The researchers constructed two cohorts: one of 502,490 people with a history of NMSC, and a cohort of 8,787,513 people who served as controls. They followed up with the participants electronically for five to six years, and 67,148 from the NMSC cohort and 863,441 from the control group subsequently developed cancers.

They found that for those who had NMSC, the relative risk for developing cancers of the bladder, brain, breast, colon, liver, lung, pancreas, prostate, and stomach remained consistently elevated for the entire period of the study, and the risk for cancers of the brain, colon, and prostate increased with time.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Bio-markers & Prevention.

Source: Indian Express

When Breast Cancer Spreads

If your cancer spreads beyond your breast and the nearby lymph nodes, it’s called advanced cancer, or metastatic cancer. The most common places it spreads to are the liver, lungs, bones, and brain.

News that your cancer has spread is scary, but there are many treatments that work for metastatic breast cancer.

“The majority of women with metastatic breast cancer can move forward with their therapies while continuing their regular lifestyle — working, taking care of their families, exercising, and traveling,” says Erica L. Mayer, MD, MPH, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

“We often think of metastatic breast cancer as a chronic disease, like diabetes,” says Mayer. A Different Treatment Schedule

Treatments for advanced breast cancer may go on without an end date, to keep the cancer under control. You’ll visit the clinic on a regular basis and you’ll get to know the health care team.

“If the treatment works, you’ll stay on it as long as it’s working well without side effects,” says Rita Nanda, MD, of the University of Chicago’s breast cancer program. If not, your doctor will try different treatments.

Your doctor is likely to suggest chemotherapy because it travels through your entire body. “Metastatic breast cancer is a whole-body disease,” Mayer says.

You may also need hormone therapy. Targeted drugs are another option. They work directly on the changes within cancer cells. These combinations can make chemotherapy work better.

Sometimes surgery or radiation can help ease symptoms. Regular Tests Keep Tabs on Your Cancer

Occasionally, you’ll have imaging tests to see how treatments are working and whether the cancer has spread. Common imaging tests include:

CT scans, where an X-ray machine circles around as you lie on a table Bone scans with an injection that helps show areas with cancer (scintigraphy) PET scans with a special camera and a tracer chemical that goes in your arm by IV
“CT scans examine the chest and abdomen,” says Richard J. Bleicher, MD, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. “You can see something on organs like the liver or sometimes the bones.” Sometimes results are combined for a PET CT scan. A computer merges the images to find hot spots that may be cancer.

Your doctor will tell you how often you need these tests, based on the stage of your cancer.

Source: Web md

 

Antioxidants speed lung cancer growth: Study

Although some people spend countless dollars on antioxidant supplements to improve their health, many studies have found that these would-be panaceas could actually exacerbate the diseases they claim to prevent.

Now, a team of Swedish scientists has shown that two antioxidants—vitamin E and N-acetylcysteine (NAC)—can fuel the growth of lung cancers in mice. The team also worked out why.

Antioxidants protect cells from chemically unstable molecules called reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can easily react with DNA and cause damage that leads to cancer. But Martin Bergo’s team at the University of Gothenburg showed that antioxidants neutralize ROS in tumors as well as healthy cells. “If we give extra antioxidants in the diet, we’re helping the tumor to reduce radicals that would otherwise block its growth,” Bergo said. “Then it can speed up all it wants.”

The results, published today (January 29) in Science Translational Medicine, are particularly important for people with an increased risk of lung cancer, including smokers or people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). “There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that these people should take extra antioxidants,” said Bergo. “It may even be harmful”

“They might have a small undiagnosed tumor, and no one knows the frequency of those,” he added. “There’s a possibility that antioxidants would speed up the growth of those tumors.” This word of caution is especially relevant to people with COPD, who often take large amounts of NAC to relieve the build-up of mucus in their airways.

“A warning seems appropriate for everyone who has been seduced to use antioxidants or vitamins on a regular basis, as a preventive measure,” the University of Syndey’s Nico van Zandwijk told The Scientist in an e-mail.

These results fit with those from a long line of human clinical trials, in which antioxidants failed to prevent disease or made things worse. The first of these was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994, and showed that male smokers who took beta-carotene supplements were more likely to develop and die of lung cancer than those who did not. Other trials found similar results for other antioxidants and other cancers, and some of those studies were even stopped early.

In 2012, the Cochrane Collaboration analyzed the results of 78 earlier trials and, based on the most careful of them, concluded that people who took antioxidant supplements (including both healthy people and those with chronic diseases) were more likely to die prematurely than those who did not.

Few studies had looked at the reasons behind these seemingly paradoxical effects. Bergo’s team, led by graduate student Volkan Sayin, began by feeding NAC and vitamin E to mice with early lung cancers, at doses comparable to those in human multivitamin pills. The mice that ingested the antioxidants developed tumors that were three times bigger, and they died twice as fast.

Sayin then showed that tumors normally have lower levels of ROS than normal tissues. The antioxidants reduced these levels even further, protecting the tumors from DNA damage. They also dramatically reduced the activity of p53—a guardian protein that prevents cancer by detecting damaged DNA and putting the brakes on cell division.

By lifting p53’s suppression, the antioxidants allowed the cancer cells to grow and divide faster than usual. Indeed, when the team abolished p53 entirely, neither NAC nor vitamin E affected the growth of the lung tumors. “P53 is normally inactivated in late-stage lung cancer, so what we’re doing is speeding up the progression of malignancy,” said Bergo.

“This is an extremely striking observation, but not surprising given the rather disappointing outcomes of patients at risk for developing lung cancer who had been treated with various antioxidants,” David Tuveson from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who was not involved in the work, said in an e-mail. “We should now consider whether people consuming high doses of antioxidants are ironically promoting cancers that they seek to prevent.”

Although Bergo’s team focused on mice in this study, the scientists found the same mechanisms at work in human cells. They also used mice with the same genetic defects as those that cause human lung cancers, and whose tumors look identical to human ones under the microscope.

They are now doing similar experiments in melanomas, leukaemias, and gastrointestinal tumors to see whether the same mechanisms hold true for other types of cancer.

Source: The Scientist

World’s tallest woman recovering after operation to remove tumour

The world’s tallest woman has been saved from being paralyzed and going blind after doctors removed a huge tumor from her brain.

Siddiqa Parveen, who is estimated to be 7ft 8in tall, had a spine on the ‘verge of breaking’ and was feared to be losing her sight.

The 28-year-old suffered from gigantism brought on by a tumour on the pituitary gland, producing excess growth hormone.

She had already suffered fractures to her spine and was unable to stand up straight .

Doctors in India feared her back would “snap” if she went untreated and put weight on.

They also feared the massive tumour would cause her to go blind.

She was forced to travel 1,000 miles from her remote village in West Bengal to Delhi for the life-saving operation.

Neurosurgeon Dr Ashish Suri, of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said the operation had been a success.

“The tumour had to be taken out through the nose by inserting an endoscope through the nostrils,” he said.

“She suffered significant blood-loss during the operation as the tumour was a vascular one. But she coped well.”

Siddiqa’s unbelievable size saw her recently crowned the world’s tallest woman by Guinness Book of Records – but it caused significant medical challenges.

Her frame was so large doctors were forced to use a large operating table, as well as additional trolleys to cope.

Dr PK Bithal, head of neuroanaesthesiology said: “Our maximum bed size is six feet, both in the operating theatre and intensive care unit

“Positioning her appropriately for surgery was a big problem. Her head size was enlarged, which made access of the tumour with our instruments, like endoscopes, extremely difficult.

“Anaesthetising her was a problem with her head size, since we did not have endotracheal tubes of her size, and she had difficulty lying down with the multiple fractures in her spine.”

 

But hospital authorities say it is only “the first of multiple steps in her road to complete recovery”.

Siddiqa, who weighs 130kg and has enlarged hands and feet, has been released from the intensive care unit but remains in hospital.

However, her problems are not just physical and doctors say she will need to be treated for a ‘psychosocial crisis’ – having been isolated for much of her life.

Dr Suri said: “She has been confined to her house for the major part of her life. An old teacher from her area is the only one she communicates with and only speaks Bengali.

“She has been silent for so long, it will take us a long time to ensure her complete recovery,” said Dr Tandon.

Siddiqa was mentioned in the 2014 Guinness Book of World Records as the new record holder after the 2012 death of Yao Defen from China who, at 233.3 cm -7 feet 7 inches – was the tallest woman on earth.

Siddiqa’s entry in the latest book states: “The tallest woman living is Siddiqa Parveen of South Dinajpur, India, who in December 2012 was measured by Doctor Debasis Saha from Fortis Hospitals to be at least 222.25 cm (7 feet 3.5 inches).

“Dr Saha estimates her standing height to be at least 233.6 cm (7 ft 8 in).”

Source: healcon

 

Brisk walk can help beat prostate cancer

Exercise may improve the prognosis of prostate cancer patients by affecting blood vessels in their tumours, a study suggests.

Researchers found that men who walked at a fast pace before being diagnosed with the disease had tumours containing larger and more regularly shaped blood vessels.

Better formed tumour blood vessels may in turn inhibit cancer aggressiveness and promote better responses to treatments, the scientists believe.

Physically active men with prostate cancer have a lower risk of recurrence and death from the disease than those living sedentary lives, but until now the reason has remained a mystery.

The new study looked at 572 prostate cancer patients taking part in a US lifestyle and health investigation called the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

Men with the fastest walking pace – between 3.3 and five miles per hour – prior to diagnosis had 8 per cent more regularly shaped tumour blood vessels than the slowest walkers who ambled at 1.5 to 2.5 mph.

“Prior research has shown that men with prostate tumours containing more regularly shaped blood vessels have a more favourable prognosis compared with men with prostate tumours containing mostly irregularly shaped blood vessels,” said lead scientist Dr Erin Van Blarigan, from the University of California at San Francisco.

“In this study, we found that men who reported walking at a brisk pace had more regularly shaped blood vessels in their prostate tumors compared with men who reported walking at a less brisk pace.

“Our findings suggest a possible mechanism by which exercise may improve outcomes in men with prostate cancer. Although data from randomised, controlled trials are needed before we can conclude that exercise causes a change in vessel regularity or clinical outcomes in men with prostate cancer, our study supports the growing evidence of the benefits of exercise, such as brisk walking, for men with prostate cancer.”

Dr Matthew Hobbs, deputy director of research at Prostate Cancer UK, said: “Although this research provides a plausible explanation of how exercise might improve outcomes for men with prostate cancer, much more research is needed to confirm the impact of lifestyle factors on men’s recovery.

“We hope that further research in this area may one day give us a way to improve the prognosis for the 40,000 men in the UK who are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year.”

Meanwhile a separate study suggest a good night’s sleep may also held the condition. Scientists have linked higher levels of the night-time hormone melatonin with a 75 per cent reduced risk of advanced disease.

Melatonin is produced in the dark at night. It plays a key role in regulating the body’s sleeping cycle and influences many other functions associated with the body’s 24-hour clock, or circadian rhythm.

Low levels of the hormone are typically associated with disrupted sleep.

Scientists studied 928 Icelandic men who were questioned about their sleep patterns.

Source: the Scotsman

‘Sticky balls’ may stop cancer spreading

Cancer-killing “sticky balls” can destroy tumour cells in the blood and may prevent cancers spreading, early research suggests.

The most dangerous and deadly stage of a tumour is when it spreads around the body.

Scientists at Cornell University, in the US, have designed nanoparticles that stay in the bloodstream and kill migrating cancer cells on contact.

They said the impact was “dramatic” but there was “a lot more work to be done”.

One of the biggest factors in life expectancy after being diagnosed with cancer is whether the tumour has spread to become a metastatic cancer.

“About 90% of cancer deaths are related to metastases,” said lead researcher Prof Michael King.

They attached a cancer-killing protein called Trail, which has already been used in cancer trials, and other sticky proteins to tiny spheres or nanoparticles.

When these sticky spheres were injected into the blood, they latched on to white blood cells.

Tests showed that in the rough and tumble of the bloodstream, the white blood cells would bump into any tumour cells which had broken off the main tumour and were trying to spread.

The report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed the resulting contact with the Trail protein then triggered the death of the tumour cells.

Prof King told the BBC: “The data shows a dramatic effect: it’s not a slight change in the number of cancer cells.

“The results are quite remarkable actually, in human blood and in mice. After two hours of blood flow, they [the tumour cells] have literally disintegrated.”

He believes the nanoparticles could be used used before surgery or radiotherapy, which can result in tumour cells being shed from the main tumour.

It could also be used in patients with very aggressive tumours to prevent them spreading.

However, much more safety testing in mice and larger animals will be needed before any attempt at a human trial is made.

So far the evidence suggests the system has no knock-on effect for the immune system and does not damage other blood cells or the lining of blood vessels.

But Prof King cautioned: “There’s a lot of work to be done. Various breakthroughs are needed before this could be a benefit to patients.”

Source: BBC news

Hunt for Environmental links to breast cancer

A decade-long research effort to uncover the environmental causes of breast cancer by studying both lab animals and a group of healthy US girls has turned up some surprises, according to AFP

At the center of the investigation are 1,200 schoolgirls who do not have breast cancer, but who have already given scientists important new clues about the possible origins of the disease.

Some risk factors are well understood, including early puberty, later age of childbearing, late onset of menopause, estrogen replacement therapy, drinking alcohol and exposure to radiation, AFP reports.

Advances have also been made in identifying risky gene mutations, but these cases make up a small minority.

“Most of breast cancer, particularly in younger women, does not come from family histories,” said Leslie Reinlib, a program director at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“We have still got 80 percent that has got to be environmental,” said Reinlib, who is part of the Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Program (BCERP) program that has received some $70 million in funds from the US government since 2003.

Some of its researchers track what is happening in the human population, while others study how carcinogens, pollutants and diet affect the development of the mammary glands and breast tumors in lab mice.

The program’s primary focus is on puberty because its early onset “is probably one of the best predictors of breast cancer in women,” Reinlib said.

Puberty is a time of rapid growth of the breast tissue. Research on survivors of the Hiroshima atomic bombings in Japan has shown that those exposed in puberty had a higher likelihood of developing breast cancer in adulthood.

The 1,200 US girls enrolled in the study at sites in New York City, northern California and the greater Cincinnati, Ohio, area beginning in 2004, when they were between the ages of six and eight.

The aim was to measure the girls’ chemical exposures through blood and urine tests, and to learn how environmental exposures affected the onset of puberty and perhaps breast cancer risk later in life.

Researchers quickly discovered that their effort to reach girls before puberty had not been entirely successful.

“By age eight, 40 percent were already in puberty,” said Reinlib. “That was a surprising bit of information.”

Further research has shown that the girls appear to be entering puberty six to eight months earlier than their peers did in the 1990s.

A study published last week in the journal Pediatrics on this cohort of girls found that obesity was acting as a primary driver of earlier breast development.

Other studies on the girls have focused on chemicals that are known as endocrine disruptors because they are believed to cause either earlier or later breast development.

Initial results showed “for the first time that phthalates, BPA, pesticides are in all the girls they looked at,” said Reinlib.

Researchers were taken aback by the pervasiveness of the exposures, but also by the data which appeared to show some plastic chemicals might not be as influential on breast development as some have feared.

“They didn’t find much of an association between puberty and phthalates, which are these chemicals that leach out of plastic bottles and Tupperware,” Reinlib said.

Another major finding regarded blood chemicals from two nearby groups in Ohio and Kentucky, both drinking water that was apparently contaminated by industrial waste.

Girls in northern Kentucky had blood levels of an industrial chemical — perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA or C-8) found in Teflon non-stick coating for pans — three times as high as those who drank water from the Ohio River near Cincinnati, where water was filtered with state-of-the-art technology.

“Northern Kentucky did not have granular activated carbon filtration” in their water supply said researcher Susan Pinney, a professor at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine.

“In 2012 they put it in after they learned of our preliminary results.” Families were also notified of their daughters’ blood levels, she said.

The chemicals can linger in the body for years. Researchers were dismayed to learn that the longer the girls spent breastfeeding as infants — typically touted for its health benefits — the higher their PFOA levels compared to girls who were fed formula.

What cannot be studied in the girls is tried on lab mice, who in one experiment are being fed high-fat diets and exposed to a potent carcinogen to see how the two interact.

Mammary tumors develop much faster in the high-fat diet group, said scientist Richard Schwartz of the department of microbiology and molecular genetics at Michigan State University.

Fat mice have more blood supply in the mammary glands, higher inflammation levels and display changes in the immune system.

Follow-up studies suggest that cancer risk stays high even if mice are fed high-fat diets in puberty and switched to low-fat diets in adulthood, he told AFP.

“The damage is already done,” he said. “Does this mean that humans are at risk the same way? We don’t know that with certainty.”

But the findings do reinforce the advice that people often hear regarding how to maintain good health — avoid fatty foods, maintain a normal weight and reduce chemical exposures wherever possible, experts say.

“It can’t hurt, and it can only help,” said Schwartz.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women globally and took 508,000 lives in 2011, according to the World Health Organization.

Source: News OK