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August 08, 2008
News
Headlines
Initial Chemo Beneficial in Lung Cancer Brain
Mets
European Payers Question Value of New Cancer
Drugs
Lymphedema After Breast
Cancer Surgery Common
Early
Screening For All Breast Cancer Relatives May Not Necessary
''Complementary Medicine'' Widely Used By
Cancer Patients
Sticking to Diet
Advice Cuts Colon Cancer Risk
Higher Plasma Folate Associated with Lower
Colorectal Cancer Mortality
Sentinel
Node Dissection Before Preoperative Chemotherapy Improves Staging
Survival Benefits of
Palliative Chemotherapy Are Often Unclear to Patients
Pain in Chest, Upper Abdomen an Ominous
Sign
Video Game Improves Treatment
Adherence For Young Cancer Patients
Cancerpage news is updated daily, Monday
through Friday, and on the weekends as
warranted. More than 24 new
articles have been added to cancerpage news since the last newsletter.
To see ALL the latest stories, go to the
cancerpage.com search page and click on Submit
(but leave search field black.)
Prostate Cancer
Screening Guidelines
Little
is likely to be settled by the release earlier this week
of updated prostate cancer screening recommendations from the U.S. Preventive
Services Task Force, especially since their cautions seemed little heeded
before. The Task Force, more strongly, reiterated the lack of evidence to
support PSA screening for men over 75 year of age concluding in fact that "there
is moderate or high certainty that [PSA screening] has no net benefit or
that the harms outweigh the benefits." The task force concluded there's just not
enough evidence to determine whether the good outweighs the harm done in
widespread PSA screening for men under 75 years of age. The
MAYO CLINIC has a decision guide if you need help making
a decision to get screened or not to get screened.
PSA testing
isn't as accurate in obese men as normal-weight men so
that when prostate cancer is detected in the obese it's more likely to be
found at a more advanced stage. That's the conclusion of investigators at the
Duke Prostate Center and the Durham Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center. One
of the Duke urologists speculates the results are "possiblly caused by larger
blood volumes [of obese men] which dilute the readings." In case you
don't think he's talking about anyone you know - "We can't forget that
when we use the term obese we are not just talking about very, very large men. A
man who is 5 foot 9 and weighs 203 pounds would be considered obese," Duke
urologist Dr. Stephen Freedland is quoted as saying. And if current trends
continue, a U.S.
government study concludes
, all U.S. adults will be overweight in 40 years.
California researchers conclude Vietnam War
vets who were exposed to agent organge
should be screened for prostate cancer more frequently and starting at a
younger age. They published their findings ONLINE Monday in the
journal Cancer. They studied the VA health records of
more than 13,000 Vetnam vets in Nothern California. The study revealed that
twice as many men exposed to Agent Orange were identified with prostate cancer.
"In addition, Agent Orange-exposed men were diagnosed two-and-a-half years
younger and were nearly four times more likely to present with metastatic
disease." Read
more about it here
.
Identifying the
Heretofore Unknown
In May, film director
and actor Sydney Pollack
succumbed to cancer. When he died, doctors
still didn't know what kind of cancer he had however.
Like about 32,000 other Americans annually, he was diagnosed with cancer of
an unknown primary - that means doctors found the cancer after it
had already spread but they were never able to determine where it originated.
That's like trying to fight a dragon blindfolded. Last week, the FDA
approved a test that might now give doctors and their patients better odds
in determining where the cancer started. The first test of its kind, the Pathwork
Tissue of Origin Test will compare tissue taken from a suspect tumor and
compare its genetic makeup to the gene expression in 15 known tumor
types. The tissue sample is then given a score which can narrow the
possibile suspects.
Dr.
Renuka Iyer, a medical oncologist at the Roswell Park Cancer
Institue
(Buffalo, NY) specializes in treating cancers
of an unknown primary. She told cancerpage a strong score can eliminate
the need for expensive diagnostic imaging and toxic therapies. You can listen to the 10
minute interview (MP3) here.
The Best New Old
Thing?
A drug in use since the 1970s against roundworm, hookworm, pinworm, whipworm,
and other worm-based parasitic infections could be the best new
old drug against melanoma. Researchers at New York University School of
Medicine, publishing in Molecular Cancer Research ONLINE Thursday,
report that the drug mebendazole targets a Bcl-2, a protein that protects melanoma from programmed cell death.
"The discovery of a viable investigational treatment with an established safety profile could
address a serious unmet need in oncology. Effectively sidestepping the
prohibitive costs and long lead times typically required to discover new cancer
medicines, the NYU team screened a library of already approved drugs for
activity against the most deadly form of skin cancer," a press
release from NYU states.
Profile in Courage
The New York Times wrote a very nice profile of Olympic swimmer
Eric Shanteau this week in advance of the Olympic games, which open this
weekend. Read
it here. (LOGIN: cancerpage PW: visitor)
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