Treatment Gives Lung Cancer Patients With Inoperable Tumors Two Years or More
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Radiofrequency ablation (RFA)—an interventional treatment that “cooks” and kills lung cancer tumors with heat—greatly improves survival time from primary or metastatic inoperable lung tumors, according to a study released today at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting. Of the 244 patients suffering from lung metastases (195 patients) or primary non-small cell lung cancer (49 patients), 70 percent were still alive at two years, including 72 percent for lung metastases and 64 percent for primary lung cancer. These survival results are similar to surgical results from other studies, but the interventional treatment is less invasive and has far fewer side effects and less recovery time. The researchers found that RFA often can completely destroy the primary tumor and, therefore, extend a patient’s survival and greatly improve his or her quality of life. Survival thus becomes dependent on the extent of disease elsewhere in the body.
Of the 49 patients (ages 27–85) with non-small cell primary lung cancer who were treated with RFA, 85 percent had no viable lung tumors after one year on imaging, and 77 percent had no viable lung tumors after two years, which indicates a cure. This study was conducted in tumors four centimeters in diameter or smaller, and even better results were obtained for tumors smaller than two centimeters.
Testicular cancer gauge often not used
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A standard part of testicular cancer care isn’t used in more than half of all patients who have the condition, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have found.
Serum-based tumor markers, which are one indicator of the presence of cancer cells, are helpful in several aspects of the care of patients with testis cancer, including diagnosis, prognostication and surveillance for disease recurrence following treatment. Doctors typically rely on a series of three tumor markers with this type of cancer.
In a review of more than 4,700 testicular cancer cases, a combination of two of these tumor markers were used less than half of the time, while all three tumor markers were measured in just 16 percent of the cases.
Alternative medicine fans more likely to get shots
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Adults who use alternative or complementary medicines are more likely to receive recommended vaccinations than their peers who don’t use these products, according to a study by researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Among 30,617 adults participating in the 2002 National Health Interview Survey, the 36 percent who said they had used complementary or alternative medicines (CAM) recently were more likely to have received shots for preventing the flu, pneumococcal infections and hepatitis B.
Nevertheless, most people the CDC considers “priority” recipients for the flu and pneumococcal vaccines because of a high-risk condition didn’t get them, Dr. Shannon Stokley of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases in Atlanta and her colleagues found.
Early heart monitoring predicts pregnancy trouble
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In healthy women who’ve never given birth before, alterations in heart function and blood flow in the uterus in early pregnancy may help predict preeclampsia, a potentially serious complication involving high blood pressure, that often leads to premature delivery, UK investigators report.
In the new study, 534 women pregnant with a single fetus underwent ultrasound testing of their heart and the blood vessels that supply the uterus between 11 and 14 weeks of pregnancy.
The research team compared heart function and uterine blood flow in women who had preeclampsia, a small infant, both or neither. The findings appear in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
Early breast-feeding reduces newborn deaths
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Initiation of breast-feeding within the first hour after birth or during the first day of life reduces the risk of death for the newborn, according to results of a study from Nepal. Although newborn death rates are already very low in the US, in low-resource countries like Nepal, they can be relatively high.
Dr. Luke Mullany and colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and a team with the Nepal Nutrition Intervention Project, Katmandu, analyzed data on measures to reduce newborn deaths.
Urban Planning a Factor in Rising Obesity Rates
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You may want to buy healthy food for your family, but if the good grocery stores are far away and pricey and the fast-food outlets are cheap and plentiful, it may be harder to make the healthy choice. Research led by the University of Alberta and funded by the Canadian Institute for Health Information confirms there are links between our urban surroundings and how likely we are to struggle with obesity.
The startling rise in obesity rates in North America over the past two decades has led to calls for more effective approaches to help people achieve healthy weights. The State of the Evidence Review on Urban Health and Healthy Weights, released to the public this week, synthesizes the findings of hundreds of population health studies published over the years and shines a spotlight on aspects of our urban environments that can either inhibit or promote our ability to maintain a healthy weight.
“Two key areas we looked at were economic environments and built environments—meaning the ways in which the neighbourhoods and the cities in which we live are planned and developed,” said Kim Raine, director of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Health Promotion Studies and lead author of the report.
Body Mass Index may serve as prognostic tool for advanced, aggressive breast cancers
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Body Mass Index (BMI), the measure of a person’s fat based on their height and weight, may be an effective prognostic tool for specific types of breast cancer, according to research from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The study, published in the March 15 issue of Cancer Research, reports that women with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) and inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) with high BMIs had worse prognosis than women with the disease whose BMIs were in the healthy range.
One’s BMI is scored based on height and weight. A score less than 18.5 indicates that a person is underweight and a score of 18.5 -24.9 indicates that one is in a normal or healthy range. A person is overweight if their score is 25-29.9 and any score above 30 classifies that a person as obese.
Australian men care about their health
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A study of male attitudes to health and how they use health services, published in the online open access journal, BMC Health Services Research, challenges the usual stereotype that men are uninterested in their health. Rather than procrastinating, men may delay going to the doctor so that they can watch a health problem to see if it will fix itself. Indeed, a picture emerges of men as personal health detectives, monitoring rather than ignoring symptoms, and visiting the doctor only if a problem fails to resolve itself.
The results will surprise those people who envisage the Australian pub-going male as brusque and disinterested in all things medical. When men do see a physician, they usually expect a quick-fix solution.
Snoring may be chronic despite surgery
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Children who gain weight rapidly after having their tonsils and adenoids removed to treat sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) may improve in the short-term, but over time they may relapse or even worsen. African-American children also tend to relapse, according to new research from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
Adenotonsillectomy is the most commonly performed surgery in children, ranging from about 19 per 10,000 in Canada to 115 per 10,000 in the Netherlands. In the U.S., the rate is about 50 per 10,000. It is the first line of treatment for SDB in children. For many kids, undergoing this major surgery provides only temporary relief.
“The high rate of recurrence we observed in both obese and non-obese children indicates that SDB is a chronic condition,” said Raouf Amin, M.D., director of pulmonary medicine at the hospital.
Toddlers affected most by secondhand smoke exposure at home
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Secondhand smoke in the home appears to induce markers for heart disease as early as the toddler years, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s 48th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
It has long been known that many forms of cardiovascular disease in adults are initiated and progress silently during childhood. Now researchers have found a young child’s response to smoke may not just affect the respiratory system, but the cardiovascular system as well.
“This is the first study that looks at the response of a young child’s cardiovascular system to secondhand smoke,” said Judith Groner, M.D., lead author of the study, pediatrician and ambulatory care physician at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio.
Parkinson’s Disease Drug Might Work in Cancer Patients
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A study published in the March 13 online issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation shows that dopamine, a drug currently used to treat Parkinson’s disease and other illnesses, also might work in cancer patients. The study, which was done in mouse and laboratory models, shows that dopamine could possibly prevent new blood vessels from growing and as a result, slow cancer progression.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that regulates movement and affects behavior. In its synthetic form, dopamine is used to treat heart attack victims, Parkinson’s disease and pituitary tumors. But it wasn’t known until now that dopamine worked by blocking the growth of new blood vessels (a process called angiogenesis).
“Researchers now can test this concept in solid tumors where angiogenesis plays a critical role in the growth and progression of these cancers,” says Sujit Basu, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic scientist who conducted this study with Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, Ph.D., a scientist with the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute (CNCI) in Calcutta, India.; and, Debanjan Chakroborty, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry at Mayo Clinic and CNCI.
Study Offers Clues About Patient Allergies to Cancer Drug
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Members of a study team led by Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills of the University of Virginia Health System knew they had a medical mystery on their hands. When treated with the widely-used cancer drug, cetuximab, patients in several states – mostly in the Southeast – were experiencing allergic reactions more frequently and more severely than those living elsewhere. Reactions typically occurred during initial treatment and sometimes included anaphylaxis, a life-threatening condition characterized by a rapid drop in blood pressure, fainting, difficulty breathing, and wheezing.
Previous research had shown that 22 percent of patients in Tennessee and North Carolina had severe allergic reactions to the drug. Even higher reaction rates and clusters of cases had been reported in Arkansas, Missouri and Virginia. This data contrasted sharply with the drug’s label, which states that three percent of patients experienced severe allergic reactions, and with results in the northeast, where less than one percent of patients receiving cetuximab had allergic reactions.
“There seemed to be a link between geographic location and allergic response, and we wanted to know why,” explains Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills, Professor of Medicine, Allergy and Clinical Immunology at UVA. The team’s findings, published in the March 13, 2008 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, offer a key clue to solving this mystery.
If pregnant women stop smoking, babies are happier
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Mothers who stop smoking while pregnant tend to have cheerier, more adaptable babies, British researchers reported on Wednesday.
Babies of women who continued to smoke while pregnant were notably grumpy, and the researchers believe that mothers who can muster the effort to kick the habit are also caring more for their babies in other ways.
Babies of non-smokers also are more temperamental than babies born to quitters, the researchers found—which they said suggested that mothers who suspend smoking are doing something special.
Second study finds treating herpes won’t stop HIV
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Another study has found that treating genital herpes infections does not protect people from the AIDS virus.
The study, published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, casts even more doubt on the once hopeful idea that treating the common infection might help put a dent in the AIDS pandemic.
Dr. Deborah Watson-Jones of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues reported on 659 workers aged 16 to 35 at recreational facilities in Tanzania.
Popcorn ingredient causes lung disease: U.S. study
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A chemical used to give butter flavor to popcorn can damage the lungs and airways of mice, U.S. government experts reported on Thursday.
Tests on mice show that diacetyl, a component of artificial butter flavoring, can cause a condition known as lymphocytic bronchiolitis, said the team at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health.
The condition can lead to obliterative bronchiolitis—or “popcorn lung”—a rare and debilitating disease seen in workers at microwave popcorn packaging plants and at least one consumer.
