Cancer
Diabetes Raises Risks Of Many Cancers
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People with type 2 diabetes—formerly known as adult-onset diabetes—are more likely to get 24 kinds of cancer than the general population, according to a new study.
Researchers in Sweden and the U.S. reviewed records of more than 125,000 people in Sweden who had been hospitalized for complications of diabetes.
They found that the greatest increase in risk was for pancreatic and liver cancers. People with diabetes were six times more likely to get pancreatic cancer and 4.25 times more likely to get liver cancer.
Cancer report energizes activists, not policy
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A cancer report that concludes Americans are under constant assault from carcinogenic agents has heartened activists, who hope that finally government and policymakers will pay attention to their concerns.
But the report from the President’s Cancer Panel on Thursday has underwhelmed most mainstream cancer experts and drawn only a puzzled response from the White House. Even members of Congress who usually are eager to show they are fighting to protect the public have been mostly silent.
Cancer experts say for the most part that we already know what causes most cases of cancer and it’s not pollution or chemicals lurking in our water bottles. It’s tobacco use and other unhealthy behaviors, says Dr. Graham Colditz of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Research Analyzes Extent of Tumor Resection and Glioblastoma Patient Outcome
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Gliomas arise from the supporting cells of the brain, called the glia. These cells are subdivided into astrocytes, ependymal cells and oligodendroglial cells (or oligos). These tumors are graded from the lowest grade 1 to highest grade 4, with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) being the highest grade and deadliest type of glioma. About 50 percent of all gliomas diagnosed annually are high-grade.
High-grade glioma or GBM is the most common primary malignant brain tumor, as well as the most devastating, accounting for 19 percent of all primary brain tumors. Standard treatment includes surgical resection followed by chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Unfortunately, despite decades of refinement, this multimodal approach still translates to a mean survival of only 12 to 14 months.
Researchers at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix and the University of California, San Francisco, analyzed the relationship between extent of resection and patient outcome in 500 patients with glioblastoma.
Ellen Pompeo launches cancer prevention campaign
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Actress Ellen Pompeo, star of the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy,” is stepping beyond her surgeon’s role in the hit medical drama to encourage women to make their own health a priority to prevent cancer.
The disease affects one in three women in the United States during their lifetime. Pompeo, a new mother and the daughter of a cancer survivor, said women are vital to battling and stopping the illness.
“Cancer is something that touches everyone’s lives,” Pompeo told Reuters. “Women are busy taking care of other people. This is about choosing yourself.”
Diabetes and Cancer Linked – Biomedical Scientists
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A team of biomedical scientists based have linked diabetes with cancer in women.
They suggest that female patients with type 2 diabetes have up to a 25 per cent increased risk of developing cancer than those without the condition, the Daily Mail reports.
According to NHS figures, around 2.3 million people have diabetes in the UK and there are at least half a million more who suffer from it and are not aware.
Use and Costs of Diagnostic Imaging Increasing for Patients With Cancer
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From 1999 through 2006 the use of diagnostic imaging for Medicare patients with cancer increased, with use of positron emission tomography (PET) increasing the most significantly, according to a study in the April 28 issue of JAMA. Imaging costs for these patients also increased, outpacing the rate of increase in total costs among Medicare beneficiaries with cancer.
Cancer-related expenditures are expected to increase faster than any other area of health care. “Emerging technologies, changing diagnostic and treatment patterns, and changes in Medicare reimbursement are contributing to increasing use of imaging in cancer,” the authors write. “The types and costs of imaging, including costly new imaging modalities, among Medicare beneficiaries with cancer have not been examined previously.”
Michaela A. Dinan, B.S., of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined changes in the use and costs of imaging and how these changes have influenced the cost of cancer care. The study included an analysis of a nationally representative 5 percent sample of claims from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. From 1999 through 2006, there were 100,954 new cases of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, leu¬kemia, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and prostate cancer.
Men from deprived areas less likely to be treated for prostate cancer
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Men living in deprived areas are far less likely to be treated with the most common types of radical treatment for prostate cancer than those in more affluent places, says a study published on bmj.com today.
A large scale study carried out by researchers from Cambridge found that patients from the most deprived areas are 26% less likely to have radiotherapy than men from the most affluent areas and 52% less likely to have radical surgery.
Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in men and its incidence has been increasing, particularly since the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Body Mass Index gain throughout adulthood may increase risk of postmenopausal breast cancer
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Reported mid-life increase in body mass index (BMI) may lead to substantially higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, according to results of a prospective cohort study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010, held here April 17-21.
In previous studies, excess weight has been linked with increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Scientists have speculated that in postmenopausal women, estrogen produced in adipose tissue, or body fat, may promote breast cell proliferation. Relatively few studies have looked specifically at increase in BMI and its timing in relation to postmenopausal breast cancer risk, which this study investigated.
The researchers analyzed information from 72,007 women in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial cohort, who were 55 to 74 years old at study entry. The analysis included 3,677 cases of postmenopausal breast cancer, which makes this one of the larger studies of its kind, according to the researchers.
Excessive alcohol consumption may lead to increased cancer risk
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Researchers have detected a link between alcohol consumption, cancer and aging that starts at the cellular level with telomere shortening.
Results of this cross-sectional study were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010, held here, April 17-21, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Telomeres are found at the region of DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, and are important for the genetic stability of cells. As people age, telomere length shortens progressively.
Obesity and weight gain near time of prostate cancer surgery doubles risk of recurrence
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Johns Hopkins epidemiologists say that prostate cancer patients who gain five or more pounds near the time of their prostate surgery are twice as likely to have a recurrence of their cancer compared with patients whose weight is stable.
“We surveyed men whose cancer was confined to the prostate, and surgery should have cured most of them, yet some cancers recurred. Obesity and weight gain may be factors that tip the scale to recurrence,” says Corinne Joshu, Ph.D., M.P.H., postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Joshu and her colleagues sent questionnaires to 1,337 men with prostate cancer who had undergone surgery to remove their prostate at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The researchers asked each participant to recall their dietary, lifestyle and medical factors from five years before their surgery through one year after.
Testing lung tumors tailors drug treatments
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Researchers said they helped advanced lung cancer patients fare better by matching their tumors to targeted drugs, in what they said is the first significant trial to show it is possible to choose the best drug for an individual patient.
They tested four so-called targeted therapies in patients with specific biomarkers - mutations that the drugs were designed to counteract.
After eight weeks, 46 percent of the patients on the trial had their tumors grow more slowly or shrink, compared with about 30 percent of usual lung cancer patients.
U.S. Medicare panel to weigh prostate treatments
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At a time of growing debate over prostate cancer treatments, U.S. Medicare officials will take a closer look at radiation therapy and its ability to reduce deaths and side effects in men.
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has asked a panel of outside experts meeting on Wednesday to say how confident they are that various types of radiation treatment can improve patient outcomes.
Researchers have found that many prostate cancers are so slow-growing that most men will die from other causes, sparking debate over whether diagnosis is too frequent and whether treatments, which also include surgery, are excessive.
Stress hormones accelerate tumor growth
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Chronic stress has recently been implicated as a factor that may accelerate the growth of tumors. However, the mechanisms underlying this effect have not been determined. But now, Anil Sood and colleagues, at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, have generated data using human ovarian cancer cell lines and tumor specimens that indicate that stress hormones, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine, can contribute to tumor progression in patients with ovarian cancer. They therefore suggest that targeting stress hormones and the signaling pathways that they activate might be of benefit to individuals with cancer.
Anoikis is the process by which cells are triggered to die when separated from their surrounding matrix and neighboring cells. Tumor cells that spread to other sites somehow escape anoikis. In the study, exposure of human ovarian cancer cells lines to either of the stress hormones norepinephrine or epinephrine protected them from anoikis.
Study suggests new ways to improve anti-cancer chemotherapies
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A study released this week suggests that anti-cancer chemotherapies which use nanoparticles to deliver drugs deep inside tumor tissue will be more effective if the particles are positively electrically charged because they are taken up to a greater extent by proliferating cells, according to a team of chemists and chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
This is because a positive surface charge allows better uptake of the nanoparticles across the cell membrane, a mechanism which the researchers found controls delivery to most tumor cells. At the same time, “negative particles, which diffuse more quickly, may perform better when delivering drugs deep into tissues,” say UMass Amherst’s Neil Forbes, with chemist Vincent Rotello and colleagues. Their description of a new “tunable” delivery system appears in the current issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Web Site Explains How Stem Cells Fuel Cancer
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A new field of cancer research could explain why some cancers that appear to have been cured can rear their ugly head or spread to other organs.
The answer, believe researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, lies with a small number of cells within a tumor, called cancer stem cells, that are responsible for fueling the tumor’s growth.
A U-M Web site explains what cancer stem cells are and why they are the key to finding a cure. The site is at http://www.mcancer.org/stemcells.
