Cancer
U.S. cancer death rate down but 565,650 seen in 2008
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The U.S. death rate from cancer has continued a steady decline that began in the early 1990s but it will still kill a projected 565,650 Americans this year, the American Cancer Society said on Wednesday.
The death rate from lung, colorectal, prostate, breast and other cancer types fell in 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available, but not as much as in 2003 and 2004, the group said. The actual number of cancer deaths rose.
The cancer death rate for men has fallen by 18.4 percent since peaking in 1990 and for women has fallen by 10.5 percent since peaking in 1991. Cancer is the No. 2 cause of death in the United States, behind heart disease.
Major study links insurance status to advanced stage in multiple cancers
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A new American Cancer Society study of twelve types of cancer among more than 3.5 million cancer patients finds uninsured patients were significantly more likely to present with advanced stage cancer compared to patients with private insurance. The study, which appears in the March issue of The Lancet Oncology, is the first to use national data to investigate insurance status and stage of diagnosis for a large number of cancer sites. It finds the strongest association between insurance status and advanced cancer was for cancers that can be detected early by screening or evaluation of symptoms.
For their study, American Cancer Society researchers led by Michael Halpern, M.D., Ph.D., strategic director of health services research, compared insurance status and stage at diagnosis using the National Cancer Database, a hospital-based registry capturing patient information from approximately 1,430 facilities. The database includes information for approximately 73 percent of patients diagnosed with cancer in the U.S. The new analysis included patients in the database between ages 18 and 99 diagnosed with any of 12 cancers between 1998 and 2004.
The study found consistent associations between insurance status and stage at diagnosis across multiple cancer sites. Compared to patients with private insurance, uninsured patients had significantly increased likelihoods of being diagnosed with cancer at more advanced stages.
British researchers link obesity to more cancers
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Obesity can double the risk of several cancers, according to a study published on Friday that for the first time also links being overweight with a number of less common forms of the disease.
The analysis of 144 published studies incorporating some 282,000 men and women also showed that gender can make a difference in the relationship between obesity and some cancers, the researchers reported in the Lancet medical journal.
The findings come after a major report from the World Research Cancer Fund in October showed that excess body fat was likely to cause some cancers, said Andrew Renehan, a cancer specialist at the University of Manchester, who led the study.
Anxiety Tied to DCIS Patients’ Overestimation of Cancer Risks
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Elevated levels of anxiety may cause women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common form of non-invasive breast cancer, to overestimate their risk of recurrence or dying from breast cancer, suggests a study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
“Although DCIS typically is very treatable disease, many women diagnosed with DCIS develop inaccurate risk perceptions,” said Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, the study’s lead author and a breast oncologist at Dana-Farber. “This exaggerated sense of risk needs to be addressed, as it may cause women to make poor treatment choices and adversely affect their emotional well-being and subsequent health behaviors.”
The study’s findings will be published online by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Feb. 12 and later in a print edition.
No Link Found Between Personality Traits and Cancer Risk
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In the Journal of the National Cancer Institute of January 29, 2008, Eveline Bleiker, PhD, at The Netherlands Cancer Institute, and colleagues at the VU University Medical Center and Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, report on a large prospective study on psychological risk factors for breast cancer. In addition to looking at individual personality traits, they also examined how interactions between personality traits influenced breast cancer risk.
In 1989 -1990, about 9,700 women completed a personality survey that assessed anxiety, anger, depression, rationality, anti-emotionality, understanding, optimism, social support, and emotional expression and control.
Antioxidants more likely to raise cancer risk
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Taking antioxidant supplements won’t reduce cancer risk, according to a new analysis of a dozen studies including more than 100,000 patients. In fact, the researchers found, smokers who take beta carotene supplements could be increasing their risk of smoking-related cancer and death.
While antioxidants have been touted for cancer prevention, different antioxidants have different effects, and their effects may also vary depending on the part of the body involved, Dr. Aditya Bardia of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and colleagues note in their report.
To investigate, the researchers looked at 12 trials that compared antioxidant supplements with placebo on cancer incidence and mortality.
Women, Children Face Higher Cancer Risk from CT Scans
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The lifetime risk of cancer associated with radiation exposure from a computer tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) varies widely, but women and younger patients appear to be at increased risk, according to the July 18 Journal of the American Medical Association.
CTCA, which combines 64 images to produce cross-sectional views of the heart and coronary arteries, has been predicted to be the diagnostic tool of choice for patients with a high risk of developing coronary artery disease. Little data, however, are available on CTCA and its associated cancer risk from radiation exposure.
Researchers led by Andrew J. Einstein, MD, PhD, found that the lifetime attributable risk of cancer incidence associated with radiation exposure varied with age, sex, and scan protocol. Lifetime cancer risk estimates for standard cardiac scans ranged from one in 143 for women for a 20-year-old woman to one in 3,261 for an 80-year-old man.
Anemia Drugs and Stimulants Ease Exhaustion in Some Cancer Patients
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Drugs that promote red blood cell production and stimulants typically used to treat attention deficit disorder relieve excessive tiredness in cancer patients, according to a new systematic review of studies.
Undergoing cancer treatment can affect physical, mental and emotional well-being, and a variety of contributing factors — such as treatment regimens, psychological distress and the effects of the cancer itself — can cause cancer-related fatigue.
“Fatigue is difficult to treat as it usually has a number of contributory causes — many of which are not fully understood,” said lead investigator Dr. Oliver Minton. Patients and professionals alike may consider tiredness as an unavoidable part of cancer treatment, Minton said, rather than a problem to recognize and address.
Large Mediastinal Teratoma Originating from the Aortic Adventitia
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Many mediastinal tumors do not cause local symptoms, so they are discovered incidentally upon thoracic imaging. We present the case of a patient who had a large, mature, cystic, mediastinal teratoma. The primary tumor arose from the ascending aortic adventitia and was in a highly unusual location—the medial mediastinum. The teratoma, which was diagnosed in our patient on thoracic computed tomography for follow-up evaluation of empyema, was resected completely. To our knowledge, such a teratoma, arising from the adventitia of the ascending aorta in the medial mediastinum, has not previously been reported in the English medical literature.
We review diagnostic methods and therapeutic approaches to such mediastinal tumors. We conclude that surgical resection is the method of choice for treating these tumors, because it enables radical therapy and tissue diagnosis after extirpation.
Key words: Magnetic resonance imaging, mediastinal cyst, mediastinal neoplasms/diagnosis/surgery, radiography, thoracic, surgical resection, teratoma/diagnosis/surgery, tomography, X-ray computed, tumor markers, biological/blood/diagnostic use
New report estimates 12 million cancer deaths worldwide
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A new American Cancer Society report estimates that there will be over 12 million new cancer cases and 7.6 million cancer deaths (about 20,000 cancer deaths a day) worldwide in 2007. The estimate comes from the first-ever Global Cancer Facts & Figures, the latest addition to the American Cancer Society’s family of Facts & Figures publications. The report estimates that 5.4 million of those cancers and 2.9 million deaths will occur in economically developed countries, while 6.7 million cases and 4.7 million deaths will occur in economically developing countries. These projections were based on incidence and mortality data from the Globocan 2002 database compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
In economically developed countries, the three most commonly diagnosed cancers in men are prostate, lung, and colorectal cancer. Among women, they are breast, colorectal, and lung cancer.
Overweight, obesity and cancer: epidemiological evidence and proposed mechanisms
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The prevalence of obesity is rapidly increasing globally. Epidemiological studies have associated obesity with a range of cancer types, although the mechanisms by which obesity induces or promotes tumorigenesis vary by cancer site.
Obesity and cancer: the risks, science, and potential management strategies
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Overweight and obesity increase the risk of developing several cancers. Once cancer develops, individuals may be at increased risk of recurrence and poorer survival if they are overweight or obese. A statistically significant association between overweight or obesity and breast cancer recurrence or survival has been observed in the majority of population-based case series; however, adiposity has been shown to have less of an effect on prognosis in the clinical trial setting.
Depression screening for cancer patients too often falls between the cracks
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Depression is known to be associated with cancer yet too many cancer patients are not screened for this mental disorder, according to researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Regenstrief Institute and the Roudebush VA Medical Center.
In a study published in the November-December issue of General Hospital Psychiatry, Caroline Carney Doebbeling, M.D., M.Sc. and Laura Jones, Ph.D., looked at data from the Roudebush VA Medical Center, where 95 percent of veterans in primary care are screened for depression.
Diabetes and hyper-insulinemia as predictors of colorectal cancer risk in a prospective cohort of wo
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Women with diabetes are 1.5 times more likely to develop colorectal cancer than those who do not have the metabolic disorder, according to researchers at the University of Minnesota. The findings, they say, add to the complex body of evidence linking diet and colorectal cancer and also provide new evidence that furthers our understanding of the role of insulin in cancer promotion.
“Colorectal cancer and type II diabetes share a number of common factors, including obesity, so it is interesting to see the direct line between these two conditions,” said Andrew Flood, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and the University of Minnesota Cancer Center ”In general, the idea is that if elevated insulin levels create a biochemical environment conducive to cancer growth, it provides one mechanism by which diet and lifestyle can really influence cancer risk.”
Public health and cancer prevention: Success and future challenges in cancer policy
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Medical research has revealed much about cancer prevention, but is the information reaching all Americans, and are they acting on it” Today, at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Sixth Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, being held from December 5 to 8 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, researchers explore the question of how best to translate cancer prevention science into public health policy.
Quitting smoking and inoculation with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine are two ways that major segments of the general population can drastically lower their risk of developing certain cancers, yet researchers have found that these messages are not necessarily translating into action by the public. Likewise, researchers found that minority women fare worse between time of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, then do Caucasian women, highlighting a worrisome gap in health care among racial and ethnic minorities.
