Cancer
Low-cal ketogenic diet slows brain cancer in mice
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A calorically restricted ketogenic diet decreases the growth of malignant brain tumors in laboratory mice, according to an online report in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism.
A ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet that induces excess production of ketone bodies, which are incompletely burned fat molecules. This diet has been used to control epileptic seizures that do not respond to drug treatment.
Laryngeal Cancer
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Cancer of the voice box (larynx), a common area of cancer within the head and neck, occurs more often in men than in women. It is linked to cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption.
Many still die from “curable” testicular cancer
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The decline in deaths due to testicular cancer seen in the US and Canada over the last three decades has not reached all countries in the Americas and deaths from this relatively rare cancer remain unacceptably high in most Latin American countries, according to a report.
Testicular cancer is “one of the most curable (cancers) if adequate treatment is adopted,” Dr. Paola Bertuccio from Milan’s Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri” noted in an email to Reuters Health.
Liverpool to trial new pancreatic cancer therapy
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Patients in Liverpool are to trial a new therapy for pancreatic cancer – a disease which sees most sufferers die within a year of diagnosis.
One of the 10 most common cancers in the UK, it is among the most difficult to diagnose and treat and kills around 7,000 people each year. There are very few early symptoms so most patients present late and only around 15% are suitable for surgery.
The Phase III TeloVac trial has been designed by the Pancreatic Cancer Clinical Sub-Group of the UK National Cancer Research Institute and will be run by Cancer Research UK’s Liverpool Cancer Trials Unit.
Ovarian Cancer May Mimic Fallopian Tube Formation
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A new study suggests that ovarian cancer cells form by hijacking a developmental genetic process normally used to form fallopian tubes. Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute discovered that the protein, PAX8, is involved in the development of fallopian tubes and is present in ovarian cancer cells, but not in normal ovarian tissue. The discovery not only provides a new target for diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, but also opens new avenues for basic research in ovarian cancer pathology. The research appears in Volume 104, Issue 3 of the journal Gynceologic Oncology.
“Our finding sustains the promise of a molecular genetic understanding of different cancers and emphasizes the importance of describing cancer in the context of normal human development that has gone awry due to genetic and epigenetic alterations,” said Nathan Bowen, Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scientist at Georgia Tech and the Ovarian Cancer Institute (OCI).
Cancer cells more likely to genetically mutate
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When cells become cancerous, they also become 100 times more likely to genetically mutate than regular cells, researchers have found. The findings may explain why cells in a tumor have so many genetic mutations, but could also be bad news for cancer treatments that target a particular gene controlling cancer malignancy.
The research was led by Dr. Lawrence Loeb, professor of pathology and biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. Loeb will present his research Feb. 18 at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
Simple 2-gene test sorts out similar gastrointestinal cancers
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A powerful two-gene test distinguishes between a pair of nearly identical gastrointestinal cancers that require radically different courses of treatment, researchers report this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This simple and accurate test has the potential to be relatively quickly implemented in the clinic to benefit patients by guiding appropriate treatment,” says senior author Wei Zhang, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Pathology at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Vitamin D may cut risk of colorectal cancer
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Taking 1,000 to 2,000 international units (IU) of vitamin D each day may safely reduce the risk of colorectal cancer, according to pooled data from published studies.
The current findings contradict some prior individual studies that found that vitamin D intake did not seem to protect against colorectal cancer. However, it is possible that the dose may simply have been too low to provide a benefit, researchers say.
Workplace secondhand smoke ups cancer risk: study
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High levels of secondhand smoke on the job can double nonsmokers’ risk of developing lung cancer, and those who inhale it at work long-term face a 50 percent higher risk, researchers said on Wednesday.
Scientists led by epidemiologist Leslie Stayner of the University of Illinois at Chicago combined the results of 22 studies on secondhand smoke conducted in the United States, Canada, Europe, India, Japan and China.
Depression detection tool to transform treatment of cancer
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25 January 2007: A tool to detect depression in cancer patients launched by the University of Liverpool will vastly improve patients’ ability to come to terms with their disease.
Depression affects 25% of patients with advanced cancer – the stage at which the disease has begun to spread from its original tumour. At this stage, depression is difficult to diagnose as symptoms can be confused with a patient displaying ‘appropriate sadness’ – feelings which commonly result from suffering a terminal illness.
Radiation Therapy Reduces Cancer Recurrence in Older Women
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Radiation therapy after lumpectomy and five years of treatment with the drug tamoxifen can dramatically reduce the risk of both cancer recurrence and new tumors in older women with early breast cancer, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues.
“While these treatments are standard care for younger patients, it is has been shown that older women are less likely to receive them,” said lead author Ann M. Geiger, M.P.H., Ph.D., an associate professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest and formerly of Kaiser Permanente Southern California. “Our results provide strong evidence of the importance of providing high quality care to all patients, regardless of age.”
Texas study finds link between pollution, cancer
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A University of Texas study found a possible link between childhood leukemia and living close to the city’s refinery row along the Houston Ship Channel, one of the study’s co-authors said on Thursday.
The study found that living within two miles of elevated levels of 1,3-butadiene around the ship channel’s petrochemical complex was associated with a 56 percent increased incidence of childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia compared with those living more than 10 miles away, according to a statement from the city of Houston, which financed the study.
Prenatal infection may up leukemia risk in child
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A mother who contracts influenza, pneumonia, or a sexually transmitted disease around the time of pregnancy appears to be at increased risk of having a child that will develop leukemia, new research shows.
These observations “suggest that maternal infection might contribute to the develop of childhood leukemia, which has been postulated to have an infectious origin,” Dr. Marilyn L. Kwan, from the Division of Research at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California told Reuters Health.
Obesity a minor player in rising rate of lymphoma
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The increasing number of cases of lymphoma and other cancers of the blood cannot be blamed to any great degree on the increasing number of people who are overweight or obese, Norwegian investigators conclude.
The rate of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), which makes up a major proportion of all lymphomas, has risen during the last three decades in Norway and other parts of the world, Dr. Anders Engeland, from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo, and colleagues explain in a report in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Cancer risk rises after kidney transplant, study says
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People who have had kidney transplants face a big increase in risk for a variety of cancers, particularly those caused by a virus, according to a study published on Tuesday.
The researchers, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, tracked cancer incidence from 1982 to 2003 in nearly 29,000 Australians who got kidney transplants after serious kidney disease.
They excluded nonmelanoma skin cancer and cancers already known to lead to end-stage kidney disease, and found that the patients experienced an overall cancer risk nearly 3.3 times higher after getting a kidney transplant than before.
