Cancer News

Avastin extends the lives of late-stage colorectal cancer by about five months. It works by stopping the blood supply to cancerous tumours.

But the drug costs about $3,000 a month per patient, and the Department of Health has decided not to fund it under the provincial health plan.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Eating lots of sugar and sugar-sweetened foods could increase a person's likelihood of developing cancer of the pancreas, by far one of the deadliest types of cancer, Swedish researchers report.

Dr. Susanna C. Larsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and her colleagues found that pancreatic cancer was significantly more likely to strike men and women who added the most sugar to their food and consumed the greatest quantities of soft drinks.

The researchers followed 77,797 men and women aged 45 to 83 for an average of about seven years. Those who reported eating five or more servings of added sugar daily, for example sugar added to tea, coffee or cereal, were 69 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer than those who never added sugar to their food or drink.

COMMON cancer drugs may be more harmful to the brain than the tumour cells they are meant to destroy, a study suggests.

Laboratory tests showed that brain cells are highly vulnerable to the drugs. Dose levels typically used when treating patients killed 70 to 100 per cent of neural cells but just 40 to 80 per cent of cancer cells.

Several types of healthy brain cell continued to die for at least six weeks after exposure.

The findings, published today in the Journal of Biology, may help explain the little understood cancer therapy side-effect of "chemo brain". Patients can suffer symptoms ranging from memory loss to seizures, loss of vision and even dementia.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Breast cancer patients were urged to change their treatment plans more than half the time when they received a second opinion from a team of specialists, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Overall, 52 percent of patients whose original diagnosis and treatment recommendations were taken to a multidisciplinary team were advised to make one or more changes in their treatment, the researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found.

The changes were a result of breast imaging specialists reading a mammogram differently or breast pathologists interpreting biopsy results differently, the researchers reported in this week's issue of the journal Cancer.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- U.S. cancer scientists say they've demonstrated a gene involved in regulating aging also blocks prostate cancer cell growth.

Dr. Richard Pestell and colleagues at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University say they hope the newly found connection will aid in better understanding the development of prostate cancer and lead to new drugs against the disease.

The gene, SIRT1, is a member of a family of enzymes called sirtuins that have far-reaching influence in all organisms, including roles in metabolism, gene expression and aging.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has welcomed a decision to put the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil on the national immunisation program, but says screening for older women must be stepped up.

The Federal Government has given the go ahead for the $436 million immunisation program which will be carried out through schools from April next year.

It will also be available through GPs for the next two years for women aged 18 to 26.

The AMA's national president, Doctor Mukesh Haikerwal, says the move will reduce cervical cancer rates into the future, but it does not reduce the need for normal screening.

The test, from San Diego-based Gen-Probe, is approved in some European countries but not in the U.S. It detects genetic material -- RNA -- from prostate cancer gene 3 or PCA3.

PCA3 (previously known as the DD3 gene) is found only in the prostate. When prostate cells become cancerous, their PCA3 genes go wild. Prostate cancer cells express 60 to 100 times more PCA3 RNA than normal cells.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Tobacco-related diseases including cancers and heart disease will kill 6.4 million people a year by 2015, 50 percent more than AIDS, a study said on Tuesday.

But the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be the leading cause of illness and disability in low- and middle-income countries by then and take an increasing number of lives worldwide, it said.

The study by World Health Organization (WHO) researchers projects global figures for mortality and the burden of 10 major disease groups in both 2015 and 2030. 

"According to our baseline projection, smoking will kill 50 percent more people in 2015 than HIV/AIDS and will be responsible for 10 percent of all deaths globally," said their study in the Public Library of Science Medicine (PLoS Medicine).

VALENCIA, Calif. — MannKind Corp. said Monday the Food and Drug Administration will allow the drug developer to begin human testing of one of its cancer treatments.

The company said it can now begin early-stage clinical trials on its experimental cancer drug, MKC1106-PP.

Enrollment of the trial's first patient is expected by the end of the year. The study will test the safety and tolerability of the drug in patients with solid tumors.

source - AP 

AUSTRALIA - Queensland is the first state to provide its citizens with free bowel cancer tests, the state Government says.

The Queensland Government says the tests will be provided under a new National Bowel Cancer Screening Program, which will be rolled out across the country over the next few years.

State Health Minister Stephen Robertson said today that people over the age of 50 were most at risk, and that more than 200,000 Queenslanders in that age group would be invited to have a free test before June 2008.

"Not only is Queensland the first state to kick off the new program but we're also the only state to have committed funds specifically dedicated to support the statewide roll-out of the program," Mr Robertson said.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A new type of ultrasound was highly effective at determining whether lumps in the female breast were cancerous or harmless, U.S. researchers who conducted a small study said on Monday.

The finding, if confirmed in a larger trial, could reduce the number of unnecessary breast biopsies and reassure women that their tumors are harmless, said Richard Barr, a radiologist at Southwoods X-Ray and Open MRI in Youngstown, Ohio, who conducted the study.

"If we can document that the technique is extremely accurate, I think it will give women the assurance that (a tumor) is benign and they don't have to worry," Barr said. "With the existing technology, that is not there."

According to a report in the Archives of Dermatology, 3.7-million doctor visits occur each year in the United States for the management of actinic keratoses. Actinic keratosis results from sun damage of the skin and is considered precancerous for nonmelanoma skin cancers.

Among patients older than 40 years old, 331 squamous cell cancers will evolve for every 100,000 lesions of actinic keratoses.

For those who have multiple lesions, nearly 60 percent of these lesions will progress into squamous cell cancer.

A MELBOURNE businessman and his two sons are being sued in the federal court for allegedly selling vitamins, massage and "energy zappers" as a cure for cancer.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has also filed proceedings against several companies which sold the $35,000 alternative therapy to the terminally ill.

The ACCC alleges that five NuEra companies were involved in "misleading and deceptive conduct" while promoting the so-called RANA System.

Around a fifth of cancer sufferers are not being seen within two months of an urgent referral, the target set by ministers. Currently only 79% of cancer patients are seen by a consultant within eight weeks of being referred to hospital by their GP, well below the Scottish executive’s 95% target.

Earlier this year health boards were criticised after figures revealed wide variations in the waits faced in different parts of the country.

The true cost of making the new breast cancer drug Herceptin widely available on the NHS will be borne by patients who are denied other treatments, according to a team of doctors.

Hospitals in England and Wales have been told they should offer Herceptin to all suitable patients with early breast cancer.

But the new guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) presents a financial headache for those holding the NHS purse strings.

A new $260-million federal strategy to fight cancer will help patients get the best care, the research chair of a new agency overseeing the plan said Friday.

Cancer researcher Philip Branton spoke after Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in Montreal that the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer will be a "clearinghouse" for the latest information on care.

The Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control Research Action Group will work on access to cancer prevention and treatment.

DUBAI - A controversial cervical cancer vaccine, which was recently approved in the UAE, may be included in the immunisation programmes of the various health authorities, says a senior official at the pharmaceutical company.

The vaccine protects against certain types of the human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that causes cervical cancer in women.

About half a million women worldwide die of cervical cancer each year. It is controversial as some have argued it may encourage promiscuity.

ANGRY cancer patient Dennis Burke yesterday branded the NHS a shambles after a hospital cancelled his appointment 48 times in a row.

Dennis, 68, who is in remission from bowel cancer, spent 14 months trying to get a consultation after his GP referred him to hospital. He said: "I am absolutely fed-up with them messing me around.

"What's the point in my GP telling me to go to hospital if I can't get an appointment?

"I have had to put up with 48 appointments with an NHS doctor being cancelled in a row. It is a disgrace."

As high as this figure might sound, the incidence of cancer in Malta is not higher than in other Western countries, Stephen Brincat, the chairman of the Radiotherapy and Oncology Department at Sir Paul Boffa Hospital, said.

Although he believes that information about the importance of early detection is widely available in Malta, he highlighted the importance of concentrating on reducing the incidence of cancer, especially those that could be prevented through a healthy lifestyle.

In a study of 29,092 Finnish men in their 50s and 60s who were smokers, those with the highest concentrations of vitamin E in their blood at the study’s outset were the least likely to die during the follow-up period, which lasted up to 19 years, Dr. Margaret E. Wright of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. and colleagues report.

There are a number of mechanisms by which vitamin E, also known as alpha tocopherol, might promote health, Wright and her team note in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. For example, vitamin E is a powerful antioxidant, while it also boosts immune system function and prevents tumor blood vessel growth.

A woman who has benefited from a new breast cancer drug has welcomed news the treatment will be made available to everyone.

Margaret Coulton, 60, of Chapel Road, Hesketh Bank, had breast cancer and now takes Arimidex, which blocks production of oestrogen, which fuels hormone sensitive breast cancer.

Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago after a routine mammogram.