Cancer News

Thousands of young women could be at risk of life-theatening cervical cancer after being excluded from the NHS screening programme, say doctors.

Regular smear tests are no longer offered to women under 25 and experts say at least 3,000 women will develop abnormalities that could result in cancer if left untreated.

A change of policy in 2004 stopped women aged 20 to 24 years from getting screening tests on the grounds it could do 'more harm than good'.

Merck & Co. is helping bankroll efforts to pass state laws requiring girls as young as 11 or 12 to receive the drugmaker's new vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus.

Some conservatives and parents'-rights groups say such a requirement would encourage premarital sex and interfere with the way they raise their children, and they say Merck's push for such laws is underhanded. But the company said its lobbying efforts have been above-board.

With at least 18 states debating whether to require Merck's Gardasil vaccine for schoolgirls, Merck has funneled money through Women in Government, an advocacy group made up of female state legislators around the country.

A top official from Merck's vaccine division sits on Women in Government's business council, and many of the bills around the country have been introduced by members of Women in Government.

Study to compare immunogencity of GSK’s cervical cancer candidate vaccine, CERVARIX® , to Merck’s Gardasil® 

Issued — Thursday 18 January 2007, London, UK & Philadelphia, PA - GlaxoSmithKline announced today the initiation of the first study of its kind designed to compare the immunogenicity of its cervical cancer candidate vaccine, CERVARIX®, versus Gardasil®. The primary objective of the head-to-head trial is to compare the immune responses to HPV types 16 and 18 in U.S. women 18 to 26-years-old. Secondary objectives include evaluating the immune responses to HPV 16 and 18 in women 27 to 35-years-old and 36 to 45-years-old. In addition, the study will compare immune responses to other cancer-causing HPV types. Initial study results are anticipated 12 months after studyenrollmentis completed, and extended follow up will continue for another 17 months.

Chris Knutson, ANP, MN

"Survivorship medicine" is becoming a more frequent challenge for practitioners of all specialties. Women cancer survivors who make their way back into "routine" care following cancer treatment have questions and concerns that could hardly be considered routine. Some will ultimately be cured. Some will deal with cancer's chronicity. All of them find their lives forever changed by cancer.

Michael Krychman, MD, Co-Director of the Sexual Medicine Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, recently spoke of the reproductive and sexual concerns of women with cancer. He reminds his patients that "you may survive this illness but your life will never, ever be the same." Helping patients come to grips with that concept and making accommodations to enhance or preserve sexual functioning and fertility are increasingly frequent and critical components of cancer care.

Breast cancer could be sexually transmitted, says a researcher who has found the same virus that causes cervical cancer in breast cancer tumours from Australian women.

Emeritus Professor James Lawson of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have found the same form of the human papillomavirus (HPV) associated with cervical cancer in almost half the breast tumour samples they tested.

It's the first study of its kind in Australia, although international studies have also found cervical cancer-related HPV in breast cancer cells.

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.

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.

Americans are in the dark about a virus linked to cervical cancer that can kill them, two new studies suggest.

A vaccine exists to protect against types of the virus, called human papillomaviruses (HPV).

But when the vaccine is presented under the umbrella of sexually-transmitted-disease protection, women are less likely to get inoculated.

Every year in the United States, about 6.2 million people get HPV.

Anyone who has ever had genital contact with another person can get HPV. Both men and women can get it — and pass it on to their sex partners — without even realizing it.

The studies were presented Sunday at the American Association for Cancer Research's Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting in Boston.

by Jacki Donaldson, The Cancer Blog

Cervical cancer was once the most common cancer in women. But between 1955 and 1992, the number of cervical cancer deaths dropped by 74 percent -- thanks to increased use of the Pap test, a screening tool that can find changes in the cervix before cancer develops and can also detect cancer in its most curable stage. The Pap test is still widely used. And the cervical cancer death rate continues to drop four percent every year.

In 2006, about 9,700 new cases of invasive cervical cancer will be diagnosed in the United States. About 3,700 women will die from the disease. Non-invasive cervical cancer is believed to be four times more common than the invasive form of the disease. Nearly all of these cases can be cured.

Figures from the Menzies School of Health Research show that in the mid 1990s only 34 per cent of Indigenous women were being screened for cervical cancer.

Researchers say that over the past 10 years a cancer prevention program has increased the proportion of Aboriginal women having pap tests to 44 per cent.

Findings from a large, Danish study provide compelling evidence that testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) is more effective for identifying older women with a high risk of developing cervical cancercancer.

Cervical cancer is caused by HPV infection, which is spread through sexual contact. Two specific types -- HPV 16 and HPV 18 -- are believed to be responsible for up to 70% of cases worldwide.

HPV is fairly common among younger women, but in most cases infection is transient and does not pose a health risk.

Reuters reports that Merck's Gardasil is on sale now.

Uptake of .. vaccines will depend crucially on government recommendations for their use and funding.

The manufacturers received a boost earlier this month when the influential Lancet medical journal called for routine vaccination of all adolescent girls in European Union countries.

This recommendation was also released earlier this month - EU should make cervical cancer vaccine mandatory for young girls.

Noticing that this vaccine "was launched in Britain and Ireland on Tuesday in the latest phase of an unusually rapid rollout for the new product", I can only hope that this vaccine won't get widely accepted and made obligatory without thourough and careful testing.

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