Cancer News

Scientists have pinpointed a set of common variations in human DNA that signal a higher risk for prostate cancer in men who carry them. Some of these variations are more common in African-American men, which may help explain why prostate cancer rates are higher in African Americans than in men of other races.

The findings, published in 3 separate studies, may lead to genetic tests that will help identify those most at risk for the disease. The findings may also help unlock the biological mysteries behind prostate cancer, which could speed up the discovery of new treatments.

The 3 studies focus on DNA variations located on chromosome 8 in some men. The variations may be linked to as many as 68% of prostate cancer cases in African Americans, 60% in Japanese Americans, 46% in Latinos, 45% in native Hawaiians and 32% in whites, the authors of 1 of the studies calculate.

Oregon scientists say a simple test can identify men at high risk of life-threatening prostate cancer even after a biopsy finds no signs of it. The key, researchers say, is "PSA density," which compares the size of a man's prostate with his levels of a cancer-related protein called prostate-specific antigen.

Men with the highest PSA densities were much more likely to later be diagnosed with aggressive cancers than men with lower scores in an Oregon study, even though both groups had clean prostate biopsies.

If it survives scientific review, it could help save the lives of men with serious cancers and avoid repeated biopsies in others.

"It's that 1-in-10 men that do have a life-threatening cancer that we wanted to identify," said Dr. Mark Garzotto, an Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher, who recently presented the study at a cancer conference in Florida.

URBANA - A new University of Illinois study shows that tomatoes and broccoli--two vegetables known for their cancer-fighting qualities--are better at shrinking prostate tumors when both are part of the daily diet than when they're eaten alone.

"When tomatoes and broccoli are eaten together, we see an additive effect. We think it's because different bioactive compounds in each food work on different anti-cancer pathways," said University of Illinois food science and human nutrition professor John Erdman.

In a study published in the January 15 issue of Cancer Research, Erdman and doctoral candidate Kirstie Canene-Adams fed a diet containing 10 percent tomato powder and 10 percent broccoli powder to laboratory rats that had been implanted with prostate cancer cells. The powders were made from whole foods so the effects of eating the entire vegetable could be compared with consuming individual parts of them as a nutritional supplement.

Men who receive combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation for local or locally advanced prostate cancer may experience a significant reduction in penile length, according to a report in the January issue of the Journal of Urology.

There has been anecdotal evidence that radiation therapy can reduce penile length but, to the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first to determine if penile length changes following combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation.

Dr. Ahmet Haliloglu and colleagues at the University of Ankara in Turkey enrolled 47 men with local or locally advanced prostate cancer. The patients, who were followed from 2000 to 2005, received leuprolide or goserelin injections every 3 months, for a total of three doses. At month 7, radiotherapy, using a 70-Gy dose, was initiated and continued for 7 weeks.

Radioactive 'Seeds' and Conventional Radiation Treatment Are Effective

By Salynn Boyles, WebMD Medical News

Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

One of the longest ever follow-up studies of radioactive "seed" implants for prostate cancer shows the treatment to be highly effective in combination with conventional external radiation.

Three out of four patients in the study remained disease free at least 15 years after treatment ended, with intermediate-risk patients faring almost as well as those considered to have a low risk of dying from their cancer. The outcomes compared favorably to the best results reported among surgically treated patients, says John E. Sylvester, MD, of the Seattle Prostate Institute.

Seventy-four percent of men treated with a combination of radiation seed implants and external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer are cured of their disease 15 years following their treatment, according to a study released in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology-Biology-Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.

This study was conducted by the physicians at the Seattle Prostate Institute. Doctors wanted to look at the combination of seed implants and external beam radiation therapy, two different types of radiation therapy, to prolong the long-term disease cure rates for prostate cancer. Over the course of 15 years, doctors followed 232 men with early-stage prostate cancer who received a course of external beam radiation therapy followed by permanent seed implants a few weeks later. Sixty-five percent of these patients had T2b-T3 disease and the entire group had an average pre-treatment PSA of 15 ng/ml.

Figures on cancer waiting times show that 88.2 per cent of breast-cancer patients are starting treatment within the two-month target from urgent referral by their doctor. But waiting-time for targets in urological cancers, including prostate and testicular cancers, hit only 67.5 per cent.

Dr David Love, joint chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said men might be the unintended victims of high-profile campaigns which have lobbied successfully to improve breast-cancer care.

The gender "bias" is most marked in the Borders. Up to 100 per cent of breast-cancer patients start treatment within two months, but for urological cancers, achievement of the target falls to a low of 54.5 per cent.

Canadian and international researchers are recruiting men for a clinical trial to test whether combining a high-dose vitamin D pill with chemotherapy improves treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

Dr. Kim Chi of the B.C. Cancer Agency and two other lead investigators will study about 1,000 men over the next two years.

Currently, there is little to offer prostate cancer patients who have stopped responding to standard hormone therapy, Chi said.

BALTIMORE, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Men with early prostate cancer who eat a vegetarian diet, exercise and reduce stress may lower their risk of cancer progression, says a U.S. study.

The 93 study participants were men with early-stage prostate cancer who had chosen "watchful waiting" instead of active treatment for their prostate cancer.

During the one-year study, six men in the usual care group underwent conventional treatment because of rising prostate specific antigen, known as PSA, or evidence of progression from magnetic resonance imaging. In contrast, none of the men in the comprehensive lifestyle group, who followed a very-low-fat diet of 10 percent or less of daily calories, needed treatment. PSA levels decreased 4 percent in the lifestyle group, whereas PSA levels increased 6 percent in the usual-care group.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial was conducted to test the efficacy of the vaccine, called sipuleucel-T, in delaying disease progression and prolonging survival in patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC).

Many elderly men are getting screened for prostate cancer unnecessarily, according to researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

In a study of nearly 600,000 men aged 70 and older who had been seen at dozens of VA hospitals across the United States, the research team found high rates of inappropriate PSA testing, even among men with multiple illnesses who were unlikely to survive more than 10 years.

The older a man is, the more likely he is to develop prostate cancer. At the same time, however, the older the man, the more likely he is to die of something else before the prostate cancer can even begin to cause symptoms.

ISLAMABAD - Green and black tea can slow down the spread of prostate cancer, while a highly touted antioxidant found in red wine, grapes and peanuts does not perform well as a cancer preventive, two new studies have found.

For the tea study, Susanne Henning, an associate researcher at the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, assigned 20 men, all scheduled for prostate removal due to cancer, to drink either black tea, green tea or soda, five

The aim was to see if substances called polyphenols found in tea might slow prostate cancer cell growth. Other researchers have found these polyphenols induce death in cancer cells.

LONDON (Reuters) - A popular baldness drug taken by more than 4 million men worldwide can mask an important marker used in screening tests to detect prostate cancer, scientists said on Monday.

Finasteride, which is made by Merck & Co Inc under the name Propecia, is a leading drug to treat male-pattern baldness.

But researchers have discovered it artificially lowers a protein called prostate specific antigen (PSA). High levels of PSA in the blood can signal prostate cancer or other problems.

Dr Anthony D'Amico, the lead author of the study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recommends middle-aged men taking Propecia should have their PSA levels multiplied by 2 in tests to account for the difference.

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 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.

This press release issued by Eurekalert says that researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have for the first time implicated the muscle protein myosin VI in the development of prostate cancer and its spread.

In a series of lab studies with human prostate cancer cells, the Hopkins scientists were surprised to find overproduction of myosin VI in both prostate tumor cells and precancerous lesions. When the scientists genetically altered the cells to "silence" myosin VI, they discovered the cells were less able to invade in a test tube.

"Our results suggest that myosin VI may be critical in starting and maintaining the malignant properties of the majority of human prostate cancers diagnosed today," says Angelo M. De Marzo, M.D., Ph.D., a study coauthor and associate professor of pathology, urology and oncology.

Early results from animal studies presented at a medical conference in London showed that an experimental estrogen-regulating drug prevented the swelling of the prostate gland which occurs as men age.

“We still have to try the drugs in humans, but so far these are very promising results,” said Professor Gail Risbridger, of Monash University in Melbourne.

Negative perceptions about radiation therapy can strongly influence a prostate cancer patient's choice to avoid external beam radiation therapy, even though studies have proven the treatment to be as safe and effective as other treatments for the disease, including surgery, according to a study presented November 5, 2006, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 48th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

"The study shows that patients base their treatment choice not only on technical information, but also on cultural and personal prejudices," said Riccardo Valdagni, M.D., an author of the study and head of the Prostate Programme at the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan, Italy. "It's important for patients to express their fears about radiation treatment to their doctors and for doctors to consider these worries and address any misconceptions about this therapy so that patients can make the best, most informed decision about their treatment."

The researchers, led by Maria Hedelin from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, also found that genetics play a part in the development of the cancer, and also in the potential benefits of the fish oil.

“This study shows that there is an interaction between dietary factors and our genes, but it's always hard to say what role the genes play,” she said. “Omega-3 fatty acids can still be good for men who don't carry this gene variant in completely different ways.”

Now, new research suggests a blood test widely used to screen for the disease can identify which patients are more likely to die from it -- and do so more than a decade before the cancercancer is even diagnosed.

In the study, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers report that the rate at which prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels change over time is an accurate predictor of prostate cancer survival 25 years later.

Men who receive hormone therapy for prostate cancer with drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists may find themselves at higher risk for diabetes and heart disease. Doctors and patients should take this into account when deciding whether GnRH agonist treatment is appropriate, according to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

GnRH agonists are also called LHRH agonists. Common drugs in this class include leuprolide (Lupron, Viadur, Eligard), goserelin (Zoladex), and triptorelin (Trelstar).

The goal of hormone therapy for prostate cancer is to reduce levels of testosterone, the male hormone that is known to fuel the growth of the cancer. Hormone therapy is typically given for prostate cancer when it has spread to other parts of the body or has come back after treatment with surgery or radiation. It is also given before radiation in early stages of the cancer to make the tumor easier to treat. The authors say the use of hormone therapy in men with earlier stage prostate cancer has been increasing in recent years.

THURSDAY, Oct. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Early detection and treatment are crucial to defeat prostate cancer, says a Johns Hopkins Health Alerts report that outlines seven key ways to treat prostate cancer and provides advice on how to prevent it.

The 7 Keys to Treating Prostate Cancer report was written by Dr. Jacek L. Mostwin of Johns Hopkins' James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute. The report is meant to help prostate cancer patients make informed decisions about their medical care.

By Janice Billingsley, HealthDay, 6 Oct 2006

FRIDAY, Oct. 6 (HealthDay News) -- Doctors have long known that lowering your cholesterol levels helps protect your heart. But could it also reduce the risk of prostate cancer for men?

Researchers are increasingly optimistic that the two conditions are related, making what's good for the heart good for the prostate, too.