September 9, 2006, 6:57 AM CT
Olive oil pill can cut prostate cancer risk
A pill made from olive oil and herbs could dramatically reduce a man's chances of developing prostate cancer.
A trial at Columbia University in the US revealed the herbal supplement can reduce the rate at which prostate cancer cells grow and spread by nearly 80 per cent.
The results, reported in the medical journal Nutrition And Cancer, appear to confirm anecdotal evidence that the herbal mixture has powerful anti-cancer properties.
Called Zyflamend, the supplement is based on olive oil and ten different herbs.
It is already widely used as an alternative to prescription drugs in conditions such as arthritis. This is because it appears to reduce inflammation that causes painful, swollen joints.
by PAT HAGAN, Daily Mail........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 6:52 AM CT
David Welch: Journey With Brain Cancer
Read the touching story of David Welch.
Diagnosed at age 38 with a lemon-sized brain tumor, David Welch has documented his journey since then -- from a Patient's Perspective. 38 Lemon is not a medical website. Rather, this is one patient's entire experience in dealing with brain cancer, from December 2004 to today.
Read a sample.01 September 2006.
Solid progress is being made using Temodar chemotherapy in the therapy of my brain cancer. Since my last update in May, here are some important updates:
1.) Neuro-oncologist Dr. Howard Fine at NIH has been able to use an innovative "co-registration" technique to measure initial signs of tumor shrinkage over the past 4 months. A slow-growing brain tumor grows, it does not shrink. Evidence of any type of shrinkage can only be attributed to my current Temodar chemotherapy therapy.
2.) My Hematology Reports (blood tests) are holding up. They essentially indicate that I am tolerating my Temodar chemotherapy medicine fairly well as I head into my 12th chemo cycle on Labor Day (9/4/06).
Thank you David Welch and all the best.
For more visit his website.........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 6:40 AM CT
Selection Of Embryos
As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick.
Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him uncommonly susceptible.
By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Kingsbury and his wife, Colby, were able to determine that she did not harbor the defective gene. That was the reason they selected her, from among the other embryos they had conceived through elective in vitro fertilization, to implant in her mother's uterus.........
Posted by: Emily Permalink Source
September 9, 2006, 6:11 AM CT
Personal Informational Network on Cancer
In March of 2002 I remember laying in bed sick from chemotherapy and looking out the window. It was snowing. I took in every moment of that snow fall … thinking maybe it would be the last I ever saw. The first time it snowed that December, I cried. I had made it. I had seen the snow again and so much more. I see everything brighter and with new perspective. Cancer took a breast, but gave me a life. I life I hadn’t planned.
Now, three years later, I have been diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer and must start treatments again. This time, I am not as scared. I know the days of uncertainty and depression will rear its ugly head again. But I also know that this time, I have no regrets. I was lucky enough this year to marry my Angel, Mario, who has taken care of me and loved me with a devotion I have never known.
Being that I have metastatic breast cancer, my disease is considered non-curable. But that was no matter to my Angel. He married me. And I know he is devoted to making my life as happy as we can, for as long as we can. None of us know what tomorrow brings.
(From Elizabeth Dill-Isgro) ........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 6, 2006, 8:14 PM CT
Cancer Survivors On Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro
Adelaide adventurer Duncan Chessell has led a team of Australian cancer survivors to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro in Africa.
Chessell and one of his guides managed to get six of the 10 climbers in his group to the summit of the 5,986 metre peak in Tanzania just before 1pm (CST) on Tuesday.
The four others were forced to return to the expedition's base camp after finding the going too tough.
Chessell's wife Jo Arnold said conditions had been reasonably kind to the group and weather on the summit was clear but cold.
"They had a few issues with wind on the way in but it's been quite fine on summit day," she said.
The expedition marks the 21st birthday of cancer support group CanTeen.
The climbing group included a number of people who were celebrating five years of being cancer free.........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 6, 2006, 8:03 PM CT
Cancer Happens
What is Cancer Happens? Rebecca Gifford was a young adult, fresh out of college and eager to begin an exciting new job when she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. During the next two years, Rebecca endured chemotherapy, a bone marrow transplant, the loss of her independence and the near-collapse of both her career and her social life. With a little humor and lot of frankness, Rebecca tells it like it was -- hair loss, confinement, treatment groups, lack of sex, relationship challenges, family strain, funerals, morphine, premature menopause, professional humiliation, and more.
Coming of Age As she is trying just to live long enough to come of age, she's faced with a number of of the issues other twentysomethings endure whether they have cancer or not. Like her peers, she desperately tries to figure out what kind of adult she wants to be. But she has to try to figure out who she is both with and without cancer -- and then recognize the difference.........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 3, 2006, 8:05 AM CT
Mature muscle fibers can revert to cancer
Dr. Rene Galindo (right), and Dr. Eric Olson
Mature muscle fibers, rather than their less-developed neighbors, are the tissues that turn cancerous in a soft-tissue cancer that strikes children and teens, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children's Medical Center Dallas have found.
The research, performed in fruit flies, not only provides a clue to how the cancer arises, but also means that researchers can use the flies to search for other genes involved in the cancer.
"Never before has any animal model system shown that new cells can be generated from differentiated skeletal muscle," said Dr. Rene Galindo, lead author of the study, assistant professor of pathology at UT Southwestern and a pediatric pathologist at Children's.
"Skeletal muscle had been viewed as being biologically fixed," he said.
The research is available online and is being reported in the Sept. 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists focused on alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a subtype of rhabdomyosarcoma, the sixth most common childhood cancer. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is an aggressive, often fatal form of cancer that occurs primarily in the trunk, arms and legs of older children or teenagers.
The disease starts when one of two genes, called PAX3 and PAX7, fuses with another gene called FKHR, or "Forkhead." .........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
September 2, 2006, 10:12 PM CT
MRI More Accurate For Breast Cancer
MRI is better than MDCT for determining if and how far breast cancer has spread into the breast ducts and should be used before patients receive breast conserving therapy, a new study shows.
"Patients have a lower survival rate if their surgical margins are positive for tumor cells. A positive surgical margin is usually the result of inadequate resection of the cancer's intraductal component," said Akiko Shimauchi, MD, at Tohoku University in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. "Accurate preoperative diagnosis of the intraductal component allows the surgeon to achieve a cancer-free surgical margin," she said.
The study included 69 patients with proven invasive cancer, 44 of which had an intraductal component, said Dr. Shimauchi. MRI correctly identified 33 of the 44 cases, while MDCT correctly identified 27. "MRI revealed the presence of the intraductal component with significantly higher sensitivity (75%) compared to MDCT (61%), Dr. Shimauchi said.
"The lesions that were missed by both examinations were the ductal extension type, i.e. the tumor included a dominant mass with an outward extension of cancer cells, with a relatively small ductal component," said Dr. Shimauchi. MRI was better able to detect the smaller ductal components than MDCT, she said.
The study also found that both MDCT and MRI "generally underestimated the length of the intraductal component," however, MRI was less likely to underestimate the length of the intraductal component than MDCT. "In our institution, surgeons err on the side of caution by using a surgical margin that is 20 mm outside the radiologically determined tumor margin," said Dr. Shimauchi. Underestimation of the length of the intraductal components by 15 mm or more was significantly less frequent with MRI (30%) compared to MDCT (55%), she said.........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
August 31, 2006, 5:11 AM CT
TNF Blockers May Not Cause Cancer
Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune, inflammatory disease marked by progressive joint and organ damage, face a high risk of developing cancer. Their vulnerability, particularly to lymphoma and leukemia, may be due to the nature of RA. Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) including tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF) antagonists, a type of biologic DMARD have also been implicated. TNF blockers, which work by attaching to and impeding chemical messengers behind inflammation, have had a significant impact on the therapy of RA. They have also been associated with lymphoma among users. In fact, reports of lymphoma prompted the Food and Drug Administration to mandate adding a cancer risk warning to the labels of three TNF blockers: etanercept (Enbrel), infliximab (Remicade), and adalimumab (Humira).
Motivated by persistent concerns and inconclusive studies, scientists at Harvard Medical School's Brigham and Women's Hospital set out to investigate the association between therapy with TNF blockers and occurrence of cancer in a large sample of patients with RA. Their results, featured in the September 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (
http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), indicate that biologic DMARD treatment poses no greater risk for cancer than treatment with a standard prescription DMARD, methotrexate (MTX).........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
August 29, 2006, 4:47 AM CT
Brisbane teens receive first cancer vaccine shots
UQ Professor Ian Frazer administered the first shots of the cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil in Queensland this afternoon at the Princess Alexandra Hospital.
Rochedale sisters Emma and Rachel McMillan were the first teenage recipients of the Australian-made vaccine which Professor Frazer and his late research partner Dr Jian Zhou.
helped create.
The vaccine prevents four of dozens of strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) which cause genital warts and cervical cancer.
The prescription-only vaccine is distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Melbourne based pharmaceutical manufacturer CSL and distributed worldwide by US drugmaker Merck & Co.
It sells for $465 for a three-dose shot but there are plans to have it considered for subsidy under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and eventually added to the national.
vaccination program for girls aged 12.
Professor Frazer, the immunologist named 2006 Australian of the Year for his team's work on the vaccine, is the Director of UQ's Centre for Immunology and Cancer Research.
Queensland Treasurer Anna Bligh announced a new Senior Smart State Fellowship at the vaccine launch in honour of Dr Zhou.
Ms Bligh said the three-year, $450,000 Jian Zhou Fellowship would be offered to a Queenslander to advance research and development in immunology and cancer research.........
Posted by: Jessica Permalink Source
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