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Breast cancer newsAddressing Problem of Breast Cancer
Undeniably, this was actually a brilliant idea to engage the targeted group of women with, if not impressive, but strategic placement and execution of the campaign. The agency reported that it had installed around 20,000 free switches and the self-checking was reportedly increased by 20.8 percent with the help of this campaign. The campaign was created by Bluedream Ad, Shanghai, China. Via Ads of the World Plant-Based Diet For Breast Cancer Survival
"Women coping with breast cancer deserve to know that plant-based diets and regular exercise can spell the difference between life and death," says Jennifer Reilly, R.D., senior nutritionist with The Cancer Project. "In the battle against breast cancer, fruits, vegetables, and other low-fat vegetarian foods may be our most powerful weapons. Doctors must let women know that diet changes and exercise can help them beat this terrible disease". The new study, conducted by scientists with the University of California, San Diego, tracked dietary patterns and exercise habits among about 1,500 women who were diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer between 1991 and 2000. It observed that the death rate for women who consumed a high-fiber diet rich in fruits and vegetables and practiced good exercise habits was 44 percent lower than the rate for women who exercised little and ate few plant-based foods. There are more than 2 million breast cancer survivors in the United States, but a number of of these women eat fewer than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, consume too much fat, and lead sedentary lifestyles. But science has repeatedly shown that a plant-based diet composed of legumes, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables can help prevent cancer and cancer recurrence......... Breast cancer diagnosis from combined MRI-optics method
The new technique utilizes MRI to produce an image of the breast, yielding information on its structure, including shape and composition. The near-infrared light technique provides information on how the tissue is functioning, for example, whether a region contains a large amount of blood and is rapidly consuming oxygen as early cancers typically do. The scientists are hoping this dual-procedure approach will be a key to learning which tissues are cancerous before performing a biopsy. The pilot study involved a 29-year-old woman with a ductal carcinoma, a very common breast cancer, in her left breast. A contrast MRI procedure waccording toformed, where MRI was done before and after the contrasting agent gadolinium was injected. The area enhanced by the contrasting agent was targeted for the optical technique, known as near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The results showed the area's hemoglobin level was high, oxygen saturation was low and water content was high, all indicators of malignant tissue......... Pink Mouse For Helping Breast Cancer Campaign
Somebody said this wireless mouse from Kensington, looks very much like an epilator. Improved Breast Cancer Screening
Via MedGadget
The solution to tackling these issues may lie with the new breast screening device from Z-Tech. The device works on the principle that the breast tissue has electrical properties, and when malignancy sets in these tissues, electricity flows more easily through it. So by comparing the relative electrical impedance between the two breasts (in simpler words, the one that allows more electricity to flow through it), it is possible to detect the malignant one. The actual physical setup consists of 12 flower-petal shaped sensors that fit around the breast. Each of these petals is equipped with electrodes that send and receive an imperceptible, low level electrical current into and out of a breast. The impedance data collected by these sensors are transmitted to a computer that does the number crunching and presents the diagnosis in real time......... Posted by: Janet Read more Source Aromasin after tamoxifen
The study presented finding shows that Aromasin, following tamoxifen reduces breast cancer recurrence "by about half," reported Dr. Terry Mamounas of the Aultman Health Foundation of Canton, Ohio. The study randomly assigned 1,598 postmenopausal women with early-stage breast cancer to take exemestane or an inactive placebo, beginning after five years on tamoxifen. Women taking exemestane were 50 percent less likely to see a recurrence of breast cancer. The drug was as well-tolerated, with adverse events approximately the same as with placebo. Fatigue, joint pain and bone pain were the most common complaints......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Advances In Breast Imaging
This new technique, Molecular Breast Imaging, uses a new dual-head gamma camera system and is sensitive enough to detect tumors less than 10 millimeters (about two-fifths of an inch) in diameter in 88 percent of cases where it is used. Early findings from an ongoing comparison of the device with mammography show that it can detect small cancers that were not found with mammography, say the investigators. Mayo Clinic physicist Michael O'Connor, Ph.D., will present these results Saturday, Dec. 16, at the 2006 meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. "Our ultimate goal is to detect small cancers that may be inconspicuous or invisible on a mammogram for high-risk women with dense breasts," says Dr. O'Connor. The researchers also say their device will likely be only slightly more expensive to use than mammography, and will be much more comfortable for women because much less pressure is needed to image a breast. "We hope that our studies will eventually show our device to be almost as sensitive as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is probably the best diagnostic test available to date, but is not widely used because of its expense," says Stephen Phillips, M.D., a Mayo radiologist and a co-author of study. An MRI scan costs as much as ten times more than a traditional mammogram and involves injection of a contrast agent......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Psychological Needs Of New Breast Cancer Patients
Studies have shown that significant emotional distress, including mood disorders and related functional impairments, afflict up to one-third of breast cancer survivors for up to 20 years after therapy. However, little was previously known about the baseline psychological status of newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer. To help characterize pre-treatment psychological status, Mark T. Hegel, Ph.D. of the Department of Psychiatry and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center of Dartmouth Medical School and his colleagues conducted psychiatric and functional screening of 236 women newly diagnosed with breast cancer. Their findings indicate that almost one in two women met clinically significant criteria for emotional distress or a psychiatric disorder. The most common problem was moderate to severe emotional distress (41 percent). The most usually reported source of distress was correlation to the cancer diagnosis (100 percent), followed by uncertainty about therapy (96 percent) and concern about physical problems (81 percent). Twenty-one percent of women met criteria for psychiatric disorders, including major depression (11 percent) and PTSD (10 percent). These women also demonstrated significant declines in daily functioning that were due to the emotional disorders. Treatment for their cancer had still not begun......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Breast Cancer Therapy In Which Order?
A woman's chances of survival or seeing the cancer return are similar in all three cases, if radiation treatment and chemotherapy begin within seven months after surgery, the review concludes. However, the studies suggest that certain toxic side effects in the blood and esophagus -- common in chemotherapy and radiation patients -- may be up to 44 percent more likely when the two therapies are delivered at the same time, said Dr. Brigid Hickey and his colleagues at the Southern Zone Radiation Oncology Service in Brisbane, Australia. The reviewers also note that most of the women in the studies were treated about 10 years ago. "As a result, the trials do not assess the modern types of radiotherapy and newer types of chemotherapy" and other anti-cancer drugs such as Herceptin, Hickey said. Studies show that radiation treatment can reduce the risk of breast cancer returning in the treated breast and boost the likelihood of survival after breast cancer surgery. Doctors may also prescribe chemotherapy to women at high risk for having the cancer spread to other parts of the body after surgery, to reduce the risk of dying from breast cancer......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Genome Id Method Against Cancer
A student-led group from the laboratory of Michael Waterman, USC University Professor in molecular and computational biology, has developed an algorithm to handle the massive amounts of data created by a restriction mapping technology known as "optical mapping." Restriction maps provide coordinates on chromosomes analogous to mile markers on freeways. Lead author Anton Valouev, a recent graduate of Waterman's lab and now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, said the algorithm makes it possible to optically map the human genome. "It carries tremendous benefits for medical applications, specifically for finding genomic abnormalities," he said. The algorithm appears in this week's PNAS Early Edition. Optical mapping was developed at New York University in the late 1990s by David Schwartz, now a professor of chemistry and genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Schwartz and a collaborator at Wisconsin, Shiguo Zhou, co-authored the PNAS paper. The power of optical mapping lies in its ability to reveal the size and large-scale structure of a genome. The method uses fluorescence microscopy to image individual DNA molecules that have been divided into orderly fragments by so-called restriction enzymes......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Breast Reconstruction Not Very Safe For Obese
"Just because someone is overweight doesn't mean they should not be entitled to undergo breast reconstruction after mastectomy," said Elisabeth Beahm, MD, ASPS Member Surgeon, author of the study, and associate professor at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. "Feeling 'whole' can be an integral part of recovery from cancer, yet significant concerns have been raised about the wisdom of doing breast reconstruction in very obese patients due to a high complication rate. The current retrospective study found that patients with a BMI greater than 35 demonstrated significantly increased complication rates for all types of breast reconstruction, from implants to flaps. The complication rate approached 100 percent for morbidly obese patients with a BMI over 40. "We investigated whether plastic surgeons can safely perform breast reconstruction for these patients or if we would be depriving them reconstruction simply because of empiric concerns for their weight," said Dr. Beahm. "We found that significantly obese patients, those having a BMI of 35 or higher, had a higher risk for complications. Our experience suggests that in many cases it may be more prudent to delay breast reconstruction until the patient has lost weight"......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Thrive After Breast Cancer
The magazine, which provides women who have or had breast cancer the support and latest information on therapy and recovery, hits newsstands September 19, 2006, with a $5.99 cover price. "Since more than two million American women live with breast cancer, we wanted to provide this community a resource of support, inspiration and hope," says Kelly Kegans, editor of Beyond. An advisory board of leading experts in the breast cancer field contributed to the premiere issue of Beyond. They include: Susan Brown, the health manager at Susan G. Komen Foundation; Carolyn M. Kaelin, director of Comprehensive Breast Health Center and breast cancer survivor; and Lillie Shockney, Administrative Director at Johns Hopkins Breast Cancer......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Macy's Shop for a Cause
Make sure to include your return address so that we can mail the pass back to you. An additional donation of 50 cents to cover shipping and handling is much appreciated. Pass requests must be received by Friday, September 8th........ Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Targeting Protein S14 In Breast Cancer Treatment
Dartmouth researchers Wendy Wells and William Kinlaw are looking into a protein called S14. (Photo by Joseph Mehling '69)
"Over the past three years, we've learned about S14 and its role in communicating information about the nutrient and energy supply to genes required for fat metabolism in breast cancer cells," says Kinlaw, who is also affiliated with the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "With this knowledge has also come the understanding that most breast cancers have found a mechanism to turn on the S14 gene". He explains that these tumors are 'addicted' to S14, because it is required for the activation of a group of genes that allow the cancer cells to make fat. Kinlaw and his team have found that breast cancer cells die if S14 is removed, and their analysis of human breast tumors indicates that S14 is critical for metastasis. "This makes sense, as fat is a crucial fuel for breast cancers," he says. "We believe this is especially so during a tumor cell's attempt to journey from the breast to other parts of the body, because the normal breast tissue supplies machinery that allows tumor cells to acquire fat from the bloodstream. Our data support the hypothesis that once the cells leave this metabolically friendly breast environment, the ability to manufacture their own fat becomes a make-or-break issue"......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Breast Cancer Survivors Change Lifestyle
"We observed that breast cancer survivors who believed that an unhealthy behavior - such as consuming an unhealthy diet, contributed to their cancer - were more likely to say that they had changed that behavior since their diagnosis," says lead author Carolyn Rabin, PhD, a psychology expert at The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. "Likewise, breast cancer survivors who believed that a healthy behavior- such as consuming a healthy diet, could ward off a cancer recurrence - were more likely to say that they had adopted that behavior since their diagnosis". Due to advances in detection and therapy, there are now more than 10 million Americans who are cancer survivors, as per the American Cancer Society. However, scientists have still not determined why some cancer survivors are motivated by a cancer diagnosis to make healthy changes in lifestyle, while others are not. This question prompted the study by scientists at The Miriam Hospital and Brown Medical School......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source CT Images Faster Than Traditional Scanners
The work is another step toward developing scanners for medical imaging and homeland security that are smaller, faster, and less expensive to operate, said Dr. Otto Zhou, Lyle Jones Distinguished Professor of Materials Science, in the curriculum in applied and materials sciences and the department of physics and astronomy, both in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences. "The current Computerized axial tomography scanners take images sequentially, which is slow and inefficient. Using the nanotube x-ray technology, we show in this paper the feasibility of multiplexing - taking multiple images at the same time," Zhou said. Carbon nanotubes, made of layers of carbon atoms, can be as small as one nanometer - one billionth of a meter - in diameter. The UNC team uses them in this work because they can emit electrons without high heat. The new development is reported in the current edition of the journal Applied Physics Letters. The lead author of the paper is Dr. Jian Zhang, a postdoctoral research associate in the UNC School of Medicine's department of radiation oncology. In addition to Zhou, other authors - all from UNC - are Dr. Sha Chang, associate professor of radiation oncology; doctoral candidate Guan Yang and Dr. Jianping Lu, professor of condensed matter physics, both of the department of physics and astronomy; and Dr. Yueh Lee, an intern at the medical school and an adjunct assistant professor in physics and astronomy......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Best Online Learning Experience
"Previous research indicated that women with breast cancer can learn as a result of having access to online health education resources, but this is among the first studies to explain how such learning actually occurs," says Bret Shaw, lead author of the study. The results are published as an advance issue of the journal Health Education Research. To examine the most effective ways that cancer patients learn online, the researchers provided free computers and Internet access to 286 lower income women recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Participants were also provided access to an integrated computer-based health education and support system called the Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (CHESS) "Living with Breast Cancer" program offering four distinct types of services. The first type was information services - static Web pages containing a broad range of breast cancer-related information. The system also offered support groups enabling peer-to-peer communication and an expert service allowing patients to ask a question and receive a response within 48 hours. The other service type was interactive in which the computer played an active role in guiding the user, making suggestions, offering feedback and influencing the user's behavior. A browser automatically collected use data on an individual key stoke level as participants used the system, allowing the researchers to measure what types of services were used. Additionally, women were also surveyed before the study began and four months after receiving the system to determine how certain patterns of use behavior contributed to improved learning outcomes......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source New Options In Breast Cancer
Posted by: Janet Permalink Progress In Understanding Of Breast-cancer Cell Migration
These scientists say that their findings could lead to new approaches to treating breast cancer as blocking the protein's actions has the potential to stop malignant cells migrating. "What we have identified is a new role for a protein called LPP," explained Professor Andrew Sharrocks, who headed the research team. "Until now, this protein was only thought to function at the cell periphery but we have shown that it works in conjunction with another protein - PEA3 - in the cell nucleus". "PEA3 has already been implicated in the spread of breast cancer but we have found that the LPP molecule is essential for the correct function of PEA3". "If we can target the LPP protein and stop it from working in malignant cells, we have a possible new route to treatment". This research report that was reported in the scientific journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, may have significant implications for other cancer systems......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Unacceptable Delay For Breast Cancer Gene Test
According to reports women are suffering significant delays, amounting to two years or more to see if they carry a gene that increases the risk of breast cancer. A number of women are getting prophylactic mastectomies just to deal with the uncertainties associated with long delay of getting breast cancer gene tests. This means that a number of women who may not actually need mastectomy may be undergoing breast removal surgeries because of the delay in providing the test. Those who can afford for this expensive gene test pay from pocket, without waiting for the long delay. The test costs around $2500 in the United States, and could be more expensive in UK. Those who cannot afford to pay for the test have the option of waiting for two years or more or undergoing mastectomy without waiting for the test results. None of these two options are acceptable in the civilized world. In some cases women who had gene test done in the year 2002 is still waiting for the results......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Mammograms May Reveal Heart Disease
Dr. Barbara Jaeger, Director, Women's Imaging
"We have seen these as incidental findings when we screen for cancer, now new studies have shown this does relate to a person's risk of coronary artery disease and cardiovascular disease," Dr. Jaeger said. Dr. Mark Applefeld, a Mercy cardiologist, said doctors and patients should take note of heart health when reviewing mammograms. "It is yet another risk factor, which identified on a mammogram, a doctor and patient should consider as another risk of heart disease," Applefeld said. That's exactly what Gleiman did. "I went to my internist who looked at the findings and (confirmed that) I did have (calcifications), and I was put in a risk-management program," she said. She's now on medicine for high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and working on changes in lifestyle in hopes that early intervention will help her enjoy shopping for a number of years to come. Now, the doctors are not talking about calcifications within the breast tissue, but calcifications within the arteries of the breast......... Posted by: Betsy Permalink Source MRI To Improve Breast Cancer Detection
"This technique involves a new method for interpreting information gathered through MRI," explained Springer. "The technique involves recognizing that certain properties of MRI signals can change during the examination, much like the changing of a camera's shutter speed. On a camera, a fast shutter speed can make a speeding car look as if it is standing still. A slower shutter speed may result in a photo showing the car blurring past the camera. This principle, when correctly applied to MRI imaging, can provide more accurate information. In the case of MRI, the blurring is not of the actual image, but of the time courses of the MRI signals." Magnetic resonance imaging technology combines the use of powerful magnets and radio wave pulses. The magnet influences the magnetization of the body's water molecules. The radio signals that are received from this can be converted into a visual representation......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Novel Imaging Technique Shows Lymph Nodes
"Our advance is that we have a non-invasive method that may minimize surgical trauma," says the team's leader, Martin Brechbiel, Ph.D. "At the least, surgeons can acquire a set of images and have a feel, a road map if you will, for what they need to do before the [surgical] procedure begins. Ultimately the technology could have the potential to replace surgery, though that's not proven yet." Brechbiel reported the technique, which uses magnetic resonance imaging and a novel MRI agent, for the first time at the 228th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. The pharmaceutical chemist is looking to step up from mouse studies to Phase I clinical trials. One in seven women will develop breast cancer, as per the American Cancer Society's 2004 report of cancer statistics. Closely tied to deciding the best approach for the tumor's removal - a lumpectomy is now the most common - is determining whether and how much of neighboring tissue may also contain cancer cells. That's a question surgeons can now rarely answer until the patient is on the operating table and they can probe her lymph tissue directly. And eventhough their decision strongly impacts her chances for cancer recovery and survival, even direct inspection can render it less than clear......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source A Fundamentally New Approach To Chemotherapy
The approach, tested in laboratory experiments with several existing anti-cancer drugs, could offer substantial benefits for cancer patients, according to Jeffrey P. Krise, Ph.D. Krise led a group of pharmaceutical and medicinal chemists at the University of Kansas at Lawrence who did the research. The new approach would allow anticancer drugs to accumulate in both normal and malignant cells. The drugs, however, would be tweaked by giving them "basic" chemical properties. In chemistry, "basic" means an alkaline substance like baking soda or laundry detergent, which has properties opposite those of acidic substances. Normal cells simply isolate anti-cancer drugs with basic properties, greatly reducing the toxic effects. Cancer cells, in contrast, have an impaired ability to isolate basic substances, and get hit with a full blast of toxicity. "It could allow cancer patients to tolerate higher and more effective doses of chemotherapy before normal cells are damaged to an extent that causes serious side effects and cessation of therapy," Krise said. "The approach is completely different from previous attempts that were designed to deliver drugs only to cancer cells and not normal cells"......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source |
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