PM David Cameron has announced £60m over the next four years to introduce the latest cancer screening technology.

He said better bowel cancer screening, using flexible sigmoidoscopy, could save 3,000 lives a year.

Mr Cameron said he wanted to close the gap between the UK’s rate of cancer survival and the European average by at least 5,000 lives.

Labour said the policy “watered down” its 2009 pledge to deliver diagnostic tests within a week of seeing a GP.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: “Investment in cancer is welcome but this is a watered down version of Gordon Brown’s pledge at the Labour Party Conference last year.

“We committed to delivering all cancer diagnostic tests within one week. This flagship pledge would have saved money and saved lives and it is disappointing not to see it implemented in full.”

Cancer Research UK welcomed the use of new screening, saying it could help cut deaths by nearly half.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Mr Cameron said: “I absolutely want to close that gap [in survival rates] and the announcement today is part of that.”

He said recognising early warning signs was a key part of achieving the goal.

Bendy tube

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said bowel screening pilot schemes will begin next spring, subject to approval by the UK National Screening Committee.

Flexible sigmoidoscopy – also known as Flexi-Scope or Flexisig – will be used alongside existing techniques.

It involves a thin, bendy tube with a camera attached being placed a short way into the rectum and lower bowel. The inside wall of the bowel can then be viewed and polyps removed.

Welcoming the extra screening money, Cancer Research UK – which co-funded a 16-year clinical trial on the Flexi-scope test – called for it to be introduced as soon as possible.

“The recent trial results of this method of detecting and removing polyps before they develop into bowel cancer can truly be called a breakthrough,” Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said.

“We believe it could cut the number of cases of bowel cancer by a third and deaths from the disease by almost half (43%) among those attending screening.

“Flexi-scope needs to be brought in as soon as possible. Every week of delay will risk scores of lives.

“Because it will prevent so many cancers, adding this test to the bowel screening programme will spare tens of thousands of families the anxiety and suffering associated with a cancer diagnosis, while also saving the NHS money.”

The Department of Health said that to reach the average European cancer survival rates, 5,000 lives a year would need to be saved. To match the best-performing countries in Europe, 10,000 lives a year would have to be saved.

More specialists

The Department of Health has already announced £50m for additional cancer drugs this year, and £10.75m for a “signs and symptoms” campaign, which will focus on breast, lung and bowel cancers.

It also said the government would boost the number of specialists, by continuing the funding needed to deliver 1,200 additional specialists involved in cancer services by 2012.

The DoH said more patients would receive radiotherapy, with £43m worth of investment so that all high-priority patients with a need for proton beam therapy get access to the treatment.

Mr Cameron’s promise comes as the government plans a major shake-up of the NHS in England.

Planned changes include giving GPs more responsibility to determine health spending; hospitals to be set free from central control and an independent board to safeguard the NHS from political interference.

The prime minister said: “It’s not just about money, it’s about how well GPs do their job and we need to improve that as well.”

Mr Cameron added: “It’s very important as we take the country through some difficult decisions to say, look, there are some things that are so important to families… and the NHS is one of those things.”

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11461495

Breast cancer incidence declined among postmenopausal women in Canada as their use of hormone therapy declined, according to a study published online September 23 in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trial of more than 16,000 postmenopausal women in the United States reported in 2002 that the risks of combined estrogen and progestin hormone replacement therapy outweighed the benefits. As a result, prescriptions for hormone therapy fell dramatically in several countries around the world and so did the incidence of breast cancer.

To determine whether a similar decline of hormone therapy use and breast cancer incidence occurred in Canada, Prithwish De, Ph.D., of the Canadian Cancer Society, and colleagues, analyzed data from various Canadian registries and from a national health survey for women aged 50-69 years. Specifically, the researchers looked at information on prescriptions for hormone replacement therapy, breast cancer incidence, mammography rates, and self-reported use of hormone replacement therapy.

The researchers found that “the nearly 10% drop in invasive breast cancer rates coincided with the decline in use of hormone replacement therapy reported among Canadian women aged 50-69 years.” The steepest decline in use occurred between 2002 and 2004, when use dropped from 12.7% to 4.9%. In that same period, breast cancer incidence dropped 9.6% but mammography rates remained stable.

The researchers write that the decline in breast cancer incidence “is likely explained by the concurrent decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy among Canadian women.” They also say the drop in hormone therapy use may be partly explained by the media’s coverage of results of both the WHI and the Million Women Study in the U.K., both of which showed that breast cancer risk was elevated with the use of combined hormone therapy. In Canada, cancer rates began to increase again in 2005 among women aged 50-69 years, which might be further evidence of a link between hormone therapy and breast cancer, according to the authors.

“Such a rebound might be expected if occult hormone-sensitive tumors were merely slowed by the withdrawal of hormone replacement therapy rather than prevented by it. If so, hormone replacement therapy may be thought to act as a promoter, rather than a cause of breast cancer,” they write.

The study’s limitations include the fact that data on hormone replacement therapy use was self-reported – and therefore subject to recall bias – and that data on frequency or duration of use were not collected. Also, data on receptor status of breast tumors were not collected.

In conclusion, the authors write that “further long-term surveillance studies of trends between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer incidence can help reconcile the potential population-level associations of these two factors.”

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/202401.php

Human pancreas cancer cells dramatically regress when treated with chemotherapy in combination with a synthetic compound that mimics the action of a naturally occurring “death-promoting” protein found in cells, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The research, conducted in mice, appears in today’s issue of Cancer Research and could lead to more effective therapies for pancreatic and possibly other cancers, the scientists said.

“This compound enhanced the efficacy of chemotherapy and improved survival in multiple animal models of pancreas cancer,” said Dr. Rolf Brekken, associate professor of surgery and pharmacology and the study’s senior author. “We now have multiple lines of evidence in animals showing that this combination is having a potent effect on pancreas cancer, which is a devastating disease”.

In this study, Dr. Brekken and his team transplanted human pancreatic tumors into mice, then allowed the tumors to grow to a significant size. They then administered a synthetic compound called JP1201 in combination with gemcitabine, a chemotherapeutic drug that is considered the standard of care for patients with pancreas cancer. They observed that the drug combination caused regression of the tumors.

“There was a 50 percent regression in tumor size during a two-week therapy of the mice,” Dr. Brekken said. “We also looked at survival groups of the animals, which is often depressing in human therapeutic studies for pancreas cancer because virtually nothing works. We found not only significant decrease in tumor size, but meaningful prolongation of life with the drug combination”.

The drug combination was also effective in an aggressive model of spontaneous pancreas cancer in mice.

The compound JP1201 was created in 2004 by UT Southwestern scientists to mimic the action of a protein called Smac. The scientists discovered Smac in 2000 and observed that this protein plays a key role in the normal self-destruction process present in every cell.

Cell death, or apoptosis, is activated when a cell needs to be terminated, such as when a cell is defective or is no longer needed for normal growth and development. In cancer cells, this self-destruct mechanism is faulty and lead to breaks in the cell-death cascade of events. The synthetic Smac, or Smac mimetic, developed at UT Southwestern inhibits these breaks, allowing the cell to die.

“In essence, we’re inhibiting an inhibitor,” Dr. Brekken said. “And we’re allowing the apoptotic cascade to kick off, resulting in the death of cancer cells”.

UT Southwestern scientists are using Smac mimetics in breast and lung cancer research, as well. Dr. Brekken said the next step is to develop a compound based on JP1201 that can be tested in humans in clinical trials.

source : www.medicineworld.org

Cancer is a class of diseases characterized by out-of-control cell growth. There are over 100 different types of cancer, and each is classified by the type of cell that is initially affected.

Cancer harms the body when damaged cells divide uncontrollably to form lumps or masses of tissue called tumors (except in the case of leukemia where cancer prohibits normal blood function by abnormal cell division in the blood stream). Tumors can grow and interfere with the digestive, nervous, and circulatory systems, and they can release hormones that alter body function. Tumors that stay in one spot and demonstrate limited growth are generally considered to be benign.

More dangerous, or malignant, tumors form when two things occur:

1. a cancerous cell manages to move throughout the body using the blood or lymph systems, destroying healthy tissue in a process called invasion
2. that cell manages to divide and grow, making new blood vessels to feed itself in a process called angiogenesis.

When a tumor successfully spreads to other parts of the body and grows, invading and destroying other healthy tissues, it is said to have metastasized. This process itself is called metastasis, and the result is a serious condition that is very difficult to treat.

In 2007, cancer claimed the lives of about 7.6 million people in the world. Physicians and researchers who specialize in the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer are called oncologists.

What causes cancer?

Cancer is ultimately the result of cells that uncontrollably grow and do not die. Normal cells in the body follow an orderly path of growth, division, and death. Programmed cell death is called apoptosis, and when this process breaks down, cancer begins to form. Unlike regular cells, cancer cells do not experience programmatic death and instead continue to grow and divide. This leads to a mass of abnormal cells that grows out of control.

Genes – the DNA type

Cells can experience uncontrolled growth if there are damages or mutations to DNA, and therefore, damage to the genes involved in cell division. Four key types of gene are responsible for the cell division process: oncogenes tell cells when to divide, tumor suppressor genes tell cells when not to divide, suicide genes control apoptosis and tell the cell to kill itself if something goes wrong, and DNA-repair genes instruct a cell to repair damaged DNA.

Cancer occurs when a cell’s gene mutations make the cell unable to correct DNA damage and unable to commit suicide. Similarly, cancer is a result of mutations that inhibit oncogene and tumor suppressor gene function, leading to uncontrollable cell growth.

Carcinogens

Carcinogens are a class of substances that are directly responsible for damaging DNA, promoting or aiding cancer. Tobacco, asbestos, arsenic, radiation such as gamma and x-rays, the sun, and compounds in car exhaust fumes are all examples of carcinogens. When our bodies are exposed to carcinogens, free radicals are formed that try to steal electrons from other molecules in the body. Theses free radicals damage cells and affect their ability to function normally.

Genes – the family type

Cancer can be the result of a genetic predisposition that is inherited from family members. It is possible to be born with certain genetic mutations or a fault in a gene that makes one statistically more likely to develop cancer later in life.

Other medical factors

As we age, there is an increase in the number of possible cancer-causing mutations in our DNA. This makes age an important risk factor for cancer. Several viruses have also been linked to cancer such as: human papillomavirus (a cause of cervical cancer), hepatitis B and C (causes of liver cancer), and Epstein-Barr virus (a cause of some childhood cancers). Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) – and anything else that suppresses or weakens the immune system – inhibits the body’s ability to fight infections and increases the chance of developing cancer.

What are the symptoms of cancer?

Cancer symptoms are quite varied and depend on where the cancer is located, where it has spread, and how big the tumor is. Some cancers can be felt or seen through the skin – a lump on the breast or testicle can be an indicator of cancer in those locations. Skin cancer (melanoma) is often noted by a change in a wart or mole on the skin. Some oral cancers present white patches inside the mouth or white spots on the tongue.

Other cancers have symptoms that are less physically apparent. Some brain tumors tend to present symptoms early in the disease as they affect important cognitive functions. Pancreas cancers are usually too small to cause symptoms until they cause pain by pushing against nearby nerves or interfere with liver function to cause a yellowing of the skin and eyes called jaundice. Symptoms also can be created as a tumor grows and pushes against organs and blood vessels. For example, colon cancers lead to symptoms such as constipation, diarrhea, and changes in stool size. Bladder or prostate cancers cause changes in bladder function such as more frequent or infrequent urination.

As cancer cells use the body’s energy and interfere with normal hormone function, it is possible to present symptoms such as fever, fatigue, excessive sweating, anemia, and unexplained weight loss. However, these symptoms are common in several other maladies as well. For example, coughing and hoarseness can point to lung or throat cancer as well as several other conditions.

When cancer spreads, or metastasizes, additional symptoms can present themselves in the newly affected area. Swollen or enlarged lymph nodes are common and likely to be present early. If cancer spreads to the brain, patients may experience vertigo, headaches, or seizures. Spreading to the lungs may cause coughing and shortness of breath. In addition, the liver may become enlarged and cause jaundice and bones can become painful, brittle, and break easily. Symptoms of metastasis ultimately depend on the location to which the cancer has spread.

How is cancer classified?

There are five broad groups that are used to classify cancer.

1. Carcinomas are characterized by cells that cover internal and external parts of the body such as lung, breast, and colon cancer.
2. Sarcomas are characterized by cells that are located in bone, cartilage, fat, connective tissue, muscle, and other supportive tissues.
3. Lymphomas are cancers that begin in the lymph nodes and immune system tissues.
4. Leukemias are cancers that begin in the bone marrow and often accumulate in the bloodstream.
5. Adenomas are cancers that arise in the thyroid, the pituitary gland, the adrenal gland, and other glandular tissues.

Cancers are often referred to by terms that contain a prefix related to the cell type in which the cancer originated and a suffix such as -sarcoma, -carcinoma, or just -oma.

Common prefixes include:

* Adeno- = gland
* Chondro- = cartilage
* Erythro- = red blood cell
* Hemangio- = blood vessels
* Hepato- = liver
* Lipo- = fat
* Lympho- = white blood cell
* Melano- = pigment cell
* Myelo- = bone marrow
* Myo- = muscle
* Osteo- = bone
* Uro- = bladder
* Retino- = eye
* Neuro- = brain

How is cancer diagnosed and staged?

Early detection of cancer can greatly improve the odds of successful treatment and survival. Physicians use information from symptoms and several other procedures to diagnose cancer. Imaging techniques such as X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, PET scans, and ultrasound scans are used regularly in order to detect where a tumor is located and what organs may be affected by it. Doctors may also conduct an endoscopy, which is a procedure that uses a thin tube with a camera and light at one end, to look for abnormalities inside the body.

Extracting cancer cells and looking at them under a microscope is the only absolute way to diagnose cancer. This procedure is called a biopsy. Other types of molecular diagnostic tests are frequently employed as well. Physicians will analyze your body’s sugars, fats, proteins, and DNA at the molecular level. For example, cancerous prostate cells release a higher level of a chemical called PSA (prostate-specific antigen) into the bloodstream that can be detected by a blood test. Molecular diagnostics, biopsies, and imaging techniques are all used together to diagnose cancer.

After a diagnosis is made, doctors find out how far the cancer has spread and determine the stage of the cancer. The stage determines which choices will be available for treatment and informs prognoses. The most common cancer staging method is called the TNM system. T (1-4) indicates the size and direct extent of the primary tumor, N (0-3) indicates the degree to which the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes, and M (0-1) indicates whether the cancer has metastasized to other organs in the body. A small tumor that has not spread to lymph nodes or distant organs may be staged as (T1, N0, M0), for example.

TNM descriptions then lead to a simpler categorization of stages, from 0 to 4, where lower numbers indicate that the cancer has spread less. While most Stage 1 tumors are curable, most Stage 4 tumors are inoperable or untreatable.

How is cancer treated?

Cancer treatment depends on the type of cancer, the stage of the cancer (how much it has spread), age, health status, and additional personal characteristics. There is no single treatment for cancer, and patients often receive a combination of therapies and palliative care. Treatments usually fall into one of the following categories: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, hormone therapy, or gene therapy.

Surgery

Surgery is the oldest known treatment for cancer. If a cancer has not metastasized, it is possible to completely cure a patient by surgically removing the cancer from the body. This is often seen in the removal of the prostate or a breast or testicle. After the disease has spread, however, it is nearly impossible to remove all of the cancer cells. Surgery may also be instrumental in helping to control symptoms such as bowel obstruction or spinal cord compression.

Radiation

Radiation treatment, also known as radiotherapy, destroys cancer by focusing high-energy rays on the cancer cells. This causes damage to the molecules that make up the cancer cells and leads them to commit suicide. Radiotherapy utilizes high-energy gamma-rays that are emitted from metals such as radium or high-energy x-rays that are created in a special machine. Early radiation treatments caused severe side-effects because the energy beams would damage normal, healthy tissue, but technologies have improved so that beams can be more accurately targeted. Radiotherapy is used as a standalone treatment to shrink a tumor or destroy cancer cells (including those associated with leukemia and lymphoma), and it is also used in combination with other cancer treatments.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy utilizes chemicals that interfere with the cell division process – damaging proteins or DNA – so that cancer cells will commit suicide. These treatments target any rapidly dividing cells (not necessarily just cancer cells), but normal cells usually can recover from any chemical-induced damage while cancer cells cannot. Chemotherapy is generally used to treat cancer that has spread or metastasized because the medicines travel throughout the entire body. It is a necessary treatment for some forms of leukemia and lymphoma. Chemotherapy treatment occurs in cycles so the body has time to heal between doses. However, there are still common side effects such as hair loss, nausea, fatigue, and vomiting. Combination therapies often include multiple types of chemotherapy or chemotherapy combined with other treatment options.

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy aims to get the body’s immune system to fight the tumor. Local immunotherapy injects a treatment into an affected area, for example, to cause inflammation that causes a tumor to shrink. Systemic immunotherapy treats the whole body by administering an agent such as the protein interferon alpha that can shrink tumors. Immunotherapy can also be considered non-specific if it improves cancer-fighting abilities by stimulating the entire immune system, and it can be considered targeted if the treatment specifically tells the immune system to destroy cancer cells. These therapies are relatively young, but researchers have had success with treatments that introduce antibodies to the body that inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells. Bone marrow transplantation (hematopoetic stem cell transplantation) can also be considered immunotherapy because the donor’s immune cells will often attack the tumor or cancer cells that are present in the host.

Hormone therapy

Several cancers have been linked to some types of hormones, most notably breast and prostate cancer. Hormone therapy is designed to alter hormone production in the body so that cancer cells stop growing or are killed completely. Breast cancer hormone therapies often focus on reducing estrogen levels (a common drug for this is tamoxifen) and prostate cancer hormone therapies often focus on reducing testosterone levels. In addition, some leukemia and lymphoma cases can be treated with the hormone cortisone.

Gene therapy

The goal of gene therapy is to replace damaged genes with ones that work to address a root cause of cancer: damage to DNA. For example, researchers are trying to replace the damaged gene that signals cells to stop dividing (the p53 gene) with a copy of a working gene. Other gene-based therapies focus on further damaging cancer cell DNA to the point where the cell commits suicide. Gene therapy is a very young field and has not yet resulted in any successful treatments.

How can cancer be prevented?

Cancers that are closely linked to certain behaviors are the easiest to prevent. For example, choosing not to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol significantly lower the risk of several types of cancer – most notably lung, throat, mouth, and liver cancer. Even if you are a current tobacco user, quitting can still greatly reduce your chances of getting cancer.

Skin cancer can be prevented by staying in the shade, protecting yourself with a hat and shirt when in the sun, and using sunscreen. Diet is also an important part of cancer prevention since what we eat has been linked to the disease. Physicians recommend diets that are low in fat and rich in fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

Certain vaccinations have been associated with the prevention of some cancers. For example, many women receive a vaccination for the human papillomavirus because of the virus’s relationship with cervical cancer. Hepatitis B vaccines prevent the hepatitis B virus, which can cause liver cancer.

Some cancer prevention is based on systematic screening in order to detect small irregularities or tumors as early as possible even if there are no clear symptoms present. Breast self-examination, mammograms, testicular self-examination, and Pap smears are common screening methods for various cancers.

New study

Soy contains isoflavones, which act similarly to the hormone estrogen, and may have anti-cancer qualities in hormone-related cancers of the breast and prostate, the researchers note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Cells in the lung have properties that suggest they may also respond to isoflavones.

Dr. Taichi Shimazu, of the National Cancer Center in Tokyo, and colleagues studied more than 36,000 Japanese men and more than 40,000 Japanese women, 45 to 74 years old and free of cancer at the start of the study.

The researchers followed the women for about 11 years, after surveying their food intake, smoking status, medical history, and other lifestyle factors between 1995 and 1999.

Overall rates of lung cancer were small: 481 men — or about one in 75 — and 178 women, or about one in 225 — were diagnosed during the 11 years of the study.

Among the slightly more than 13,000 men who never smoked, there were 22 lung cancer cases among men who ate the least soy, and just 13 lung cancer cases among those who ate the most. Shimazu said men’s soy intake from food varied widely, from about 34 to about 162 grams per day.

After taking a number of factors into account, the risk about halved in the highest versus the lowest intake group.

There were even fewer lung cancer cases among women, so researchers could draw no conclusions about their risks.

The authors note that men it may not be the act of eating soy that lowered lung cancer risk in the men in their study. Men who eat soy may be more likely to take part in other activities that may lower the risk, or may be more likely to eat other healthy foods. But they did take many of those factors into account.

However, the current study did not gather data on isoflavone supplement use, nor did it look at exposure second-hand smoking. That means these findings should be confirmed among Japanese and other populations, the authors conclude.

Dozens of cancer studies may be thrown into doubt by the discovery that researchers inadvertently used the wrong type of cancer cells.

The “cell lines”, according to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, were supplied as samples of oesophageal cancer.

However, tests show they contained other types of tumour, including lung and bowel.

The Dutch researchers say this could put major trials of drugs in doubt.

Many experimental studies on cancer use laboratory-grown “cell-lines”, meaning that dozens of studies may rely on cells originally taken from a single patient.

New drugs can be tested on these cells to see if they have an effect before they are tested on real patients.

The problem of “false” – or contaminated – cell lines, is not a new one, and there have been calls for scientists to take more care verifying they have the right sort of cells before continuing with their experiments.

If not, they run the risk that their findings, positive or negative, may be misleading.

The latest example of the problem involved samples widely supplied as oesophageal adenocarcinoma cells, a particular type of cancer affecting the gullet which carries food from the mouth to the stomach.

In fact, they came from tumours of the lung, bowel and stomach, said researchers from the University Medical Centre in Rotterdam.

They wrote: “Experimental results based on these contaminated cell lines have led to ongoing clinical trials recruiting patients, to more than 100 scientific publications, and to at least three cancer research grants and 11 US patents – which emphasises the importance of our findings.”

Widespread use of these cell lines could threaten the development of new treatments, they said.

In particular, use of the drug sorafenib for some oesophageal cancer patients should be reconsidered, since the wrong cell line was used to assess its potential.

Specialist suppliers

However, writing in the same journal, Professor Robert Shoemaker of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, said he suspected that a similar study using the right cell lines would support the use of sorafenib.

In the UK, one of the main funders of cancer studies, Cancer Research UK, has said that it uses DNA testing to check its cell lines.

The Health Protection Agency also operates an extensive cell culture collection and a spokesman said it urged scientists to, where necessary, pay for tests to check their cell lines.

He said: “The use of wrongly identified human cancer cell lines is a problem that was first recognised more than 20 years ago.

“We draw attention to this danger on our website, which includes an ever-expanding list of those cell lines known to be incorrectly identified, or cross-contaminated with a cell line of a different type.

“As a national culture collection we, together with other national collections, exhort research scientists to always work with authenticated cell lines of known provenance.”

An April 2009 study by Jessica Dolle et al. of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center examining the relationship between oral contraceptives (OCs) and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) in women under age 45 contained an admission from U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) researcher Louise Brinton and her colleagues (including Janet Daling) that abortion raises breast cancer risk by 40%. [1]

Additionally, Dolle’s team showed that women who start OCs before age 18 multiply their risk of TNBC by 3.7 times and recent users of OCs within the last one to five years multiply their risk by 4.2 times. TNBC is an aggressive form of breast cancer associated with high mortality.

“Although the study was published nine months ago,” observed Karen Malec, president of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer, “the NCI, the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and other cancer fundraising businesses have made no efforts to reduce breast cancer rates by issuing nationwide warnings to women.”

Brinton was the chief organizer of the 2003 NCI workshop on the abortion-breast cancer link, which falsely assured women that the non-existence of the link was “well established.” [2]

Dolle’s team reported in Table 1 a statistically significant 40% risk increase for women who have had abortions. They listed abortion among “known and suspected risk factors.”

Brinton and Daling had previously studied this population from the Seattle-Puget Sound area in the 1990s and reported risk increases between 20% and 50% among women with abortions. [3,4] In the 2009 study, they and their co-authors wrote that their findings concerning induced abortion, OC use and certain other risk factors, “were consistent with the effects observed in previous studies on younger women.”

“Obviously, more women will die of breast cancer if the NCI fails in its duty to warn about the risks of OCs and abortion and if government funds are used to pay for both as a part of any healthcare bill,” said Mrs. Malec.

A brief analysis of the study (click here) , Dolle et al. 2009, was provided by Dr. Joel Brind, professor of biology and endocrinology and deputy chair for biology at Baruch College, City University of New York.

Last year, studies from Turkey and China also reported statistically significant risk increases for women who had abortions. [5,6]

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer is an international women’s organization founded to protect the health and save the lives of women by educating and providing information on abortion as a risk factor for breast cancer.

Vitamin D can be a beneficial natural supplement as a new study has found that levels of the nutrient are associated with survival rates of lymphoma patients.

The nutrient is most commonly received from sunlight exposure, but can also be found in various food and dairy products. It’s most known for its link to blood and bone health.

Results presented at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting in New Orleans suggested that 50 percent of the 374 research subjects that were diagnosed with large B-cell lymphoma had a vitamin D deficiency. Scientists say that this gave patients a twofold greater risk of dying.

This research is reportedly the strongest link between vitamin D levels and cancer progression that scientists have been able to discover. Some doctors feel this will help them in treatment recommendations for cancer patients.

While scientists don’t know how vitamin D comes into play with cancer treatment, lead researcher Dr. Matthew Drake feels that the positive outcome is the most important thing.

“The exact roles that vitamin D might play in the initiation or progression of cancer is unknown, but we do know that the vitamin plays a role in regulation of cell growth and death, among other processes important in limiting cancer,” he said.

Studies have previously estabilished a link between colorectal cancer and a diet high in fat and low in fiber, vitamin D and calcium.

Now, in a new research, scientists at Rockefeller University have shown what happens to colon tissue when mice are fed such a diet.

The study has been published in the November 2009 issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

“There is convincing evidence that increased intake of red meat, processed meat and alcohol can increase risk of colorectal cancer, whereas greater consumption of dietary fiber, milk and calcium might decrease risk,” says Peter Holt, a senior research associate in the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism at Rockefeller. “Our findings show that a Western diet induces oxidative stress and alters immune responses in the colon of mice long before tumors occur.”

To reach the conclusion, researchers fed experimental mice either a standard diet containing five percent fat and ample amounts of calcium and vitamin D or a Western diet containing 20 percent fat and adequate but marginal levels of calcium and vitamin D for three or six months.

As expected, animals consuming the Western diet were heavier and had more fat tissue than those on the control diet. Microarray analysis identified 41 genes that were being expressed at significantly different levels between the Western diet and control animals. Most of these genes were related to metabolic processes such as lipid metabolism and glutathione metabolism, which is important for preventing damage caused by oxidation.

In addition, expression of a series of genes collectively associated with immune and inflammatory responses was altered. The diet also increased the number of macrophages, cells associated with inflammation in the colon, as well as several proteins such as myeloperoxidase and MCP-1 and colonic oxidative stress genes associated with inflammation.

Tumors can not only spread through the body by sending out tiny cells called seeds, but they can re-seed themselves, researchers said in a report on Thursday that may help explain why tumors grow back even after they are removed.

They said their findings, published in the journal Cell, may also help lead to the development of new drugs to stop the process of cancer spread, or metastasis.

“Circulating tumor cells can also colonize their tumors of origin, in a process that we call ‘tumor self-seeding’,” Joan Massague of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and colleagues wrote.

“Now we have found that tumors can recapture some of their most delinquent children, enriching themselves with the most aggressive metastatic cells, enabling them to grow faster and more robustly,” Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, said in a statement.

“Now we have found that tumors can recapture some of their most delinquent children, enriching themselves with the most aggressive metastatic cells, enabling them to grow faster and more robustly,” Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, said in a statement.

“Now we are thinking that in some cases, maybe treatment left inflamed tissue that had been a home for those cells that escaped and were residing somewhere temporarily, perhaps in the bone marrow,” he added.

“They may have re-entered the circulation in the weeks and months after surgery, and now, through the self-seeding process, have homed in on this tissue and reproduced the tumor.”

Massague’s team used mice, injecting them with human breast cancer cells that had been genetically engineered with a jellyfish protein to make them glow green under ultraviolet light.

They tracked these cells as they spread through the bodies of the mice.

Immune system signaling chemicals, including interleukin 6 and interleukin 8, appear to “call” the tumor cells home, Massague’s team found.

Researchers are working on cancer vaccines that could harness the immune system to attack cancer cells more effectively. This study suggests it might also be necessary to tone down some aspects of the immune system.