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

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.

A new study has found that Vitamin D, readily available in supplements or cod liver oil, can counter the effects of Crohn’s disease.

John White, an endocrinologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, led a team of scientists from McGill University and the Université de Montréal who present their findings about the inflammatory bowel disease in the latest Journal of Biological Chemistry.

“Our data suggests, for the first time, that Vitamin D deficiency can contribute to Crohn’s disease,” says Dr. White, a professor in McGill’s Department of Physiology, noting that people from northern countries, which receive less sunlight that is necessary for the fabrication of Vitamin D by the human body, are particularly vulnerable to Crohn’s disease.

Vitamin D, in its active form (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D), is a hormone that binds to receptors in the body’s cells. Dr. White’s interest in Vitamin D was originally in its effects in mitigating cancer. Because his results kept pointing to Vitamin D’s effects on the immune system, specifically the innate immune system that acts as the body’s first defense against microbial invaders, he investigated Crohn’s disease. “It’s a defect in innate immune handling of intestinal bacteria that leads to an inflammatory response that may lead to an autoimmune condition,” stresses Dr. White.

What Vitamin D does

Dr. White and his team found that Vitamin D acts directly on the beta defensin 2 gene, which encodes an antimicrobial peptide, and the NOD2 gene that alerts cells to the presence of invading microbes. Both Beta-defensin and NOD2 have been linked to Crohn’s disease. If NOD2 is deficient or defective, it cannot combat invaders in the intestinal tract.

What’s most promising about this genetic discovery, says Dr. White, is how it can be quickly put to the test. “Siblings of patients with Crohn’s disease that haven’t yet developed the disease might be well advised to make sure they’re vitamin D sufficient. It’s something that’s easy to do, because they can simply go to a pharmacy and buy Vitamin D supplements. The vast majority of people would be candidates for Vitamin D treatment.”

“This discovery is exciting, since it shows how an over-the-counter supplement such as Vitamin D could help people defend themselves against Crohn’s disease,” says Marc J. Servant, a professor at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Pharmacy and study collaborator. “We have identified a new treatment avenue for people with Crohn’s disease or other inflammatory bowel diseases.”

This study was funded by a grant from McGill University.

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.

Scientists have shown how a family of “limpet-like” proteins play a crucial role in repairing the DNA damage which can lead to cancer.

They hope the finding could pave the way for a new type of drug which could help kill cancer cells, and promote production of healthy replacements.

The proteins seem to have a remarkable ability to zero in on damaged areas.

The breakthrough, uncovered independently by two teams, appears in the journal Nature.

The family of Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO) proteins track down sites in the body where DNA damage has occurred.

They attach themselves to normal proteins, and guide them in to fix the genetic faults.

Using this method, the proteins are even able to repair double strand DNA breaks – the most severe type of DNA damage.

When their work is done, the proteins detach themselves and move on.

Breast cancer gene

One of the study teams was able to follow this process of repair taking place on the BRCA1 gene, which, if damaged, is associated with a very high risk of breast cancer.

SUMO was shown to attach to the damaged gene, and switch it back on – helping prevent breast cancer forming.

Researcher Dr Jo Morris, from King’s College London, said: “This new insight is the first step towards developing drugs which may protect normal cells from the side effects of chemotherapy, or improve the effectiveness of current breast cancer treatments.”

Dr Lesley Walker, of Cancer Research UK, which part-funded the study, said: “DNA damage, particularly double strand DNA breaks, are a fundamental cause of cancer and we know that people who have mutations in the BRCA1 gene have a higher risk of developing some kinds of cancer.

“Discovering that these limpet-like proteins play such an important role in repair may provide new opportunities to stop cancer from growing.”

But she added: “This is an extremely complex and intricate biological process so it may be many years before we can use this knowledge to safely intervene and help treat cancer patients.”

A new study is suggesting that those who receive the organ procedure have an elevated risk for developing skin cancer.

Researchers found in the Archives of Dermatology discovered that there were increased instances of multiple skin cancers in heart transplant patients.

While previous studies have indicated that renal transplant patients had a high risk of developing skin cancer, new findings suggest that heart transplant patients are twice as likely to develop the disease.

Findings reveal that of the 312 patients who received the organ transplant, 46.4 percent developed skin cancer in a 19-year follow up. Of those who developed the disease, there were a total of 1,395 different kinds of cancer.

The researchers wrote that while these findings were concerning, there was a low death rate. They recommended simple practices to keep skin healthy, in hopes of preventing the disease.

“Vigilant sun protection practices, skin cancer education, regular skin examinations and daily vitamin D [nutritional supplements] are appropriate interventions in these high-risk heart transplant patients,” they wrote.

Having sex at an early age can double the risk of developing cervical cancer, a study of 20,000 women suggests.

The investigation into why poorer women have a higher risk of the disease found they tended to have sex about four years earlier than more affluent women.

Previously, it had been thought the disparity was the result of low screening uptake in poorer areas.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer findings are published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Although the difference in cervical cancer incidence between rich and poor – across the world – had been noted for many years, it was not clear why this is the case.

Especially as rates of infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) – the sexually transmitted infection linked with the vast majority of cervical cancers – seemed to be similar across all groups.

The study confirmed that the higher rates of cervical cancer were not linked to higher HPV levels.

But what it did reveal is that the two-fold increased risk was largely explained by women from poorer backgrounds starting to have sex at a younger age.

The age at which a woman had her first baby was also an important factor.

Screening was found to have some effect on the level of risk.

But the number of sexual partners a woman has and smoking did not account for any of the difference.

Lag time

Study leader, Dr Silvia Franceschi, said the findings were not restricted to adolescence and the risk of cervical cancer was also higher in women who had their first sexual intercourse at 20 rather than 25 years.

“In our study, poorer women had become sexually active on average four years earlier.

“So they may have also been infected with HPV earlier, giving the virus more time to produce the long sequence of events that are needed for cancer development.”

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said the study raised some interesting questions.

“Although women can be infected by HPV at any age, infections at a very young age may be especially dangerous as they have more time to cause damage that eventually leads to cancer.

“Importantly, the results back up the need for the HPV vaccination to be given in schools at an age before they start having sex, especially among girls in deprived areas.”