Medical Information Weblog

Archive for the ‘About Cancers’ Category

A publication issued in the last hours in the daily bulletin daily indicates that infertility treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF) would not be associated with an increased risk of cancer even though the hormones used, a study Swedish.

Apparently some previous research had suggested that fertility drugs may be linked to cancers of the breast, uterus and ovaries. In the study published in the journal Human Reproduction, Bengt Kallen, University of Lund, Sweden, and colleagues analyzed data from records between 1982 and 2006 of 24 000 women who gave birth after IVF.

They compared the rates of cancer in those women with 1.4 million women in the general Swedish population who also had children in those years. Finding that less than 2% of women treated with IVF group developed one or more cancers during the follow-up period averaging eight years, compared with nearly 5% in the control group.
For the study took into account maternal age, number of previous pregnancies and smoking, the overall risk of cancer was about 25% lower among women undergoing IVF.

According to Kallen in an interview with Reuters Health: “A couple who need IVF should not be afraid that the hormone treatment used, at least those used in Sweden, carrying a woman’s risk of developing cancer.”

While ovarian cancer risk was doubled in women who had IVF compared with those not, Kallen suggested that this is due to ovarian function abnormalities that may increase the risk of both cancer and infertility, by Hence the need for IVF.

“The risk of two common cancers, breast and uterus, was significantly lower than expected,” he added. He said this may be because women undergoing IVF could be healthier in other ways or, more likely, further checks are made cervical and mammography.

Scientists have long known that cancer cells can break away from the primary tumor and circulate in the blood, but these are so rare and so fragile that have been difficult to catch and study significantly. However, researchers are finalizing details of highly sensitive devices that trap portions of blood cancers and provide a “liquid biopsy” that would give doctors and pharmaceutical companies a better way to determine if drugs work against the disease.

So far, Johnson & Johnson has the only approved test in the U.S. market, but researchers say that their usefulness is limited because it only captures a few cells. Reason, several teams returned to the design stage and are close to developing more sensitive analysis. If they work, could lead to a new era of personalized treatments for cancer in which doctors use blood cancer cells from a patient to conduct the treatment.

According to Dr. Bob McCormack Veridex unit of Johnson & Johnson: “Once you have these cells have the same cancer you’re trying to attack in the palm of your hand. You can begin to direct therapy from the test tube “.

Currently, there are about 25 different technology companies competing to develop tests, ranging from small labs to large corporations. Researchers believe that an improved analysis could be worth billions. According to Dr. Minetta Liu of Georgetown University Hospital in Washington: “The big concern is that this is blood. This is not to put a needle into an organ.”

Most of the analysis of tumor cells circulating in the blood seeking epithelial cells, which form the outer layers of the organs. These cells do not belong to the blood, but there are 85 to 90 percent of cancers. “The assumption is that these circulating cells are cells that kill them,” said Dr. Mehmet Toner, biomedical engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

If they can be detected in the blood before they attack a new organ in the body, doctors may be able to prevent the spread, turning deadly cancers such as lung cancer into a chronic disease. Dr. Toner referred to traces of a telephone interview given to UPI, “That could really put the entire cancer field upside down.”

His team published a study last month showing that the new silicon chip detected over 90 percent of cancer cells that the team had added to the blood samples. The device, an improved version of a chip developed in 2007, has microscopic dots coated with antibodies that function as adhesive to trap the epithelial cells but not blood cells. “With current technology, one can find a cell in a blood tube 8 mm. You find hundreds or thousands of cells in the same amount of blood,” said Toner.

According to the newspaper Publico.es, research about treatments for cancer, has been moving in recent months, some of the reasons supporting these advances the two studies presented at the Congress of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO ), which claim to have demonstrated the efficacy of two vaccines to improve the prognosis of two types of tumors (Hodgkin’s lymphoma and melanoma).

Apparently it is a kind of shots that differ from traditional, to the extent that it does not seek to prevent the disease but if they influence the development and increase the life expectancy of patients. This type is called therapeutic vaccines, as they intend to prolong life expectancy.

Although both vaccines would be administered in combination with a traditional method, chemotherapy, efficacy has been demonstrated to such an extent that to reduce the toxicity of the treatments, suggesting a lower dose of the traditional drugs, and increase the vaccines, as stated by the Cancer Center oncologist Patrick Hwu, who claims that the melanoma vaccine is made from a protein present in the tumor itself and stimulates the production of T cells, a type of white blood cells multiply and seek the protein gp100 to try to destroy it and with it, the malignant cells.

On the other hand, the portal NoticiasMexico.Info, refer another study at the University of Cambridge, published in the journal Science, which found that stromal cells (cell type of connective tissue detected in many cancers) have a major role in suppressing the immune response in cancerous tumors, the type of cell being charged with protecting the cancer cells of the immune response of the body and responsible for the failure of cancer therapies.

Through a study of mice, were able to demonstrate the existence of a compound found in these cells is responsible for producing the fibroblast activating protein (FAP), which is crucial in this process, and explain why developed vaccines cause a activation of the immune system, but without achieving the necessary impact on tumor growth. So by destroying say stromal cells in tumors showed a rapid death of the tumor. This effect could contribute to improving current immune therapies.

Studies continue in search of better results from treatments currently receiving cancer patients, in favor of a better quality of life response and perspective.

the study of cancer has many professionals working worldwide to find a cure, and progress is becoming increasingly important. In the U.S., for example, created a machine that is capable of finding even the smallest cancer cell among millions of other uninfected cells.

This is accomplished through a simple blood test, and the method promises to provide great advances in science. The problem is that even though the cell is infected the machine is not able to tell which body part comes, so some method must be used together to serve for a deeper detection.

The real use of this device is useful in the analysis of people who have already made an anti-tumor therapy. In this way you can know what level has the disease in the body and what are the chances that re-appear over time, among other variables.

Cancer is a disease of most concern, both patients and researchers and health professionals. The large number of guys who has this problem makes it impossible to find a “cure-all.” But always get interesting developments, such as the recently introduced renal cancer.

This is one of the most serious types of cancer, and that it exercises no symptoms on the patient and when you “wake up” has a very high level of mortality. But with the advent of new therapies experts say some patients treated early the disease can survive for more than two years.

Compared with the mortality rate offered by the RCC, the possibility of reaching 26 months of survival is just remarkable. The researchers engaged in the study of cancer are still working to get a method to detect the disease early in order to increase the life expectancy of patients.

According to a publication in NEWS DOCTOSSIMO held in on Monday January 17, the incidence of childhood cancer in Spain has now stabilized and the survival rate has increased in recent years to nearly 80 percent, only a point below the European average.

So says Dr. Rafael Peris, director of the National Registry of Childhood Tumours, a research project funded by the Provincial Board of Madrid of the Spanish Association against Cancer (AECC), with 200,000 euros, though an agreement has been renewed today for three years.

Childhood cancer is the leading cause of death by disease after the first year of life in developed countries. Spain is detected between 900 and 950 new cases each year in children between the 0 and 14 years, and since the eighties, the mortality has fallen by 57 percent.

Dr. Peris explained that the record, the only one in Spain, recorded 19,849 cases of childhood cancer since its inception in 1980 and of these, 17,838 are children between 0 and 14.

During the signing of the new agreement, Dr. Blanca Lopez Ibor, a pediatric oncologist and vice president of the Science Foundation of the AECC, stressed that the project, developed at the University of Valencia, is not just an epidemiological register. López Ibor has indicated that the record “is concerned about what we do Spanish oncologists and how we do, and whether the children by being in one or another autonomous community are less likely to be cured.”

Dr. Peris referred to is not just a database, but helps “actively” to improve assistance to children affected by cancer in Spain, to the knowledge of childhood cancer and to study the causes of this disease through research.

For its part, the president of the AECC, Isabel Oriol, stressed the support of the association for children with cancer, not only through projects like this, but also through host homes and apartments, recreational camps, psychosocial assistance or volunteering in hospitals.

The rector of the University of Valencia, Esteban Morcillo, stressed that with these research projects is put in value the social commitment of universities.

According to statistics from the Mexican Social Security Institute, 60 percent of men over 50 years have a good chance of seeing prostate affected his illness. Even in the prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer in men.

But it usually attacks only the cancer; other diseases common in male viewers are prostatitis and obstructive prostatic hyperplasia. The first is a serious inflammation of the prostate and can be caused by infection or sexually transmitted disease. For its part, the prostatic hyperplasia occurs when there are changes in the body due to advanced age.

Symptoms that have a patient with these diseases are: urinary urgency, pressure reduction when missionary, pain or burning when passing urine, blood in the semen or urine and an intense pain in the lower back.

These diseases are treatable and the sooner it is detected the better. However, many men refuse to get tested for fear of exploration that is done in the year. This bias must be discarded; it is the only way to prevent prostate diseases.

The conference “Asexorate” was a good time for the Department of Youth Care Tower instructs high school students, testicular cancer, its impact on young people and self-examination as the best way to find anything unusual.

The conference was offered to approximately 200 students from CETIS number 59, the colony expansion Las Margaritas of Torreon and was provided by Juan Carlos Acosta de la Torre, a specialist in clinical sexology, who spoke about several topics such as teen pregnancy, diversity sexual and venereal diseases.

According to data presented at the conference testicular cancer in young people between 15 and 30 have high statistics in Mexico.

The information provided was unrelated to the Human Papilloma Virus, the exploration of the testes as a means of cancer prevention among youth and adults.

One of the main weapons to combat testicular cancer is early detection to complete treatment or removal.

The testicular exploration campaign has been carried out in schools as High Venustiano Carranza, London Institute, High LUZAC, among several others.

Breast cancer is a disease which is spoken a lot today. Specialists are developing new methods of diagnosis and treatment, but can be in preventing this disease by physical activity and having a healthy diet.

There are different types of breast cancer triple negative being one of the most difficult for treatment. Recently an investigation by the Women’s Health Initiative concluded that obesity increases the risk of triple-negative breast cancer, especially after menopause.

For this reason the main recommendations of oncologists are exercising and eating balanced. If the body mass index is maintained at the correct levels, there is a 23% lower risk of developing breast cancer.

For its part, obese people are 35% more likely to develop a triple negative cancer. This is a clear sign that the health care of the body is key to defeating this disease.

A vegetarian diet helps prevent cancer. Studies of vegetarians show that death rates from cancer are only about one-half to three quarters of the general population. The breast cancer rates are dramatically lower in countries where diets are typically plant-based. When people from those countries adopt a meat-based Western diet, their breast cancer rates soar.

Vegetarians also have significantly less colon cancer than meat eaters. Meat consumption is more closely associated with colon cancer than any other dietary factor.

Why vegetarian diets help protect against cancer? First, they are lower in fat and higher in fiber than meat-based diets. But other factors are important, too. For example, vegetarians usually consume more of the plant pigment beta-carotene. This could help explain why they have less lung cancer. Moreover, at least one study has shown that natural sugars in dairy products may increase the risk of ovarian cancer in some women.

Some anti-cancer aspects of a vegetarian diet can not be explained yet. For example, researchers are not quite sure why vegetarians have more of certain white blood cells called “killer cells” which are able to seek and destroy cancer cells.