What You Need To Know News

Breast cancer would seem to have little to do with migraine headaches. But a study has found the two are connected in one sense: Women who have them are 30% less likely to develop breast cancer compared with women who do not have a history of migraines. The study, from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, examined data from 3,412 postmenopausal women. More than half of the women had been diagnosed with breast cancer. The women were asked whether they had been diagnosed with migraines. The study found that migraine history appeared to reduce the risk of the most common subtypes of breast cancer: estrogen-receptor and progesterone-receptor positive.

Although there is no explanation for the connection, the study, published today in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, suggests that the same hormones that contribute to breast cancer risk play a role in preventing migraines. For example, it’s been observed that some women who take birth control pills tend to have migraines during the hormone-free week each month. Other women have noted that they are free of migraines during pregnancy, when estrogen levels are high. Estrogen is known to stimulate the growth of hormonally sensitive breast cancer.
Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/11/women-with-migr.html

Women who took calcium and vitamin D supplements developed breast cancer at the same rate as women who didn’t take them, a large clinical trial has found, overturning conclusions from previous studies that hinted at benefits from vitamin D.

The study — part of the massive Women’s Health Initiative — followed more than 36,000 post-menopausal women who were randomly assigned to take calcium and vitamin D supplements to see whether the supplements would make a difference in their incidence of hip fracture. Breast cancer and colorectal cancer were secondary outcomes studied by the researchers.

After about seven years, there were 528 cases of breast cancer in the group of women taking calcium and vitamin D compared with 546 cases in the placebo group — a difference not considered statistically significant. Blood tests for vitamin D levels also showed no correlation with breast cancer rates. Women who were already taking the supplements — about the same number in the supplement group and the placebo group — had been allowed to continue doing so.

“The main findings do not support a causal relationship between calcium and vitamin D supplement use and reduced breast cancer incidence, despite the association observed in some epidemiological studies,” the authors, led by Dr. Rowan T. Chlebowski of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, write in the online version of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. “Although further study of relationships among calcium plus vitamin D supplement use and breast cancer can be considered, current evidence does not support their use in any dose to reduce breast cancer risk.”

The study is valuable because it is the first rigorous test of vitamin D that accounts for factors the earlier, observational studies were unable to capture, said Dr. Jennifer A. Ligibel, a medical oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Women who take dietary supplements might be healthier than women who don’t, for example. But there are still questions about vitamin D that need to be answered.

“I think this is an important study. It tells us there is absolutely more work that needs to be done on vitamin D,” Ligibel said in an interview. She was not involved in the study. “I do think the study should put a little bit of brakes on people telling people to take huge doses of vitamin D to prevent cancer.”

In an editorial also appearing in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Corey Speers and Dr. Powel Brown of Baylor College of Medicine praise the study’s design and execution, but suggest further work to see whether the age of the women, the dose of vitamin D they were taking, the calcium they took with it, and the hormone therapy also being studied might have confounded the results.

“The potential health benefits of vitamin D and calcium may yet still have a bright future,” they write.

Few types of food or their components, from fat to carbohydrates to fruits and vegetables, have turned out to have a proven relationship in the development of breast cancer or its recurrence, with the exception of alcohol, which has been linked to increased risk, said Ligibel of Dana-Farber. She tells her patients about preliminary evidence that a diet high in fat might not be the best.

“I think there is a lot to learn in this area still, but I personally do not counsel my patients that they need to make tremendous dietary changes based on the information available,” she said.
Source: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2008/11/calcium_plus_vi.html

Some 35,000 men who participated in a major prostate cancer prevention trial are in the process of getting this disheartening—yet not entirely surprising—letter in the mail from the National Cancer Institute. The message: Vitamin E and selenium, long buzzed about for their supposed prostate cancer-fighting properties, have flopped. Flopped hard.

Officials announced this week that they had accumulated enough data to conclude that taking vitamin E or selenium, or even both together, does not prevent prostate cancer. In fact, vitamin E may even slightly increase the risk. Leaders of the trial, called the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, were also concerned to find that slightly more cases of diabetes arose among men who took selenium. And though officials emphasized to reporters that the increased number of prostate cancer and diabetes cases may have been a coincidence, they aren’t taking any chances. That’s why participants are being told to stop taking the supplements.

I can’t say that I’m shocked. As I’ve mentioned in this blog before, we have been suffering from a certain degree of “vitamania” in the past few decades. Yes, some promising observational studies, which cannot prove cause and effect, done in the late 1980s and 1990s suggested that certain antioxidants, including vitamins A, C, and E, could protect against heart disease, cancer, and other maladies. But it turns out that those original antioxidant studies were misleading, a steady stream of more recent randomized studies that do prove cause and effect have shown. (If you’re interested, New Scientist slogs through some of the disappointing findings on beta carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C.)

In most instances, the clinical trials have shown that vitamins have no effect and, in some, that they may even cause harm. Still, with the passage of a permissive 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act that allows manufacturers to sell supplements without first proving that they provide health benefits, consumers have been left with a booming supplement industry quick to offer us a slew of supplements for any and every ailment.
Source: http://www.usnews.com/blogs/on-men/2008/10/28/prostate-cancer-throws-vitamin-e-another-strike.html

Analysis of data from several phase I and II clinical trials of a new cancer vaccine has shown it is capable of eliciting an immune response in most patients with bowel, kidney and prostate cancer, and that it may provide clinical benefit.

In a news briefing at the 20th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Geneva (Thursday 23 October), Dr Richard Harrop, vice-president of clinical immunology at Oxford BioMedica, a UK-based biotechnology company – said: “Our exploratory analyses of data from nine different trials of TroVax® demonstrate significant associations between immune responses and overall survival in patients with colorectal cancer, renal cancer and prostate cancer.

“While it is essential that these observations are confirmed in large, randomised studies, collectively the data suggest that TroVax could provide some clinical benefit to cancer patients. In addition, the data show the vaccine is well tolerated by patients.”

TroVax is made up of a modified virus (Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA)), which acts as a vehicle to transport a second component, a gene that produces an antigen that is present in most solid tumours, called 5T4. TroVax is injected into patients whose solid tumours have the 5T4 tumour antigen present, so that the vaccine can trigger the body’s natural immune responses to mobilise against 5T4.

“The virus acts as both a ‘vehicle’ to deliver the 5T4 antigen and as an ‘adjuvant’, which helps to ensure we stimulate a strong immune response to the 5T4 antigen,” explained Dr Harrop. “Antibody and cellular responses can occur in response to both the viral vector (MVA) and to the 5T4 antigen.”

The analysis, presented at the symposium in Geneva, looked at data from 189 patients who had taken part in nine trials of TroVax in the UK and USA. The patients received an average of five injections (with a range of 1-12), and it was well tolerated by patients when given either on its own or in combination with other anti-cancer treatments. Of 180 patients tested for antibody responses after vaccination, 88% (159) showed positive responses to 5T4 and 98% (176) showed positive responses to MVA.

The highest levels of antibody responses were detected after an average of two vaccinations for the MVA part of the vaccine and after four for 5T4. Dr Harrop said: “This was expected because MVA is a foreign virus which the immune system responds to more quickly than to a ’self antigen’ such as 5T4.”

He continued: “When looking at the results from all the trials (colorectal, renal and prostate cancer patients), the magnitude of the 5T4-specific antibody response was associated with increased patient survival. Indeed, a doubling of the average number of antibodies in the patients between the first and third injections was associated with a reduction in the relative risk of death of 17%. This effect was strongest in colorectal cancer patients.

“Both the magnitude and the frequency of immune responses elicited against our tumour target (5T4) are exceptionally high and could be considered ‘best in class’. Since cancer vaccines rely on the induction of immune responses to be able to work, this is a very important attribute of TroVax.”

Cancer vaccines have been criticised in recent years because they usually fail to live up to their early promise. Apart from the vaccines against cervical cancer and Oncophage™ (vitespen, approved in Russia for the treatment of kidney cancer), there are no other licensed cancer vaccines. Dr Harrop said there were a number of reasons for this, which included the tools used to assess efficacy, the fact that vaccines on their own are more likely to slow disease progression or clear small tumours rather than cause large reductions in tumour burdens, and the fact that they are probably more likely to work in patients with early stage disease but have to be tested in patients with late stage cancer and large tumour burdens.

“To run a trial in patients with early-stage disease is extremely time-consuming and costly and therefore impossible for most small biotech companies. We are fortunate in this matter in that we have backing from a UK consortium (QUASAR) and our partner sanofi-aventis to run a large (over 3000 patients) phase III study in early stage colon cancer patients. Such a large study would normally be out of the question for a company of our size and is a great opportunity to investigate whether there is a survival advantage in patients treated with TroVax,” he said.

“At this stage we can say that the fact we have been able to identify correlations between the anti-tumour (5T4) immune response and clinical benefit (e.g. increased time to disease progression or increased patient survival) in multiple independent trials for several cancers is very encouraging. It gives a strong indication that the immune response we are inducing with TroVax appears to be doing something which is associated with benefit to the patient.”

In addition to the phase III trial in early stage colon cancer patients, the effect of TroVax is being monitored in a current phase III trial of 733 kidney cancer patients. Although a review by the independent Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) in July noted that this study would not meet its pre-defined primary endpoint (overall survival) the DSMB supported continuation of follow-up of the patients.

“We are very hopeful that the ongoing phase III trial in kidney cancer and two planned studies in metastatic colorectal and early stage colon cancer respectively will provide an opportunity to demonstrate that TroVax can provide clinical benefit to patients without the often severe side-effects which are associated with many cancer therapeutics,” concluded Dr Harrop.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081023195220.htm

Just three tumour proteins can indicate lung cancer as much as a year before symptoms emerge, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a finding that may lead to a blood test for lung cancer within five years.

They said an analysis of blood samples taken from smokers found three proteins or antigens were present in more than half of the people who later developed lung cancer.

“The fact that we got a signal like this with just three biomarkers is very significant,” Dr. Samir Hanash of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said in a statement.
“If we can enlarge this panel by adding a few more, we could develop a blood test with sufficient sensitivity and specificity for detecting lung cancer much earlier than current screening methods allow,” said Hanash, whose research appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The lung cancer test uses immune-system signals in the same way as blood tests now used to detect human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, which causes AIDS. It looks for an immune response.

“What is going on in cancer is the immune system recognizes the presence of tumour antigens as foreign proteins, even though they are made by cancer cells we have in us,” Hanash said in a telephone interview.

“The immune system thinks those are aberrant proteins and it needs to respond against them.”

Hanash wanted to see if three biomarkers linked with early-stage lung cancer could be detected in the blood of people before any symptoms appeared.

The researchers were looking for two previously identified tumour antigens, annexin1 and 14-3-3 theta, as well as a newly discovered lung cancer antigen, LAMR1.

They tested blood samples from

85 current or former smokers collected within a year of lung-cancer diagnosis and samples from 85 current or former smokers who did not develop cancer.

They found three proteins were present in 51 per cent of the people who went on to develop lung cancer.

“This was a critical step to pass to show that, in fact, a set of antigens do show positivity even before a diagnosis of lung cancer, at a time when subjects don’t have any symptoms,” Hanash said.

The next step is to see if the blood test used in conjunction with computed tomography, or CT scans, can boost early diagnosis of lung cancer, perhaps catching cancers the scan missed.

Eventually, the team wants to have a lung cancer blood test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“That will take maybe five years if every step of the way we are successful,” he said.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in men and the second-leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide, according to the American Cancer Society.
Source: http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/reallife/story.html?id=3449a6b8-95a7-426f-8bc5-7379ddbe85f5

An experimental breast cancer vaccine makes mice reject tumors — even cancers no longer sensitive to Herceptin.

The vaccine targets breast cancers that grow wildly in response to a growth factor called HER-2. About 25% of women with breast cancer have HER-2 positive tumors.

Herceptin, a man-made antibody approved for the treatment of breast cancer, targets these cancers. But after a while, tumor cells often become resistant to Herceptin.

The new vaccine elicits immune responses that kill HER-2 positive breast tumors in mice, whether or not they’ve become Herceptin resistant, says Wei-Zen Wei, PhD, professor of immunology at Detroit’s Karmanos Cancer Institute.

“Regardless of whether tumor cells are resistant, if immune cells are properly primed by immunization we can destroy these cells,” Wei tells WebMD.

The vaccine developed by Wei’s team uses DNA that carries the genetic code for a key piece of the HER-2 molecule. After injection of the DNA into the skin, a small electric pulse is administered to help cells take up the DNA and produce the protein that elicits immune responses.

Mice given the vaccine made anti-HER-2 antibodies. The vaccine also primed cellular immune responses that attacked breast cancer tumors. These cellular responses alone were enough to kill HER-2 positive cells in mice unable to make antibodies.

A version of the vaccine is now undergoing human safety tests.

Last April, a different HER-2 vaccine made headlines when it halved the number of deaths in women with HER-2 positive breast cancer. The vaccine also slowed breast cancer recurrence.

However, researchers at San Antonio’s Brooke Army Medical Center found that 26 months after vaccination, there was no significant difference in cancer recurrence between vaccinated and unvaccinated women.

Gary Yang, MD, associate professor of radiation medicine at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., says these human studies are a major step forward.

“These studies accomplished a lot — but we need to find out why the immune system cannot sustain this efficacy,” Yang tells WebMD.

Yang says that is why Wei’s team’s work is so important. What’s learned in the lab must be tested in patients — and then more lab work is needed to answer questions raised by human studies.

“The clinical research into breast cancer vaccines is not going to be a home run,” he says.

Wei is convinced that in the long run, vaccines will prove to be powerful cancer treatments.

“Ultimately, we will be using the best defense we have to fight cancer — the human immune system,” she says. “It is a very challenging thing to do. We hope we have reached a point where we can make it useful to patients.”
Source: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20080915/new-vaccine-fights-breast-cancer-tumors

A National Institute of Cancer study shows the number of melanoma cases among young women is up by 50 percent since 1980.

Local dermatologists think part of the reason is behavioral.

62,000 people develop melanoma every year, while 8,000 die annually. That breaks down to just about one person every hour.

Dr. Ramsay Farah isn’t surprised more young women are getting skin cancer. Women spend more time outside in the sun – and more time inside, under the bulbs - than men.

“No one in their right mind should think sun exposure and tanning booth exposure isn’t linked to an increase in melanoma risks,” Farah says.

Kay Merini owns Body and Sol Tanning Studio in Manlius; she admits that tanning isn’t good, but she insists doing it in a controlled environment is much better than doing it outside.

“We go through a whole question process - about coloring, [whether] they burn, have they been tanning, things like that,” Merini says.

The bulbs are changed based on how many hours they have on them. They warn customers and take that into account when determining how long you can tan.

The goal is to get the best tan possible, with the least amount of exposure. Dermatologists don’t buy it. Dr. Farah says even if it’s controlled, 10 minutes a day outside in indirect sun is all you need.

The study also found an increasing trend for thicker and later-stage melanomas, which suggests the increase is not the result of better reporting of the disease.
Source: http://www.9wsyr.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=af302ed7-623a-40e1-b945-fa464affc091