A day after announcing his battle with cancer, former All Back Wayne "Buck" Shelford has been named the "face" of a footwear brand.
Shelford will be the frontman for John Bull footwear, which sells work boots in New Zealand and Australia.
Yesterday he revealed he was undergoing treatment for lymphoma, a cancer which affects white blood cells.
Shelford said it was a "lower-grade cancer" and there wasn't much of a story in it.
John Bull marketing manager Phillip Dewis said the former All Black's toughness and resilience made him a an apt representative of the company's boots.
Shelford's powers of endurance were witnessed in a 1986 match against France, Mr Dewis said.
"During a bloody game, Buck received a torn scrotum whilst in a scrum. This alone would leave most men screaming in agony and heading for the nearest hospital, yet Buck calmly instructed the physio to stitch him up, and he played on."
Shelford said he was happy to work with John Bull because the company did a lot of good work in the community.
source : news.yahoo.com
Monday, June 25, 2007
Cancer victim Shelford to front advertising campaign
Former All Blacks rugby hardman Shelford battles cancer
Former All Blacks captain Wayne "Buck" Shelford, one of international rugby's iconic hardmen, is battling cancer, his wife told the Sunday Star-Times newspaper.
"We found out a month ago and he has five more months of treatment," Jo Shelford said. "We are very positive and pleased with how the treatment is going."
The famous backrower No. 8 is being treated for lymphoma, a cancer affecting white blood cells.
Shelford, 49, captained the All Blacks from 1987 to 1990 during a golden era when they never lost a game.
His reputation as a fearless, uncomprising player was born from his second international in 1986 when in a Test against France his scrotum was torn open, leaving one testicle hanging out.
He calmly told the team physio to stitch the wound and carried on playing.
"I was knocked out cold, lost a few teeth and had a few stitches down below," he later recalled of that game.
"It's a game I still can't remember -- I have no memory of it whatsoever."
The All Blacks lost the match 16-3, the only time Shelford was on the losing side during his distinguished 22-Test career.
When he was dropped from the All Blacks in 1990 there was a national "Bring Back Buck" campaign, which was ignored by the New Zealand selectors, and he moved to England where he coached successfully for several seasons.
source : news.yahoo.com
New cancer research centre for Sydney
A $100 million cancer research centre to be built at Sydney University is already being credited with luring leading scientists home to undertake crucial research.
The centre, an Australian first to establish facilities for research and clinical drugs trials into both adult and children's cancers, was announced by University of New South Wales Vice-Chancellor Fred Hilmer.
The Lowy Cancer Research Centre, which will house up to 400 cancer researchers, will be located adjacent to UNSW's Faculty of Medicine at its Randwick campus, in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
Westfield founder Frank Lowy and his family have donated $10 million toward the facility - the largest single philanthropic donation ever received by the university.
Top grants have come from the NSW government, $18.3 million, and from the federal government - $13.3 million.
Professor Philip Hogg, director of the UNSW Cancer Research Centre, will head adult cancer research at the Lowy centre and will be able to bring back the British trial of a new cancer drug his team developed.
Development of a drug known as glutathionarsenoxide (or GSAO) was completed in 2003 but Prof Hogg was unable to get funding for early trials.
The drug aims to stop cancer tumours from developing blood vessels to continue their growth after initial cell development.
Clinical trials are about to begin at the Cancer Research UK, a non-profit cancer foundation.
Trials of a second generation of the drug would also have had to be shipped overseas but the creation of the Lowy Centre has attracted the people and the $2 million to trial the drug at the one location in Sydney.
"What the facility does is it enables us to take our research efforts to the next level," Prof Hogg said.
He said both an Australian cancer researcher now at Cambridge University and one at Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, will return to work at the Lowy Centre.
"It provides a beacon if you like for other great cancer researchers and gives them a reason to come here and work in Sydney."
Another prominent clinician, oncologist Robyn Ward, recently joined the UNSW team as a professor of medicine, a move which helped Prof Hogg win further funding for the second drug trial.
He said drug companies back 99 per cent of advanced drug trials but only after initial trials show promise for a new drug.
"The combination of the two of us was good enough to get funding outside of the drug-company-sphere to do the trial," Prof Hogg said.
"The trial on this second drug is a good example of how that sort of initiative will allow things to happen that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise."
The Lowy Centre also will house the Children's Cancer Institute of Australia, which was looking to expand into a now home.
It will be the first time adult and children's cancer research will be located at the same facility, Prof Hogg said.
Since cancer in children and cancer in adults develop for inherently different reasons, there has never previously been one centre to house research for both.
But Prof Hogg said that by combining them, and with clinical trials, the Lowy Centre would continue to attract top researchers and trial funding.
"It's more than just a building," he added.
The Lowy Centre is due to be completed by late 2009.
source : news.yahoo.com
New Cancer Drugs Prove Their Worth
New cancer drugs often save lives, but are they cost-effective?
Two new analyses of two new breast cancer drugs found that they are indeed worth what you pay for them.
The aromatase inhibitor Aromasin (exemestane) and the monoclonal antibody Herceptin (trastuzumab) have already been proven in clinical trials to improve survival.
As new breast cancer drugs exit the pipeline and enter the market, the U.S. health-care system, including the insurance companies or governments paying for therapy, want to know if the drugs are economically, as well as clinically, viable. And new drugs are almost always more expensive compared to the usual standards.
"This is always important to do when you have a drug or a procedure or intervention that is expensive compared to standard care," said Nicole Mittmann, senior author of the Aromasin study, and a scientist with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Toronto. "The clinical data still drives the decision to use the medication, and this is another piece of the puzzle in the decision-making process."
Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology with Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La., said, "The clinical research trials we've done in the last 50 years have been spectacular, and we know how good or how not good our treatments are, and because of the excellent clinical research that's been done, we can then ask ourselves can we afford these treatments.
"These two studies involving Herceptin and Aromasin clearly show that doing these two maneuvers are very, very cost effective in certain subgroups of women with breast cancer. When insurance companies come to you and ask why are you doing this, you have excellent studies to back them up," he added.
A large clinical study had already shown that women with hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer who switched from tamoxifen to Aromasin after two to three years lived longer than women who took tamoxifen continuously for five years.
But aromatase inhibitors are more expensive than tamoxifen, which has been around for years. And aromatase inhibitors do have some side effects, including musculoskeletal problems such as osteoporosis and fractures.
"Tamoxifen is pretty cheap. Aromasin is newer and more expensive," Mittmann said. "Is the added cost worth the added benefit?"
Cost-effectiveness is measured in number of life years gained and is also adjusted for the quality of life gained, expressed as quality-adjusted life year (QALY).
In Canada and elsewhere, the commonly accepted threshold for a QALY is $50,000 (Canadian dollars).
In this case, the authors found that using tamoxifen and Aromasin sequentially for five years (after 2.5 years of surgery and other standard therapies) improved disease-free survival at an additional cost of $2,889 (Canadian) per patient. This translates into an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of $24,185/QALY gained, well below the $50,000 bar.
"If this is $24,000, it seems to make sense that this is good value for money," Mittmann said.
According to Mittmann, the model would be applicable to the U.S. market.
The authors of the second study estimated that women would gain three years of life, on average, by adding Herceptin to therapy.
Over a woman's lifetime, the cost-effectiveness ratio would be $26,417/QALY (U.S.), again, below the commonly accepted threshold.
The Aromasin study was funded by an unrestricted grant from Pfizer Inc., which makes the drug. The Herceptin study was funded partly by Genentech, which makes Herceptin.
The new studies are published in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Cancer.
source : news.yahoo.com
Friday, June 22, 2007
Radio Host With Cancer Bowing Out
Lowell Sun columnist and radio host Paul Sullivan announced Wednesday that his battle with cancer has prompted him to leave his daily air job.
Sullivan has announced he will leave his WBZ radio show next week for health reasons.
Sullivan has had four surgeries since he was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma three years ago.
In a letter released Wednesday morning, Sullivan said the burden has just become too much for his friends, family and colleagues.
He said he hopes to continue to contribute to the station in some capacity.
Breast Cancer Risk May Be Hidden In Small Families
A new study has found that the genetic risk for breast cancer may be hidden in small families.
Women who have mutations in the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are at an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
Only around 2 percent of breast cancers are due to mutations in these specific genes, doctors said.
In families where multiple women are diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancers, the chance that other related females have the mutations increases dramatically.
Researchers observed over 300 women who had at least one relative diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50. They found that those with small families were almost three times more likely to have the breast cancer genes compared to women with large families.
Doctors recommend women in small families who have one female relative diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age or any relative with ovarian cancer to consider genetic testing.
source : news.yahoo.com
Omega-3 fatty acids rich diet may help lower genetic prostate cancer risk
A new study by boffins at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine has found that a diet rich in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids found in certain fish or fish oil, nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils may help lower prostate cancer risk in men with a genetic predisposition to cancer.
The study was conducted on a mouse model by a team of researchers led Yong Chen.
The researchers studied the effects of such a diet on Pten-knockout mice that are predisposed to develop prostate tumours.
The authors found that a nutritionally balanced diet high in omega-3 fatty acid reduced prostate tumour growth and increased survival in these animals, whereas omega-6 fatty acids had the opposite effects.
They also found that introducing the enzyme omega-3 desaturase into the Pten-knockout mice reduces tumour growth in a manner similar to the omega-3 rich diet as it converts omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids.
The researchers went on to show that the effect of polyunsaturated fatty acids on prostate cancer development is mediated in part through cell death that is dependent on a protein known as Bad.
Together, the data highlight the importance of the interaction between genes and diet in prostate cancer and imply a beneficial effect of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on delaying the onset of human prostate cancer.
The study appears in the July print issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
source : news.yahoo.com
Novel method of drug delivery to inhibit prostate cancer cells' growth developed
A doctoral candidate in pharmacy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has developed a novel method of drug delivery to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells.
Danny Goldstein, a student who was recently conferred the Barenholz Prize for Creativity and Originality in Applied Research for his work, says that the well-known drug, paclitaxel, exhibits a wide spectrum of anti-tumour activity.
However, the therapeutic application of the drug in cancer therapy is limited due to its low water solubility, which makes it difficult to effectively deliver the drug to the points needed, he says.
These are the reasons why there arose a need for novel methods that would allow the delivery of effective concentrations of paclitaxel over extended time intervals while minimizing toxicity, adds the researcher.
Previous studies have already shown that the HER2 receptor is over-expressed in prostate cancer cells, and that an antibody called trastuzumab binds specifically to HER2. But no clinical data ever indicated that this antibody would provide any relief for prostate cancer patients.
Goldstein, a student of Prof. Simon Benita, has now shown that that attaching trastuzumab molecules to the surface of oil droplets in nano-emulsions makes possible the targeting of such droplets to cells over-expressing the HER2 receptor.
He coupled trastuzumab with emulsions containing the toxic agent paclitaxel-palmitate, and evaluated the efficiency of these emulsions in laboratory tests on cancerous prostate cells and on mice with induced prostate cancer.
He found that this emulsion compound did not cause a hypersensitive reaction upon injection, and yielded better results than known drug treatments while inhibiting tumour growth substantially.
Goldstein, however, cautions that the inhibiting activity of tumour metastases growth was not absolute, and that further research to combat metastatic prostate cancer was needed.
Prof. Benita hinted that clinical trials using the new method could begin in about two years.
source : news.yahoo.com
Diet plus exercise up survival after breast cancer
Among women who have been treated for breast cancer, those who stick to a healthy diet and are moderately active seem to live longer, results of a new study indicate. A good diet alone or exercise alone doesn't have the same benefit.
"It looks like if you get your physical activity going and get your fruits and vegetables in you can reduce your risk (of dying) significantly," study co-author Dr. John Pierce told Reuters Health.
Several studies have shown that diet and exercise may each contribute to breast cancer survival, but little research has looked at the effect of both diet and exercise together. Pierce, director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center, in La Jolla, California, and his team looked at the combined effects of diet and exercise for breast cancer survivors.
They studied 1,490 women who had been treated for breast cancer 2 years earlier, on average.
Overall, only 30 percent of these women maintained the healthiest type of lifestyle, including eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily and engaging in physical activity equivalent to a half-hour of brisk walking six days a week.
These women had a 44 percent lower risk of dying within a 10-year period than did their peers, Pierce and his team report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
What's more, this lower risk of death remained true regardless of whether the women were obese, study findings indicate. The effect of physical activity and diet was "so strong it wiped out the body mass index effect," Pierce said. However, obese women were less likely than nonobese women to report such healthy habits.
A similarly reduced risk of death was not apparent among non-physically active women who consumed the highest amounts of fruits and vegetables or among physically active women who did not eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, the investigators note.
"Doing each one alone didn't do it," Pierce said. "There was no benefit from each one alone, but there was a benefit from both together."
source : news.yahoo.com
Diet could be life or death for prostate cancer patients
Switching to a healthy diet rich in fish and nuts could be the difference between living or dying for men prone to to prostate cancer, new US research indicates.
A study published in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation found that omega-3 fatty acids found in the foods may improve the prognosis for men with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
Working with mice genetically engineered to develop prostate tumors, scientists fed some of the mice a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids from birth. These mice had fewer tumors and a longer life span than those not fed the diet. Survival was 60 percent in mice fed a high omega-3 diet, 10 percent in mice on a low omega-3 diet and zero percent in mice fed a diet high in omega-6, a different type of polyunsaturated fatty acid found in vegetable oils.
In normal mice not engineered for prostate cancer, all survived regardless of diet, according to the study funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Dietary sources of omega-3 fatty acids include cold water fish such as salmon, halibut, tuna, sardines and mackerel, and fish oil such as cod liver oil. English walnuts and flaxseeds also contain omega-3s.
"This study clearly shows that diet can tip the balance toward a good or bad outcome," said Yong Q. Chen, senior researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
"It's possible that a change in diet could mean the difference between dying from the disease and surviving with it."
Taking a recommended daily dose of omega-3s can reduce risk of cardiovascular disease and lower blood pressure slightly, previous studies have shown. High doses may have a harmful effect, such as excess bleeding, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Prostate cancer is among the leading causes of cancer death in men.
source : news.yahoo.com
Fish Oil Might Slow Prostate Cancer
A new study with mice suggests that diets high in omega-3 fatty acids from fish might help slow prostate cancer.
The comparable levels of dietary omega-3s used in the study "are much higher than the average Western diet, but they are not unachievable," said senior researcher Yong Chen, a professor of cancer biology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Omega-3 fatty acids -- especially the "long-chain" forms found in oily fish -- have become the latest nutrition superstars, with studies suggesting they can help prevent heart disease and even cancer.
The exact mechanism driving the purported anti-cancer effect is still unclear, Chen said. One leading theory contends that specific cellular enzymes metabolize omega-3s in ways that retard malignancy.
However, Chen's team is investigating a much lesser-known mechanism.
"It turns out that [long-chain] omega-3 fatty acids might modulate apoptosis -- a form of cell death," he said.
Cancer cells spread in two ways: either they proliferate uncontrollably, or they bypass natural signaling that tells them to commit suicide, or apoptosis.
"It turns out that a key molecule -- that happens to be called 'Bad' -- may be involved in this process," Chen said. His team now believes that long-chain omega-3s interact favorably with Bad to push cancer cells back into a normal apoptosis.
In their study, the researchers fed mice diets high in both omega-3 fatty acid and the less-healthy omega-6 fatty acids. These mice were genetically engineered to lack the Pten tumor suppressor gene, leaving them highly prone to prostate tumors. Dysfunctional Pten plays a key role in about one-third of human prostate cancers, so this mouse is a great model for human disease, Chen said.
As expected, mice with functioning Pten did not develop prostate cancer, the researchers said.
On the other hand, rodents whose Pten was switched off typically developed prostate tumors. However, 60 percent of these mice survived if they were fed a high omega-3 diet, compared to just 10 percent given a low omega-3 diet. None of the mice given the high omega-6 diet survived, the team noted.
There was another wrinkle to the study. In the past, it has been tough for researchers to tease out the effects of omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids, which usually occur together in foods. But Chen's team introduced another gene into the Pten-less mice. This gene caused the mice to convert omega-6 fatty acids into the omega-3 form, thereby limiting this confounding factor.
"That's really a big strength of this study; nobody had really ever done that before," Chen said.
The study is published June 21 in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
According to Chen, the study suggests that diets high in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids might give men an edge against prostate cancer.
But not everyone is convinced.
"Recent large reviews and meta-analyses tend to suggest no major effects of fish [intake] on cancer risk," said Paul Terry, assistant professor in the department of epidemiology at the Emory University School of Public Health, in Atlanta.
"The fact that they [the Wake Forest researchers] identified and addressed another potential mechanism in their study is certainly helpful," he added. However, he said, "how this mechanism relates to the many others identified and shown in studies to be possibly important remains unclear."
Terry said rodent studies can only tell scientists so much, and "clinical trials in humans of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and tumor characteristics, for example, are relatively scarce. This study, and others, provides some more rationale for conducting such trials."
For his part, Chen said it's important that consumers realize that not all omega-3s are created equal in terms of their potential health benefits.
"In this study, we are only referring to the long-chain form" found in oily fish, such as mackerel, herring, albacore tuna and salmon, he said. Other, shorter-chain varieties can be found in flaxseed and plant sources, but their impact, if any, on cancer is even less clear.
"We are doing a type of study right now to see whether there is any difference," Chen said.
source : news.yahoo.com
Greek Orthodox church leader has cancer
The leader of Greece's influential Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, has cancer in his large intestine and liver, doctors said Thursday.
Christodoulos, who has helped thaw centuries of tension with the Vatican but is often accused of meddling in domestic politics, has been hospitalized since June 9, and has already undergone intestinal surgery.
The two cancers were not directly related and had not spread from one site to the other, said the head surgeon at the state-run Aretaion hospital, Dionysis Vorros.
Hospital doctors described the church leader's condition as treatable, saying he would remain in intensive care for at least three more days and likely be allowed to return home next week.
The 68-year-old Orthodox leader's illness has led to an outpouring of sympathy in a country where 97 percent of the population is baptized Orthodox Christian. Even officials who have criticized him for meddling in state affairs have visited him in the hospital.
Elected Church leader in 1998, Christodoulos received the late Pope John Paul II in 2001 in the first visit by a pontiff to the Orthodox country in nearly 1,300 years.
Christodoulos followed up last year with a historic visit to the Vatican, where he met Pope Benedict XVI.
source : news.yahoo.com
Morning sickness tied to lower breast cancer risk
If there's any good news about morning sickness, this may be it. Women who experience nausea and vomiting during pregnancy may have a lower risk of breast cancer later in life, according to new research.
Dr. Jo Freudenheim from the University at Buffalo in New York reported the finding this week in Boston, at the annual meeting of the Society for Epidemiologic Research.
Freudenheim and her colleagues interviewed 1001 women with recently diagnosed breast cancer, ages 35 to 79, and 1917 "control" subjects matched to the case patients by age, race and county of residence.
Several pregnancy-related factors -- pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and weight gain -- were evaluated, but had no significant effect on future incidence of breast cancer.
In contrast, pregnancy-associated nausea and vomiting was associated with about a 30 percent lower risk of breast cancer. Greater severity and longer duration of the symptoms reduced the risk even further.
Freudenheim cautioned, however, that this is an epidemiologic study, so the findings should not be "over-interpreted." Confirmation of their findings, she added, will require replication in other populations.
source : news.yahoo.com
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Shrinks to treat cancer patients now
Psycho-oncology is a new concept in India, but it is fast being recognised as an essential tool in the care and treatment of cancer patients.
Jayshree was detected with breast cancer five years ago, and that day onwards her life came to a complete standstill.
But now Jayshree is leading a healthy and normal life. So how did this come about?
Says Jayshree, “Psycho-oncology is a must for oncology patients. Definitely doctors have a major role to play but they are curing my body. What about my mental status?"
Jayshree was lucky to have met leading psycho-oncologist Dr Brindha Sitaram who helped her and her family deal with the tremendous psychological, emotional and social distress that cancer brings to patients and their families alike.
"We have found in our clinical experience that it motivates patients, dropout rates become lower, people tolerate treatment better and quality of life is far better. At any given point of time we have 15 lakh cancer patients in this country. Unfortunately we have no data to talk about, the magnitude of the psychological distress of the patients that they go through,” says Dr Sitaram who is also founder-director of Centre of Psycho-Oncology for Education and Research (COPER).
A growing necessity for an institute that provides qualified psycho-oncologists, prompted her to start COPER. And setting up the institute though was anything but easy.
Says Dr Sitaram, “There was a lot of resistance in the beginning because they thought that going to a psycho-oncologist is like saying they have gone crazy but slowly things are opening up. But what we need to clarify is that these patients don't go through psychiatric problems. These are psychological problems that you and I could have.”
So psycho-oncology helps cancer patients and their families look at the human face of cancer while fighting the disease.
source : news.yahoo.com
New Procedure Detects Oral Cancer
The next trip to your dentist could save your life. That's because many local dentists have a new screening test that can detect oral cancer in its early stages. The test is called ViziLite.
The patient rinses with a special mouthwash for one minute to dehydrate potential cancer cells. The doctor then uses a special light to inspect the entire mouth.
Any suspicious tissue will glow in the dark.
Dr. Phil Golden has already done close to 200 of the screenings and sent at least four patients to have biopsies.
He said the test is extremely accurate.
"They have a negative predictive value of 99.1 percent, which means there's less than 1 percent chance of this screening missing oral cancer," Golden told WXII 12's Margaret Johnson.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 34,000 new cases of oral cancer will be diagnosed this year. It said about 7,500 of those patients will die.
Golden said the new screening could help reduce those numbers. He recommends it for anyone over 18.
source : news.yahoo.com
Study Probes Whether Diet Can Cut Colon Cancer Risk
A study to examine whether a Mediterranean diet can help prevent colon cancer is being conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Over three years, the researchers hope to recruit 120 people, age 21 or older, who've had colon polyps or colon cancer or have a family history of the disease. Participants will follow either a Mediterranean diet or the Healthy People 2010 diet for six months. They'll be able to choose foods they prefer from recommended food groups lists, and a dietitian will work closely with each participant by telephone.
Along with its emphasis on vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, olive oil and nuts, the Mediterranean diet limits high fat meats and processed foods. The Healthy People 2010 diet -- from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- emphasizes fruits, vegetables and whole grains, along with moderate fat intake and limits on saturated fat.
"Overall eating patterns appear to be more important for cancer prevention than intakes of specific nutrients or food groups. We hope this study will give us an indication of the benefits that a person's diet can have on health, especially in terms of reducing the risk of colon cancer," Zora Djuric, research professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and principal investigator on the Healthy Eating for Colon Cancer Prevention study, said in a prepared statement.
A recently completed study of 70 women, ages 25 to 65, found that those who ate a Mediterranean diet decreased the amount of unhealthy polyunsaturated fat they consumed by 50 percent and increased their intake of healthy monounsaturated fats by the same amount.
The women on the Mediterranean diet also ate nearly double the amount of fruits and vegetables as women who ate a normal diet and had twice the blood levels of antioxidant micronutrients called carotenoids.
source : news.yahoo.com
Girls could be vaccinated against cervical cancer in Britain
The British government took a step Wednesday toward offering vaccinations against cervical cancer for girls as young as 12, a measure that could be carried out by late next year.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recommended the use of vaccines to guard against the human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection which causes most cases of cervical cancer.
The Department of Health said it had agreed "in principle" to accept the body's advice, but would wait for an independent review of the costs to the National Health Service.
Cervical cancer kills more than 1,000 women in Britain annually.
The vaccinations would be offered to girls throughout Britain, but would not be compulsory.
Currently, there are two vaccines -- Gardasil made by Merck and Sanofi Pasteur and Cervarix made by GlaxoSmithKline -- which are designed to be used in an immunisation programme.
Gardasil was introduced to Britain last year.
The government has not approved it for use on the National Health Service, although Britain's Press Association news agency said it has been approved in dozens of other countries, including the United States, Canada and Australia.
Cervarix is expected to receive its European Union licence later this year.
Public Health Minister Caroline Flint said: "It is great news that vaccines have been developed that protect women against this form of cancer and I am delighted to announce that we intend, in principle, to introduce a HPV vaccine into the national immunisation programme."
"A significant amount of planning is required before we can introduce the immunisation into our programme," she said.
"We are still working on the details and logistics, and will work closely with the NHS to ensure the vaccination can be delivered effectively. However, we are hoping that girls will start being vaccinated from as early as 2008."
The department said smear testing would continue after the vaccine is introduced.
source : news.yahoo.com
Breast cancer genes can come from father
A deadly gene's path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from Dad.
A new study suggests thousands of young women with breast cancer — an estimated 8,000 a year in the U.S. — aren't offered testing to identify faulty genes and clarify their medical decisions.
Guidelines used by insurance companies to decide coverage for genetic testing should change to reflect the findings, said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel of City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. Testing can cost more than $3,000.
"Interestingly, it's about Dad," Weitzel said. Half of genetic breast cancers are inherited from a woman's father, not her mother. But unless Dad has female relatives with breast cancer, the faulty gene may have been passed down silently, without causing cancer. (Men can get genetic breast cancer, too, but it's not common.)
Weitzel said doctors often overlook the genetic risk from the father's side of the family.
The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the genetic test results from 306 women diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50.
None of the cancer patients in the study had a family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
Among the women with plenty of female relatives, about 5 percent had BRCA gene mutations. But among those with few sisters and aunts older than 45 (when breast cancer would be likely to appear), almost 14 percent had mutations of the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. That suggests that these cancer patients were unaware of their genetic mutations because there were so few women in the family to signal a cancer risk.
The researchers defined few female relatives as fewer than two on either the father's or mother's side of the family.
Women who were adopted and don't know their family medical history should be aware of the findings, Weitzel said. Women whose female relatives died young before breast cancer had time to show up also are affected.
When such a woman gets breast cancer before age 50, she should get a genetic test, said Dr. Noah Kauff, a cancer geneticist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. That would help her decide whether to have the unaffected breast or her ovaries removed to prevent more cancer. Kauff was not involved in the research, but wrote an accompanying editorial.
"The study allows physicians and patients to make an argument to insurance carriers that, although there's not a family history of breast cancer, it's still reasonable to test and it should be a covered benefit," Kauff said.
Genetic testing helps a woman choose her next medical steps. A woman with breast cancer who has a BRCA gene mutation has a four times greater risk of developing cancer in the other breast and a 10 times greater risk of ovarian cancer than does a woman with breast cancer who has no BRCA gene mutation.
Some women with a family history of breast cancer choose to have a BRCA genetic test so they can decide whether to reduce their cancer risk by removing their ovaries and breasts before any cancer appears. Drug therapy and monitoring with annual MRI tests offer alternatives.
Testing the genes of more women would cost more money, but Weitzel said that won't add significantly to health care costs and will prevent cancer in some of the women.
The study also showed that three commonly used predictive models don't accurately estimate the genetic breast cancer risk for women without a family history of cancer. The American Cancer Society recently based its recommendation for annual MRIs on risk assessments from the predictive models.
source : news.yahoo.com
Radio Host With Cancer Bowing Out
Lowell Sun columnist and radio host Paul Sullivan announced Wednesday that his battle with cancer has prompted him to leave his daily air job.
Sullivan has announced he will leave his WBZ radio show next week for health reasons.
Sullivan has had four surgeries since he was diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma three years ago.
In a letter released Wednesday morning, Sullivan said the burden has just become too much for his friends, family and colleagues.
He said he hopes to continue to contribute to the station in some capacity.
source : news.yahoo.com
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
'Fish on a chip' technology may speed cancer diagnosis
A faster, cheaper cancer diagnosis technology called a "fish on a chip" has been developed in Alberta.
The diagnostic chip miniaturizes and automates testing for chromosome mutations from many types of cancer, shortening the wait for diagnosis.
The FISH technology, short for fluorescent in situ hybridization, attaches coloured dyes to detect mutations such as breaks and reattachments in chromosomes.
The test maps the DNA in a blood or bone marrow sample to tell doctors what type of cancer they're dealing with, and provides information on how to treat it.
Patients don't have to suffer therapies that won't do them any good, and they don't have to endure the side-effects, said Linda Pilarski, an oncology professor at the University of Alberta who holds a Canada Research Chair in biomedical nanotechnology.
The new test could cost as little as $10, one-tenth the cost of conventional diagnostic tests, the researchers said.
While conventional tests take several days and highly skilled technologists, the fish on a chip version can be done in less than a day, including in rural areas where people would not have to travel to major centres to access it, Pilarski said.
Researchers have tested the technology on hundreds of cancer patients, including cancer survivor Willie Gruber. When Gruber's doctor suspected cancer during a physical exam, it took two weeks before he got the results.
"When you go in and you are told you may have cancer, you then have this several weeks of waiting," Gruber recalled of the stressful time. "It turns your life upside down, it puts things on hold."
The test needs to undergo more trials and gain approval from Health Canada before it could be rolled out in five years at the earliest.
For now, it is used as part of research and clinical trials, Pilarski said.
The research will be published this month in the journal Nanobiotechnology, and will be presented at the 11th International Myeloma Workshop, a medical conference being held in Greece at the end of June.
source : news.yahoo.com
GW says Canada backs cannabis drug for cancer pain
A pioneering cannabis-based drug will be considered by Canadian regulators for approval as a treatment for cancer pain, its British developer GW Pharmaceuticals Plc said on Tuesday.
The drug called Sativex is an under-the-tongue spray which is already on sale in Canada as a treatment for pain in multiple sclerosis, but GW sees another promising market for the drug as a means of controlling pain associated with cancer.
GW said it is required to accept conditions from Health Canada within 30 days, after which the regulator would finalize its marketing authorization within another 30-day period. The drug is being marketed in Canada by Bayer AG.
Investec analyst Ibrahim Mahmood said he did not expect Canadian approval of Sativex for cancer pain to generate significant sales, but it served as a promising signal for approvals in larger markets.
He reiterated his "buy" recommendation on GW stock with a target price of 244 pence, more than 160 percent above current levels. GW shares rose as much as 5 percent to 92-1/2 pence, valuing the firm at 108.7 million pounds ($215.8 million).
"The evidence continues to mount inexorably across the board both clinically and commercially in support of Sativex," Mahmood said in a note.
GW also announced a net loss of 6.7 million pounds ($13.3 million) for the six months to March 31 after a loss of 6.9 million last year. The company said it had a net cash inflow of 2 million pounds during the half year.
source : news.yahoo.com
Now, FISH on a chip for quicker, cost-effective cancer diagnosis
Canadian researchers have for the first time miniaturised an important diagnostic test for cancer, and automated it onto a microfluidic chip.
The new technology, developed by University of Alberta researchers in Edmonton, opens up the possibility of better, faster cancer treatment and greater accessibility to fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH), a complex test that detects mutations in chromosomes for a number of different types of cancer.
It is based on a microfluidic chip the size of a microscope slide, developed by Chris Backhouse, professor of electrical engineering, and cancer scientist Dr. Linda Pilarski, that can perform FISH on a handheld diagnostic device.
The researchers claim that the new system will allow FISH to be performed within a day for a fraction of the cost of current analysis methods, which take days conduct the test.
The rapid detection of chromosomal mutations with the help of new technology, say researchers, will significantly increase a doctor's ability to tailor treatment strategies to target individual cancers.
"The ability to design 'personalized' therapies means that patients will be able to receive more effective treatments sooner and avoid exposure to side effects from treatments that will not help them," Pilarski said.
"This is representative of how miniaturization can make our health care more accessible while creating new economic opportunities here in Alberta," Backhouse added.
The new technology has been hailed by the scientist fraternity.
"The work of Dr. Pilarski and her associates will have great impact, and quite quickly - on the diagnosis of patients with a broad spectrum of diseases," said Dr. Roderick McInnes, Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Genetics.
The work is being published this month in IET Nanobiotechnology, and it will be presented at the 11th International Myeloma Workshop, a medical conference being held in Greece from June 25 to 30.
source : news.yahoo.com
New breast cancer treatment combines radiation, surgery in 1-step
Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) breast cancer specialists are using a new way to treat patients by delivering a one-time dose of radiation during surgery.
The procedure, called intraoperative radiation therapy, takes less than an hour and eliminates the need for further radiation treatments.
It marked the first time the portable intrabeam radiotherapy machine that makes this procedure possible has been used in Canada. The PMH team has since treated two more patients.
"The potential benefits to patients are huge," says lead surgeon Dr. David McCready, who also heads the PMH Breast Cancer Program.
"Treating the specific area of cancer with this kind of precision protects the skin, heart and lungs from unnecessary radiation, minimizes side effects, and saves the patient a lot of time."
Using a probe attached to the portable intrabeam radiotherapy machine, a single, concentrated dose is inserted directly into the affected area inside the breast during surgery.
Dr. McCready said the one-time dose is "biologically equivalent" to conventional radiation treatments for breast cancer that typically require, on average, a minimum of 16 treatments over three weeks.
"This procedure is helping us understand more about the biology of how breast tissue responds to treatment. That knowledge, in turn, will help us further customize and select the best treatment options for individuals with early breast cancer," Dr. Anthony Fyles, the radiation oncologist who leads the Breast Radiation Oncology Program and treated the first patient in the operating room that day, said.
source : news.yahoo.com
Women with few older female relatives face cancer threat
Women with few older female relatives may be unaware they carry a genetic risk of breast cancer, US researchers reported in a study that casts doubt on current genetic testing guidelines.
Genetic risk models for breast cancer underestimated a deadly gene mutation in women with fewer than two female relatives who lived to be older than age 45 on both sides of the family, according to researchers in California.
Both sides of the family are important because genetic breast cancer can be inherited from the father's lineage as well as the mother's, according to the study by the City of Hope cancer center published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
If the father has few or no sisters or aunts, the risk can go undetected.
Mutation of the tumor-suppressing BRCA gene boosts a woman's risk of breast cancer by 50 percent to 85 percent.
Identifying women with this mutation who have already had breast cancer is important because their risk of recurrence is as high as 40 percent within 10 years without aggressive treatments.
The study included 306 women who had breast cancer before age 50 and no first- or second-degree relatives with breast or ovarian cancers.
In about half of those cases -- 153 women -- there were few older females in the family. The BRCA gene mutations were detected in 13.7 percent of those with few older female relatives compared to 5.2 percent among women with plenty of female relatives.
source : news.yahoo.com
Experts Offer Better Means of Gauging Breast Cancer Risk
Current methods of gauging a woman's breast cancer risk that rely on her family history may often underestimate the danger, a new study suggests.
These risk models help determine if a woman might carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations that would predispose her to the disease, the research team explained. If her family history suggests she might carry such a gene, she might be offered a test to screen for the mutations.
But the new study, published in the June 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that there may be a better way to refine the risk model so those predictions are more accurate.
"In some circumstances, we have to qualify what family history can tell us," explained lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel, director of the department of clinical cancer genetics at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. He pointed out that family history data isn't always available to women, and "if there's no family, then you can't have a family history, if you don't have older women in either lineage."
"We're trying to predict which women should get tested [for a genetic predisposition]. The test is expensive, and not every woman can get it," added Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. However, "with smaller families today, many times you don't have that extensive family tree that you can reconstruct," said Brooks, who was not involved in the study.
The implications could be lifesaving for many women. Mutations in BRCA 1 and BRCA 2, especially, can greatly increase a woman's risk of developing both breast and ovarian cancer.
"It's now medically necessary that access to care should be broader, and more people should be able to take advantage of [gene screening], because it may make a big difference in outcome," Weitzel said. "Failure to recognize that a woman happens to be a BRCA carrier and do appropriate prevention procedures could cost a woman her life."
Although BRCA mutations are relatively rare (affecting only about 5 percent of the population), those with the misfortune to carry them have a 50 percent to 85 percent greater chance of developing breast cancer and a 16 percent to 50 percent higher risk of developing ovarian cancer.
Women with breast cancer who have a BRCA mutation also have a higher risk of developing another breast cancer or ovarian cancer. A mastectomy or oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) can significantly reduce that risk.
Most of the methods available to estimate how likely a person is to carry the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 defects were developed using data from large families. They incorporate information on family history, age at diagnosis and ethnic ancestry.
It is these models that are most often used by insurance companies when deciding whether or not to pay for the gene test.
But the fact that a woman's father might have passed on the mutation is often not taken into account, Weitzel noted. "Half of all heredity for breast cancer comes from dad," he said. "Most clinicians don't realize that BRCA can be inherited through dad."
Then there are women with early-onset breast cancer but no history of breast or ovarian cancer, or patients with less than two female relatives surviving beyond age 45 on each side of their family. The model does little to help them, experts say.
In their study, Weitzel's team combed through information on more than 1,500 women cared for at high-risk breast cancer clinics in the United States.
They concluded that women under 50 with breast cancer and a limited family structure -- less than two females age 45 or older on either side of the family -- were almost three times more likely to be BRCA carriers than women with adequate family structure.
BRCA gene mutations were found in 13.7 percent of women with limited family structure compared with 5.2 percent of those with adequate family structure.
Weitzel now believes that "family history is not a good tool. We shouldn't discriminate against women [who have limited family structure]. What if she's adopted? We lost whole generations to the Holocaust. Why should we deny them access to testing?"
In women with little family history to rely on, age may end up being a deciding factor in assessing BRCA-linked breast cancer risk.
Women under 40 who have breast cancer are usually tested for the BRCA mutations, but women in the next decade of life probably should be as well, the researchers said.
"Most crucial is the 40-to-50 age range," Weitzel said.
"Younger women who have breast cancer, especially those below 50, really should raise a red flag about genetic testing," Brooks added. "Age is a very, very powerful thing. The average age for developing [breast cancer] is 60. If you're developing disease 10 years before you're expecting to, that should raise a red flag."
"You're trying to predict who deserves the test," he continued. "With small family numbers, we may be underestimating who needs to be tested."
source : news.yahoo.com
Breast cancer genes can come from father
A deadly gene's path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from Dad.
A new study suggests thousands of young women with breast cancer — an estimated 8,000 a year in the U.S. — aren't offered testing to identify faulty genes and clarify their medical decisions.
Guidelines used by insurance companies to decide coverage for genetic testing should change to reflect the findings, said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel of City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. Testing can cost more than $3,000.
"Interestingly, it's about Dad," Weitzel said. Half of genetic breast cancers are inherited from a woman's father, not her mother. But unless Dad has female relatives with breast cancer, the faulty gene may have been passed down silently, without causing cancer. (Men can get genetic breast cancer, too, but it's not common.)
Weitzel said doctors often overlook the genetic risk from the father's side of the family.
The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the genetic test results from 306 women diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50.
None of the cancer patients in the study had a family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
Among the women with plenty of female relatives, about 5 percent had BRCA gene mutations. But among those with few sisters and aunts older than 45 (when breast cancer would be likely to appear), almost 14 percent had mutations of the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. That suggests that these cancer patients were unaware of their genetic mutations because there were so few women in the family to signal a cancer risk.
The researchers defined few female relatives as fewer than two on either the father's or mother's side of the family.
Women who were adopted and don't know their family medical history should be aware of the findings, Weitzel said. Women whose female relatives died young before breast cancer had time to show up also are affected.
When such a woman gets breast cancer before age 50, she should get a genetic test, said Dr. Noah Kauff, a cancer geneticist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. That would help her decide whether to have the unaffected breast or her ovaries removed to prevent more cancer. Kauff was not involved in the research, but wrote an accompanying editorial.
"The study allows physicians and patients to make an argument to insurance carriers that, although there's not a family history of breast cancer, it's still reasonable to test and it should be a covered benefit," Kauff said.
Genetic testing helps a woman choose her next medical steps. A woman with breast cancer who has a BRCA gene mutation has a four times greater risk of developing cancer in the other breast and a 10 times greater risk of ovarian cancer than does a woman with breast cancer who has no BRCA gene mutation.
Some women with a family history of breast cancer choose to have a BRCA genetic test so they can decide whether to reduce their cancer risk by removing their ovaries and breasts before any cancer appears. Drug therapy and monitoring with annual MRI tests offer alternatives.
Testing the genes of more women would cost more money, but Weitzel said that won't add significantly to health care costs and will prevent cancer in some of the women.
The study also showed that three commonly used predictive models don't accurately estimate the genetic breast cancer risk for women without a family history of cancer. The American Cancer Society recently based its recommendation for annual MRIs on risk assessments from the predictive models.
source : news.yahoo.com
Breast cancer risk models flawed, study shows
Tools used to predict whether a woman's breast cancer is inherited do not account for smaller families and may leave some women in the dark about their risk for future cancers, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
"You've got to have family to have a family history of breast cancer," said Dr. Jeffrey Weitzel of the City of Hope cancer center in Duarte, California.
Weitzel said women with breast cancer are often asked if they have a family history of the disease, information that is used to decide whether they should get genetic tests to see if their cancer is inherited.
"Most of the models used to determine who might get genetic testing were based on large families and families where there were multiple cases," he said.
"But what about those women who were younger than expected when they got their cancer but who don't have a family history of cancer," asked Weitzel, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
While only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer cases are inherited, women with mutations of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have a much higher risk of developing another breast cancer or ovarian cancer.
And many insurance companies use these risk assessment tools to decide whether to pay for genetic tests, which cost roughly $3,000 for most women, Weitzel said.
GREATER RISK
"If a woman has limited-stage breast cancer, she's got a pretty good chance of long-term disease-free survival," Weitzel said in a telephone interview.
"However, if she carries a BRCA gene mutation, her chance of having another breast cancer is nearly 50 percent in her lifetime. It's at least 30 to 40 percent in the next 10 years after her first diagnosis. That is a big deal," he said.
To see whether risk assessment tools were underestimating the risk of some patients, Weitzel and colleagues, between 1997 and 2007, evaluated 306 women who had breast cancer before age 50.
Women with fewer than two close female relatives on either parent's side who lived past the age of 45 were considered to have a limited family structure. About half of patients fell into this group.
The study found that participants with less family information to draw from actually had a higher risk of having the BRCA gene mutation than those with larger families.
BRCA gene mutations were found in 13.7 percent of participants with limited family structure, compared with 5.2 percent with adequate family structure.
Weitzel said the findings challenge the accuracy of the probability models used to determine the need for genetic tests.
The result is important because many women with the BRCA gene mutations are followed more closely and treated more aggressively, including with drugs to prevent cancer and surgery to remove their breasts or ovaries.
"Finding out if someone is at inherited risk clearly does change how we follow people," said Dr. Noah Kauff of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who wrote a commentary in JAMA encouraging that doctors use these risk models with caution.
"If you have breast cancer prior to age 50 and not a lot of women on your mother's or father's side, it is probably reasonable to test" for inherited cancer, Kauff said.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with more than a million cases detected worldwide each year.
source : news.yahoo.com
Monday, June 18, 2007
Higher Screening Rates Credited With Drop in Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer is on the decline in the United States, but doctors aren't declaring victory just yet against the deadly disease.
It's one of the few completely preventable forms of cancer -- but only if people get regular screenings, doctors say.
"Unfortunately, only about half of individuals who should be screened are not up to date in their screenings," said Dr. Durado Brooks, director of colorectal cancer for the American Cancer Society.
The American Cancer Society estimates there will be about 112,340 new cases of colon cancer and 41,420 new cases of rectal cancer in 2007 in the United States. Combined, they will cause about 52,180 deaths.
A recent study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that increased screening for colorectal cancer may have contributed to the disease's decline in the United States between 1988 and 2002. According to the researchers, colorectal cancer decreased from 42.8 cases per 100,000 people in 1988-90 to 38.6 cases per 100,000 in 2000-02.
Meanwhile, there was an 80 percent increased use of colonoscopy to test for the disease by Americans between 1997 and 2002.
Many health experts also credit the "Katie Couric Effect," citing the TV newswoman's nationally televised 2000 colonoscopy, prompting more Americans to get screened for the malignancy.
The falling colorectal cancer rates and the climbing colonoscopy rates are linked, because the disease can be averted by removing polyps in the colon that are known to lead to cancer. Those polyps are found through colonoscopy and other screening methods.
"By finding non-cancerous polyps and removing them, we can actually prevent cancer," Brooks said. "Avoiding the disease is probably the most important reason screening needs to be done."
Beginning at age 50, both men and women should follow one of five screening options, according to the American Cancer Society:
* A yearly stool blood test or fecal immunochemical test.
* A flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years.
* A yearly stool blood test plus flexible sigmoidoscopy every five years.
* A double contrast barium enema every five years.
* A colonoscopy every 10 years.
Colonoscopy has been presented as the best option, because polyps can be detected and removed during the same procedure. During a colonoscopy, a slender, lighted tube is inserted through the anus up into the colon, allowing a thorough scan of the organ.
But Dr. Bernard Levin, vice president of cancer prevention at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said the emphasis on a colonoscopy shouldn't keep people from pursuing other forms of screening if colonoscopy isn't available where they live.
Any screening test that gets done is the best, Levin said. "We have to accept that colonoscopy is not available to everybody. Other screening methods should not be considered second-rate," he said.
Other screening methods might also seem more palatable to patients who don't want to be anaesthetized, undergo the cleansing process necessary to prepare themselves for a colonoscopy, or have some other objection to the procedure.
"Some patients absolutely refuse having anything inserted into their body as a screening tool," Brooks said.
Flexible sigmoidoscopy is similar to colonoscopy, but the tube is inserted only into the lower part of the colon, making the procedure less invasive.
In a barium enema screening, a chalky substance is used to partly fill and open up the colon. Air is then pumped in to cause the colon to expand, allowing X-rays to be taken.
An additional screening tool, virtual colonoscopy, could make it easier than ever to be checked. Virtual colonoscopy uses CT scans and computers to produce two- and three-dimensional images of the colon and display them on a screen.
However, Brooks said, it's too soon to tell whether virtual colonoscopy is a dependable means of detecting or preventing colon cancer.
"Right now, virtual colonoscopy is not recommended as a screening tool," he said. "There is a significant body of evidence that supports its usefulness as a test, but it is being evaluated."
Levin decries another misconception about colon cancer, that men are more likely than women to get the disease.
"Over a woman's lifetime, they have the same chance as men," Levin said. "It's not a man's disease."
Those who are screened regularly for colorectal cancer are being met halfway by the medical profession, which is working to improve the quality of its screenings.
For example, a recent study found that doctors are more likely to get better results during a colonoscopy if they spend at least six minutes looking for abnormal growths.
The key is withdrawing the instrument slowly after it has been fully inserted, Levin and Brooks said.
"You have to do a high-quality examination for that examination to be effective," Brooks said. "Doctors who took their time and removed the scope slowly were able to find abnormalities at a rate of three times more compared with doctors who removed the scope at a more rapid rate."
Levin agreed. "If you're not withdrawing slowly enough to see every aspect of the colon, you're short-changing that patient," he said.
source : news.yahoo.com
Glaxo aims to launch five cancer drugs in 3 years
GlaxoSmithKline aims to launch five new drugs for cancer in the next three years, its head of research said on Monday at the start of a presentation to analysts on the group's pipeline.
"This late-stage oncology pipeline has the potential, effectively, to deliver five new oncology medicines in the next three years," Moncef Slaoui told reporters in a conference call.
The total does not include Tykerb, which was recently launched for breast cancer in the United States.
Europe's biggest drugmaker aims to establish itself as a major player in the fast-growing oncology market, although industry analysts say its ambitions will do little to offset short-term worries about sales and profits.
Glaxo suffered a major blow last month after a critical study linked its diabetes drug Avandia to heart-attack risk, hitting demand for its second biggest selling medicine.
source : news.yahoo.com
Glaxo aims to launch five cancer drugs by 2010
laxoSmithKline Plc plans to launch five new cancer drugs by 2010, tapping into a $40 billion-a-year market that is growing by 20 percent annually, its research head said on Monday.
Europe's biggest drugmaker has a range of oncology products waiting in the wings, including an oral treatment to starve tumours of blood supply, new cancer vaccines and drugs to help alleviate the symptoms of chemotherapy.
"This late-stage oncology pipeline has the potential, effectively, to deliver five new oncology medicines in the next three years," Moncef Slaoui told reporters ahead of a presentation to investment analysts.
"This is an unprecented objective for a pharmaceutical company."
The total does not include Tykerb, which was launched for breast cancer in the United States in March.
The five new drugs identified for launch in the coming three years are Cervarix, pazopanib, HuMax-CD20, Promacta and Rezonic. The latest research on some of these had already been presented at a major meeting of cancer experts in Chicago this month.
Glaxo wants to establish itself as a major player in the lucrative oncology market, where it has been under-represented in the past, though industry analysts say its ambitions will do little to offset short-term worries about sales and profits.
It suffered a major blow last month after a critical study linked its diabetes drug Avandia to heart-attack risk, hitting demand for its second-biggest selling medicine.
Glaxo shares were off 0.6 percent at 13.18 pounds by 1400 GMT, slightly outperforming a European drugs sector that was down 1 percent.
The British group has pinned particularly high hopes on its Tykerb pill for breast cancer, a rival to Roche Holding AG and Genentech Inc.'s injectable drug Herceptin.
Tykerb has produced promising results in studies showing it can help patients, including some of those whose breast cancer has spread to the brain.
But analysts believe it could take many years to reach blockbuster potential, with further trials on the value of combining Tykerb with Herceptin due later this year and other tests on its use as a first-line treatment due early next year.
Still, Saloui said early trends were good.
"Tykerb, actually, is off to a very good start in the U.S., with over 3,000 breast cancer patients treated since launch," he said.
CANCER VACCINES
Australia approved Cervarix, a vaccine to prevent a virus that causes cervical cancer, last month and Glaxo hopes to have it on sale in Europe later this year, though a U.S. launch is viewed by analysts as unlikely before 2008.
Pazopanib is an anti-angiogenesis drug similar to Genentech and Roche's Avastin, while HuMax-CD20 is an antibody drug licensed from Denmark's Genmab that is being tested for leukaemia and other blood cancers.
Genmab said separately that HuMax-CD20 possibly could be launched in 2008.
HuMax-CD20, or ofatumumab, works in a similar way to Genentech and Roche's Rituxan/MabThera, and Saloui said Glaxo planned a head-to-head comparative study of the two drugs.
Promacta and Rezonic are both supportive care medicines. Promacta helps boost blood platelet levels, while Rezonic is designed to reduce nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy.
New Phase III trial data presented for the first time on Monday showed Rezonic given with Glaxo's older anti-nausea drug Zofran was significantly more effective than Zofran alone.
Glaxo is also working in the emerging field of therapeutic cancer vaccines, which are designed to boost the body's immune system rather than prevent an infection like conventional vaccines.
It plans to recruit the first patients into a late-stage Phase III trial of its MAGE-A3 shot for non-small-cell lung cancer in September. MAGE-A3 will compete with a similar product called Stimuvax from Merck KGaA, which entered Phase III testing in February.
source : news.yahoo.com
GlaxoSmithKline plans 5 new cancer drugs
GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company, said Monday that it expects to introduce five new cancer treatments through 2010.
The drugs will treat a range of different cancers, including cancer of the cervix, the company said in a statement. The new treatments are cervarix, pazopanib, promacta, rezonic and ofatumumab.
Most recently Glaxo introduced Tykerb, its oral treatment for breast cancer, in March. The market for cancer treatments is worth about 20 billion pounds (US$39.5 billion; euro29.5 billion) and is growing at a rate of about 20 percent a year, the company estimates.
"Over the next three years, GSK will make a difference to millions of patients facing cancer," said Glaxo's head of research and development, Moncef Slaoui.
Glaxo has seen its shares drop recently after the New England Journal of Medicine published an article saying its diabetes drug Avandia raised the risk of heart attack by 43 percent.
The U.S.Food and Drug Administration said it will require a heart failure warning on Avandia. The drug already carries a warning about heart conditions.
Glaxo shares dipped 0.4 percent to 1,321 pence (US$26.11; euro19.51) on the London Stock Exchange.
source : news.yahoo.com
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Stress linked to lower endometrial cancer risk
Women who feel chronically stressed may have a lower risk of developing uterine cancer than their less harried peers, researchers have found.
In a study that followed nearly 6,800 Danish women for two decades, researchers found that women with higher self-reported stress levels at the beginning of the study were less likely to develop endometrial cancer.
The findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, which mirror the results of some breast cancer risk studies, may seem surprising. The researchers speculate that these lower cancer risks may reflect diminished estrogen production in women under chronic stress.
Endometrial cancer is cancer that originates in the lining of the uterus, and hormones are believed to play an important role in the development of the disease. Factors that limit a woman's lifetime exposure to estrogen -- such as starting menstruation late, pregnancy and early menopause -- have been shown to correlate with a lower risk of endometrial cancer.
This may also explain why women who report greater stress show lower rates of breast and endometrial cancers, according to the study authors, led by Dr. Naja Rod Nielsen of the National Institute of Public Health in Copenhagen.
Because of the effects of stress on the central nervous system, persistent stress may lower the body's synthesis of estrogen, the researchers explain.
They emphasize, however, that chronic stress should not be seen as a good thing, because it may also promote or exacerbate other health conditions, such as heart disease, stroke and impaired immune function.
"Despite these results," Nielsen and her colleagues write, "stress may still be a risk factor for other diseases and should therefore not be considered a healthy response."
source : news.yahoo.com
Soon, a blood protein test to spot colon cancer
Boffins have discovered proteins CCSA-3 and CCSA-4, present in blood that accurately identify colon cancer and precancerous polyps, which might be used to develop a blood test to identify at-risk individuals.
The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by Robert Getzenberg at the Johns Hopkins' Brady Urological Institute.
These proteins were first discovered by Getzenberg and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh through a protein scan.
As part of the study, to find whether the two blood-dwelling proteins are to be remnants of cellular debris castoff from dead cancer cells, researchers drew blood samples from 107 apparently healthy individuals the day before their scheduled colonoscopies, and from 28 colorectal cancer patients.
Alteration of nuclear scaffolding is a hallmark of cancer cells that is easily detectable under the microscope as a misshapen and discoloured nucleus. This led the researchers to the notion that 'there must be something at the molecular level that would form a molecular flag for cancer via a blood test.'
Researchers used a particular concentration of scaffold-proteins as a marker for disease.
Researchers found 100 percent accurate results in identifying the 28 existing cancers, using the same protein markers.
"These proteins seem very good at separating normal samples from cancerous ones and identifying other groups with pre-cancers at high risk for disease as well," Getzenberg said.
The findings of the study were published in the June issue of Cancer Research.
source : news.yahoo.com
"Chemo brain" unrelated chemotherapy for breast cancer
Drug therapy given before the primary chemotherapy for breast cancer does not appear to worsen mental processes, or "cognitive function," German investigators report in the journal Cancer. Suspicions that it does may have been influenced by cases of mental decline that occurred before treatment began.
"Most evidence of so-called chemo brain (or chemo fog) comes from cross-sectional studies without pre-chemotherapy assessment," Dr. Kerstin Hermelink from Ludwig-Maximillian University, Munich, told Reuters Health. "In these trials, cognitive compromise present already after diagnosis might mistakenly have been attributed to chemotherapy effects."
Hermelink and colleagues assessed the course of cognitive function before and after exposure to cytostatic treatment in just over 100 women with breast cancer.
Before the start of therapy, the average scores for 5 of 12 cognitive tests were below normal, the authors report, and the group's average score for one test was better than the norm.
Twenty-one weeks later, toward the end of chemotherapy, there was an overall improvement in scores that reached statistical significance in six tests. Only one test showed significant deterioration after chemotherapy.
Excluding patients with confounding factors, 22 percent showed predominant deterioration, and 32 percent showed predominant improvement after chemotherapy, the researchers note.
Age and intelligence were not associated with the change in test results, the report indicates. And while anxiety and depression did not correlate with the change in test results, but they did correlate with self-reported cognitive complaints.
"Breast cancer patients who decline chemotherapy for fear of cognitive impairment should be informed that cognitive compromise often occurs already in the wake of diagnosis," Hermelink said. "During chemotherapy, cognitive function is stable in most patients, and decline is as likely as improvement."
Nevertheless, "More research is necessary before patients can be reassured that chemotherapy does not impair cognitive function," Hermelink said, adding that results of the 1-year follow-up should be available soon.
source : news.yahoo.com
Turning an Anti-Tumor Gene Back On Could Fight Cancer
Cancer drugs may be able to switch on a gene that tumor cells have switched off, potentially offering a new target for treatment, scientists say.
The findings on the gene, called Brahma (BRM), are published online in the journal Oncogene.
Genetic mutations are one cause of cancer. But the disease can also develop when genes that control cell growth are turned off, allowing cells to multiply out of control. Currently, these deactivated genes can be used to identify or monitor cancer, but there are no treatments that actually target these genes, according to background information in the study.
A team at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, found that BRM was switched off -- but not missing -- in about 15 percent of tumor samples they studied, including cells from lung, esophageal, ovarian, bladder, colon and breast cancers.
The team was able to use existing cancer drugs to switch BRM back on, but they said that new drugs would have to be developed to provide more effective reactivation of the gene in cancer cells.
"This is a targetable target. We can detect it, but we need to find a better way to turn it back on," lead author Dr. David Reisman, assistant professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School, said in a prepared statement. "No drugs are designed to deal with a gene that's turned off. But it's a straightforward extension of current therapies that target genes that are turned on," he added.
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Hormone Therapy Extends Lives of Ovarian Cancer Patients
Hormone therapy that has proved successful against breast cancer may also extend and improve the lives of women with estrogen-sensitive ovarian cancer, a British study suggests.
Letrozole hormone therapy may also be an alternative to chemotherapy for some women with the disease, according the report in the June 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.
"This study demonstrates that some ovarian cancers are responsive to anti-estrogen hormonal therapy, and these cancers, and therefore the patients who would benefit, can be identified," said lead researcher Simon Langdon, a Cancer Research UK scientist and a senior lecturer in cancer research at the University of Edinburgh.
Langdon noted that his team's research has shown that growth of certain ovarian cancers is stimulated by the female hormone estrogen. "These cancers could be identified as those possessing high levels of the estrogen receptor," he said.
For the study, which included 44 women, the researchers used letrozole, which works by limiting production of estrogen in the body. "This treatment then effectively starves the ovarian cancer of estrogen and inhibits growth," Langdon said.
During six months of treatment, 25 percent of the women had no tumor growth, and 33 percent of the women with the greatest estrogen values had a positive response that delayed the use of chemotherapy. "Within the trial, we were able to show that tumors with the highest levels of estrogen receptor were the most likely to respond to treatment," Langdon said.
"This approach provides an addition to chemotherapy for this disease," he added. "It is unlikely to replace chemotherapy but could be used to delay the need for chemotherapy."
The patients most likely to benefit from the therapy can be identified before treatment starts. So, this kind of approach means women can be better targeted and the drug not given to those unlikely to benefit who should receive some other type of treatment, Langdon said.
The American Cancer Society reports that ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer in women, not including skin cancer. There will be about 22,430 new cases of ovarian cancer in the United States this year, and an estimated 15,280 women will die from the disease.
A large majority -- about two-thirds -- of women with ovarian cancer are 55 or older. A woman's risk of getting ovarian cancer is about one in 67, according to the cancer society.
Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, said, "Letrozole is already approved for treating ovarian cancer in women who have failed other treatment. This study refines these researchers' previous work by identifying those women with estrogen-receptor-sensitive ovarian cancer who are the most likely to respond to this drug.
"Whether the drug should be started earlier in the course of ovarian cancer and whether we should be evaluating whether or not a woman has estrogen-receptor-sensitive ovarian cancer are questions that need to be answered," he said.
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Pancreatic cancer surgery overlooked
Nearly 40 percent of patients with early pancreatic cancer who could be treated with surgery don't get the operation, dooming them to grim chances of survival, a study found.
The complicated operation is tricky but safer than previously thought and can extend life, although chances of surviving five years are still not great, Dr. Mark Talamonti, study co-author, said Thursday.
Still, about 30 percent of patients with early-stage disease who get the operation can be expected to survive at least five years, compared with less than 5 percent of early-stage patients who don't get the operation, the study found.
"It is still a formidable disease, but if you're caught with early-stage disease, at least there is reasonable hope" with surgery, said Talamonti, a cancer surgeon at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital and chief of surgical oncology at Northwestern University's medical school.
The study is based on an analysis of a national cancer database maintained by the American College of Surgeons, which released the results Thursday.
The researchers found that 3,644 patients out of 9,559 with early-stage disease, or about 38 percent, were not offered surgery. Blacks, patients older than 65, and those with lower annual incomes and education were the least likely to be offered surgery.
"For people with potentially removable cancer not to be offered the only treatment that can potentially cure them or at least extend their lives is disturbing," said Dr. William Jarnagin of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He was not involved in the study.
Part of the problem likely is lack of access to centers experienced in doing the surgery, Talamonti said. Also, many doctors are unaware of improvements in the surgery, he said. Some still view it and the disease itself as a virtual death sentence, and that likely also explains why so many eligible patients aren't referred for an operation, he said.
The study will appear in the August edition of Annals of Surgery, which recently printed an early online version.
About 37,000 Americans will be diagnosed this year with pancreatic cancer and about 33,000 of them will die, making it the fourth leading cause of cancer death, according to the American Cancer Society.
Some 20 percent of patients are diagnosed with early-stage disease, where the cancer has not spread beyond the pancreas, Talamonti said.
Nearly all patients who survive many years have an operation called the Whipple procedure. This seven- to eight-hour surgery includes removing most or all of the pancreas, part of the intestine, the entire gallbladder and part of a bile duct.
The surgery itself can be dangerous, but with advances in technique, death rates have fallen from about 25 percent in the 1960s to less than 3 percent today at some centers that do many of the operations, the study authors said.
Patients eligible for surgery generally have no detectable cancer outside the pancreas. Still, disease spread is often initially hard to spot, contributing to low survival rates even after surgery, Talamonti said.
Dr. Suresh Chari a pancreatic cancer specialist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said the study results were unexpected.
"I was surprised that so many of the primary physicians don't even think of referring the patient to a major center" for surgery, Chari said.
He said Mayo does about 100 pancreatic cancer surgeries a year.
"About the only way you can ever effect a long-term cure is with surgery," he said.
source : news.yahoo.com
Funding boost for cancer treatment
The national drug-funding agency Pharmac has announced it will make a more convenient treatment available to sufferers of colorectal cancer.
Pharmac medical director Peter Moodie said about 450 extra people each year would be given capecitabine, a tablet form of chemotherapy.
The tablets would be available to patients with stage three cancers.
"More people being treated for colorectal cancer will take tablets at home instead of going to hospital to received multiple infusions over a prolonged period of time," Dr Moodie said.
At the moment, most colorectal cancer patients were visiting hospital up to 30 times in six months.
Some patients were already taking the tablets, but the extra funding meant the treatment would be more widely and consistently used, he said.
The more convenient treatment would be particularly useful for people who lived in rural areas, or in towns without major hospitals.
The tablets would be available by prescription at community pharmacies.
Dr Moodie said the increased access would cost Pharmac at least $1.7 million a year, but there would also be a cost-saving because it would reduce hospital treatments.
"This is not only much better for patients but frees up precious resources in hospitals...to deliver chemotherapy to other patients."
Colorectal cancer was the second most common cancer in New Zealand, with about 2300 new cases and 1200 deaths each year.
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Bowel cancer pill
Next month New Zealanders with bowel cancer will have access to a more convenient treatment. Bowel cancer is the second most common cancer among both men and women in New Zealand. Close to 1200 New Zealanders die from the disease each year.
From the first of July, the government drug funding agency PHARMAC will be subsidising a tablet form of chemotherapy treatment for the disease called capecitabine.
PHARMAC medical director Peter Moodie says with the drug in tablet form, more people can be treated, which is a win for both patients and hospitals. Dr Moodie says the treatment programme will cost more than $1.7 million a year.
source : news.yahoo.com
Former NHL coach Burns leads prostate cancer marchers in Montreal
Former NHL coach Pat Burns led a flood of marchers from the top of Montreal's Mount Royal on Saturday to raise awareness about prostate cancer.
"We've been working on this a little bit to try to get some men to understand that they've got to put the 'machoism' aside," the three-time NHL coach of the year said before the walk.
Burns, 55, said men have to get tested for prostate cancer since one in seven Canadians will be diagnosed with it.
"Being a cancer patient myself, I know how important it is," said a fit-looking Burns between signing autographs for fans. "Men are a little but lazy when it comes to those things."
His 13-year NHL coaching career was cut short during the 2003-04 playoffs when he was diagnosed with colon cancer. In 2005, the disease struck a second time, this time in his liver.
The Montreal native had two major surgeries and chemotherapy to fight the cancer.
"This has been the biggest challenge of my life," he said. "Walking out of that doctor's office after he had told me (about the cancer) was a real taste of reality. It was a real slap in the face."
But these days, the former NHL head coach in Montreal, Toronto, Boston and New Jersey said, he's in "great shape."
"I've been through some rough times, but right now I feel good about everything," said Burns, a consultant with New Jersey.
More than 200 walkers and sports celebrities joined Burns for the four-kilometre Walk of Courage, which also raised funds for prostate cancer research.
Participants of all ages descended a winding gravel trail from Mount Royal's picturesque Beaver Lake. Representatives from Montreal's professional teams, including the CFL's Alouettes, NHL's Canadiens and the United Soccer League's Impact joined the march.
The event was organized by Procure, a non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against prostate cancer.
Another walker who got an early workout signing shirts and hats was Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur.
"My dad died from cancer and a couple of my uncles too, so it's something you look at and worry about eventually," said Lafleur.
"It's something that affects a lot of people." Lafleur said more people need to talk about prostate cancer and those battling through it should be encouraged.
Father Tom McEntee was diagnosed with the disease and said it's localized at the moment. He knows many others who are fighting prostate cancer.
"I guess I'd be here whether I had it or I didn't have it, so I'm glad to support the cause," McEntee said as he watched walkers warm up to music before the march.
The Montreal priest said word of the diagnosis from his doctor hit hard. "I cried," he said. "That's all I can say."
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Friday, June 15, 2007
Piribo Adds Cancer Stem Cells Market Report to its Specialised Catalogue
Piribo, the online destination for business intelligence for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, has now added a new market report called "Cancer Stem Cells - Emerging Therapeutic, Diagnostic and Market Opportunities".
(PRWEB) June 15, 2007 -- The last decade has seen the emergence of a new paradigm in the therapeutic strategies which may be available to target cancer. This is based on the existence of so called Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs), found in small populations within the bulk of normal proliferating cancer cells, in tumours.
Many scientists believe that CSCs are responsible for the development and spread of cancer and explain why the disease is resistant to many conventional treatments and able to re-establish itself after therapy. Many researchers believe the selective targeting of these cells offers revolutionary advances in the treatment of cancer, by attacking the disease at its source. The unique identity of CSCs and their proposed causal role in the development and progression of cancer potentially make these cells an ideal target for the detection of the disease. A number of CSC-targeting candidate drugs are now in early research, 2 of which have entered Phase I clinical trials.
Key findings of the report
•Research on CSCs is revealing a unified picture on the involvement of these cells in the development and progression of cancer and this has accelerated discovery programmes to selectively target these cells, alongside normal proliferating cancer cells
•The targeting of CSCs is believed to offer revolutionary advances in cancer therapy and diagnosis
•The CSC field is seeing substantial development, investment and new company formation, as specialised groups advance new discovery programmes
•The targeting of CSCs presents several unique challenges, however a number of strategies have been proposed and are being explored.
•It is believed that diagnostic methods based on the detection of CSC's will have the potential to address key limitations of current methods
•The first CSC-targeting drug candidates have entered clinical development
This report provides a comprehensive overview of research on CSCs and the impact this is having on the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic strategies to target cancer. More than 50 academic research teams from 13 different countries have been reviewed, together with leading discoveries in this field. This is driving new research programmes and commercial developments. This report has identified and profiled 17 companies or commercially-focused groups, which now are targeting CSCs, to develop new therapies and diagnostics. The emerging picture on CSCs is creating significant excitement and interest in the cancer field and researchers have proposed a number of drug discovery strategies, which are also reviewed. Many scientists believe that the targeting of CSC's offers important and revolutionary advances in the targeting of cancer. This report gives the reader a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of developments in this exciting field.
source : news.yahoo.com
Cervical cancer awareness programme to be launched in State in month's time
CERVICAL cancer is the most common cancer found in the Indian women, said Dr Pankaj Shah, Director of the MP Shah Cancer Hospital. Almost 25 per cent of the world's cases of cervical cancers are found in India alone. Under the Ahmedabad District Cancer Control Programme, the Gujarat Cancer Research Institute (GCRI) will introduce visual examination to detect cervical cancer at early stages.
The programme will be launched across the State in a month's time.
Cervical cancer occurs due to a sexually transmitted virus. Patients and doctors often overlook the risks of cervical cancer because there are hardly any symptoms in first ten years, the precancerous stage, of having contracted the virus.
The visual methods of examination include application of iodine and acetic acid on the cervix and observe the changes in colour. The two methods are called Visual Inspection with Lugol's Iodine (VILI) and Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA).
"If detected in the first ten years, there is 100 per cent survival rate among patients. If detected in later stages, there is only a 40 per cent chance of survival among its patients," said Dr Ava Desai, a gynaecologist in the cancer hospital.
Due to inaccessibility of the Pap Smear Test in our country, almost 75 per cent of the patients are diagnosed late and in incurable stages of cancer. "The GCRI programme hopes to rope in almost 10,000 gynaecologists in government, municipality and private hospitals to raise awareness about and encourage early detection of the deadly cancer," said Dr Pankaj Shah.
The conventional method of detection of cervical cancer is the Pap Smear Test. However, this test requires significant infrastructure like laboratories, trained personnel and testing equipment. In developing countries like India, economical constraints, lack of awareness and social conservativeness greatly reduce the chances of early detection of the cancer.
"Developed countries like USA and Norway have reduced their morbidity and mortality rates significantly. India still does not have a national cervical screening programme," said Dr Ava Desai. "Our first aim is to increase awareness about this cancer and break the social stigma surrounding gynaecological examinations."
Though vaccines are available to prevent the cancer, their effectiveness has not been proved completely. Apart from being expensive, the vaccine can only be administered to women who have had no prior sexual contact.
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