Gov't releases plan to cut cancer death rate by 20%

The government on Friday released a basic plan to combat cancer, featuring measure to reduce the cancer death rate by 20 percent in the next 10 years for people under 75.

Based on the plan, each prefecture will be required to draft their own plan to fight cancer by next spring that takes into account regional differences.

The plan was approved based on a cancer-fighting law put into force in April. The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry made the draft but the panel that debated it included cancer patients and their families, in addition to doctors and other experts.

Besides reducing cancer deaths, the plan sets a goal of "reducing the pain of the patients and families as well as maintaining and improving their quality of life."

It also calls for focusing on several areas which require more efforts in the nation, such as promoting radiation and chemical treatment, and fostering such specialists, and conducting palliative care on patients from the early treatment stage.

As numerical targets, the plan includes having all doctors working on cancer treatment acquire the basic knowledge of palliative care within 10 years. It also calls for raising the percentage of people screened for breast and colon cancers to 50 percent or more in five years, in addition to reducing the percentage of smokers among people under 20 to 0 percent in three years.

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Top Iraqi Shiite leader back in Iran for cancer treatment

Powerful Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim has returned to Iran to undergo chemotherapy for his lung cancer, two weeks after receiving treatment in Tehran, his son told AFP on Thursday.

"There are minor malignant swellings in his lung, a sort of not advanced lung cancer that has not spread yet," Mohsen Hakim said.

"The physicians said that it is treatable with chemotherapy and they are very much hopeful that they will be able to treat it," he added.

Two weeks ago, the secretary of another son, Ammar, said Abdel Aziz "is in his headquarters in Najaf and will be there for a long time, after he finished his initial period of treatment in Tehran."

Hakim, the head of one of the most powerful parties in the parliament, has also undergone medical tests in the United States.

On May 22, Ammar Hakim said his father's health was "stable and the doctors in America confirmed to him that the cancer tumour is limited and could be brought under control."

Hakim's Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), formerly known as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, was founded in Iran in 1982 as an opposition movement in exile.

The party returned to Iraq in the aftermath of the March 2003 US-led invasion. It joined Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's coalition government last year after winning 30 seats in the 275-member parliament.

Hakim's illness comes as one of his main rivals, radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, has resurfaced after several months in hiding.

Despite SIIC's close ties with Iran, Hakim has tried to build bridges with the United States, and last year met President George W. Bush at the White House.

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Cancer drug 'may pave the way' for RU486

Offering medical abortions using a cancer drug could finally propel a more effective abortion pill, RU486, onto the market, a leading obstetrician says.

Queensland specialist Professor Caroline de Costa, who led the charge for RU486, says she is thrilled major sexual health clinics will now offer non-surgical abortions.

Women's health organisation Marie Stopes International has announced it will provide medical options at clinics in NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria from this month.

However, because of delays in accessing RU486 the clinics will use the cancer drug methotrexate.

RU486 was approved for use more than a year ago but no drug company has yet offered to supply it.

Prof de Costa, who spearheaded the campaign to approve the abortion pill, said the move by the clinics would boost the profile of medical abortions and the drugs involved.

"My belief is that offering methotrexate as an option will actually lift the chances of finally getting RU486 on the market here," Prof de Costa said.

"We need all the help we can get to get this drug out there because it is the best proven option."

Methotrexate is a cancer drug used by many individual obstetricians in small doses in combination with another drug misoprostol to induce abortions.

The use is "off licence", meaning it is not registered for this purpose.

But until now, clinics have not offered the treatment.

A Sydney pilot study run by Marie Stopes showed the drug was safe and effective with few side effects.

However, specialists agree that RU486 induces abortions faster and more effectively.

"Once RU486 is available via mainstream distribution and purchase from a pharmaceutical company in Australia, Marie Stopes International will be able to offer this option to clients," the company said in a statement.

Prof de Costa is the only doctor so far authorised to prescribe the drug and says it is proving "very effective" among her small sample of Cairns women with medical complications.

"It's great for them but what we want is to get it out there more widely," she said.

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Breast cancer drug may offer hope for treating ovarian cancer

Researchers from Edinburgh University have revealed that drug letrozole, which is used to treat breast cancer, can increase the life span of people suffering from Ovarian cancer by three years.

The researcher used the drug to stop oestrogen from stimulating tumour growth.

Though the discovery may not benefit all because not all cases of ovarian cancer, which is also called a 'silent killer' are triggered by oestrogen, it still offers hope to thousands, reports Daily Mail.

The study that involved 44 women found that the drug stopped oestrogen supply to tumours for almost half a year, in 25pct of the women.

In one-third of the women, whose tumours were largely dependent on oestrogen, the drug deferred chemotherapy.

The researchers expect the drug to increase life expectancy from sa number of months to almost three years.

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Taiwan researchers claim cancer therapy alternative

Taiwan researchers said Thursday they have successfully tested 10 new sugar-fat compounds they believe will inhibit cancer growth while prolonging patients' survival time with limited side effects.

The new compounds were created by a team led by Dr. Wong Chi-huey, president of Taiwan's highest academic research body, the Academia Sinica, and an expert in the structure and function of sugars.

"This is an innovative strategy in cancer treatment. So far, most anti-cancer drugs are associated with side-effects like nausea and hair loss," said Alice Yu, who led a team to validate the compounds.

"But the new (compounds) are expected to cause few side-effects as they are designed to enhance immunity rather than attack cancer cells."

The new compounds are an improvement on one called a-Galcer, which was discovered in Japan in 1995.

At least 10 of the new compounds had proved effective in experiments with mice, Academia Sinica said.

The study showed that lung cancer-bearing mice treated with the new compound had significantly prolonged survival time compared to those treated with a-Galcer, the research institute said in a statement.

The Japanese research did not go beyond a phase I trial because while A-Galcer was found to enhance immunity by helping some proteins, it also damaged other proteins, thus suppressing immune functions. Overall the anti-cancer results were weak.

However, Taiwan's experiments showed that mice treated with the new compounds for six weeks appeared to be in better health.

In breast cancer-bearing mice, treatment with the new compounds had inhibited tumor growth in 75 percent of the group, compared to 50 percent inhibition of tumor growths in mice treated with a-Galcer.

Encouraged by the experiments, Dr. Chang Ya-jen, another researcher involved in the study, said the new compounds could be used to manufacture drugs that would "provide an alternative therapeutic approach" to cancer management in the future.

"They could signal a new ray of hope to cancer patients because such drugs could not only extend their survival time but also improve their life quality while battling with cancer," she said.

The study's results have been published in an online early edition report of the US' PNAS (Proceedings of
National Academy of Sciences).

Yu said it may take up to 10 years for completion of clinical experiments that would precede mass production of a new cancer therapy drug.

Academia Sinica has applied for patent rights here and abroad for the special compounds.

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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."

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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.

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