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October
31, 2008
News
Headlines
Young Patients with Lung Cancer Have Better
Survival than Older
Hot Flushes May
Predict Breast Cancer Drug Success
Statins Cut Key Indicator of Prostate Cancer
Prostate Cancer Not Warded Off By
Supplements
Scientists Develop
Cancer Fighting Tomato
Aggressive
Vaccine Effort Could Cut Cervical Cancer
Urethral Catheter-Less Robotic Radical
Prostatectomy Decreases Patient Discomfort
Cancerpage news is updated daily, Monday
through Friday, and on the weekends as
warranted. More than sixteen new
articles have been added to cancerpage news since the last newsletter.
To see ALL the latest stories, go to the
cancerpage.com search page and click on Submit (but
leave search field black.)
CDC Report on Vermiculite Processing in Libby, Montana
Vermiculite is a mineral used in gardening and
insulation and while the CDC says theres no evidence that vermiculite itself
poses a health risk, sometimes it is contaminated, as was the case of the
mineral mined in Libby, Montana between the 1920s and 1990s. Libby vermiculite
contained amphibole asbestos ,which was released in the processing. The CDC is
now urging employees of 28 Libby, Montana vermiculite exfoliation sites, their
families and others who lived near the sites during those years to talk to their
doctors about the dangers posed by long term exposure to asbestos, such as
increased risk of lung disease, lung cancer and mesothelioma. Read more
about the CDCs report here. See
a summary of the whole report here.
What Can Cancer Patients Expect?
The Editor-in-Chief of OncologySTAT
, Dr. Lee
Schwartzberg, lays out the differences between the Obama and McCain healthcare plans and explores the potential
impact on cancer providers and their patients. You can read his straightforward
analysis here
. You do have to register.. but its free and worth it.
Hope Lodge s Expand
The American Cancer Society expanded its network of Hope Lodges
this week, opening a new facility in Boston and adding new rooms to its Charleston,
S.C. Hope Lodge. New Hope Lodge locations were opened in Iowa City earlier
in October, and Grand Rapids, Michigan in February, and the Atlanta location
added 21 rooms this year. More than a dozen new Hope Lodge sites around the
country are in development. Many families touched by cancer have to travel long
distances to seek the treatment their loved ones need and the hotel bills add
up. The American Cancer Society's Hope Lodges offer a free place to stay near
world class cancer hospitals. Find out more about the Hope Lodges on the ACS web site here.
Lymphedema
An estimated 2 million American women are at risk of
developing lymphedema following surgery for breast cancer. The condition
involves chronic swelling on the arm or arms, neck, back or other areas after
the surgical disruption of the lymph system. There are various methods for
managing lymphedema and physicians are now beginning to turn a serious clinical
eye toward figuring out how cancer patients cope. One fact has become evident
a large number of cancer survivors are turning to non-traditional methods to
manage lymphedema and not talking to their doctors about them. The Lance
Armstrong Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have been funding
research by the Lymphedema Research Project at Ellis Fischel and Sinclair School
of Nursing at the University of Missouri. You
can read about what the Project has been up to, what the researchers have
found and how to participate in continuing research here.
Patrick Swayze Back At Work
Actor Patrick Swayze says of his chemo regimen..its
hell on wheels. He has been undergoing
traditional chemo augmented by an experimental drug called Vatalanib following diagnosis earlier
this year with pancreatic cancer. He recently told the New York Times
he's well enough to be back at work - sometimes 12 hours a day on an
upcoming A&E series..the Beast, which premiers in January
Read more
here Or here.
In the Lab/In the
Clinic
If you start takiing cholesterol-lowering statin drugs
and your PSA (prostate specific antigen) score drops, is that a good thing? As a screening
measure, doctors might keep an eye on a mans PSA score (in
case it goes up) as an indication of prostate cancer and the need to perform
a biopsy. Doctors at Duke University found that some men whose PSAs were on the
rise but were put on statins started to see their PSAs drop. The question followed
did the PSA drop because the cancer risk was reduced or becasue the statins
merely masked the risk. The same question may also hold for NSAID use.
Read
more about it here.
Researchers at Cornell University have gone back and looked at hundreds of older studies to
see if theres a pattern being missed and anti-cancer benefits being suppressed in
our efforts to defeat allergies. They think theyve found evidence that some
allergies may actually be evidence of the bodys own defense against cancer causes
in the environment. They found that cancer patients had fewer allergies in
their medical histories. Not all body organs appeared to benefit equally it
was those more likely to come in contact with the outside environment like the
mouth, throat, colon, skin, pancreas, and lung. Find
out more here.
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