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CDC recommends that boys get vaccinated ...

CDC recommends that boys get vaccinated against HPV

HPV vaccine for boysThe federal government is recommending that boys get vaccinated against HPV– but may find the virus’ connection to gay men and anal cancer a tough selling point.

On Tuesday, a Centers for Disease Control panel recommended that boys ages 9-11 be vaccinated against human papilloma virus (HPV). The CDC already recommends girls be vaccinated against HPV.

HPV can cause girls to get cervical cancer later in life; 15,000 new cases are reported annually. The CDC said that 7,000 men in the U.S. get anal cancer every year.

“Some parents may say, ‘Why are you vaccinating my son against anal cancer? He’s not gay!'” Dr. Ranit Mishori told the Associated Press.

Heterosexual boys who get the HPV vaccine will also avoid transmitting HPV to women, thereby creating what is called “herd immunity.”

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Cancer survivor population over 65 to in...

Cancer survivor population over 65 to increase over next decade

Older cancer survivorsOver the next decade, the population of cancer survivors over 65 years of age will increase by approximately 42 percent.

“We can expect a dramatic increase in the number of older adults who are diagnosed with or carry a history of cancer,” said Julia Rowland, Ph.D., director of the Office of Cancer Survivorship in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). “Cancer is largely a disease of aging, so we’re seeing yet another effect of the baby boom generation and we need to prepare for this increase.”

Rowland’s report is part of the special focus on cancer survivorship, published in the October issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Rowland and colleagues analyzed data from the NCI Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program. This report on cancer survivorship statistics will be updated and published on an annual basis.

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Tyk2 protein helps suppress the growth a...

Tyk2 protein helps suppress the growth and metastasis of breast tumors

tyk2 proteinA possible new target for breast cancer therapy comes from the discovery that the Tyk2 protein helps suppress the growth and metastasis of breast tumors, as reported in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Qifang Zhang and Andrew Larner, Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA), and colleagues from VCU, Temple University School of Medicine (Philadelphia, PA), Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland), and Miyazaki University (Japan), present data demonstrating that mice lacking Tyk2 tyrosine kinase that are injected with breast cancer cells exhibit enhanced breast tumor growth and metastasis compared to mice with normal Tyk2 protein expression.

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Study finds tanning beds more dangerous ...

Study finds tanning beds more dangerous than once thought

Tanning Beds and Skin CancerIt’s no secret that tanning beds cause skin cancer. Now there’s evidence that some of the ultraviolet rays from these beds may be even more dangerous than previously thought – and that has the “health police” renewing their call for banning teens from the beds.

Experts had only thought UVB rays – the ones that cause sunburn – were the main cause of skin cancer. But a new study suggests UVA rays – which pass through clouds and glass windows and are linked to aging and wrinkles – are just as dangerous.

“Tanning salons still tend to claim that UVA is safe, but that’s nonsense,” study author Dr. Antony Young, professor of photobiology at King’s College London, told The Daily Mail. “It may be more carcinogenic than previously thought.”

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New Herceptin treatment combo can be saf...

New Herceptin treatment combo can be safer for aggressive breast cancer

HerceptinThe effective breast cancer drug Herceptin can be administered in a way that greatly reduces one of its most serious side effects, a risk of heart damage, according to a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Herceptin targets a protein called Her2 which appears on the surface of the cancer cells in about one quarter of breast cancer patients. As a result of the Her2 protein, women who develop that type of cancer often have a more aggressive form. Previous studies, confirmed by the latest one, have found that if Her2 positive patients get Herceptin together with a chemotherapy drug soon after the initial surgery — called adjuvant therapy — their chance of a recurrence drops by about 50 percent. That discovery is one of the greatest successes in the history of breast cancer research.
Most doctors give Herceptin together with the familiar chemotherapy drug called adriamycin. Adriamycin by itself increases the risk for heart problems, including heart failure and even death. Combined with Herceptin, the heart risk is greater.

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Hypertension Increases Risk for Cancer D...

Hypertension Increases Risk for Cancer Death

HypertensionA large study has found that hypertension is associated with an increased risk for cancer death, and that hypertension increases the risk of developing cancer — although the latter effect reached statistical significant only in men, not women.

“The relative and absolute risk estimates were rather modest,” said lead researcher Mieke Van Hemelrijck, PhD, from the cancer epidemiology group at King’s College London, United Kingdom.

“This is important from a public health perspective, since a large proportion of the population in many western countries suffers from hypertension,” she told delegates at a presidential session here at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress. The paper was chosen as one of the best abstracts from the meeting.

One of the implications of this finding is the opportunity it offers for intervention, said Per Hall, MD, PhD, medical oncologist and professor of epidemiology at the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who acted as discussant for the paper.

“Primary prevention strategies developed by cardiologists have the potential to lower the risk of cancer,” Dr. Hall explained.

For oncologists, this highlights the need for a more holistic approach, he continued. Oncologists must learn to think beyond cancer therapy and consider treatment of the whole person, including conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease, he said. “If we look for other things also, it would definitely improve overall survival,” he added.

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Prolia Is approved by the FDA to strengt...

Prolia Is approved by the FDA to strengthen bones of some cancer patients

Prolia approved for bone strengthening in cancer patientsThe FDA has approved the osteoporosis drug Prolia as a treatment for some breast and prostate cancer patients whose bones have been weakened by certain hormone therapies for cancer.

The drug’s manufacturer, Amgen Inc., says studies showed that Prolia improved bone mass and reduced the occurrence of new spine fractures in men with prostate cancer receiving androgen deprivation therapy and who did not have cancer spread to the bone. It also increased bone mass in women being treated with aromatase inhibitors for breast cancer.

The company says in a news release that Prolia is the “first-and-only” therapy approved by the FDA for cancer treatment bone loss in patients who have undergone hormone therapy.

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HPV Vaccines Differ in Cost-Effectivenes...

HPV Vaccines Differ in Cost-Effectiveness and Cancer Deaths

HPV VaccineBetween the 2 vaccines now available for protection against human papilloma virus (HPV), the quadrivalent vaccine may have an advantage over the bivalent vaccine with respect to costs and quality of life, but the bivalent vaccine may prevent more deaths from cervical cancer, according to new research.

Mark Jit, PhD, MPH, a mathematical modeler from the Health Protection Agency in London, United Kingdom, and colleagues published their findings online September 27 in the BMJ.

As described in the article, the HPV bivalent vaccine (Cervarix, GlaxoSmithKline) targets HPV types 16 and 18, which are estimated to cause more than 70% of cervical cancer cases worldwide. In contrast, in addition to HPV types 16 and 18, the quadrivalent vaccine (Gardasil, Merck) also targets HPV types 6 and 11, to which anogenital warts and recurrent respiratory papillomatoses are attributed.

In 2008, the UK government selected the bivalent vaccine for protection against HPV based on a previous analysis led by the same authors, indicating that the bivalent vaccine would have to be £15 to £23 cheaper per dose to be as cost-effective as the quadrivalent vaccine because of “the lack of protection against anogenital warts,” as understood at that time. Since then, however, new data have emerged. First, studies have indicated that both the bivalent and the quadrivalent vaccines may also be effective against certain oncogenic HPV types not included in the respective vaccines. In addition, the quadrivalent vaccine has shown protection against vulvar, vaginal, and anal cancer; and the bivalent vaccine has shown some protection against anal infection, which may ultimately translate into prevention of anal cancer.

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Global health experts: Healthier living ...

Global health experts: Healthier living could cut millions of cancer cases

A healthy lifestyle can help prevent cancerHealthier lifestyles and better diets could prevent up to 2.8 million cases of cancer each year, the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) said on Wednesday, calling on governments to “avoid a public health disaster.”

The number of global cancers has increased by a fifth in less than a decade to around 12 million new cases a year, and along with other chronic diseases like heart and lung disease and diabetes are the world’s biggest health challenges, the Fund said.

In a report released two weeks before a United Nations summit on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the charity said political leaders had a “once in a generation” opportunity to tackle a wave of cancer and other lifestyle diseases.

Global health experts say many deaths from NCDs, including around a third of all common cancers, could be prevented by curbing excessive alcohol intake, improving diets, discouraging smoking and promoting more physical activity.

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Fructose helps feed cancer, US study fin...

Fructose helps feed cancer, US study finds

Corn SyurpPancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.

Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.

“They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

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