Tag Archives: american

New insights into breast cancer spread could yield better tests and treatments — ScienceDaily

According to the National Cancer Institute, more than 232,000 American women developed breast cancer last year and nearly 40,000 women died from the disease. It is the most common cancer among women in the United States. Most breast cancer deaths occur because the cancer has spread, or metastasized, which means that cells in the primary tumor have invaded blood vessels and traveled via the bloodstream to form tumors elsewhere in the body…

Nonsmokers in automobiles are exposed to significant secondhand smoke

The nonsmoking passengers showed elevated levels of butadiene, acrylonitrile, benzene, methylating agents and ethylene oxide. This group of toxic chemicals is “thought to be the most important among the thousands in tobacco smoke that cause smoking-related disease,” said senior investigator Neal L. Benowitz, MD, a UCSF professor of medicine and bioengineering and therapeutic sciences and chief of the division of clinical pharmacology at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. …

Oral cancer-causing HPV may spread through oral, genital routes

“HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world, and is a risk factor for several cancers, including cervical, vaginal, vulvar, oropharyngeal [throat/tonsil], anal, and penile cancer,” says Eduardo L. Franco, Professor and Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology at McGill University. “Understanding how HPV is transmitted is important because it will help us identify who is most at risk for HPV infection and how we can help them protect themselves and their partners,” adds Franco, who is also the Chairman of the Department of Oncology in the Faculty of Medicine. “Our work provides additional evidence that HPV is sexually transmitted to the oral tract through oral-oral and oral-genital contact.” Infection rates higher for male smokers A research team led by Franco looked at HPV infections in 222 men and their female partners and found that among men in the study, the prevalence of oral HPV was 7.2 percent…

Half of premature colorectal cancer deaths due to socioeconomic inequality

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the U.S. Historically, death rates were higher in those with higher socioeconomic status, in whites, and in northern states. Over the past few decades, though, that switched, with death rates now highest in persons with the lowest socioeconomic status, in blacks, and in southern states…

‘Landmark’ results for curing hepatitis C in liver transplant patients

The investigational three-drug regimen, which produced hepatitis C cure rates of 97 percent, is an oral interferon-free therapy. Previously, the typical treatment for hepatitis C after a liver transplant was an interferon-based therapy, usually given for 48 weeks. It had a much lower response rate, had a risk of organ rejection and was poorly tolerated because of the immunosuppressants required to prevent rejection. The new oral regimen — ABT-450, ombitasvir and dasabuvir (with or without ribavirin) — produces significantly fewer side effects and is prescribed for 24 weeks…

Novel molecular imaging drug offers better detection of prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non-skin cancer in the United States, and it is second only to lung cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths in American men. An estimated 233,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2014, and an estimated 29,000 will die of the disease. More than 2 million men are currently living with prostate cancer in the United States…

Physicians play critical role in ensuring bladder cancer patients understand link between smoking, their disease — ScienceDaily

At least half of bladder cancer cases diagnosed in the United States are the result of cigarette smoking. Bladder cancer is the second most common tobacco-related malignancy, a fact that is not well known even among bladder cancer surgeons, let alone the general public. Quitting smoking after cancer diagnoses can prolong survival, improve cancer prognoses, and decrease the risk of developing second cancers. …

Shape of things to come in platelet mimicry

For the first time, the researchers have been able to integratively mimic the shape, size, flexibility and surface chemistry of real blood platelets on albumin-based particle platforms. The researchers believe these four design factors together are important in inducing clots to form faster selectively at vascular injury sites while preventing harmful clots from forming indiscriminately elsewhere in the body…

Immune booster combined with checkpoint blocker improves survival in metastatic melanoma

Patients in the clinical trial who got the combined therapies also had fewer serious adverse side effects than those who received only ipilimumab, the researchers report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The group treated with both ipilimumab and the immune stimulant, called sargramostim, had a one-year survival rate of 68.9 percent vs. 52.9 percent in the ipilimumab-only group. In both groups, however, the median progression-free survival (the length of time before the cancer began to grow) was similar – 3.1 months…