Tag Archives: american

Misunderstanding of palliative care leads to preventable suffering

The authors say for palliative care to be used appropriately, clinicians, patients, and the general public must learn the fundamental differences between palliative care and hospice care, a distinction that is not well-known. Seven in ten Americans describe themselves as "not at all knowledgeable" about palliative care, and most health care professionals believe it is synonymous with end-of-life care. While both are intended to relieve suffering, hospice care provides care for people in the last phases of an incurable disease so that they may live as fully and comfortably as possible. Palliative care focuses on helping patients get relief from symptoms caused by serious illness and is appropriate at any age or stage in a serious illness…

Game-changing shift occurring in cancer discovery, treatment

Clinical Cancer Advances 2013: ASCO’s Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer reveals how marked expansion in our knowledge and understanding of cancer is already improving treatment while also pointing the way towards even more effective approaches in the future. Published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the ASCO report covers a broad range of cancer types and highlights a selection of the most recent achievements across the entire continuum of cancer care, from prevention and screening to treatment and survivorship. "For patients today, these results can be critical. Scientifically, they demonstrate how our long term investment in science and technology can yield practical advances now and in the near future," said ASCO President Clifford A…

Increased attention needed for cancer risk from silica

For centuries, silica has been known to cause lung disease (silicosis). Evidence that silica causes lung cancer has been more recent, accumulating over the last several decades. Writing in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Kyle Steenland, PhD, at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, and Elizabeth Ward, PhD, of the American Cancer Society highlight three important developments that hold potential to prevent illness and death from silica exposure at work…

Novel drug regimen can improve stem cell transplantation outcomes

In a new phase 2 trial, patients treated with bortezomib had lower rates of severe acute GVHD and treatment-related mortality, and experienced better one-year overall survival than has been seen historically with such patients receiving standard preventive therapy, the investigators reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting. …

Economic factors may affect getting guideline-recommended breast cancer treatment

Women with a break in their insurance coverage had a 3.5-fold higher likelihood of nonconcordance with National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines for radiation therapy and chemotherapy compared with women with uninterrupted coverage. "We found that women who had no insurance at some point during treatment, women with lower incomes compared with those in the highest income categories, and women who held more debt at the time of diagnosis were less likely to receive all of the recommended breast cancer treatments," said Jean A…

X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome: Gene therapy trial shows promising early results

Eight of the nine boys registered to date in the new trial are alive and well, with functioning immune systems and free of infections associated with SCID-X1, between nine and 36 months following treatment, according to Sung-Yun Pai, MD, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist from Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. She presented the findings at the 55th annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology on behalf of the Transatlantic Gene Therapy Consortium (TAGTC). The investigators continue to monitor the children for signs of treatment-associated leukemia, which developed three to five years post-treatment in the prior trial. …

Cigarette smoking after cancer diagnosis increases risk of death

Compared with men who did not smoke after a cancer diagnosis, those who smoked after diagnosis had a 59 percent increase in risk of death from all causes, after adjusting for factors including age, cancer site, and treatment type. When limited to men who were smokers at diagnosis, those who continued smoking after diagnosis had a 76 percent increase in risk of death from all causes compared with those who quit smoking after a diagnosis…

Social stigmas may contribute to African-American college students’ hesitation to breast-feed

"We need to start early with our breast-feeding education and exposure because women decide before they have children whether or not they will breast-feed," Urmeka Jefferson, assistant professor at the Sinclair School of Nursing, said. "We need to figure out how to encourage positive breast-feeding attitudes among young Black women and make them aware that breast-feeding is the normal, natural infant-feeding method." Jefferson surveyed African-American college students about their attitudes and exposure to breast-feeding and their intent to breast-feed future children. She found the majority of students knew the benefits of breast-feeding and had some level of previous exposure, such as friends or parents who had breast-fed their infants…

Detailed image shows how genomes are copied

Genomes are built from pairs of long strands of DNA. In previous collaborations with American researchers, Umeå University scientists have shown that DNA polymerase epsilon is one of the three enzymes that build DNA strands in all higher-level organisms from yeast to humans. When the DNA of an organism’s genome is copied, DNA polymerase epsilon is responsible for building about half of the DNA. This process occurs quickly and with very high accuracy to avoid producing mutations that can be detrimental to the cell and to the organism as a whole. …