Tag Archives: breast

Acupuncture provides significant quality of life improvements among breast cancer patients taking drugs to prevent recurrence, study shows

The results build upon earlier findings reported in November 2013, showing that EA can decrease the joint pain reported by roughly 50 percent of breast cancer patients taking AIs — the most-commonly prescribed medications to prevent disease recurrence among post-menopausal women with early-stage, hormone receptor positive breast cancer. Despite their efficacy, the joint pain associated with the use of AIs often leads to fatigue, anxiety, depression, and sleep disturbances for these patients, which researchers suggest may cause premature discontinuation of the drug. …

Genes found to be linked to breast cancer in East Asian women — ScienceDaily

While breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide, most studies of the genetic risk factors for the disease have focused on women of European ancestry. Given the differences in genetic heritage and environmental exposures between East Asian women and those of European ancestry, the investigators decided to conduct a study in East Asians to search for genetic changes that are linked to breast cancer development. The current study was conducted as part of the Asia Breast Cancer Consortium led by Wei Zheng, M.D., Ph.D., MPH, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt. …

Genetics the dominant risk factor in common cancers

Researchers at the Centre for Primary Health Care Research at Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden have presented the new research findings based on studies of population registers. “The results of our study do not mean that an individual’s lifestyle is not important for the individual’s risk of developing cancer, but it suggests that the risk for the three most common types of cancer is dependent to a greater extent on genetics,” said Bengt Zöller, a reader at Lund University who led the study. The researchers studied adoptees born in Sweden in relation to both their biological parents and their adoptive parents. The Swedish multi-generation register and the cancer register were used to monitor 70 965 adopted men and women. …

Total darkness at night key to success of breast cancer therapy, study shows

Principal investigators and co-leaders of Tulane’s Circadian Cancer Biology Group, Steven Hill and David Blask, along with team members Robert Dauchy and Shulin Xiang, investigated the role of melatonin on the effectiveness of tamoxifen in combating human breast cancer cells implanted in rats. “In the first phase of the study, we kept animals in a daily light/dark cycle of 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of total darkness (melatonin is elevated during the dark phase) for several weeks,” says Hill…

Saving the heart in breast cancer treatment — ScienceDaily

Breast cancer patients who are positive for the HER2 gene may be at increased risk for heart damage during chemotherapy, according to a new study published in ecancermedicalscience. Patients with the HER2 gene are often treated with trastuzumab or lapatinib, which interfere with its cancer-causing signals…

Cancer study maps decade of discovery to potential anticancer agent — ScienceDaily

“What began with the question ‘what makes a particular aggressive form of breast cancer cells keep growing?’ turned into 10 years of systematic research to identify the enzyme PLK4 as a promising therapeutic target and develop a small molecule inhibitor to block it,” says Dr. Mak, Director of The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network. …