“Exosomes are minuscule membrane vesicles — or sacs — released from most, if not all, cell types, including cancer cells,” said Yong Zeng, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Kansas. “First described in the mid-’80s, they were once thought to be ‘cell dust,’ or trash bags containing unwanted cellular contents. …
And habitual drinking is known to increase susceptibility to bacterial pneumonia, septicaemia, tuberculosis and viral hepatitis. The researchers therefore wanted to find out if there was any association between drinking patterns and susceptibility to HPV infection. They included 1313 men who were already taking part in the US arm of the HPV in Men (HIM) study, an international study that is tracking the natural history of HPV infection in men. …
The team of investigators from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, analyzed data from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society, and looked at more than 1 million women who underwent mastectomy due to breast cancer between 1998 and 2011. …
Cancer Research UK scientists at The University of Manchester found that chemical signals produced by a type of immune cell, called macrophages, also act as a survival signal for melanoma cells. …
The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) has previously shown that LDCT screening of people at high-risk for lung cancer reduces lung cancer mortality by 20%, thus many organizations including the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) have recommend LDCT screening for these individuals. It is thought that if lung cancer is detected at an early stage with screening that it can be cured and the consequences of this are a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality, as the 5-year survival rate for early-stage disease is 54%, and a reduction in the need for expensive and toxic treatments for advanced late-stage lung cancer, which seldom results in a cure as reflected by a 5-year survival rate of 4%. However, in the US 8.6 million people meet the high-risk criteria, which could equate to a significant screening cost…
The analysis studied the association between patients’ smoking histories and their risks of developing SPLC, which is defined as a new lung cancer unrelated to the initial tumor based on histology and location in the lung. The study analyzed 1,484 patients (372 current smokers, 1,014 former smokers and 98 never smokers) who underwent surgery, with or without adjuvant chemotherapy or radiation therapy, for stage I-IIIA NSCLC at Duke University Medical Center between 1995 and 2008. Baseline covariates and oncologic outcomes including local control (LC), development of distant metastases (DM), overall survival (OS) and rates of SPLC were assessed. …
The research, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress in Munich, suggests that testing the temperature of breath could be a simple and noninvasive method to either confirm or reject the presence of lung cancer. Many research teams have been looking at the possibility of using breath tests for a number of cancers. This is the first study looking at breath temperature as a marker in lung cancer. The researchers enrolled 82 people in the study who had been referred for a full diagnostic test after an x-ray suggested the presence of lung cancer…
Previous research has shown that hospitals are often ill-prepared to provide care for dying patients. To investigate whether the circumstances for dying on cancer center wards allow for a dignified death, Karin Jors, MA, of the University Medical Center Freiburg, and her colleagues surveyed physicians and nurses in 16 hospitals belonging to 10 cancer centers in Baden-W�rttemberg, Germany. The survey addressed topics regarding end-of-life care including structural conditions such as rooms and staff, education/training, working environment, family/caregivers, medical treatment, communication with patients, and dignified death. Among 1131 survey respondents, 57 percent believed that patients could die with dignity on their ward. …
“There have been some concerns that one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra-wearing patterns,” said Lu Chen, MPH, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health. “Given how common bra wearing is, we thought this was an important question to address. …
The researchers, whose results were published today in Cell, successfully grew six prostate cancer organoids from biopsies of patients with metastatic prostate cancer and a seventh organoid from a patient’s circulating tumor cells. …