Melatonin is a hormone that is produced exclusively at night in the dark and is an important output of the circadian rhythm, or the body’s inherent 24-hour clock. Many biological processes are regulated by the circadian rhythm, including the sleep-wake cycle. …
The study, posted online recently in advance of publication in Cancer Research, was led by co-investigators Andries Zijlstra, Ph.D., assistant professor of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt, and John Lewis, Ph.D., associate professor of Oncology and Frank and Carla Sojonky Chair in Prostate Cancer Research, University of Alberta. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men in North America…
Although rare, they found instances when the ureter — tubes that carry urine from the kidneys to the bladder — were cut and required repair. In each case, they identified patient characteristics that may forewarn such damage. The study was recently published in the Journal of Endourology. The study – drawing from Henry Ford Hospital’s experience with robot-assisted surgery removal of prostate cancer – was conducted in the context of a steady rise in robot-assisted prostatectomies in the U.S…
Working with local hospitals across North Carolina, UNC researchers led by Ronald Chen, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Radiation Oncology in the UNC School of Medicine, and Paul Godley, MD, PhD, Professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology — both members of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center — surveyed patients about their decision-making process after a prostate cancer diagnosis. "Prostate cancer is a unique disease where there are multiple treatment options, ranging from active surveillance to surgical treatments to radiation treatments…
This study included 751 Kaiser Permanente patients with prostate cancer who underwent radical prostatectomy, an operation that includes removal of the prostate and surrounding tissue. The researchers explored the association between the patients’ body mass index and prostate cancer mortality, adjusted for tumor aggressiveness and other characteristics…
Prostate cancers are suggested to contain self-renewing tumor stem cells that have the ability to grow uncontrollably and spread. Identified as tumor-initiating cells (TICs), research has shown that these cells are found to be resistant to standard chemotherapy. A desirable treatment strategy is to develop therapies that would effectively target the self-renewing capabilities of the TICs, which requires better identification of TICs themselves. Utilizing prostate cancer samples from patients diagnosed at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey between 2008 and 2012, Cancer Institute investigators used mouse and zebrafish models to identify the frequencies of TICs from each patient’s prostate cancer cells. …
Men with advanced prostate cancer typically receive hormonal therapy to reduce the level of androgens, or male hormones, in their bodies. …
Prof Boniol, Research Director at the International Prevention Research Institute (iPRI) and Professor at the Strathclyde Institute for Global Public Health at iPRI, Lyon, France, will tell the congress that the total harm men experience in terms of impotence and incontinence, and the side-effects from prostate cancer treatments, severely affects their quality of life, and should further discourage the use of PSA testing for prostate cancer screening. Prof Boniol will say: "The test measures PSA protein levels, which are produced by the prostate gland, in a man’s blood, and may help detect early cancer…
New findings reported in NEJM on August 15, 2013, based on follow-up of trial participants for up to 18 years, showed that survival of the men on finasteride was equivalent to men who did not take the drug and the reduction in risk of prostate cancer persists. Among nearly 19,000 eligible men who underwent randomization, prostate cancer was diagnosed in 10.5 percent of those in the finasteride group and 14.9 percent of those in the placebo group, a 30 percent reduction in risk…
"Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy and the second most frequent cause of male cancer death in the United States and other Western countries but is far less frequent in Asian countries. Prostate cancer risk has been inversely associated with intake of soy and soy foods in observational studies, which may explain this geographic variation because soy consumption is low in the United States and high in Asian countries," according to background information in the article. "Although it has been repeatedly proposed that soy may prevent prostate cancer development, this hypothesis has not been tested in randomized studies with cancer as the end point. A substantive fraction (48 percent — 55 percent) of men diagnosed as having prostate cancer use dietary supplements including soy products, although the exact proportion is not known…