Skin cancer risk determined by various genetic factors

Though researchers learn more about skin cancer every year, its causes remain numerous and ambiguous, making it hard to predict whether a person will actually develop skin cancer cells in their life time, according to dermatologists in Connecticut.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found a person’s overall risk for skin cancer involves a wide variety genetic factors including family history, ethnicity, and genetic variations specific to each individual.

Taking these factors into account, the researchers developed more precise method for assessing skin caner risk, which they recently published in journal Genetics.

“We hope this study will ultimately contribute toward a better understanding of the genetics of complex traits and diseases,” said Ana Inés Vázquez, PhD, lead author of the study from UAB’s Department of Biostatistics. “Such an understanding is essential for the development of methods that can be used for early and improved prediction of genetic predisposition to diseases.”

In their study, the researchers used phenotypic and genetic information from more than 5,000 familial participants in a recent Framingham Heart Study to develop various models for assessing skin cancer risk.

The researchers’ most basic risk evaluation model included standard risk factors such as sex, but attached predictive models that were developed by adding information on family history, ethnicity, and data from 41,000 genetic markers across the human genome.

The accuracy of each model was then evaluated, taking into account the best predictions obtained from each model that included all predictive risk factors — the standard risk factors with the additional family history, ethnicity and genetic markers.

“Although there is no doubt that sun exposure increases your risk for skin cancer,” said Mark Johnston, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Genetics , “it isn’t clear how much of a risk it poses to each individual.

Experts in Southern Connecticut dermatology said the new model for assessing skin cancer risk should prove useful to health care providers and public health officials, who play a vital role in educating people about preventing and treating the terminal illness.

Uninsured brain cancer patients have higher post-surgery death rates

It seems health insurance plays a larger role in successful brain tumor surgery NJ recovery rates than previously known. According to a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, uninsured patients die at a higher rate after receiving brain surgery to remove cancerous tumors than patients with private insurance.

Researchers found uninsured patients had a death rate of 2.6 percent, compared to 1.3 percent among the privately insured, a statistically significant difference.

“If you have some type of insurance, you’re going to do better,” said Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, the study’s lead researcher, adding that survival rates for patients covered by Medicaid were slightly better than those for the uninsured, but the difference was not significant.

The study, which was recently published in the Archives of Surgery, reviewed the records of more than 28,000 patients and compared their in-hospital death rates based on insurance status.

But the factors causing uninsured patients to do worse aren’t entirely understood. “Whether we like it or not, this paper raises more questions than it answers,” Quiñones-Hinojosa said.

The study isn’t the first to link health insurance status to health treatment outcomes. Previous research has documented the same pattern among patients undergoing surgeries for other conditions, including cardiovascular disease.

Researchers looked at several possibilities that could explain the study’s findings. Previous studies found that being uninsured may influence a patient’s overall health and ability to access care. The study was unable to address whether uninsured patients had undiagnosed medical conditions that might have contributed to their poorer outcomes.

Researchers also speculated that doctors may treat uninsured patients differently. Quiñones-Hinojosa said he would like to conduct a future study on neurosurgery New Jersey that would follow surgical patients and analyze the care they receive.

Quiñones-Hinojosa declined to offer an opinion about whether the expansion of coverage expected to take place in 2014 under the 2010 health care law, including an expansion of Medicaid, would improve health outcomes.

“This paper argues that patients with some sort of insurance don’t die as much [as those] without insurance,” he said. “One can logically ask … will having some sort of universal coverage lead to something in favor of patients not dying?”

Double mastectomies found unnecessary in 70 percent of breast cancer patients

Giving up a physical part of one’s body is never an easy decision to make. This is especially true for women who suffer from breast cancer and get a mastectomy, or the removal of a breast. Still, a recent trend has been on the rise as women get double mastectomies, but according to a new study, as many as 70 percent of women who have a mastectomy do not need one, prompting researchers to worry about over-treatment and an increased chance of premature ovarian failure.

“People want absolute certainty,” breast surgeon Monica Morrow at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said. “Unfortunately, even having a double mastectomy doesn’t provide certainty that breast cancer will not recur. So it’s a false sense of security.”

Morrow is a co-author of a paper that will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s Quality Care Symposium in San Diego.

Another co-author, Sarah Hawley, of the University of Michigan, said double mastectomy “does not make sense” for about three-quarters of the women who are choosing the operation “because having a non-affected breast removed will not reduce the risk of recurrence in the affected breast.”

The study examined 1,446 women that had been treated for breast cancer using traditional approaches, such as chemotherapy and DHEA fertility treatments and none had the cancer come back. Researchers found that, of the women who had a mastectomy, 20 percent had both breasts removed. That came out to a total of 7 percent of the women who had a double mastectomy performed.

Many women who have double mastectomies do so because they worry about the breast cancer recurring in the other breast. In fact, while 90 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer worried about the possibility of cancer in the healthy breast, researchers say that cancer in one breast does not affect the chances of cancer in the other.

The more radical operation makes medical sense, Hawley says, for fewer than 10 percent of women with early breast cancer. Those include the 1.5 percent who have a genetic mutation called BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 and another 8 percent who have a strong family history, which means two or more immediate relatives who’ve had breast or ovarian cancer.

Regardless, researchers concluded women who do not fall into either of those situations, a double mastectomy as a preventative measure is likely overkill. The procedure also comes with a host of complications and leads to a more difficult recovery. Some women will also need to undergo radiation or chemotherapy, which will further delay their treatment and can result in a poor ovarian reserve.

“One of the biggest fears when you get a cancer diagnosis is, if I go through this treatment, can I be done, can I go on and live my life and not have to worry about it coming back?” Hawley says.

“I have seen young women who leave the office having signed up for lumpectomy,” Morrow says, “and they call back the next day and say, ‘Well, I was on the Internet or I was talking to my friends and they said I’m a young mother, don’t I want to do everything I can to be there for my child? I think I want a double mastectomy.’ “

Blocking two proteins may sustain fertility during cancer treatment

According to a recent study published in the journal Molecular Cell, women undergoing cancer treatment may be able to sustain fertility if the activity of two proteins is blocked.

Many women with cancer become infertile post treatment and normally have to rely on an embryo donor if they want to conceive. Both chemotherapy and radiation therapy can cause damage. In radiation therapy, the high levels of radiation used to battle the cancer cells can impair the function of the ovaries. Many of the chemotherapy drugs used can also damage a woman’s egg supply and possible stop the ovaries from functioning normally.

It is common for infertile women to use reproductive assistance, such as embryo adoption or using a donor egg, to conceive after treatment. If possible, then this advancement could all women who have underwent cancer treatments to be able to conceive children naturally.

The study, conducted by researchers from Monash University and Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research, found that when egg cells are damaged for instance after radiation or chemotherapy, two proteins, called NOXA and PUMA, cause the death of the damaged egg cells. The process of cell death is normal, but this finding indicates that blocking the activity of these two proteins may preserve fertility.

The researchers reported that when the NOXA and PUMA proteins were absent, cells damaged from cancer treatment were able to repair themselves. After the repair process, the cells can then continue to become ovulated and fertilized.

With this new advancement treatments may be able to block the proteins and prevent the egg cell damage caused by chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

Prostate Cancer Websites May Be Too Hard To Understand

According to a Loyola University Medical Center study, the wording in many prostate cancer websites may be too hard for the general public to understand. Many doctors specializing in metastatic prostate cancer treatment NJ to CA would agree that this new data is alarming.

Prostate cancer is a cancer that develops in the prostate gland, which is found in the male reproductive system. It is the number one cause of death from cancer in males over the age of 75. Although prostate cancer is rarely diagnosed in men under 40, approximately 80 percent of men are diagnosed by the age of 80.

Due to the fact that around one-third of the US population reads below high school levels, the US National Institutes of Health recommends that all patient-education material, either in text or online, should be written at a fourth- to sixth-grade level. The Loyola researchers were interested to see if prostate websites followed this recommendation.

The study, published in the Journal of Urology, examined the reading level of 62 prostate cancer websites. The researchers were surprised to find that only 4.8 percent of the prostate cancer websites were written below a high school reading level. 63 percent of the sites, in fact, were written well above a 12th-grade reading level, and the median reading level of all the sites combined was 12th grade.

These results indicate that people interested in learning about prostate cancer may not be able to understand the material presented to them. Patients may find it hard to get information on prostate cancer screenings, as well as information on prostate cancer itself after being diagnosed.

This in particular is a problem since prostate cancer is a very difficult condition to understand. There are several treatment options available to patients and each option has pros and cons that vary according to factors such as a patient’s age, tumor type and overall health.

There are no clear early signs or symptoms of prostate cancer, so it is common for men to be diagnosed when the cancer has spread. For this reason, it is very important for men over 40 to have annual prostate screenings and to be aware of the potential risks they face.

Acupuncture can help ease fatigue in cancer patients

According to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, acupuncture may help relieve fatigue in women who have had breast cancer, as well as easing anxiety, depression and other aspects of recovery and physical therapy MN.

“I am quite excited with these results. They provide some good evidence of an effect of acupuncture for the management of a very debilitating and burdensome symptom for patients,” said Alex Molassiotis, lead author of the study from University of Manchester, in England, to HealthDay.

The study involved over 300 women with breast cancer who were under outpatient care at one of nine health care facilities in the United Kingdom. Most of the participants were white, had an average age of 53 and had been diagnosed with either stage 1, 2 or 3 breast cancer and had all experienced at least moderate fatigue for an average of 18 months.

Over a six-week period, all patients continued receiving the same care they had been given before the study, and over 200 of the patients underwent weekly 20-minute acupuncture sessions. At the end of six weeks, patients who had received the acupuncture reported feeling better in terms of overall fatigue, physical and mental fatigue, anxiety and depression levels, functional well-being, emotional well-being, social functioning and overall quality of life.

The improvement was “mild to moderate,” according to experts on physical therapy in Minnesota. It was not enough to allow someone who is stuck in bed to start walking, but maybe enough to get people who are too tired to exercise to start doing some activity.

This is an important finding as cancer and cancer treatments are known to cause chronic pain, psychological stress and anaemia, all of which contribute to fatigue. In addition, people who are nauseated after chemo might not be getting the most nutritious diet for maintaining energy levels.

According to an editorial published with the study, close to one-third of cancer patients have persistent fatigue that may continue for years after treatment. Doctors typically encourage moderate exercise and talk therapy to improve their energy.

On top of all treatments and recovery efforts, researchers recommended “maintaining activity to tolerance, unless there are other problems with that, good nutrition, getting adequate sleep, and if the fatigue continues, considering there might be an alternative that complements those things.”

Anti-alcoholism drug could help fight brain cancer

There’s few pills that cure both alcoholism and brain tumors, but in a breakthrough study, researchers say they have found the two-in-one ultra medication. In a study published in the British Journal of Cancer, researchers from University of Wolverhampton have shown that the drug disulfiram can be used to treat glioblastoma, an especially deadly and aggressive type of brain cancer.

Disulfiram, a drug that has been used to help alcoholic patients for over 60 years, proved to be effective against the brain tumors that normally leave patients with a 27 percent chance of survival.

Experiments have shown how the anti-alcoholism drug called disulfiram, can potentially cross the blood-brain barrier and might help sensitize cancer cells to existing chemotherapy treatments, said the research.

Researchers found that the drug was efficient at destroying glioblastoma cells growing in the lab, especially when partnered with the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine which is one of the few chemotherapy drugs that is able to cross the blood-brain barrier.

Study leader Dr Weiguang Wang from the university said the team in the West Midlands has spent the last ten years looking into ways to use disulfiram as a cancer-fighting tool. It is said that the drug works by transporting copper into cancer cells, which leads to destructive free-radicals building up and killing harmful cells. Glioblastoma cells already have high levels of copper, so adding to this can tip them over the edge.

Glioblastoma multiforme is one of the tumors that can grow really fast, usually the patient lives for just 15 months after cancer diagnosis. According to estimates, in the year 2010, more than 22,000 adults in the U.S. were diagnosed and 13,140 died from brain and other nervous system cancers. Around 15 percent of all brain-cancer patients between 45 and 70 years have glioblastoma multiforme.

“One of the big challenges in cancer treatment is how to successfully kill tumor cells without harming the surrounding tissues. Drugs like this one, which can both penetrate the blood brain barrier and increase the sensitivity of cancer cells to chemotherapy, could play an important role in overcoming the problem of resistance to help improve the outlook for people with brain tumors,” said Dr. Julie Sharp, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information manager.