Results tagged “prostate cancer” from Cancer

Scientists have pinpointed a set of common variations in human DNA that signal a higher risk for prostate cancer in men who carry them. Some of these variations are more common in African-American men, which may help explain why prostate cancer rates are higher in African Americans than in men of other races.

The findings, published in 3 separate studies, may lead to genetic tests that will help identify those most at risk for the disease. The findings may also help unlock the biological mysteries behind prostate cancer, which could speed up the discovery of new treatments.

The 3 studies focus on DNA variations located on chromosome 8 in some men. The variations may be linked to as many as 68% of prostate cancer cases in African Americans, 60% in Japanese Americans, 46% in Latinos, 45% in native Hawaiians and 32% in whites, the authors of 1 of the studies calculate.

Oregon scientists say a simple test can identify men at high risk of life-threatening prostate cancer even after a biopsy finds no signs of it. The key, researchers say, is "PSA density," which compares the size of a man's prostate with his levels of a cancer-related protein called prostate-specific antigen.

Men with the highest PSA densities were much more likely to later be diagnosed with aggressive cancers than men with lower scores in an Oregon study, even though both groups had clean prostate biopsies.

If it survives scientific review, it could help save the lives of men with serious cancers and avoid repeated biopsies in others.

"It's that 1-in-10 men that do have a life-threatening cancer that we wanted to identify," said Dr. Mark Garzotto, an Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher, who recently presented the study at a cancer conference in Florida.

URBANA - A new University of Illinois study shows that tomatoes and broccoli--two vegetables known for their cancer-fighting qualities--are better at shrinking prostate tumors when both are part of the daily diet than when they're eaten alone.

"When tomatoes and broccoli are eaten together, we see an additive effect. We think it's because different bioactive compounds in each food work on different anti-cancer pathways," said University of Illinois food science and human nutrition professor John Erdman.

In a study published in the January 15 issue of Cancer Research, Erdman and doctoral candidate Kirstie Canene-Adams fed a diet containing 10 percent tomato powder and 10 percent broccoli powder to laboratory rats that had been implanted with prostate cancer cells. The powders were made from whole foods so the effects of eating the entire vegetable could be compared with consuming individual parts of them as a nutritional supplement.

Men who receive combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation for local or locally advanced prostate cancer may experience a significant reduction in penile length, according to a report in the January issue of the Journal of Urology.

There has been anecdotal evidence that radiation therapy can reduce penile length but, to the authors' knowledge, the present study is the first to determine if penile length changes following combination treatment with hormone therapy plus radiation.

Dr. Ahmet Haliloglu and colleagues at the University of Ankara in Turkey enrolled 47 men with local or locally advanced prostate cancer. The patients, who were followed from 2000 to 2005, received leuprolide or goserelin injections every 3 months, for a total of three doses. At month 7, radiotherapy, using a 70-Gy dose, was initiated and continued for 7 weeks.

Radioactive 'Seeds' and Conventional Radiation Treatment Are Effective

By Salynn Boyles, WebMD Medical News

Reviewed By Louise Chang, MD

One of the longest ever follow-up studies of radioactive "seed" implants for prostate cancer shows the treatment to be highly effective in combination with conventional external radiation.

Three out of four patients in the study remained disease free at least 15 years after treatment ended, with intermediate-risk patients faring almost as well as those considered to have a low risk of dying from their cancer. The outcomes compared favorably to the best results reported among surgically treated patients, says John E. Sylvester, MD, of the Seattle Prostate Institute.

The collaborative work being performed by professionals across medical disciplines in the promising area of molecular imaging - from research scientists to nuclear medicine physicians, urologists, radiochemists and even veterinarians - provides encouraging news in fighting prostate cancer. This type of progressive - or translational - research can be seen in two papers published in the January issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., and at Nihon Medi-Physics’ research center in Chiba, Japan, collaborated closely in examining the potential of using the radiotracer FACBC to better stage or determine prostate cancer spread, said David M. Schuster, an assistant professor and director of the division of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging in Emory’s radiology department.

Seventy-four percent of men treated with a combination of radiation seed implants and external beam radiation therapy for prostate cancer are cured of their disease 15 years following their treatment, according to a study released in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology-Biology-Physics, the official journal of ASTRO.

This study was conducted by the physicians at the Seattle Prostate Institute. Doctors wanted to look at the combination of seed implants and external beam radiation therapy, two different types of radiation therapy, to prolong the long-term disease cure rates for prostate cancer. Over the course of 15 years, doctors followed 232 men with early-stage prostate cancer who received a course of external beam radiation therapy followed by permanent seed implants a few weeks later. Sixty-five percent of these patients had T2b-T3 disease and the entire group had an average pre-treatment PSA of 15 ng/ml.

Cancer treatment in Scotland appears to favour women over men, who face longer waits and delays in treatment, a leading doctor has warned.

Figures on cancer waiting times show that 88.2 per cent of breast-cancer patients are starting treatment within the two-month target from urgent referral by their doctor. But waiting-time for targets in urological cancers, including prostate and testicular cancers, hit only 67.5 per cent.

Dr David Love, joint chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said men might be the unintended victims of high-profile campaigns which have lobbied successfully to improve breast-cancer care.

The gender "bias" is most marked in the Borders. Up to 100 per cent of breast-cancer patients start treatment within two months, but for urological cancers, achievement of the target falls to a low of 54.5 per cent.

Canadian and international researchers are recruiting men for a clinical trial to test whether combining a high-dose vitamin D pill with chemotherapy improves treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

Dr. Kim Chi of the B.C. Cancer Agency and two other lead investigators will study about 1,000 men over the next two years.

Currently, there is little to offer prostate cancer patients who have stopped responding to standard hormone therapy, Chi said.

BALTIMORE, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- Men with early prostate cancer who eat a vegetarian diet, exercise and reduce stress may lower their risk of cancer progression, says a U.S. study.

The 93 study participants were men with early-stage prostate cancer who had chosen "watchful waiting" instead of active treatment for their prostate cancer.

During the one-year study, six men in the usual care group underwent conventional treatment because of rising prostate specific antigen, known as PSA, or evidence of progression from magnetic resonance imaging. In contrast, none of the men in the comprehensive lifestyle group, who followed a very-low-fat diet of 10 percent or less of daily calories, needed treatment. PSA levels decreased 4 percent in the lifestyle group, whereas PSA levels increased 6 percent in the usual-care group.

A study has found that men with advanced, often untreatable prostate cancer who received a therapeutic cancer vaccine went on to survive longer than those receiving a placebo.
Study findings showed the vaccine group lived up to an average of four-and-a-half months longer and had a greater than three-fold increase in survival at 36 months when compared to patients in the placebo group.

The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III clinical trial was conducted to test the efficacy of the vaccine, called sipuleucel-T, in delaying disease progression and prolonging survival in patients with asymptomatic metastatic hormone refractory prostate cancer (HRPC).

BRUSSELS (MarketWatch) -- OncoMethylome Sciences (ONCOB.BT) Wednesday announced it successfully completed the initial research activities of its urine-based prostate cancer test, and that the test has been licensed to Veridex LLC, a Johnson & Johnson company (JNJ).

The test, which uses urine as the patient sample, is being developed to improve the current process for prostate cancer screening. For men, prostate cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Tests that screen for prostate cancer today, such as the PSA test, are commonly criticized by the medical community for their inaccuracy.

Up to 75% of the men who are recommended for a prostate biopsy procedure based on their elevated PSA levels have negative biopsy results.

Many elderly men are getting screened for prostate cancer unnecessarily, according to researchers from the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

In a study of nearly 600,000 men aged 70 and older who had been seen at dozens of VA hospitals across the United States, the research team found high rates of inappropriate PSA testing, even among men with multiple illnesses who were unlikely to survive more than 10 years.

The older a man is, the more likely he is to develop prostate cancer. At the same time, however, the older the man, the more likely he is to die of something else before the prostate cancer can even begin to cause symptoms.

ISLAMABAD - Green and black tea can slow down the spread of prostate cancer, while a highly touted antioxidant found in red wine, grapes and peanuts does not perform well as a cancer preventive, two new studies have found.

For the tea study, Susanne Henning, an associate researcher at the Center for Human Nutrition at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, assigned 20 men, all scheduled for prostate removal due to cancer, to drink either black tea, green tea or soda, five

The aim was to see if substances called polyphenols found in tea might slow prostate cancer cell growth. Other researchers have found these polyphenols induce death in cancer cells.

A comprehensive study into treatments for prostate cancer has found that palladium-based therapies provide more effective than iodine alternatives.

According to the research, carried out by experts from a number of US institutions including the New York Prostate Institute, patients treated with palladium therapies were less likely to suffer a recurrence of prostate cancer than those who were treated with iodine.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiation Oncologists (Astro), Dr Louis Potters, of the New York Prostate Institute, revealed: "Based on the experience of the multi-institutional team of physicians who tested the patients and generated the data presented, there was a more positive outcome for patients that were treated with palladium over iodine."

LONDON (Reuters) - A popular baldness drug taken by more than 4 million men worldwide can mask an important marker used in screening tests to detect prostate cancer, scientists said on Monday.

Finasteride, which is made by Merck & Co Inc under the name Propecia, is a leading drug to treat male-pattern baldness.

But researchers have discovered it artificially lowers a protein called prostate specific antigen (PSA). High levels of PSA in the blood can signal prostate cancer or other problems.

Dr Anthony D'Amico, the lead author of the study from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, recommends middle-aged men taking Propecia should have their PSA levels multiplied by 2 in tests to account for the difference.

The nearly 240,000 men in the United States who will learn they have prostate cancer this year have one more thing to worry about: Are their doctors making treatment decisions on the basis of money as much as medicine?

Among several widely used treatments for prostate cancer, one stands out for its profit potential. The approach, a radiation therapy known as I.M.R.T., can mean reimbursement of $47,000 or more a patient.

That is many times the fees that urologists make on other accepted treatments for the disease, which include surgery and radioactive seed implants. And it may help explain why urologists have started buying multimillion-dollar I.M.R.T. equipment and software, and why many more are investigating it as a way to increase their incomes.

PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- U.S. cancer scientists say they've demonstrated a gene involved in regulating aging also blocks prostate cancer cell growth.

Dr. Richard Pestell and colleagues at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University say they hope the newly found connection will aid in better understanding the development of prostate cancer and lead to new drugs against the disease.

The gene, SIRT1, is a member of a family of enzymes called sirtuins that have far-reaching influence in all organisms, including roles in metabolism, gene expression and aging.

A new urine test can tell prostate cancer from an enlarged prostate -- but can't tell whether the cancer is deadly.

The test, from San Diego-based Gen-Probe, is approved in some European countries but not in the U.S. It detects genetic material -- RNA -- from prostate cancer gene 3 or PCA3.

PCA3 (previously known as the DD3 gene) is found only in the prostate. When prostate cells become cancerous, their PCA3 genes go wild. Prostate cancer cells express 60 to 100 times more PCA3 RNA than normal cells.

THURSDAY, Nov. 16 (HealthDay News) -- An experimental drug prevented bone tumors in 50 percent of mice in a preclinical study, researchers report.

The results suggest this treatment may be able to prevent or treat metastatic tumors in bone, say scientists at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

They determined the drug, known as VEGF121/rGel, stopped specialized cells within the bone from destroying material to make room for embedded prostate tumors. The drug may also inhibit the growth of blood vessels that feed bone tumors.

The findings appear in the current issue of Cancer Research.