Results tagged “treatment” from Cancer

Researchers in Spain conducted a Phase III clinical trial called GEICAM. They wanted to compare different chemotherapy regimes in women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. The trial included 252 women who had already been treated with anthracyclines and taxanes and experienced a recurrence.

One group of women was treated with Gemzar (gemcitabine) and Navelbine (vinorelbine), the other group was treated with Navelbine alone. The results were published in Lancet Oncology that states the combination of the two drugs improves progression free survival. It was also mentioned that this combination however did not improve overall survival.

A promising drug for fighting cancer is found. It has already been proven relatively safe. Laboratory and animal tests have shown it kills cancer cells and shrinks tumors.

You would think the drug companies would fall all over themselves to do the clinical trials necessary for the drug to be prescribed to cancer patients. Right?

Wrong.

This may be the biggest scandal to hit the medical world in years. Yet so far, all the commercial U.S. media have stayed away from reporting on it.

The Greek health ministry has moved to curb what it called "ridiculous behaviour" following reports that a wonder-cure for cancer had been found in olive leaf extract.

"No systematic clinical study exists ... to prove the usefulness of olive leaf or fruit extract (against cancer)," the ministry said in a statement, warning patients against straying from their prescribed medication.

The statement came after several TV chat shows last week hosted self-styled therapists claiming that olive leaves mixed in water had curative properties against the illness.

Capsaicin -- the compound that makes chili peppers spicy -- can kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells, with no side effects, according to a new study by researchers at Nottingham University in the UK.

The study, led by Dr. Timothy Bates, found that capsaicin killed laboratory-grown lung and pancreatic cancer cells by attacking tumor cells' source of energy and triggering cell-suicide.

"This is incredibly exciting and may explain why people living in countries like Mexico and India, who traditionally eat a diet which is very spicy, tend to have lower incidences of many cancers that are prevalent in the Western world," Bates said.

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.

Targeted nanotech-based treatments will enter clinical trials in 2007.

Author: Kevin Bullis

The first in a new generation of nanotechnology-based cancer treatments will likely begin clinical trials in 2007, and if the promise of animal trials carries through to human trials, these treatments will transform cancer therapy. By replacing surgery and conventional chemotherapy with noninvasive treatments targeted at cancerous tumors, this nanotech approach could reduce or eliminate side effects by avoiding damage to healthy tissue. It could also make it possible to destroy tumors that are inoperable or won't respond to current treatment.

One of these new approaches places gold-coated nanoparticles, called nanoshells, inside tumors and then heats them with infrared light until the cancer cells die. Because the nanoparticles also scatter light, they could be used to image tumors as well. Mauro Ferrari, a leader in the field of nanomedicine and professor of bioengineering at the University of Texas Health Science Center, says this is "very exciting" technology.

WASHINGTON - The hours spent sitting in doctors’ waiting rooms, in line for the CT scan, watching chemotherapy drip into veins: Battling cancer steals a lot of time — at least $2.3 billion worth in the first year of treatment alone.

So says the first study to try to put a price tag to the time that people spend being treated for 11 of the most common cancers.

Even more sobering than the economic toll are the tallies, by government researchers, of the sheer hours lost to cancer care: 368 hours in that first year after diagnosis with ovarian cancer; 272 hours being treated for lung cancer, 193 hours for kidney cancer.

Medical News Today - Compelling new data confirming the survival benefits of Herceptin(REG) (trastuzumab) in early and advanced HER2-positive breast cancer were presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).

Efficacy in Early Breast Cancer

BCIRG 006

Updated results of the BCIRG 006 study[i] showed that adding Herceptin to either of two adjuvant chemotherapy regimens reduced the risk of death by 34 to 41% compared with chemotherapy alone. Furthermore, the addition of Herceptin significantly reduced the risk of cancer coming back by 33-39%. These remarkable data confirm the survival benefit provided by Herceptin to women with HER2-positive early breast cancer, as previously seen in three other large adjuvant Herceptin studies[ii], [iii].

When given to ease pain and other complaints in patients with late-stage non-small cell lung cancer, a longer, less intense course of radiotherapy offers better value for the money than short-course intense treatment, concludes a study by Dutch researchers.

A previous study by the Leiden University Medical Center team compared a short course of two treatments of 8 gray (Gy) of radiation each, or a long course of 10 treatments of 3 Gy each. Patients who received the long course had more symptom improvement and improved one-year survival compared to patients who received the short course.

In this new study, the researchers analyzed the costs of the two treatment approaches to determine which one offered the best value for the money. They estimated the costs of treatment and related expenses, such as medical care for people who survived their cancer.

TORONTO -- Common breast cancer chemotherapy regimes are inferior at preventing the disease from coming back, Canadian researchers have discovered.

Widely-used breast cancer chemotherapy treatment known as AC/T is not as effective at preventing a recurrence of the disease as another commonly-used treatment regime called CEF.

Researchers also found that AC/T was less effective at preventing breast cancer from recurring than a new experimental treatment regime called EC/T.

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."

A second opinion from a team of specialists after an initial diagnosis of breast cancer resulted in a significant change in the recommended surgical treatment in more than half of cases, a new study has found.

Disagreement involved everything from the interpretation of mammograms to the necessity for mastectomy, and 6 of the 149 women in the one-year study were found on second consideration to have no breast cancer at all. The report was published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cancer.

All of the women had been referred by their doctors to a specialized cancer center for a second opinion, and all arrived with biopsy slides, X-rays and a surgeon’s recommendation for treatment.

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.

By Marsha Hitchcock, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent

ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new approach to treating breast cancer gives patients an alternative that cuts radiation treatments down from six weeks to five days.

This new minimally invasive approach, called partial breast irradiation therapy with brachytherapy, targets the tumor with precision and gives women with breast cancer more time to make decisions about their care.

"This new therapy gives hope to the some 212,000 women who we anticipate will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year," said Ellen Mendelson, M.D., Section Chief of Breast Imaging and a professor of radiology at Northwestern University in Chicago. "What we are looking at is a new way at administering the radiation part of it," she told Ivanhoe.

Women with ovarian cancer are being recruited for a world wide drug trial, to boost their chances of survival when chemotherapy has failed.

Nearly 15-hundred Australians this year will be diagnosed with the disease, described as the 'silent killer'.

Phenoxodiol has proved in clinical trials that it is capable of slowing cancer growth by interfering with the mechanisms that allow ovarian cancer cells to stay alive.

An advance that may speed the use of "prodrug chemotherapy" -- one of the most promising new strategies for reducing the side effects of anti-cancer drugs -- is being reported by scientists from Johns Hopkins University's In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center (ICMIC).

This two-part chemotherapy involves giving patients the inactive form of an anti-cancer drug (the "prodrug") and an enzyme that changes the prodrug into an active, cancer fighting form. Patients first get the enzyme, which is gradually eliminated from normal tissue but builds up and remains in the tumor. Then patients get the prodrug, which changes into its active and toxic form only upon encountering the enzyme in the tumor.

CHAPEL HILL -- Six months ago you couldn't have paid Gretchen Hoag to go to a gym. Radiation and chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer had robbed her of her hair, and the idea of being seen in public like that was repellent.

"I would not have felt comfortable," said Hoag, 46, who lives in Chapel Hill.

But today, Hoag is an eager participant in a new program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that hopes to more firmly establish regular exercise as an effective treatment for common and debilitating side effects of breast cancer therapy, including pain, fatigue, depression and anxiety.

US Oncology's doctors treat one in seven new cancer patients -- and enrage the rest of medicine.

Cancer treatment is one of the few bright spots on Dr. Dale Fell's income statement. His nonprofit Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C. loses money on its emergency room, its pediatric division and its care for indigents. But not on radiation used to zap tumors at a cost of up to $50,000 per patient. Oncologists send 1,700 patients a year to Fell's hospital, one of two in western North Carolina with a radiation department.

Then last fall US Oncology, the giant cancer care services company, received approval from state regulators to buy a linear accelerator and launch its own radiation department three miles away from Mission. "This could cripple us," Fell says. He has sued state regulators, alleging us Oncology's radiation license violates state law.

LONDON - Treating patients with advanced kidney cancer before surgery with a combination of targeted therapies is safe, effective and may prolong their lives, researchers said on Thursday.

Scientists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre, who presented their findings at a conference in Prague, studied the effect of giving the drugs bevacizumab and erlotinib to patients before their tumour was removed.

“The main aim of this study was to look at the efficacy and safety of using these targeted therapies before surgery, and our results have shown that there were few side effects and that it prolonged the survival of our patients,” said Eric Jonasch, a professor of medicine at the university.