A Study Finds Smoking’s Toll On Your Body and Health Worse Than Previously Thought

Source: nytimes.comAuthor: Denise Grady  However bad you thought smoking was, it’s even worse. A new study adds at least five diseases and 60,000 deaths a year to the toll taken by tobacco in the United States. Before the study, smoking was already blamed for nearly half a million deaths a year in this country from 21 diseases, including 12 types of cancer. The new findings are based on health data from nearly a million people who were followed for 10 years. In addition to the well-known hazards of lung cancer, artery disease, heart attacks, chronic lung disease and stroke, the researchers found that smoking was linked to significantly increased risks of infection, kidney disease, intestinal disease caused by inadequate blood flow, and heart and lung ailments not previously attributed to tobacco. Even though people are already barraged with messages about the dangers of smoking, researchers say it is important to let the public know that there is yet more bad news. “The smoking epidemic is still ongoing, and there is a need to evaluate how smoking is hurting us as a society, to support clinicians and policy making in public health,” said Brian D. Carter, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and the first author of an article about the study, which appears in The New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s not a done story.” In an editorial accompanying the article, Dr. Graham A. Colditz, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said the new findings showed [...]

2015-02-12T11:56:41-07:00February, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Why the “Cancer Due to Bad Luck” Story Needs Revising

Source: medscape.comAuthor: Zosia Chustecka  UPDATED January 16, 2015 // There has been quite a backlash to the recent news that many cancers are due to "bad luck" of random mutations, which was proclaimed in headlines around the world, and based on a report published in the January 2 issue of Science. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization's specialized cancer agency, put out a press release to say that it "strongly disagrees with the conclusion," and warning that the message could harm cancer research and public health. "We already knew that for an individual to develop a certain cancer there is an element of chance, yet this has little to say about the level of cancer risk in a population," explained IARC director Christopher Wild, PhD. "Concluding that 'bad luck' is the major cause of cancer would be misleading and may detract from efforts to identify the causes of the disease and effectively prevent it." As previously reported by Medscape Medical News, the researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reported that in about two-thirds (22 of the 31) of cancer tissue types they had investigated, the cancer could be largely explained by the bad luck of random mutations that arise during DNA replication in normal noncancerous stem cells. However, many of the news stories reported a distorting simplification of the findings, and stated that two-thirds of all cancers are due to bad luck. There has been fierce criticism of the way that the media reported the story, but an expert argues that journalists were [...]

2015-01-20T11:45:10-07:00January, 2015|Oral Cancer News|

Doctors Trying To Remind Americans That The HPV Vaccine Isn’t All About Sex

Source: thinkprogress.orgAuthor: Tara Culp-Ressler  Dr. Ronald A. DePinho is on a mission.   DePinho, who’s been a cancer researcher for decades and currently serves as the president of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, wants to reframe the national conversation about the HPV vaccine to drive home a fundamental point.   “It’s important to appreciate that this is a cancer vaccine. A cancer vaccine!” DePinho said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “It’s a dream come true that we’ve converted knowledge into something that can actually save lives and avoid getting cancer in the first place. It’s really what we have been hoping for, and now we have it.” Since the introduction of the HPV vaccine in 2006, the rate of human papillomavirus in teenage girls has plummeted. And the research in this field continues to advance. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration approved an updated version of the Gardasil vaccine that protects against nine strains of the cancer-causing virus — more than twice as many as the 2006 version, which covered just four strains.   According to DePinho, that’s a really significant advance for cancer care. He doesn’t want it to get lost in the ongoing controversy about HPV vaccination, a round of shots that some parents still worry is unsafe or inappropriate for their kids. There’s a persistent myth, for instance, that giving teen girls the shots will spur them to become more “promiscuous” because they know they’ll be protected from a sexually transmitted infection. Large [...]

2014-12-12T10:46:44-07:00December, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

New Study Finds Editing HPV Genes Kills Cancer

Source: drbicuspid.comAuthor: DrBicuspid Staff  August 14, 2014 -- Researchers have hijacked a defense system normally used by bacteria to fend off viral infections and redirected it against human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical, head and neck, and other cancers, according to a new study in the Journal of Virology (August, 6, 2014). Using a genome editing tool, researchers from Duke University were able to selectively destroy two viral genes responsible for the growth and survival of cervical carcinoma cells, causing the cancer cells to self-destruct. The study findings validate an approach only recently attempted in mammalian cells, and they could help in the development of antiviral strategies against other DNA-based viruses such as hepatitis B and herpes simplex. "Because this approach is only going after viral genes, there should be no off-target effects on normal cells," said senior study author Bryan R. Cullen, PhD, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at the Duke University School of Medicine, in a statement. "You can think of this as targeting a missile that will destroy a certain target. You put in a code that tells the missile exactly what to hit, and it will only hit that, and it won't hit anything else because it doesn't have the code for another target." When examining the genomes of different types of bacteria, researchers noted long stretches where the same genetic sequence was repeated. But in between these repeated stretches were DNA sequences that varied from bacteria to bacteria. About a decade ago, researchers determined that [...]

2014-08-14T17:25:10-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Top cancer organizations push for FDA to regulate all tobacco products

Source: medicalexpress.comAuthor: Staff The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), in a joint letter responding to a proposal by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to extend its regulatory authority over tobacco products, today urged the agency to regulate electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), cigars, and all other tobacco products and to strengthen the proposed regulations for newly deemed products. "There is no safe form of tobacco use," said Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), chief executive officer of the AACR. "Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States, and among its dire health consequences are 18 different types of cancer. It is imperative that the FDA takes action to regulate all tobacco products. The future health of the American people, in particular our nation's children, depends on it." The AACR and ASCO applauded the FDA's proposal to regulate e-cigarettes. "We believe it is vitally important for the FDA to begin regulating these products, especially because we don't know much about the health effects of e-cigarette use. We are also quite concerned that e-cigarettes may increase the likelihood that nonsmokers or former smokers will use combustible tobacco products or that they will discourage smokers from quitting," said Peter P. Yu, MD, FASCO, president of ASCO. "There are insufficient data on the long-term health consequences of e-cigarettes, their value as tobacco cessation aids, or their effects on the use of conventional cigarettes. Any benefits of e-cigarettes are most likely to be realized [...]

2014-08-13T09:48:45-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The National Academies of Science supports Report on Carcinogens assessments – formaldehyde still causes cancer

Source: switchboard.nrdc.orgAuthor: Jennifer Sass   The National Academies of Science (NAS) issued its assessment of the cancer risks from formaldehyde, a common and highly toxic chemical found in our furniture, home building materials, and clothing. The National Academies conducted a thorough and rigorous scientific review, and concluded that it posed a threat to humans for three types of cancer: nasopharyngeal cancer; sinonasal cancer; and myeloid leukemia. And, in 2009 the World Health Organization also confirmed the science that formaldehyde causes cancer in people. What makes this NAS review novel is not the cancer findings, because those had already been identified by various international and national government scientific assessments. No, this review was politically motivated, the result of a campaign by the chemical industry and its allies in Congress to protect formaldehyde and styrene, another common chemical linked to cancer. Part of that effort has been a vicious attack on government scientific assessments, to distort and discredit any evidence linking toxic chemicals to diseases, disabilities, or death. In a “kill the messenger” campaign, the Report on Carcinogens – the prestigious biennial government report that alerts the public to chemicals that may cause cancer in people – was compelled to undergo review by the National Academies after it listed formaldehyde and styrene as “known” and “reasonably anticipated” to cause cancer, respectively. This NAS formaldehyde report, along with the recent NAS styrene report are the strongest possible statement from the scientific community that: the Report on Carcinogens got it right the first time; formaldehyde - and styrene – may cause cancer in humans; and our [...]

2014-08-12T15:46:52-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Tumour Suppressor Mutations Alone Cannot Explain Deadly Cancer

Source: www.domain-b.comAuthor: Staff  Although mutations in a gene dubbed ''the guardian of the genome'' are widely recognized as being associated with more aggressive forms of cancer, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have found evidence suggesting that the deleterious health effects of the mutated gene may in large part be due to other genetic abnormalities, at least in squamous cell head and neck cancers. The study, published online 3 August in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumour suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome's third chromosome. The link between the two had not been observed before because the mutations co-occur in about 70 per cent of head and neck tumours and because full genetic fingerprints of large numbers of cancer tumours have become available only recently. ''These two genetic malfunctions are not two separate stab wounds to the body,'' says co-senior author Trey Ideker, PhD, chief of the division of genetics. ''One exposes the Achilles tendon and the other is a direct blow to it.'' To patients with these cancers, the study's results mean that there may be therapeutic value in testing tumours for the two genetic identifiers, known as a TP53 mutation (short for tumour protein 53) and a 3p deletion (short for deletions of genetic information on the short arm ''p'' of the third chromosome). TP53 plays a key role in [...]

2014-08-08T10:12:06-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Study Finds a ‘Fat Burning Process’ Termed ‘Cachexia’ Kills about One Third Cancer Patients

Source: scicast.comAuthor: Staff  Madrid, Spain (Scicasts) — Most cancer researchers are working on the biology of the tumour. However, Michele Petruzzelli, a member of Erwin Wagner's group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has been looking for ways to attack the disease indirectly.  He focused on the effects of tumours on the rest of the body, and not on the tumour itself. His work on the body's response to a tumour has uncovered that cachexia—the extreme thinness and weakness eventually being the real cause of death in one third of patients with cancer—is triggered by a process that is heavily studied not to fight cancer, but to fight obesity: the conversion of white fat tissue into brown fat tissue. "It is the first time that this phenomenon we might call burning fat has been associated with a negative effect", says Erwin Wagner, the Director of the BBVA Foundation-CNIO Cancer Cell Biology Programme. "What we observe is that the transformation of white fat into brown fat, currently one of the most researched subjects because of its potential effects on obesity and diabetes, has very severe consequences in the context of cancer". The study is published in Cell Metabolism. The researchers also argue that if it is possible to reduce the transformation of fat tissue, the symptoms of cachexia will improve, although they do not completely disappear. The authors demonstrate this by blocking mediators of inflammation, a process linked to cachexia, specifically, to the expression of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-6. "Inhibiting [...]

2014-08-07T09:50:37-07:00August, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Health Insurance providers still take advantage of consumers despite Obamacare

Source: huffingtonpost.comAuthor: Jeffrey Young No law has done more to reform health insurance and protect consumers against the industry's most heinous practices than the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare didn't magically transform insurers into benevolent entities solely devoted to taking care of sick people. Health insurance companies, even those that are not-for-profit, have to collect more money in premiums than they shell out in claims for medical care. That means they have a financial incentive not to pay for things. And since health insurance companies can no longer shun the sick to maximize profits -- either by denying coverage to people based on their medical histories or by rescinding the policies of paying customers who fall ill and rack up bills -- insurers are employing other tactics to shift costs to sick people and make it harder to get health care, consumer advocates say. "One of the things that occurred to me, even as the bill was working its way through Congress, was that once it was passed, insurers would do all they could to try to preserve profit margins," said Wendell Potter, a former Cigna executive turned industry critic. Here are a few of the tactics that consumers and advocates have complained about: Refusing to pay for medical care that should be covered Nothing in Obamacare says insurance companies have to pay any bill that comes their way. That's fine, because doctors and patients want things all the time that are wasteful and unnecessary, and everyone shares the cost for that. Zoë Keating is a [...]

2014-07-21T15:37:51-07:00July, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Current tobacco reports show 50 years of progress

Source: the-scientist.comAuthor: Jef Akst  In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General released the first report on the effect that cigarettes and other forms of tobacco have on human health, presenting strong evidence of the link between smoking and lung cancer, among other adverse consequences. During the last 50 years, significant progress has been made in terms of understanding how smoking causes various diseases and how to treat them, and educational campaigns have contributed to a drop in smoking rates from 42 percent to 18 percent of US adults. Nevertheless, more than 480,000 Americans still die from tobacco-related diseases each year, and additional health consequences continue to be linked to smoking. “Between now and mid-century, nearly 18 million Americans will die preventable avoidable deaths if we don’t do something to alter that trajectory,” Mitchell Zeller, the director of the Center for Tobacco Products of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said during a press conference held today here at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting in San Diego, California. To this end, the AACR released a compilation of peer-reviewed research and review articles, published across seven of its journals, covering basic scientific research on the molecular mechanisms of tobacco carcinogenesis, tools for the diagnosis of lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, and the impact of the original Surgeon General’s report on tobacco control. Ellen Gritz from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center helped put the new report together. “Together, these reports add to the broad reach of important tobacco-related [...]

2014-04-17T11:21:58-07:00April, 2014|Oral Cancer News|
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