prostate cancer – Oral Cancer News

This Man Tried An ‘Alternative’ Cancer Treatment—and Ended Up Poisoning Himself

Source: Menshealth.com Author: Alisa Hrustic Date: September 12, 2017 Being diagnosed with cancer is one of the scariest things that can happen to you, but what follows can be even scarier. Treatment for the disease is expensive, painful, and extensive, so it’s not uncommon for people to ponder alternative solutions. That’s all well and good, as long as it’s approved by your doctor. As for taking medicine into your own hands? That’s not always the best idea, since some alternative treatments can be extremely dangerous. Just recently, one Australian man learned that the hard way, according to a recent case report published in the British Medical Journal. The 67-year-old man—who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had gone into remission—consumed homemade apricot kernel extract daily for five years, since it’s typically marketed as a preventive medicine for cancer. He was also taking a fruit kernel supplement called Novodalin. While he was undergoing a routine surgery, his doctors noticed that his oxygen levels had severely dropped while he was under anesthesia, leading to a condition known as hypoxia, which can be deadly. Once they performed blood tests on the patient, the doctors concluded that his blood contained 25 times the accepted level of cyanide, a potentially deadly chemical, according to the report. That’s because apricot kernels contain amygdalin, also known as laetrile. Amygladin is a known cyanogenic glycoside, meaning it’s processed and converted into cyanide in your body, according to the Food and Drug Administration. While laetrile has been talked up for its anticancer properties, no human studies have [...]

Charlotte Parker2017-10-29T20:12:07-07:00September, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

Anti-cancer vaccines are emerging

Source: Boston Globe Author: Karen Weintraub Long envisioned drugs to harness the immune system could reshape treatments For more than a century, doctors and patients have dreamed of using the body’s own defenses to fight cancer. Why, they wondered, can’t the immune system - so good at tracking down and destroying intruders - attack the tumor cells that invade healthy tissue? Finally, science is catching up with this vision. Just reaching the market in a big way, so-called therapeutic vaccines turn a patient’s immune system against the cancer and help prevent a recurrence. If the early promise of these vaccines is realized, they will soon join the basic arsenal for fighting all cancers, several researchers said. “We really are in a transformative moment,’’ said Dr. Glenn Dranoff, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist and immunologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Prostate cancer patients were the first to benefit. A therapeutic vaccine called Provenge received federal approval last year after studies showed it safely extended the lives of advanced prostate cancer patients for an average of 4.1 months. Then came a vaccine called Yervoy, designed to attack melanoma, a particularly dangerous form of skin cancer. Cancer generally turns down the body’s immune response to a tumor; Yervoy is designed to turn it back on, enhancing the immune system’s ability to kill cancer cells. Many more cancer vaccines are under development, with hundreds of trials underway in patients with breast, prostate, lung, kidney, colon, cervical, brain, and [...]

Charlotte Parker2011-12-19T14:52:52-07:00December, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

HPV Vaccine and Premarital-Sex Controversy

Source: The News Tribune Some perspective is needed on the controversy over the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that arose after a recent Republican presidential debate. The best way to do that is to take sex out of the equation. Instead of preventing a sexually transmitted disease that can lead to cervical cancer in women and oral cancer in men, let’s say the HPV vaccine guarded against a fictional virus that caused breast cancer and prostate cancer. Wouldn’t most parents jump at the chance to decrease the chances of their children contracting those potentially deadly cancers? Only the most hard-core anti-vaccine holdout would say no. Which gets us back to the sex part of the HPV equation and why some otherwise rational people don’t think children should be inoculated against it. They oppose the HPV vaccine – Cervarix or Gardasil – because they fear that removing one of the consequences of premarital sex would encourage it. It’s a weak argument. The fear of STDs and pregnancy hasn’t put much of a damper on teens having sex, so it’s hard to see why the chance of developing cancer several years down the road would slow them down. They also know that smoking can cause lung cancer, but many still do it. Sometimes parents have to do things to protect kids from themselves – and teens from their hormones. Most young people will not wait until marriage to have sexual relations; parents who think not getting their children vaccinated against HPV will deter [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-09-27T10:32:53-07:00September, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

New Study for Cancer Patients to Help Improve the Body’s Ability to Fight Illness

Source: Sign On San Diego A Santa Monica research center will test an experimental therapeutic filtering device being developed by Aethlon Medical on blood taken from cancer patients, the San Diego company said Wednesday. The study will target exosomes, bubbles of protein and RNA molecules excreted by cancerous cells that can block immune system cells from fighting the illness. By removing exosomes from circulating blood, Aethlon officials hope their device will improve the body's ability to fight cancer and the effectiveness of treatments such as chemotherapy. Blood taken from 25 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, prostate cancer, melanoma, sarcoma, and head and neck cancer will be circulated through the Hemopurifier device. In clinical use, blood would be filltered directly from the patient and returned to the body in a similar way to kidney dialysis. However, in the newly announced pre-clinical trial blood will not be returned to patients, Aethlon Chairman and Chief Executive Officer James Joyce said. "If we validate that our Hemopurifier is efficient in capturing exosomes, its possible that we could transition towards a human treatment study to evaluate exosome clearance from the entire circulatory system," he said. The test will be conducted by the Sarcoma Oncology Center, a nonprofit independent research institute focused on cancer therapy development. "This clinical histological study is a critical validation step in Aethlon's Hemopurifier strategy for cancer," said Dr. Sant Chawla, the trial's chief investigator. "The concept of 'subtractive therapy', eliminating a major mechanism of tumor progression and resistance to drugs, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-08-25T09:51:41-07:00August, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Oral, Head and Neck Cancers Continue to Increase While Most U.S. Cancer Death Rates are on the Decline

Source: SHOTS (NPR's Health Blog) The rate at which Americans die from cancer continues to fall, according to the latest estimates from the American Cancer Society. As a result, nearly 900,000 cancer deaths were avoided between 1990 and 2007, the group figures. Survival gains have come as mortality rates have declined for some of the most common malignancies, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer in women and prostate cancer. Still, the ACS estimates there will nearly 1.6 million new cancers diagnosed this year, and about 572,000 deaths from the disease. The incidence of cancers hasn't budged much for men in recent years, after falling quite a bit during the first half of the last decade. Cancer incidence for women has been falling since 1998. The report was just published online by CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Lung cancer remains the biggest killer for both men and women. All told, about 160,000 people in the U.S. are expected to die from it this year. Starting in 1987, more women have died from lung cancer each year than breast cancer. One section of the report focuses on a persistent and, in some cases, widening gap in cancer death rates between people with the least education and those with the most. Educational attainment is often used in research as a proxy for socioeconomic status. American Cancer Society epidemiologist Elizabeth Ward, one of the report's authors, tells Shots, "People of a lower socioeconomic status are more likely to smoke and less likely to get [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-22T10:26:11-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Immunity Drugs Used to Fight Cancer

Source: The Wall Street Journal Scientists are scrambling to develop medications that fight cancer by spurring the body's immune system, a form of treatment that some cancer specialists believe may hold the key to keeping a patient permanently disease-free. The new efforts come in the wake of recent Food and Drug Administration approvals of Dendreon Corp.'s Provenge, an immunotherapy drug used to treat prostate cancer, and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s Yervoy, for melanoma. Other immunotherapy drugs are being developed for a number of other cancers, including lung, brain and kidney cancers. Unlike most traditional therapies that attack a cancer directly, immunotherapy uses the body's own internal defenses to ward off the disease, with the ultimate hope of building up a long-term resistance to the cancer. "If we are ever going to use the word 'cure', the immune system is going to have to come into play," says Stephen Hodi, director of the melanoma center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. One of the ways that cancer survives and ultimately spreads through the body is by exploiting a function in all cells that prevents the immune system from killing them. Researchers have found that cancer cells have multiple methods of avoiding detection and suppressing the immune system's response. "Why would cancer devote so much energy to avoid the immune system if the immune system didn't have the potential to reject the cancer?" says Robert Vonderheide from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. There are big hurdles to advancing the [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-06-14T10:26:14-07:00June, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

After a long battle with 3 different types of cancer, a footloose Orlando man takes on a 2,650-mile hike

At 68, John Casterline has beaten advanced-stage lung cancer, prostate cancer and throat cancer. Last month, he finished radiation treatments. Just one week ago, his doctors pronounced him cancer-free. So what is he doing to celebrate? Forget Disney World. Starting April 28, this Orlando retiree will be hiking 2,650 miles, from Canada to Mexico, along the Pacific Crest Trail — a route that will climb above 13,000 feet elevation and require him to average 20 miles a day. "I expect that I will experience weather that is too cold, too hot, too wet, too dry and too perfect," he wrote in his journal a year ago, when he began training seriously for the hike. "I will encounter rattle snakes, bears, and maybe even mountain lions. … The mosquitoes will be horrendous at times, the hills steep, the rocks sharp, the trail blocked, the wind very strong. [Sleep will be] occasionally fitful and I'll be carrying a backpack with 30-plus pounds." But if you have to ask why he's doing it, he wrote, you wouldn't understand. It is not simply that he hopes to raise $26,500 for the dramatically underfunded battle against lung cancer, a disease expected to claim the lives of 160,000 Americans this year — more than colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Nor is it about creating some kind of legacy. Though followers can read his ongoing exploits on lungcancerhike.org, the website is intended to give fellow cancer survivors hope — and to collect donations for the American [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-04-21T13:49:22-07:00April, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Fatal adverse events with Bevacizumab

Source: Medscape Today Treatment-Related Mortality With Bevacizumab in Cancer Patients: A Meta-analysis Study Summary Although bevacizumab has been shown to improve survival in patients with a variety of solid tumors when added to conventional chemotherapy, it has also been associated with life-threatening and fatal adverse events (FAEs), including bleeding, thromboembolism, and perforation. This improvement in survival has led to the assumption that FAEs are rare and do not significantly affect patients who are receiving treatment. In this large meta-analysis, Ranpura and colleagues identified 10,217 patients with various solid tumors from 16 randomized studies, as follows: Colorectal cancer (5 studies); Non-small cell lung cancer (4 studies); Breast cancer (3 studies); Renal cell cancer (2 studies); Pancreatic cancer (1 study); and Prostate cancer (1 study). A clear increase in FAEs was evident in patients who received bevacizumab compared with those who received standard chemotherapy alone (2.5% vs 1.7%; relative risk [RR] 1.46; P = .01). This association varied with chemotherapy agents but not with tumor type. In particular, FAEs occurred in patients receiving taxanes or platinum agents (RR 3.49; 3.3% vs 1%) but not with other specific agents. Types of FAEs included bleeding (23.5%), gastrointestinal perforation (7.1%), and pulmonary embolism and stroke (5.1% each). Most fatal bleeding events were pulmonary or gastrointestinal in origin. Viewpoint The benefit of bevacizumab is under increased scrutiny given the latest data in patients with metastatic breast cancer. In this large meta-analysis, Ranpura and colleagues documented a clear increase in the rate of FAEs (2.5%) in patients [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2011-03-03T22:45:53-07:00March, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Aspirin Cuts Death Rate From Several Common Cancers

Source: Web MD Taking aspirin over a long period of time can substantially cut the risk of dying from a variety of cancers, according to a study showing that the benefit is independent of dose, gender, or smoking. It also found that the protective effect increases with age. The study is by Peter Rothwell, MD, PhD, FRCP, of John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England, and colleagues, and has been published online by the journal the Lancet. A previous study by the same authors showed that low doses of aspirin (75-300 milligrams) reduced the number of cases of colorectal cancer by a quarter and deaths caused by the disease by more than a third. The latest study confirms the earlier results and concludes that similar effects can be shown for other types of cancers. The study looked at eight trials examining the effects of a daily dose of aspirin on preventing heart attacks involving 25,570 patients, 674 of whom died from cancer. They showed a 21% reduction in the number of deaths caused by cancer among those who had taken aspirin, compared with people who had not. The investigation also showed that the benefits of taking aspirin increased over time. After five years, death rates were shown to fall by 34% for all cancers and by 54% for gastrointestinal cancers. Participants were also followed up after 20 years, by which point 1,634 of the original participants had died as a direct result of cancer. This 20-year follow-up established that the risk [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-12-22T11:18:57-07:00December, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Pinter opens up about private battle with cancer

Source: Fairfield Citizen Author: Morgan Thomas In the 31 years that Redding actress Colleen Zenk Pinter has played Barbara Ryan on As the World Turns, her character has been in a coma following an automobile accident, survived a gunshot wound, been burned to a crisp in an explosion and imprisoned for a crime she did not commit -- the stuff of soap writers' fecund imaginations. But when Barbara was "diagnosed" with oral cancer in 2008, the script was ripped from the real life drama of the actress who plays her and fact-checked with the Oral Cancer Foundation, for which Pinter is now the spokesperson. Warning the public about this little-known cancer and about a simple 3--5 minute screening your dentist can do has become a mission for Pinter. "The screening is painless," she said in an interview with the Westport News. "And you don't have to take your clothes off!" Oral cancer kills more people each year than cervical, skin or prostate cancer, yet when found early, there is an 80 to 90 percent survival rate. She took her private health battle public first on the CBS Early Show, filmed a PSA for the Oral Cancer Foundation, a birthday commercial for the American Cancer Society and has spoken before such groups as the 2009 graduating class. University's School of Dentistry. Pinter first noticed that her speech was slurring in December 2005 but her dentist assured the then 52-year-old actress that it was just her teeth shifting. Then in July 2006, [...]

Charlotte Parker2009-10-30T10:13:47-07:00October, 2009|OCF In The News, Oral Cancer News|