squamous cell – Oral Cancer News

Food preservatives don’t preserve oral cancer

Source: bigkingken.wordpress.com Food preservatives are a common part of everyday life for those Americans who don’t go to extremes to avoid them. Twinkies will be around for thousands of years despite the dissolution of Hostess and I’m pretty sure there’s an unspoiled Big Mac somewhere that’s been hanging out for several decades. Besides grossly keeping the hamburger on the left untarnished for more than a decade, food preservatives might be an untapped resource in the fight against cancer. In short, food preservatives work by killing off any and all microbial life forms that come along to munch on the food before us humans have a chance to send it down to our bellies. Now, if these food preservatives are so effective at killing off unwanted bacteria in our food supplies, could they perhaps also be effective at killing off other unwanted life forms? This is a question being asked by a lot of medical researchers at the moment, with at least one group finding an answer in the affirmative. Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan found that the common food preservative Nisin also does an excellent job of holding off – and even shrinking – the most common and deadly form of oral cancer, squamous cell head and neck cancer (HNSCC). HNSCC is a particularly nasty form of cancer, seeing as it accounts for more than 90 percent of oral cancers yet hasn’t had its mortality rates improved in the past several decades. On the other side, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2012-11-30T06:02:23-07:00November, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Histopathologic findings of HPV and p16 positive HNSCC

Source: PubMed.gov OBJECTIVE: Human papilloma virus (HPV) and p16INKa (p16) positivity in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) is currently thought to be an encouraging prognostic indicator. However, the histopathologic changes responsible for this behavior are poorly understood. It is our objective to elucidate these histopathologic characteristics to help define the clinical utility of these markers. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. METHODS: 71 HNSCC tumors between July 1, 2008 and August 30, 2009 were examined for HPV, p16, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). Specified pathologic features were examined: perivascular invasion (PVI), perineural invasion (PNI), grade of squamous differentiation, basaloid classification. RESULTS: HPV and p16 had no direct impact on perineural or perivascular invasion. However, HPV and p16 were strongly predictive of poorly differentiated tumors, as well as basaloid squamous cell carcinoma (SCCA) (P < .001). Additionally, upon multivariate analysis, HPV(+) and p16(+) tumors had an increased risk of nodal metastasis (HPV: odds ratio [OR] = 23.9 (2.2, 265.1) p = .01; p16: OR = 6.5 (1.4, 31.2) p = .02; PVI: OR = 6.0 (1.6, 22.8) p < .01). The area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves demonstrated improved predictive value for lymph node metastasis above standard H&E histopathologic features (76.7%) for both HPV (83.2%) and p16 (81.3%) individually. CONCLUSIONS: HPV(+) and p16(+) are highly predictive for poorly differentiated tumors and basaloid SCCA. Additionally, HPV and p16 positivity demonstrate superior predictive value for lymph node metastasis above standard H&E histopathologic features. Although exact recommendations should be tempered by considerations of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-11-08T13:31:34-07:00November, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

University of Texas device could take the pain out of skin cancer detection

Source: www.statesman.com Author: Mary Ann Roser A pen-size device that might one day be used to detect skin cancer without a biopsy is being developed at the University of Texas with the aid of grants and a company hoping to bring the device to market. The scanning device, reminiscent of the tricorder that Dr. McCoy waved over his patients in the "Star Trek" TV series, "is looking very promising," said Sampath Srikanth, president and CEO of DermDx of Fresno, Calif., the company that hopes to get the device on the market in about five years. James Tunnell, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UT, received $500,000 in grants from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation of Miami, which funds research in biomedical engineering. Tunnell, who credits most of the work to UT doctoral candidate Narasimhan Rajaram, said UT shares in the rights and any future profits with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Tunnell did post-doctoral work. At MIT, Tunnell worked with emerging technology that used light to detect cancers of the esophagus, cervix and oral cavity. His device shines light through an optical fiber to scan the skin. "What the physician holds is like a pen, and it's connected to a cable that's attached to an instrument that's about the size of a mini-refrigerator," Tunnell said. "But you could shrink that mini-refrigerator down to a desktop computer." The computer measures the light's intensity — cancerous moles absorb light differently than noncancerous lesions. The device still needs Food and Drug [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2009-02-05T20:32:23-07:00February, 2009|Oral Cancer News|

Coffee consumption and the risk of oral, pharyngeal and esophageal cancers in Japan

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwn282 Authors: Toru Naganuma et al. An inverse association between coffee consumption and the risk of oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancers has been suggested in case-control studies, but few results from prospective studies are available. Data from the Miyagi Cohort Study in Japan were used to clarify the association between coffee consumption and the risk of these cancers. Information about coffee consumption was obtained from self-administered food frequency questionnaires in 1990. Among 38,679 subjects aged 40–64 years with no previous history of cancer, 157 cases of oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancers were identified during 13.6 years of follow-up. Hazard ratios were estimated by the Cox proportional hazards regression model. The risk of oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancers was inversely associated with coffee consumption. The multivariate-adjusted hazard ratio of these cancers for ≥1 cups of coffee per day compared with no consumption was 0.51 (95% confidence interval: 0.33, 0.77). This inverse association was consistent regardless of sex and cancer site and was observed both for subjects who did not drink or smoke and for those who currently drank or smoked at baseline. In conclusion, coffee consumption was associated with a lower risk of oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancers, even in the group at high risk of these cancers. Authors: Toru Naganuma, Shinichi Kuriyama, Masako Kakizaki, Toshimasa Sone, Naoki Nakaya, Kaori Ohmori-Matsuda, Yoshikazu Nishino, Akira Fukao and Ichiro Tsuji Authors' affiliation: Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University School of Medicine, 2-1 [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2008-10-30T07:30:53-07:00October, 2008|Oral Cancer News|