4/11/2005 Okemos, MI Yahoo Finance (biz.yahoo.com) Each year, approximately 30,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer, making it the sixth most common cancer in the U.S. With one life lost every hour to oral cancer, this deadly disease claims as many lives as melanoma and more than cervical cancer. To help in the fight against oral cancer, Delta Dental encourages everyone to ask their dentist about oral cancer screenings during Oral Cancer Awareness Week, April 11-17. Early detection saves lives. Like many cancers, the key to survival is early detection. Early detection of oral cancer can dramatically increase the five-year survival rate from a dismal 57 percent to 81 percent. It can even be prevented if detected at the precancerous stages. Dental professionals play a crucial role in early detection and are adopting a relatively new tool called a brush biopsy to catch oral cancer in its earliest stages or even as a precancerous lesion. Now, if dentists see unexplained red or white spots they feel need testing, they can perform the brush biopsy procedure right in the office. The brush biopsy is a quick and painless procedure that uses a small brush to collect cells from the spot, which are transferred to a slide and sent off to a high-tech laboratory for analysis. More than 160,000 brush biopsies have been performed by dentists in the U.S.; the test has already detected thousands of cases of precancers and early oral cancers. The affiliated Delta Dental Plans of Michigan, Ohio and [...]

4/10/2005 USDA/Agricultural Research Service ScienceNewsDaily (www.sciencedaily.com) Oranges rich in vitamin C offer another important yet lesser-known nutritional bonus: citrus limonoids. In laboratory tests with animals and with human cells, citrus limonoids have been shown to help fight cancers of the mouth, skin, lung, breast, stomach and colon. Agricultural Research Service scientists in northern California, led by chemist Gary D. Manners, are uncovering new details about these compounds. Manners and coinvestigators have reported their findings in studies published during the past several years. They've demonstrated, for example, that each time we bite into a citrus slice or drink a glass of orange juice, our bodies can readily access a limonoid called limonin. The team was the first to show limonin's "bioavailability." The body derives limonin from a parent compound--limonin glucoside--that's present in citrus and citrus juices in about the same amount as vitamin C, according to Manners. He's with the agency's Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif. In other early work, Manners and colleagues found that limonin may lower cholesterol. The researchers showed that, when exposed to limonin, human liver cells in petri dishes produced less apo B, a compound associated with higher cholesterol levels. High cholesterol levels are linked to increased risk of heart disease and other health problems. Now, Manners and coinvestigators are taking a closer look at limonin's cholesterol-lowering effects. They're doing that in a first-of-its-kind study with healthy volunteers. Manners is collaborating with researchers at Albany and at the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center in [...]

4/9/2005 Baltimore, MD Kristi Birch Johns Hopkins Magazine April 2005 In the war against cancer, molecular biomarkers hold out tantalizing promise. It doesn't look good, at least not judging from the body count: Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans a day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's one of every four deaths, or more than half a million people a year. And it gets worse. More than 30 years after President Nixon declared the War on Cancer in 1971, the American Cancer Society reported in January that despite some advances in treatment and prevention, cancer surpassed heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States for people under the age of 85. Tell all that to leading Johns Hopkins cancer expert Bert Vogelstein, and he'll tell you something different. Over the last 25 years, Vogelstein's seminal discoveries have helped establish cancer as a genetic disease — and earned him status as the most highly cited scientist in the world. If we're losing a war, our general doesn't seem to know it. "When I went to medical school, cancer was a black box. Now that has completely changed," Vogelstein says. "There has been a revolution." The revolution is a whole new understanding of the molecular biology of cancer that should enable doctors to detect and remove cancers in their earliest stages, when the cancer is still curable. Specifically, they'll use a new generation of diagnostic tests that look for defective molecules. At the heart [...]

4/9/2005 Lexington, KY Jim Warren Lexington Herald-Leader Researchers at the University of Kentucky and Ohio State University are hoping that one of America's favorite fruits also might prove to be a preventive for oral cancer. They plan to test their theories in a trial at Ohio State this summer by using a purplish gel -- made from freeze-dried black raspberries -to treat selected patients who have precancerous lesions in their mouths. Patients will apply the gel topically. Once oral lesions become cancerous, disfiguring facial surgery may be the only treatment option. Tumors, however, often recur. Even when doctors surgically remove early, precancerous lesions, about half of them also recur with the potential of becoming life-threatening tumors. But if the raspberry gel can prevent, or at least slow, the transformation of lesions into tumors, the medication could become an important new tool against oral cancer. "Obviously we'd like to see these lesions completely disappear, but I think everyone would be happy just to see the whole process slowing down," said Russell Mumper, an associate professor of pharmaceutical science at the University of Kentucky who is working on the project. "Ninety-nine percent or more of these lesions will advance to cancer." Oral cancers, which cause up to 8,000 deaths each year, generally are associated with alcohol and tobacco use, particularly when the two are combined. People who use both tobacco and alcohol face a 38-fold increase in risk, according to Ohio State. Until recently, most victims were men in their 60s or [...]

4/7/2005 Rita Rubin USA Today (www.usatoday.com) A vaccine against the virus that causes cervical cancer and genital warts cut long-lasting infection by 90%, according to a pilot study out Wednesday. Study co-author Eliav Barr of Merck Research Laboratories says his company expects to apply to the Food and Drug Administration late this year for permission to sell the vaccine, which would be the first against cancer. Merck is now testing the vaccine in more than 25,000 women and children, up to one-third of them in the USA, in an expanded trial whose findings will be submitted to the FDA, Barr says. Up to 70% of sexually active women will become infected with human papillomavirus, or HPV, during their lifetime, Barr and his collaborators write in an article posted online by The Lancet Oncology, a British medical journal. More than 90% of cases clear up on their own. More than 35 types of HPV infect the genital tract, but four dominate, according to the article, the first about a vaccine against all four dominant types. Two types, 16 and 18, are linked to 70% of cases of cervical cancer, diagnosed in 470,000 women worldwide each year but rare in the U.S., thanks to widespread screening. These types are also linked to less common cancers: About 80% of cancers of the anus or vulva are associated with HPV 16, and about half of penile cancers are linked to either 16 or 18, says Luisa Villa, lead study author and biologist with the [...]

4/7/2005 Tasmania, Australia Claire Konkes The Mercury State News COLES supermarkets in Tasmania have become the first major stores in the country to end cigarette promotion by covering cigarette displays. This week's move comes as quit-smoking campaigners say a confronting picture on cigarette displays is working. Other Tasmanian stores have taken cigarettes off display after it became mandatory for Tasmanian retailers to display the graphic poster of mouth cancer last year. Coles Myer -- Australia's biggest retailer -- is the first large company to voluntarily cover cigarette displays with plastic or cardboard blockers. QUIT Tasmania executive director Michael Wilson said the response to the cancerous mouth poster was extraordinary. "This is a forerunner to the response of putting the picture on the packets," he said. "We are going to be extremely busy as people start to quit." Smoke Free Tasmania convener Kathy Barnsley said the "yucky picture" of a man's mouth riddled with cancer was having an effect. But she said the perception of cigarettes as "tacky", personal choice and an attraction to thieves also had contributed to the move away from displays. Ms Barnsley commended Coles for showing "outstanding corporate governance" by taking cigarettes out of sight. With most smokers already addicted to their favourite brand, moving tobacco out of sight would mean children were not constantly exposed to advertising and displays, she said. Coles Myer corporate communications manager Caroline Lawrey said the decision was the best solution to the dilemma of offering adults the choice to smoke but [...]

4/7/2005 England Ben Townley uk.gay.com A new vaccine for the virus that leads to anal cancer in gay men and cervical cancer in women has seen dramatic results in clinical studies. The vaccine, which targets variants of the human papillomavirus (HPV), recorded a 90% reduction in infection rate, according to results published in the online journal Lancet Oncology. It was also 100% effective against cancerous lesions. Developed by pharmaceutical giant Merck, the vaccine could be used to protect gay men from anal cancer, although researchers are primarily focussing on cervical cancer in women. A recent study in the US suggested that as many as a third of gay men could be carrying the virus, which does not always lead to cancer and can be transmitted through sexual contact. The virus can also result in genital and anal warts. The trial looked at 1,158 women aged between 16-23 from across Europe and the USA. In a statement to Gay.com UK, Cancer Research UK's Dr Anne Szarewski welcomed the news of the vaccine. "This is further evidence that work on HPV vaccines is showing great promise," she said. "With any disease caused by a virus, the best way to stop it is to prevent it with a vaccine." Earlier this year Dr Szarewski predicted a vaccine could be on the market in the next five years. GlaxoSmithKline is also working on a product to help protect against the HPV virus although, again, this is thought to be focusing on cervical cancer. However, [...]

4/6/2005 New York, NY Anthony J. Brown, MD Reuters Health (via abcnews.go.com) In a study of patients with head and neck cancer, use of vitamin E supplements was associated with an increased risk that their cancer would return or that they'd develop a new cancer. However, during the second phase of the study when supplementation was discontinued, former vitamin E takers had a lower risk of cancer than their counterparts who had been given an inactive "placebo." As a result, by the end of the 8-year study, both groups had comparable cancer risks, according to a report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "We were surprised by the findings," Dr. Francois Meyer, from Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, told Reuters Health. "When we started the study, we had hoped that vitamin E supplementation would reduce or delay the risk of second primary cancer." "If we would have stopped the study after the first phase, we might have concluded that vitamin E supplementation" had a true effect on cancer risk, Meyer noted. However, the fact that the elevated risk was not seen in the second phase suggests that such use may simply have had a screening effect — leading to earlier detection of cancers, he explained. The findings are based on a study of 540 patients with head and neck cancer who were treated with radiation therapy and randomly selected to receive vitamin E, beta-carotene, or placebo for three years. Because the results of another trial had linked beta-carotene [...]

4/6/2005 Toronto, Ontario, Canada press release Newswire Canada (newswire.ca) The new Vitamin E study published in the April issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has the potential to cause unfounded fears among healthy individuals. The study's isolated findings applied to a patient group who had latent cancer or were at a high risk of developing cancer. Authors of the study admitted that "there is some concern about the generalization of the study results on individuals in the general population who are at low risk of a first cancer." Of the 540 volunteers, all had been previously treated for head and neck cancer and were at high risk of developing another cancer. At the end of the eight-year study, the percentage of patients who developed cancer were the same in the Vitamin E and placebo groups. It is therefore misleading to conclude that the results seen in this study would translate to the general population. The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) noted in a statement issued March 15th that there are several clinical trials currently underway, including one that involves more than 34,000 men and is evaluating the benefits of Vitamin E and selenium for reducing the risk of prostate cancer. CRN noted that major clinical trials like this one are underway because researchers and study sponsors have confidence in the safety and potential benefit of Vitamin E. "Jamieson Laboratories have complete confidence in Vitamin E supplementation. Vitamin E is an essential antioxidant and most people do not [...]

4/6/2005 New York, NY Amanda Gardner Forbes.com Two gospels of medicine, preached over and over during the past 40 years, have been the dangers of smoking and the benefits to health of quitting. But a footnote to that gospel is that there's never a guarantee. TV newscaster Peter Jennings, who announced Tuesday that he had lung cancer, is an ex-smoker. According to the American Lung Association, about 87 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking, and 40 percent to 50 percent of new cases may occur in former smokers. Because most lung cancers are diagnosed at a late stage, the five-year survival rate is only 15.2 percent, compared with 63 percent for colon cancer, 88 percent for breast cancer and 99 percent for prostate cancer, according to the American Lung Association. In 2005, lung cancer will take about 163,500 American lives and will maintain its place as the number one cancer killer, outpacing deaths from the second, third, fourth and fifth most common causes of cancer deaths combined, said Dr. Bill Solomon, associate professor of medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York City. Ninety percent of people who are diagnosed with lung cancer will eventually die of the disease, added Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at the Ochsner Clinic Foundation in Baton Rouge, La. Not everyone who smokes will get lung cancer and not everyone who quits will be protected. Why? No one knows for sure. People who smoke have a 10- to 15-fold greater [...]