2010 – Page 28 – Oral Cancer News

UC Davis probes into oral cancer

Source: theaggie.org Author: Eric C. Lipsky UC Davis is searching for new and more effective methods to deal with oral cancer. Researchers have begun using a fluorescent oral probe to aid in the detection of malignant tissues. The probe allows doctors to differentiate between healthy and malignant tissue, along with having the capacity of working as a screening device. Although still a prototype, the fluorescent probe is showing that it can be helpful to doctors both prior to and during surgery. "The big picture is to improve the ability to diagnose tumors at an earlier stage," said Dr. Gregory Farwell, a head and neck surgeon at the UC Davis Medical Center. Farwell said that people's ability to survive oral cancer is significantly increased if the cancer is detected at an early stage. He said that oral cancer is primarily caused by smoking, drinking and human papillomavirus (HPV). Farwell said oral cancer through HPV usually takes 10 to 20 years to develop. 43,000 Americans are diagnosed with oral cancer each year. While the cancer is not the most prevalent in the United States, Farwell said it is a major problem worldwide, especially in countries like India and China. He said this probe could be of great utility for efficiently diagnosing different stages of cancer. "It is a very effective way to discriminate between normal tissue and tumor tissue," Farwell said. "We're showing better results in distinguishing differences in tissue. It can even help discriminate between pre-cancer and advanced cancer." The probe, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-20T12:26:51-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

End of cervical cancer is possible

Source: The News and Observer Author: Martha Quillin May 19--RALEIGH -- North Carolina could be among the first states to eliminate cervical cancer, according to a group of health care experts who launched an effort Tuesday with that goal. More than 100 clinicians, researchers, community activists and some cancer survivors attended the launch of the Cervical Cancer-Free Initiative at a Raleigh hotel. That's almost as many women -- 114, on average -- who die of cervical cancer in North Carolina each year. While the number of deaths from the illness has dropped over three decades in the state and across the nation, all cervical-cancer deaths are preventable, said Noel T. Brewer, director of the initiative. Brewer is also an associate professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, which is a partner with the N.C. Division of Public Health, in the initiative. "This is an illness that kills people in countries where people don't have access to health care," Brewer said. In the United States, 4,070 women died of the disease last year, according to the National Cancer Institute. "We are a rich country," Brewer said. "This shouldn't be happening here." Participants talked about ways to get more girls vaccinated against HPV, or human papillomavirus, which is present in every case of cervical cancer, and to increase screening for cervical cancer in women who weren't vaccinated. Those two steps could prevent most of the deaths, Brewer said. In North Carolina, only a third of girls aged 13 to [...]

Charlotte Parker2010-05-20T12:20:57-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Radiation planning reduces dysphagia in oropharyngeal cancer

Source: www.medscape.com Author: Nick Mulcahy In patients with oropharyngeal cancer, modifying radiotherapy to spare swallowing structures appears to be an effective strategy to reduce the long-term dysphagia that accompanies chemoradiotherapy, according to a small longitudinal study. Importantly, the strategy did not come at the expense of locoregional control, report investigators in a study published online April 26 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Dysphagia has emerged as perhaps the most important late adverse effect in this setting, supplanting xerostomia, said the study's senior author, Avraham Eisbruch, MD, professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan Medical School and Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor. "Aggressive chemoradiotherapy approaches produce more dysphagia than in the past," he told Medscape Oncology. Meanwhile, the late adverse effect of xerostomia is on the wane, because the use of intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) has allowed radiation oncologists to spare most patients' salivary glands from radiation, he said. To address the problem of dysphagia, Dr. Eisbruch and colleagues at the University of Michigan used IMRT in combination with chemotherapy. Their treatment planning for 73 patients with stages III to IV oropharyngeal cancer included sparing any swallowing structure that did not have tumor involvement. The structures included pharyngeal constrictors, glottic and supraglottic larynx, and esophagus. One year after concurrent chemotherapy and IMRT, all 73 of the patients had either absent or minimal observer-rated dysphagia (scores, 0 to 1), with the exception of 4 people: 1 who was feeding-tube dependent and 3 who required a soft diet. The results [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-19T20:47:25-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

New biomarker technique could provide early detection for cancer

Source: www.physorg.com Author: press release provided by University of Connecticut Modern genetic testing can predict your risk of contracting particular diseases based on predispositions discovered in your DNA. But what if similar biotechnology could tell you that you’ve got a disease before you notice any symptoms? What if it could even tell you, before any signs of a tumor, that you have cancer? Jim Rusling, professor of chemistry at UConn and professor of cell biology at the UConn Health Center, ponders these questions on a daily basis. Since 2006, he and colleagues at the University and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have been developing techniques to detect biomarker proteins - the physiological traits that indicate that a person has a specific disease - for prostate and oral cancer. Because these biomarkers are often present in the blood in a disease’s early stages, they can be used for early detection and prevention. “DNA predicts which proteins can be made, but it can’t predict which proteins are actively expressed,” Rusling says. “It only assesses the risk of a disease. There’s a big push now to measure proteins as biomarkers.” In a recent publication in the journal Analytical Chemistry, Rusling and his colleagues describe a system they developed to detect with record sensitivity the bloodstream levels of a protein associated with several types of oral cancer, including head and neck squamous cell carcinomas. The project was funded by a $1.5 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at NIH. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-19T20:29:55-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Immune cells may guide therapy for oropharyngeal cancer

Source: www.medpagetoday.com Author: Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Higher pretreatment levels of cytotoxic T lymphocytes may help identify patients with head and neck cancer who have a favorable prognosis and require less aggressive treatment, according to a study reported here. A higher proportion of CD8 cells predicted improved survival in patients with oropharyngeal cancer associated with human papillomavirus-16 (HPV-16), investigators reported at the American Head and Neck Society. The finding supports the hypothesis that a patient's adaptive immunity may play a role in the favorable prognosis of HPV 16-related head and neck cancer. "We had hypothesized that a better immune status might be responsible for the better survival," Gregory T. Wolf, MD, of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, said in an interview. "The next step will be find out what the function of these cells might be and whether they are really contributing to the control of the cancer or to good response to therapy." The results also support the feasibility of using a biologic marker to identify patients with head and neck cancer that can be treated less aggressively, sparing patients from some of the treatment-related morbidity, Wolf added. Confirming the association between CD8 cells and survival is the latest step in a scientific journey that began about 15 years ago, when researchers and clinicians began to notice that a subgroup of patients with oropharyngeal cancer had a more favorable prognosis than would have been expected. Many of the patients tested positive for HPV, specifically HPV-16. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-16T17:45:29-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Biggest study ever reports on mobiles and brain cancer

Source: www.prnewswire.com Author: press release The International Journal of Epidemiology today published a combined data analysis from a multi national population-based case-control study of glioma and meningioma, the most common types of brain tumour. This is the first in a series of combined data analyses of head and neck tumours published as part of the internationally coordinated INTERPHONE project. The authors reported the following conclusion: Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones. There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels, but biases and error prevent a causal interpretation. The possible effects of long-term heavy use of mobile phones require further investigation. In the press release accompanying the release of the paper, Dr Christopher Wild, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said: "An increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data from Interphone. However, observations at the highest level of cumulative call time and the changing patterns of mobile phone use since the period studied by Interphone, particularly in young people, mean that further investigation of mobile phone use and brain cancer risk is merited." Commenting on the study, Michael Milligan, Secretary General of the Mobile Manufacturers Forum said "The INTERPHONE project is the biggest study of its kind ever undertaken in this field and provides significant further reassurance about the safety of mobile phones. The overall analysis is consistent with previous studies and the significant body of research, [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-16T17:38:09-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Doctors study link between oral cancer and HPV – suggest males should also be vaccinated

Source: www.theprovince.com Author: Iris Winston, Canwest News Service Oral cancer brings to mind images of longtime chain smokers and grizzled tobacco chewers. But the risk factors for cancers of the mouth and throat now include sexual activity as well as all forms of tobacco use and alcohol consumption. "Over the 20 years I have been in practice, I have treated a few rodeo riders and baseball players who use chewing tobacco or snuff, as well as smokers," says Dr. Joseph Dort, a professor of head and neck surgery at the University of Calgary's faculty of medicine and president of the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology. "Classically, people think of oral cancer as something that occurs in smokers and drinkers and usually among people in their 50s, 60s or even older. But, over the last 10 years or so, we have become aware that the human papillomavirus (HPV) -- the same virus that is associated with cervical cancer -- has now been strongly associated with certain kinds of head and neck cancer, specifically the tonsil and tongue-based cancers, and that they are becoming more prevalent in people who are younger than the usual cohort." Dr. Linda Lee, a specialist in oral pathology and oral medicine who is the staff dentist at Toronto's Princess Margaret Hospital, has seen a similar trend. "Because people are smoking less, we would expect to see a decline in oral cancer," she says, "but it hasn't declined and this is probably because of the HPV factor. We have [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-16T17:30:33-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Give cancer a kick with a helping of cruciferous veggies

Source: www.freep.com Author: Darlene Zimmerman, Henry Ford HealthSystem Researchers have been focusing on the potential cancer-fighting ability of cruciferous vegetables, which get their name from their four-petaled flowers, which look like a crucifer or cross. The cruciferous family includes an interesting assortment of vegetables -- arugula, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, collards, kohlrabi, mustard greens, kale, radishes, turnips, turnip greens, watercress and bok choy. Although research is ongoing, studies suggest that cruciferous vegetables may help ward off certain forms of cancers, especially cancer of the mouth, throat and stomach. Experts believe they contain substances that stimulate the release of anti-cancer enzymes and promote the destruction of cancer cells. As nutrition researchers learn more about the cancer-fighting properties of these vegetables, it's important to enjoy cruciferous vegetables often.

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-16T17:07:16-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

Tongue cancer symptoms: soreness, spots & swellings

Source: www.dentistry.com Author: staff Tongue cancer normally occurs in the squamous, or skin cells. Symptoms of tongue cancer either in the front or middle of your tongue makes it oral cancer - if they're at the base of your tongue it comes under the heading of throat or oropharyngeal cancer. When looking for tongue cancer symptoms, watch out for the following persistent signs: • Red, pink, grey or white spots on tongue • Sore spots on tongue • Leukoplakia or erythroplakia on tongue • Sore throat • Pain when swallowing • Mouth numbness • Unexplained bleeding of tongue • Pain in the ear (very rare) • Changes in your voice • Tongue swelling Red, Pink, Grey or White Spots on Tongue - These symptoms of tongue cancer start small and may look like canker sores, especially if they occur in other places in your mouth. Canker sores tend to go away in a week or two. White spots on tongue might also indicate oral thrush or hairy tongue, but you'll be able to gently scrape these off yourself. Remember, persistency is one of the main factors for symptoms of tongue cancer, along with tongue pain. Leukoplakia & Erythroplakia - These are products of uncontrolled cell growth, one of the very definitions of cancer. But figuring out if they are actual tongue cancer symptoms or just irritations from your dental work depends on a biopsy. They might also be pre-cancerous, so it's best to see your dentist about these swelling or [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-15T14:11:16-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|

ADA unveils oral cancer evidence-based recommendations

Source: www.ada.org/news Author: Jennifer Garvin A panel convened by the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs explored the potential benefits and risks of screening for oral squamous cell carcinomas and the use of screening aids to detect malignant or potentially malignant oral lesions. The panel's findings are published as the cover story in the May edition of The Journal of the American Dental Association. "Evidence-Based Clinical Recommendations Regarding Screening for Oral Squamous Cell Carcinomas" were developed by a CSA expert panel convened in April 2009, and join similar recommendations on topical fluoride and sealants as the Association's only evidence-based recommendations. Though evidence-based dentistry (EBD) recommendations do not represent a standard of care, the CSA hopes practitioners will use the recommendations as a resource in their clinical decision-making process alongside a clinician’s judgment and experience in the context of a patient's individual needs. The panel worked with ADA Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry staff and assessed five systematic reviews and four clinical studies as a basis for developing the recommendations. They addressed whether or not screenings help reduce morbidity and mortality, and whether or not oral cancer detection devices aid in detecting potentially malignant or malignant lesions. The panel concluded that while oral cancer screenings may detect potentially malignant and/or malignant lesions, clinicians are urged to remain alert for signs the lesions may become cancerous or early stage cancers while performing routine visual and tactile examinations in all patients, particularly those who use tobacco or consume alcohol heavily. "What's most important is that [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2010-05-15T14:04:18-07:00May, 2010|Oral Cancer News|