October 2016 – Oral Cancer News

Smokeless Tobacco Use and the Risk of Head and Neck Cancer: Pooled Analysis of US Studies in the INHANCE Consortium.

Source: www.pubmed.gov Author: Wyss AB, Gillison ML, Olshan AF Abstract Previous studies on smokeless tobacco use and head and neck cancer (HNC) have found inconsistent and often imprecise estimates, with limited control for cigarette smoking. Using pooled data from 11 US case-control studies (1981-2006) of oral, pharyngeal, and laryngeal cancers (6,772 cases and 8,375 controls) in the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) Consortium, we applied hierarchical logistic regression to estimate odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for ever use, frequency of use, and duration of use of snuff and chewing tobacco separately for never and ever cigarette smokers. Ever use (versus never use) of snuff was strongly associated with HNC among never cigarette smokers (odds ratio (OR) = 1.71, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.08, 2.70), particularly for oral cavity cancers (OR = 3.01, 95% CI: 1.63, 5.55). Although ever (versus never) tobacco chewing was weakly associated with HNC among never cigarette smokers (OR = 1.20, 95% CI: 0.81, 1.77), analyses restricted to cancers of the oral cavity showed a stronger association (OR = 1.81, 95% CI: 1.04, 3.17). Few or no associations between each type of smokeless tobacco and HNC were observed among ever cigarette smokers, possibly reflecting residual confounding by smoking. Smokeless tobacco use appears to be associated with HNC, especially oral cancers, with snuff being more strongly associated than chewing tobacco. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. *This news story [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-10-31T14:31:13-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

America’s Most Popular ‘Legal’ Drug is Responsible for 25% of ALL Cancer

Source: www.thefreethoughtproject.com Author: John Vibes There are many factors contributing to the massive rise in cancer cases in the US, but according to a new study from the American Cancer Society, cigarette smoke is by far the leading cause. The study found that roughly 25% of all cancer deaths could be attributed to cigarette smoking. Although cigarette smoking has waned somewhat in recent years, nearly 40 million adults in the U.S. currently smoke cigarettes. The CDC says cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., responsible for more than 480,000 deaths annually. According to the study: We estimate that at least 167 133 cancer deaths in the United States in 2014 (28.6% of all cancer deaths; 95% CI, 28.2%-28.8%) were attributable to cigarette smoking. Among men, the proportion of cancer deaths attributable to smoking ranged from a low of 21.8% in Utah (95% CI, 19.9%-23.5%) to a high of 39.5% in Arkansas (95% CI, 36.9%-41.7%), but was at least 30% in every state except Utah. Among women, the proportion ranged from 11.1% in Utah (95% CI, 9.6%-12.3%) to 29.0% in Kentucky (95% CI, 27.2%-30.7%) and was at least 20% in all states except Utah, California, and Hawaii. Nine of the top 10 ranked states for men and 6 of the top 10 ranked states for women were located in the South. In men, smoking explained nearly 40% of cancer deaths in the top 5 ranked states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky). In women, [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-10-31T12:31:03-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

GlaxoSmithKline pulls Cervarix from U.S. market

Source: www.managedcaremag.com Author: staff In response to “a very low market demand,” GlaxoSmithKline has decided to stop selling its human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Cervarix in the United States, according to FiercePharma. The move gives Merck’s Gardasil unchallenged dominance of the HPV vaccine market in this country. Last year, Cervarix earned only about $3.7 million in the U.S. out of a $107 million worldwide total. In contrast, the global total for Merck’s Gardasil franchise was $1.9 billion. Figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last year placed HPV vaccination rates at 42% of girls and 28% of boys ages 13 to 17 years––far short of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ goal of 80% for both boys and girls by 2020. To combat the public’s lukewarm response, the CDC and other cancer organizations are urging health care providers to promote the cancer-prevention benefits of HPV vaccines rather than stressing that they protect against sexually transmitted infections, which puts off some parents who worry the vaccine will promote promiscuity or who feel that their preteens are too young to need the shots, according to the Wall Street Journal. HPV, which is transmitted sexually, can cause at least six types of cancer as well as genital warts. The vaccine is recommended for boy and girls at age 11 or 12 and is also given at other ages. Experts are urging pediatricians to present the vaccine as routine, rather than different from other preteen shots. They are also stressing [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-31T07:25:20-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Can your own immune system kill cancer?

Source: www.cnn.com Author: Jacqueline Howard There was another big win in the advancement of immunotherapy treatments for cancer this week. The Food and Drug Administration approved an immunotherapy drug called Keytruda, which stimulates the body's immune system, for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer. In other words, the drug could be the very first treatment a patient receives for the disease, instead of chemotherapy. Keytruda is the only immunotherapy drug approved for first-line treatment for these patients. So it seems, the future of cancer care may be in our own immune systems, but how exactly does it work, and what are its pros and cons? "It's certainly going to become an independent way of treating cancers," said Dr. Philip Greenberg, head of immunology at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, during a Q&A session at the International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference in New York in September. "We always talk about the three pillars of cancer therapy -- radiation therapy, chemotherapy and surgery -- and it's become quite clear now that there's going to be a fourth pillar, which is immunotherapy," he said. "There are times where it will be used alone, and there will be times that it will be used in conjunction with the other therapies, but there's very little to question that this is going to be a major part of the way cancers are treated from now on, going forward." Here's a look at the past, present and future of cancer immunotherapy. It [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-10-26T09:42:45-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

The startling rise in oral cancer in men, and what it says about our changing sexual habits

Source: www.washingtonpost.com Author: Ariana Eunjung Cha Oral cancer is on the rise in American men, with health insurance claims for the condition jumping 61 percent from 2011 to 2015, according to a new analysis. The most dramatic increases were in throat cancer and tongue cancer, and the data show that claims were nearly three times as common in men as in women during that same period with a split of 74 percent to 26 percent. The startling numbers — published in a report on Tuesday by FAIR Health an independent nonprofit — are based on a database of more than 21 billion privately billed medical and dental claims. They illustrate both the cascading effect of human papillomavirus (HPV) in the United States and our changing sexual practices. The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 50,000 Americans will be infected this year, with 9,500 dying from the disease. In past generations, oral cancer was mostly linked to smoking, alcohol use or a combination of the two. But even as smoking rates have fallen, oral cancer rates have remained about the same, and researchers have documented in recent studies that this may be caused by HPV. HPV infects cells of the skin and the membranes that lines areas such as the mouth, throat, tongue, tonsils, rectum and sexual organs. Transmission can occur when these areas come into contact with the virus. HPV is a leading cause of cervical, vaginal and penile cancers. Surveys have shown that younger men are more likely to [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-26T08:15:03-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

This Is Why Your Drug Prescriptions Cost So Damn Much

Source: www.motherjones.com Author: Stuart Silverstein When the Republican-controlled Congress approved a landmark program in 2003 to help seniors buy prescription drugs, it slapped on an unusual restriction: The federal government was barred from negotiating cheaper prices for those medicines. Instead, the job of holding down costs was outsourced to the insurance companies delivering the subsidized new coverage, known as Medicare Part D. The ban on government price bargaining, justified by supporters on free-market grounds, has been derided by critics as a giant gift to the drug industry. Democratic lawmakers began introducing bills to free the government to use its vast purchasing power to negotiate better deals even before former President George W. Bush signed the Part D law, known as the Medicare Modernization Act. All those measures over the last 13 years have failed, almost always without ever even getting a hearing, much less being brought up for a vote. That's happened even though surveys have shown broad public support for the idea. For example, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found last year that 93 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans favor letting the government negotiate Part D prescription drug prices. "I mean, how in the world can one explain that the government actually passed a law saying that you can't negotiate prices?" It seems an anomaly in a democracy that an idea that is immensely popular—and calculated to save money for seniors, people with disabilities, and taxpayers—gets no traction. But critics say it's no mystery, given the [...]

Charlotte Parker2016-10-21T11:17:17-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Pre-Teens need just two doses of HPV vaccine, not three: Feds

Source: www.nbcnews.com/health Author: Maggie Fox There's good news for kids who haven't received all their HPV vaccines yet - they only need two doses of the vaccine instead of three, federal government advisers said Wednesday. The new recommendations should make it easier to get more children vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes a range of cancers including cervical cancer, throat cancer and mouth cancer, officials said. "It's not often you get a recommendation simplifying vaccine schedules," said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC immediately accepted the recommendations from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. "Safe, effective, and long-lasting protection against HPV cancers with two visits instead of three means more Americans will be protected from cancer," said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden. "This recommendation will make it simpler for parents to get their children protected in time." The CDC says every pre-teen boy and girl should get the vaccine, but fewer than a third have received all three doses. Messonnier says the three-dose schedule was based on the earliest studies of the vaccine. New studies show that two doses protect people for decades from the cancer-causing virus. And studies also suggest that spacing the two doses a year apart is at least as effective, if not more effective than giving them more closely together - something that could also make it easier to get kids fully vaccinated. Older teens who have [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-20T11:10:26-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Mouth, throat cancers caused by HPV on the rise, especially among Canadian men

Source: www.ctvnews.ca Author: Sonja Puzic, CTVNews.ca Staff Mouth and throat cancers caused by the human papilloma virus have been rising steadily over the past two decades, with a “dramatic” increase among Canadian men, according to a new report from the Canadian Cancer Society. The special report on HPV-associated cancers, released Wednesday as part of the 2016 Canadian Cancer Statistics breakdown, says the rate of mouth and throat cancers in men is poised to surpass the rate of cervical cancer diagnoses in women. Researchers and doctors have known for decades that certain strains of HPV – the most commonly sexually transmitted disease in Canada and the world -- cause cervical cancer. But the latest Canadian cancer statistics show that only 35 per cent of HPV cancers are cervical, and that about 33 per cent of HPV cancers occur in males. The latest data show that about one-third of all HPV cancers in Canada are found in the mouth and throat. Between 1992 and 2012, the incidence of HPV-related mouth and throat cancers increased 56 per cent in males and 17 per cent in females. In 1992, the age-standardized incidence rate (or ASIR) of those cancers was 4.1 per 100,000 Canadian males. In 2012, it was 6.4 per 100,000 males. In females, the rate was 1.2 in 1992 and 1.4 in 2012. ‘I thought I was done’ Three years ago, Dan Antoniuk noticed a lump on his neck and initially thought that it was just a swollen gland. But when the Edmonton [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-19T09:25:21-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Oral cancer in the crosshairs at San Antonio Dental School

Source: tpr.org Author: Wendy Rigby San Antonio researchers are working on a new therapy for a stealthy killer: oral cancer. Visits to the dentist are your number one protection against the disease. In a lab at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, dental researcher Cara Gonzales, DDS, Ph.D., shared promising news on a new approach to healing. "It was very exciting," Gonzales said. "These patients have not had any new therapeutic options in 40 years." The discovery of a new gene that’s turned on in oral cancers gave Gonzales and her colleagues a new target at which to aim. It’s a gene that’s also found in lung cancers. So-called nude mice are used in the oral cancer experiments. Wendy Rigby / Texas Public Radio Gonzales works in a sprawling space filled with lab equipment and cell lines used in many molecular biology projects. One of her research assistants brought in a cage of lab animals with some strange lumps on their backs. "These are called nude mice because they don’t have a complete immune system," Gonzales explained. These mice are at the center of a successful experiment. First, scientists used human oral cancer cells to grow large tumors on the animals. They tried one oral cancer drug already on the market. Not much action. Then, they tried a lung cancer drug, also already approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Not that effective on its own. Finally, they used a combination of two drugs. [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-14T11:59:11-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|

Merck KGaA, Pfizer and Transgene team up on cancer vaccine

Source: www.biopharmadive.com Author: Joe Cantlupe Dive Brief: Transgene announced Tuesday it is teaming up with Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, and Pfizer to evaluate the possibilities of the combination of its human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive head and neck cancer vaccine TG40001 with big pharma’s avalumab in a Phase 1/2 study. The incidence of HPV-related head and neck cancers has increased significantly, with one variation, HPV-16 accounting for 90% of all HPV-related head and neck cancers. HPV-16 is a subset of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), a group of cancers that can affect the mouth and throat. Global spending on head and neck cancer indications amounted to $1 billion in 2010, according to the companies’ recent estimates. Current treatments for the disease include surgical resection with radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy; the companies say they are exploring better options for advanced and metastatic HPV and HNSCC. Dive Insight: The current deal between the big pharma partners and Transgene highlights the industry's efforts to create combination therapies to treat cancer. Virtually every company in the space has embraced the idea that using multiple modes of attack could be the only way to eventually find cures for the many forms of cancer; companies have been teaming up in hopes of finding that crucial pairing. In previous clinical trials, TG4001 has demonstrated promising activity in terms of HPV viral clearance and was well tolerated, according to Transgene. TG4001 is one of the few drugs targeting HPV-associated cancers that can be combined with an immune checkpoint [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2016-10-13T07:41:07-07:00October, 2016|Oral Cancer News|