3/17/2005 Rebecca Walsh NZ Herald (nzherald.co.nz) Grisly picture warnings of the damage smoking can do to people's bodies could start appearing on cigarette packets in New Zealand in two years. The country must increase the size of health warnings on tobacco products to meet standards set by the World Health Organisation's Convention for Tobacco Control. A briefing on the preferred options will go to Health Minister Annette King within three months. Anti-smoking lobby group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) has released graphic pictorial warnings it would like to see on all cigarette packets. The pictures show lung diseases such as emphysema, mouth disease and throat cancer and are similar to those used in several countries, including Australia, Canada and Brazil. Ash director Becky Freeman said people might initially feel fear and disgust but Canadian research had found that 47.4 per cent of adult smokers who had seen and read the pictorial warnings tried to quit smoking or reduced their cigarette consumption. About 4500 New Zealanders die each year as a result of smoking and Ms Freeman said even small changes in the total consumption of tobacco had enormous public health implications. The protection of corporate trademarks and business rights must not be given priority over the protection of human health and life, she said. Ash wanted the remaining portion of the cigarette packet not allocated to picture and text health warnings to be white with black text only. Ms Freeman said the tobacco industry had disguised the dangers of [...]

3/17/2005 Vicki Brower Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 97, No. 6, 414-416, March 16, 2005 The controversy surrounding human embryonic stem cells has captured headlines in the mainstream media in the last few years; meanwhile, the pages of the scientific literature have recently revealed some groundbreaking findings with adult stem cells. Scientists have shown that certain adult stem cells— neural, mesenchymal, and endothelial stem cells—have an uncanny ability to home to cancer cells and tumors, even moving through large areas of the body. Researchers hope to exploit this "attraction" to kill cancer by using the cells as Trojan horses to attach and deliver deadly payloads to cancer cells as an adjunct to other treatments. Stem cells play a key role in development and repair, and like cancer cells, they are self-renewing. "That stem cells and brain tumor cells behave very, very similarly gave rise to two areas of investigation," said Evan Snyder, M.D., Ph.D., director of stem cell research at the Burnham Institute in San Diego. "First, it made us ask whether the tumors had stem cells in them, and second, if they migrate to cancer cells, could we use them to treat tumors?"

3/17/2005 BBC World News The obsession with cosmetic surgery is obscuring the real work plastic surgeons do treating cancer patients and burn victims, leading doctors say. They said the demand for cosmetic surgery fuelled by the media's coverage of celebrities and TV programmes was having a negative effect. The British Association of Plastic Surgeons even said some people saw them in a similar vein as hairdressers. Instead, the surgeons said they were doctors who were there to heal people. To stress their point, they gave examples at a London press briefing of people who had benefited from their work. In one case, a club bouncer who had had his nose cut off in a sword attack was given a new nose through nasal reconstruction. Understanding A man who developed tongue cancer had part of his tongue removed and rebuilt, hardly impairing his speech. And two children, born with cleft palates, were almost indistinguishable from their peers by the age of two. Association chairman Chris Khoo said: "One of the things that comes across in the TV programmes is that there is a quick fix for anything, but sometimes we have to say no to treatment and people don't understand. "This obsession tends to trivialise what the speciality can do. "Our members treat cancer patients, burn victims and babies with cleft palates. They enable people to live full and active lives, but this does not always come across. " "We are not saying cosmetic surgery is not important, because it is [...]

3/16/2005 Houston, TX NBC Local 2 (click2houston.com) Every year, nearly 300,000 people are diagnosed with a form of oral or throat cancer. About 8,000 die. In order to educate the public about the disease, Local 2 launched Buddy Check: On Guard for Oral Cancer on Monday, in partnership with M.D. Anderson Hospital. Oral cancer does not just affect those over 50 who smoke, Local 2 reported Tuesday. At the age of 44, George Timmons became part of a disturbing trend. "Certainly, we know tobacco and alcohol and age are sort of co-factors in the cancer, but we are seeing more cancer in the oral cavity and throats of younger individuals, if they're in their 30s and 40s and 50s," said Rhonda Jacob, an M.D. Anderson dental oncologist. In Timmons' case, doctors believe years of using smokeless tobacco led to the tumor in his tongue. After chemotherapy, surgery took lymph nodes from his neck, as well as half of his tongue. "I wish I would have been more receptive to the information and I was, like, hard-headed, like, 'That is not going to happen to me.' But you know what? It can. It will," Timmons said. "There is literature that says, and nationally based databases that have found, that head and neck cancer in young people seems to be increasing," said Dr. Erich Sturgis, M.D. Anderson's head and neck surgeon. The young age is not the only trend catching young people off guard. More oral cancer patients have little to no [...]

3/16/2005 Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News Blood Pressure, Adrenalin Also Increase Smokeless tobacco boosts heart rate, blood pressure, and adrenalin. The results have "potential implications" for heart risk, the study notes. The study was small and short, so it's not the final word on smokeless tobacco. But the findings indicate cigarettes may not be the only tobacco product that affects the heart. Smokeless tobacco, also called snuff or "spit" tobacco, is used by more than 5 million adults and more than 750,000 adolescents, say researchers. With more young men -- especially athletes -- using smokeless tobacco, the researchers were curious about its impact. Experts have already tied smokeless tobacco to oral cancer and dental problems such as receding gums, bone loss, and bad breath. In 1986, the U.S. Surgeon General concluded that smokeless tobacco isn't a safe alternative for cigarettes or cigars, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). Smokeless tobacco may also lead to nicotine addiction, says the ACS. Not as much is known about how smokeless tobacco affects the heart. But doctors do know that cigarettes are a heart hazard. Quitting smoking is widely regarded as one of the best things a smoker can do for his heart. Studying Smokeless Tobacco Participants were 16 healthy young men who habitually used smokeless tobacco. They were about 22 years old, on average. The men were asked not to use smokeless tobacco or smoke for 12 hours before each of two study sessions. They were randomly given either 1.5 grams of [...]

3/15/2005 Rosalyn Heights, NY Business Wire (home.businesswire.com) Ortek Therapeutics Inc. announced today that it has developed a new candy that uses a significant and entirely new approach to counteract the tooth decay process. Second only to the common cold, tooth decay is one of the most prevalent diseases in humans. BasicMints(TM) is a fluoride-free, all natural, sugar-free candy based on Ortek's CaviStat(R) technology. CaviStat was designed to mimic and integrate the powerful alkali producing, buffering and remineralizing benefits of saliva. In a previous clinical trial, CaviStat was significantly more effective than fluoride in reducing cavities in a two-year 726 patient toothpaste study. CaviStat was developed, clinically tested and patented by researchers in the Department of Oral Biology and Pathology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and exclusively licensed to Ortek. Stony Brook researchers presented data on BasicMints at the 83rd session of the American Association of Dental Research (March 9-12) in Baltimore, Maryland. The data presented describes how BasicMints provides immediate and sustained (nearly 24 hours) neutralization of harmful plaque acids after one application as well as favoring tooth remineralization. BasicMints will be available later this year through dental professionals. "CaviStat can be considered to be a super-saliva complex that will pick up where fluoride has left off," said Dr. Israel Kleinberg, the lead researcher of the CaviStat program and Distinguished Professor and Founding Chairman of the Department of Oral Biology and Pathology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "By mimicking the [...]

3/15/2005 Managed Care Law Weekly A novel method of mandibular reconstruction with frozen autologous mandibular bone has been developed. With this technique, "vascular supply to the neomandible is ensured by the periosteal layer of a microvascular radial periosteal fasciocutaneous free flap, placed so as to envelop the bone and cover the surgical defect," surgeons in Italy explained. "The use of the periosteal layer of the radius to provide new blood vessels to the frozen mandible is an original technical feature," according to R. Roselli and coauthors at University Hospital Circolo in Varese. They described two cases of "oral carcinoma involving the mandible, treated with mandibular resection and reconstruction." "This technique allows good functional and aesthetic results, avoiding more serious complications related to the use of composite free flaps harvested from distant anatomic donor sites," the researchers concluded. Roselli and colleagues published their study in the Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology (Mandibular reconstruction with frozen autologous mandibular bone and radial periosteal fasciocutaneous free flap: Preliminary report. Ann Otol Rhinol Laryngol, 2004;113(12):956-960).

3/14/2005 Ann Arbor, MI Shaomeng Wang, Ph.D., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (advanced online edition) Researchers have discovered a small molecule that could be the first step in developing a new drug that may one day be able to treat multiple types of cancer. The study, published this week in the advanced online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies a small molecule that inhibits in cell cultures a protein involved in multiple types of cancer. The protein, called Stat3, is constantly activated in some but not all tumors and has been identified in breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer and head and neck cancer. It contributes to new cancer cells growing and prevents cancer cells from dying. It's associated with poorer prognosis for patients since traditional chemotherapy treatments cannot shut down this protein. That's what makes it such an attractive target for new drug development, researchers say. In this new study, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center discovered a molecule called STA-21 blocked Stat3 activity in human breast cancer cells, stopping cancer cells from growing and allowing them to die. “We now can use this compound as a starting point to develop a new class of anti-cancer drugs to target cancer cells with constantly activated Stat3. One of the promises of molecular target drugs like this is they will work in many types of tumors where Stat3 protein is constantly activated. While our work looked specifically at breast cancer cells, [...]

3/11/2005 S Syrjanen J Clin Virol, March 1, 2005; 32 Suppl: 59-66 The term "head and neck cancer" has been widely adopted in the recent literature, to include the lesions at several anatomic sites: the lip, oral cavity, nose and para-nasal sinuses, naso-pharynx, oro-pharynx, hypo-pharynx, and larynx. In this report, the data on human papillomavirus (HPV) involvement in oral, oro-pharyngeal, sino-nasal, and laryngeal carcinomas are reviewed. Our group was the first to present evidence on the involvement of HPV infections in both laryngeal and oral carcinogenesis, prompted by the discovery of morphological similarities between oral and cervical squamous cell lesions. The latest meta-analyses of the epidemiological studies as well as the multi-centre case-control studies have confirmed HPV as an independent risk factor for oral cancer, with a range of odds ratios (OR) between 3.7 and 5.4. Until 2002, 4768 oral carcinomas have been analysed for HPV DNA, and 22% were reported to contain HPV by any of the detection techniques. Of all non-genital cancers, tonsillar carcinomas appear to have the highest prevalence of HPV. By the end of 2002, 422 cases of tonsillar carcinoma have been analyzed for the presence of HPV DNA, with the overall detection rate of 51%. HPV 16 is the most prevalent HPV type found in 84% of HPV DNA-positive tumours. HPV seems to be mainly episomal in tonsillar carcinomas, but the significance of this observation is still obscure. Interestingly, patients with HPV 16-positive tumours seem to have a better overall- and disease-specific survival, as compared [...]

3/11/2005 Medical News Today (www.medicalnewstoday.com) The jury may be out on whether a low-carb diet is the best way to lose weight. But moderating the carbohydrates you eat could help prevent cancer. “It's very clear for all the top cancers that diet has an influence on your risk of getting cancers,” says Mack Ruffin, M.D., M.P.H., professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Health System and a member of the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center. If your dinner plate is filled with all-white, starchy foods, take note: Not only is the food plain, but it has fewer cancer-fighting vitamins and minerals and is loaded with calories. “So you're lacking all of those protective agents and you're at risk for eating too many calories. The risk is about the same if you were eating micro-concentrations of dioxin or other pharmaceutical or other pesticide agents that might be harmful,” Ruffin says. Instead, Ruffin suggests bringing color to the dinner table through vegetables and fruits in the yellow, green, red and orange families. Fruits and vegetables contain thousands of micronutrients, which are vitamins and minerals from the plants. These micronutrients have an antioxidant effect, reducing the amount of chemicals produced in the body. The nutrients - including vitamins A, B and E, carotenoids, selenium and calcium - work individually and together to protect your body. The more richly colored vegetables pack more protective ingredients. So mashed potatoes won't cut it. Look for spinach, broccoli, carrots and deep-hued berries such as blueberries or [...]