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Emerging indications: antioxidants for periodontal disease

Source: http://www.dentistryiq.com Author: Edward P. Allen, DDS, PhD Since approximately 10 to 15 percent of adults worldwide suffer from periodontitis at one time or another(1), oral health professionals are constantly challenged with treating patients for existing conditions and helping them prevent future occurrences. Root planing, scaling, and in severe cases, surgical intervention are part of the standard treatment for periodontitis, and antibiotics are used for infection control. However, in recent years, dental health professionals have honed in on the inflammation that accompanies periodontitis. Research shows that inflammation in the oral tissues—especially that associated with periodontitis—can be a factor in chronic illness such as heart and vascular disease, diabetes, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, pregnancy complications, and a growing list of other conditions. The real culprit with inflammation is oxidative stress, a disturbance in the balance of oxidants and antioxidants. Oxidative stress is the result of overproduction of free radicals, unstable molecules that attack tissue cells by “stealing” electrons from other molecules. Although infection is a major trigger for inflammation and oxidative stress, there are numerous other causes, such as poor diet, alcohol consumption and nicotine use or chemical pollutants. In oral tissues oxidative stress can result from dental procedures and from materials used for bleaching, composite fillings, implants, crowns, veneers, and so on. Antibiotics control the micro-organisms that contribute to periodontitis and other infection, but they do not necessarily address the free radicals and oxidative stress that accompany inflammation. Innate defense through natural salivary antibiotics and antioxidants The human body has an innate [...]

2012-01-21T12:23:49-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Calls for teenage boys to be vaccinated against sexually transmitted virus after throat cancer cases double in UK

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk Author: Charles Walford Boys must be immunised against the most common sexually transmitted virus, health experts have said. The call comes after figures revealed an alarming rise in cancer linked to oral sex in young men. Cases of throat cancer have more than doubled to more than 1,000 a year since the mid-1990s. Previously the figure had been stable for many years. More than 70 per cent of cases are caused by human papilloma virus, compared with less than a third a decade ago. HPV, which can be transmitted during sex and open-mouth kissing, is the main cause of cervical cancer in women, with almost 3,000 women a year in the UK affected. Since 2008 all girls aged 12 to 13 in the UK have been offered a vaccination to protect them from HPV. The decision not to give it to boys too was heavily criticised at the time. Now specialists are urging the Department of Health to review its immunisation programme and offer boys the vaccine too, the Independent reports. They say this would not only ensure both sexes are protected against throat cancer, but it would help reduce the risk of cervical cancer in girls and of other cancers caused by HPV. Research suggests boys are more prone to get throat cancer from oral sex because the virus is found in higher concentrations in the female genital tract. Cancer typically takes 20 to 30 years to develop and the rise in HPV-related throat cancer is being [...]

2012-01-21T12:16:38-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Big Tobacco led throat doctors to blow smoke

Source: http://med.stanford.edu Author: Tracie White Tobacco companies conducted a carefully crafted, decades-long campaign to manipulate throat doctors into helping to calm concerns among an increasingly worried public that smoking might be bad for their health, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Medicine. Beginning in the 1920s, this campaign continued for over half of a century. “Tobacco companies sought to exploit the faith the public had in the medical profession as a means of reassuring their customers that smoking was safe,” said Robert Jackler, MD, the Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor in Otolaryngology. “Tobacco companies dreamed up slogans such as, ‘Not one single case of throat irritation with Camels;’ then, to justify their advertising claims, marketing departments sought out pliant doctors to conduct well-compensated, pseudoscientific ‘research,’ which invariably found the sponsoring company’s cigarettes to be safe,” Jackler said. “The companies successfully influenced these physicians not only to promote the notion that smoking was healthful, but actually to recommend it as a treatment for throat irritation.” Jackler is the senior author of the study, which was published in the January issue of The Laryngoscope. Hussein Samji, MD, a recent Stanford residency graduate, was his co-author. Using internal documents from tobacco companies from the Legacy Tobacco Document archives, the study’s authors reviewed a wealth of correspondence, contracts, marketing plans and payment receipts that shed light on the industry’s multifaceted, highly effective campaign. Jackler’s ongoing research into the history of tobacco company advertising has resulted in several [...]

2012-01-21T12:00:08-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Patients to try out gum shield – could end dry mouth misery caused by radiation

Source: www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/ Author: staff Mouth cancer patients in Bradford will be the first in the world to try a new battery-powered gum shield that could end the misery of a dry mouth. The pacemaker device fits over the lower teeth and uses minor, painless, electric shocks to trigger saliva production. A dry mouth is a common side-effect of radiotherapy for cancer of the head and neck. Healthy people produce around three pints of saliva a day. It is crucial for aiding digestion by softening food as well as fighting dental bacteria. It is also necessary for basic functions, such as speaking and swallowing. Patients being treated at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are being recruited to the double-blind trial, along with patients in London. Forty will be given a functioning device, while the remaining 44 will receive a placebo one. Neither the patients nor the doctors will know who has been given the active device. More than 15 patients have already been recruited in Bradford. Dr Jim McCaul, a consultant maxillofacial surgeon at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation, said: “Having a horrible dry mouth makes it impossible to chew food and difficult to speak. Patients worry about things like eating out in public and can’t taste their food as saliva facilitates taste. There is also an immune function in saliva.” Dr McCaul said up to now the only solution to the problem was for patients to sip water or use a saliva substitute in spray form, but the new [...]

2012-01-10T19:02:18-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Third Head and Neck Indication for Erbitux

Source: The ASCO Post, January 1, 2012, Volume 3, Issue 1, Matthew Stenger   In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs.Cetuximab (Erbitux) was recently approved by the FDA for use in combination with platinum-based therapy plus fluorouracil (5-FU) for the first-line treatment of patients with recurrent locoregional disease or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.1-3 Cetuximab has prior indications in combination with radiation therapy in locally or regionally advanced squamous cell head and neck cancer and in recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer that has progressed after platinum-based therapy. It also has indications in colorectal cancer. The most recent approval is based primarily on results of a study conducted outside the United States in 442 patients with metastatic or locally recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck who were not suitable for curative treatment with surgery or radiation. The study used a European Union (EU)-approved cetuximab rather than the U.S.-approved cetuximab (Erbitux). Erbitux provides approximately 22% higher exposure than the EU-approved cetuximab; these pharmacokinetic data, together with the results of the study conducted in Europe and other data using Erbitux establish the safety and efficacy of Erbitux at the recommended dose.In this trial, the addition of cetuximab (n = 222) to platinum-based therapy plus 5-FU (n = 220) significantly increased median overall survival from 7.4 to 10.1 months, representing a 20% reduction in risk of death [...]

2012-01-07T17:15:00-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Tongue and tonsil cancer patients surviving longer

Source: Dr.Biscuspid.com The five-year survival rate for U.S. patients with cancer of the base of the tongue or tonsils doubled between 1980 and 2002, according to a new study in Cancer Causes & Control (January 2012, Vol. 23:1, pp. 153-164). In addition, patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers had greater survival rates than those with other oral cancers, and survival was greater for male patients than females regardless of age, according to the study authors, from the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, the University of Utah School of Medicine, and the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health. However, patients with subsequent multiple cancers showed no overall survival improvement. The incidence rates of tongue and tonsil cancers have increased significantly in recent decades in the U.S., particularly among younger patients, the researchers noted. At the same time, a number of studies have shown a strong association between HPV infection and tongue and tonsil cancers. For this study, they used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) 1973-2006 registry system to examine changes in survival rates among patients with base of tongue, tonsil, and other tongue cancers in recent decades. The study included 10,704 patients with squamous tongue or tonsil cancer who were at least 20 years old. The researchers separated the patients into those with one primary cancer and those with subsequent multiple cancers, then compared trends using three nonoverlapped periods: 1980-1982, 1990-1992, and 2000-2002. The first group included those with only one primary base of tongue, [...]

2012-01-04T15:27:37-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Success of HPV vaccination is now a matter of coverage

Source: The Lancet Oncology, Volume 13, Issue 1, Pages 10-12, January 2012 In a pair of articles in The Lancet Oncology, Lehtinen and colleagues and Wheeler and colleagues present 4-year end of study data from a trial of a prophylactic human papillomavirus (HPV)-16/-18 vaccine (Cervarix, GlaxoSmithKline) in young women aged 15-25 years. From a public-health perspective, these studies have several important contributions. The results assure us that among HPV-naive women in the 15—25 year age range, Cervarix has extremely high efficacy against HPV-16/-18-associated persistent infection, CIN2, and CIN3 or worse, the best ethical surrogate endpoint for prospective studies of invasive cervical cancer risk. Combined with other trials of Cervarix and Merck's quadrivalent Gardasil vaccine against HPV-16/-18/-6/-11,3 the evidence is strong for near 100% prophylactic vaccine efficacy in HPV-naive women at any age. Nonetheless, even with vaccine efficacy near 100% in HPV-naive women, the efficacy in the total vaccinated cohort decreased steeply with increasing age, showing an absence of therapeutic effect against already-acquired infections and associated lesions. We know from natural history studies that new HPV transmission (incidence, not prevalence) decreases with age in most cultures.4 Together, natural history data and results of trials for both vaccines suggest that vaccination before sexual debut, or around the time of menarche, will achieve the greatest reduction in cervical cancer rates. The 4-year trial data shows no decline in vaccine efficacy in HPV-naive women with time since vaccination.1 We know from other trials of the two vaccines that the duration of protection is several [...]

2012-01-05T16:54:57-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Preventing Cancer with Vaccines: Progress in the Global Control of Cancer

Source: CancerPreventionResearch.AACJournals.org Abstract The cancer control community is largely unaware of great advances in the control of major human cancers with vaccines, including the dramatic control of hepatocellular (liver) cancer with hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccine, now used routinely in more than 90% of countries. The biotechnology revolution has given us a new generation of highly effective vaccines against major global killers, global funding for immunization is orders of magnitude higher than ever before, and the vaccine delivery infrastructure has improved very significantly even in the poorest countries. Liver cancer is the greatest cause of cancer deaths in men of sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia. Even in highly endemic countries such as China, the prevalence of HB surface antigen carriers has fallen from 10% to 1%–2% in immunized cohorts of children, and liver cancer has already fallen dramatically in Taiwanese children. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (now called the GAVI Alliance) has greatly expedited this success by providing HBV vaccine free for five years in most of the world's 72 poorest countries. HBV vaccination can serve as a model for the global control of human papillomavirus (HPV)–related cervical and other cancers with HPV vaccines. Cervical cancer is the greatest cause of cancer death in women in many developing countries; HPV vaccines are highly effective in preventing HPV infection and precancerous lesions in women, and the quadrivalent vaccine also prevents genital warts in men and women and precancerous anal lesions in men. HPV is causing a growing proportion [...]

2012-01-04T10:18:40-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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If teeth could talk…

Source: wsj.com Author: Melinda Beck The eyes may be the window to the soul, but the mouth provides an even better view of the body as a whole. Some of the earliest signs of diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, immune disorders, hormone imbalances and drug issues show up in the gums, teeth and tongue -- sometimes long before a patient knows anything is wrong. There is also growing evidence that oral health problems, particularly gum disease, can harm a patient's general health as well, raising the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, pneumonia and pregnancy complications. "We have lots of data showing a direct correlation between inflammation in the mouth and inflammation in the body," said Anthony Iacopino, director of the International Centre for Oral-Systemic Health, which opened at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Dentistry in Canada in 2008. Recent studies also show that treating gum disease improves circulation, reduces inflammation and can even reduce the need for insulin in people with diabetes. Such findings are fueling a push for dentists to play a greater role in patients' overall health. Some 20 million Americans -- including six percent of children and nine percent of adults -- saw a dentist but not a doctor in 2008, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health this month. "It's an opportunity to tell a patient, 'You know, I'm concerned. I think you really need to see a primary care provider,' so you are moving in the direction of better health," said [...]

2012-01-02T06:53:06-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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Roche scientist provides a look at drugmaker’s early pipeline

Source: www.nj.com/ Author: Susan Todd/The Star-Ledger Jean-Jacques Garaud, who heads Roche’s pharmaceutical research and early development efforts in Switzerland, visited the drugmaker’s Nutley campus in mid-December and spent some time speaking with The Star-Ledger about the company’s efforts in the laboratory. The talk with Garaud provided a rare glimpse of the giant Swiss drugmaker’s early-stage pipeline and highlighted the heavy bets it’s making on personalized medicine (drugs that are tailored to treat individuals whose genes or enzymes show specific biological signs of disease). If the strategy succeeds, Roche could eventually push out some breakthrough drugs for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and depression. Garaud, a French-American who joined Roche five years ago, also opened up about a discovery made in Nutley that may represent a novel cancer treatment and the high hopes behind a project with the promise of altering the lives of individuals born with a syndrome that causes mental retardation. During the interview, Garaud talked about some medicines so early in development that they are still referred to by strange-sounding laboratory names. Q. Where do things stand with gantenerumab, the monoclonal antibody Roche is developing as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease? A. This is in phase 2 and this is testing a patient population in the early stages of the disease or suffering from mild cognitive impairment. We believe this particular type of intervention may be more beneficial when it happens early in the disease so that it delays progression. This antibody targets the abnormal material called amyloid that deposits [...]

2012-01-02T06:41:44-07:00January, 2012|Oral Cancer News|
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