About Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A has created 2444 blog entries.

The oral cancer epidemic in central and eastern Europe

Source: Int J Cancer, October 30, 2009 Author: Werner Garavello et al. To monitor recent trends in oral and pharyngeal cancer mortality in 38 European countries, we analyzed data provided by the World Health Organization over the period 1975-2004. Joinpoint analysis was used to identify significant changes in trends. In the European Union (EU), male mortality rates rose by 2.1% per year between 1975 and 1984, by 1.0% between 1984 and 1993, and declined by 1.3% between 1993 and 2004, to reach an overall age-standardized rate of 6.1/100,000 in 2000-2004. Mortality rates were much lower in women, and the rate in the EU rose by 0.9% per year up to 2000, and levelled off to 1.1/100,000 in 2000-2004. In France and Italy - which had the highest rates in the past - male rates have steadily declined during the last two decades (annual percent change, APC=-4.8% in 1998-2004 in France, and -2.6% in 1986-2003 in Italy). Persisting rises were, however, observed in several central and eastern European countries, with exceedingly high rates in Hungary (21.1/100,000; APC=6.9% in 1975-1993 and 1.4% in 1993-2004) and Slovakia (16.9/100,000; APC=0.14% in 1992-2004). In middle aged (35 to 64) men, oral and pharyngeal cancer mortality rates in Hungary (55.2/100,000) and Slovakia (40.8/100,000) were comparable to lung cancer rates in several major European countries. The highest rates for women were in Hungary (3.3/100,000; APC=4.7% in 1975-2004) and Denmark (1.6/100,000; APC=1.3% in 1975-2001). Oral and pharyngeal cancer mortality essentially reflects the different patterns in tobacco smoking and [...]

2009-11-10T07:56:32-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Does green tea prevent cancer?

Source: www.ivanhoe.com Author: staff Evidence continues to brew about the protective effects of green tea against cancer, but scientists are still not sure the tea leaves reveal the answer. Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulo, M.D., professor of medicine in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues tested 41 patients who took green tea extract orally for three months at three dose levels. Nearly 60 percent of patients with oral pre-malignant lesions, who were at the highest dose levels, displayed clinical response, compared with less than 20 percent among those taking placebo. Researchers also observed a trend toward improved histology, and a trend toward improvement in a handful of biomarkers that may be important in predicting cancer development. Patients were followed for 27.5 months, and at the end of the study period, 15 developed oral cancer. Although there was no difference in oral cancer development overall between those who took green tea extract and those who did not, patients who presented with mild to moderate dysplasia had a longer time to develop oral cancer if they took green tea extract. Although encouraged by the results, Dr. Papadimitrakopoulo cautioned against any recommendations that green tea could definitely prevent cancer. "This is a phase II study with a very limited number of patients who took what would be the equivalent of drinking eight to 10 cups of green tea every single day," Dr. Papadimitrakopoulo was quoted as saying. "We cannot with certainty claim [...]

2009-11-09T14:03:35-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Hookah myths go up in smoke

Source: Author: Kate Dopazo Students, university health officials discuss misconceptions about smoking hookah When Rajiv Ulpe, a public and community health master’s student, asked students to compare hookah to cigarettes Friday afternoon at a lecture on the campus, most attendees agreed hookah was a much healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes. “I don’t think you can get addicted to hookah,” Nick Patcella, a junior civil engineering major, said. “I think you can get addicted to the social aspect because it’s a fun activity, but not the hookah itself.” “People think it’s a lot less lethal than cigarettes," senior cell biology major Ray Gonzalez, added. "The water takes out more of the impurities.” But Ulpe said these are all common myths associated with hookah — a water pipe used to smoke tobacco through cooled water — adding that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a typical hour-long hookah smoking session involves inhaling 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled in a single cigarette. During the discussion, nine undergraduate students between the ages of 18 and 22 were asked to discuss their attitudes toward hookah and what exactly they know about its effects. “Hookah is more natural than cigarettes and you smoke hookah less than cigarettes,” Patcella said. Ulpe and Public and Community Health professor Nancy Atkinson held the event to learn about students’ knowledge, attitudes and myths surrounding hookah use. The consensus of the group was that most students do not know the consequences of smoking hookah [...]

2009-11-09T13:59:18-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

GenVec receives orphan drug designation

Source: www.onemedplace.com Author: staff GenVec’s experimental drug to treat pancreatic cancer has been granted orphan drug status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The drug candidate TNFerade stimulates the production of an immune system protein known for having anti-cancer effects. Shares in GenVec rose 25 percent following the announcement. Last summer, Gaithersburg, Maryland-based GenVec announced positive data from a Phase II/III clinical trial of TNFerade. The drug provided a 42.5% reduction in the risk of death when combined with standard treatment, when compared to standard treatment alone. TNFerade is also being explored as a candidate to treat esophageal cancer, rectal cancer, and head and neck cancer. Note: The FDA grants orphan drug designation to drugs that may be significantly more effective than currently existing treatments, and target conditions that affect less than 200,000 U.S. patients per year. Upon approval, drugs granted orphan status enjoy seven years of marketing exclusivity in the United States.

2009-11-08T12:07:30-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Cetuximab continues to increase survival in patients with head and neck cancer for up to 5 years

Source: www.docguide.com Author: staff Adding cetuximab to radiation therapy prolongs survival in patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer compared with radiotherapy alone, and this improvement persists for up to 5 years. As such, this combined treatment should be considered as a standard option for patients with advanced head and neck cancer, according to a study published online first and appearing in an upcoming issue of The Lancet Oncology. The use of chemoradiotherapy has been shown to improve survival and has become a popular treatment, but is not ideal because of its associated side-effects and increased toxicity. In 1999, a trial commenced to examine the effect of adding cetuximab to radiotherapy in patients with locally advanced head and neck cancers of the oropharynx, hypopharynx, and larynx. In total, 424 patients were randomly assigned to 6 to 7 weeks of radiotherapy alone (n = 213) or radiotherapy and cetuximab (n = 211). The primary results of the trial showed that patients treated with cetuximab had a 13% improvement in absolute disease control and 10% improvement in absolute survival at 3 years without increased side-effects, compared with patients given radiotherapy alone. In the current article, James Bonner, MD, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, and colleagues reported the long-term 5-year outcomes of patients involved in the original trial. Overall, findings showed an improvement in absolute survival of about 9% in patients given cetuximab compared with those given radiotherapy alone (36.4% vs 45.6%) at 5 years. Interestingly, patients treated with cetuximab who developed [...]

2009-11-07T11:26:48-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Patterns of alcohol and tobacco use affect head and neck cancer risk

Source: www.rtmagazine.com Author: staff Assuming that total exposure is the same, it is worse to smoke lightly for many years than to smoke heavily for a few years when it comes to the risk of head and neck cancer, new research shows. With alcohol use, however, the opposite is true. The results, which were published in the October 15th issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, also confirmed previous research showing that smoking was more strongly associated with laryngeal cancer and that alcohol consumption was more strongly associated with pharyngeal and oral cavity cancers. "Cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption are known risk factors for head and neck cancers, including cancers of the larynx, oral cavity, and pharynx," co-researcher Dr. Jay H. Lubin, of the National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland, told Reuters Health. "This paper presented a detailed quantitative evaluation of their effects, using data which were pooled from 15 case-control studies." The researchers modeled the excess odds ratio (EOR) to assess risk by total exposure (pack-years and drink-years), as well as the modification of risk by exposure rate (cigarettes/day and drinks/day). The smoking analysis included 1761 laryngeal, 2453 pharyngeal, and 1990 oral cavity cancer cases. For controls, 7963 were included for laryngeal and 10,114 for pharyngeal and for oral cavity cancer cases. The alcohol analysis included 2551 laryngeal, 3693 pharyngeal, and 3116 oral cavity cancer cases. For controls, 12,179 were included for laryngeal cancer and 15,589 for pharyngeal and oral cavity cancer cases. While smoking increased the risk of all [...]

2009-11-07T11:01:10-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Microarray technologies in the diagnosis and treatment of head and neck cancer

Source: emedicine.medscape.com Authors: Perminder S Parmar, MD et al. Introduction Since the draft sequence of the human genome was published in 2001 (Lander, 2001), the Cancer Genome Anatomy Project index of tumor genes has classified more than 40,000 genes directly or indirectly involved in one or more cancers (Strausberg, 2001; Strausberg, 2000). Conventional techniques of gene investigation in cancer rely on the identification of single genetic alterations associated with disease. This has proven to be both time consuming and cost ineffective. The introduction of complementary DNA (cDNA) microarray technology in 1995 (Schena, 1995) has helped to facilitate the identification and classification of DNA sequence information and the assignment of functions to these new genes by allowing investigators to analyze expression of thousands of genes simultaneously in a single experiment. Microarrays are a significant advance because they contain a very large number of genes and because of their small size. Therefore, microarrays are useful when one wants to survey a large number of genes quickly or when the study sample is small. Microarrays may be used to assay gene expression within a single sample or to compare gene expression in 2 different cell types or tissue samples, such as in healthy and diseased tissue. Because a microarray can be used to examine the expression of hundreds or thousands of genes at once, it promises to revolutionize the way gene expression is examined. Methods DNA microarrays are small solid supports onto which the sequences from thousands of different genes are attached at [...]

2009-11-06T21:36:37-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Rice wins NIH funding for oral-cancer test

Source: www.nanotech-now.com Author: staff The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded researchers in Rice University's new BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) a $2 million Grand Opportunity (GO) grant to develop a fast, inexpensive test for oral cancer that a dentist could perform simply by using a brush to collect a small sample of cells from a patient's mouth. "We want to provide an accurate diagnosis for oral cancer in less than 30 minutes using a minimally invasive test that requires no scalpels or off-site lab tests," said principal investigator John McDevitt, Rice's Brown-Wiess Professor in Bioengineering and Chemistry. "The payoff for this could be tremendous because oral cancers today are typically diagnosed much too late in their development." NIH established the GO grant program to support projects that address large, specific research endeavors that are likely to deliver near-term growth and investment in biomedical research and development, public health and health care delivery. GO grant funding was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. If oral cancer is detected early, the prognosis for patients is excellent, with a five-year survival rate of more than 90 percent. Unfortunately, the actual five-year survival rate for oral squamous cell carcinoma is only about 50 percent, among the lowest rates for all major cancers. Oral squamous cell carcinoma affects about 300,000 people per year worldwide, and most cases are diagnosed in their late stages. The new test is possible because of a novel microchip invented in McDevitt's lab. This "lab-on-a-chip" uses the latest [...]

2009-11-05T13:38:46-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Autofluorescence-guided surveillance for oral cancer

Source: cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org Authors: Vijayvel Jayaprakash et al. Early detection of oral premalignant lesions (OPL) and oral cancers (OC) is critical for improved survival. We evaluated if the addition of autofluorescence visualization (AFV) to conventional white-light examination (WLE) improved the ability to detect OPLs/OCs. Sixty high-risk patients, with suspicious oral lesions or recently diagnosed untreated OPLs/OCs, underwent sequential surveillance with WLE and AFV. Biopsies were obtained from all suspicious areas identified on both examinations (n = 189) and one normal-looking control area per person (n = 60). Sensitivity, specificity, and predictive values were calculated for WLE, AFV, and WLE + AFV. Estimates were calculated separately for lesions classified by histopathologic grades as low-grade lesions, high-grade lesions (HGL), and OCs. Sequential surveillance with WLE + AFV provided a greater sensitivity than WLE in detecting low-grade lesions (75% versus 44%), HGLs (100% versus 71%), and OCs (100% versus 80%). The specificity in detecting OPLs/OCs decreased from 70% with WLE to 38% with WLE + AFV. Thirteen of the 76 additional biopsies (17%) obtained based on AFV findings were HGLs/OCs. Five patients (8%) were diagnosed with a HGL/OC only because of the addition of AFV to WLE. In seven patients, additional HGL/OC foci or wider OC margins were detected on AFV. Additionally, AFV aided in the detection of metachronous HGL/OC in 6 of 26 patients (23%) with a history of previously treated head and neck cancer. Overall, the addition of AFV to WLE improved the ability to detect HGLs/OCs. In spite of the lower [...]

2009-11-05T13:17:24-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More

Green tea shows promise as chemoprevention agent for oral cancer, M. D. Anderson study finds

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: press release Green tea extract has shown promise as cancer prevention agent for oral cancer in patients with a pre-malignant condition known as oral leukoplakia, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The study, published online in Cancer Prevention Research, is the first to examine green tea as a chemopreventative agent in this high-risk patient population. The researchers found that more than half of the oral leukoplakia patients who took the extract had a clinical response. Long investigated in laboratory, epidemiological and clinical settings for several cancer types, green tea is rich in polyphenols, which have been known to inhibit carcinogenesis in preclinical models. Still, clinical results have been mixed. "While still very early, and not definitive proof that green tea is an effective preventive agent, these results certainly encourage more study for patients at highest risk for oral cancer," said Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, M.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, and the study's senior author. "The extract's lack of toxicity is attractive - in prevention trials, it's very important to remember that these are otherwise healthy individuals and we need to ensure that agents studied produce no harm." In the Phase II dose-finding study, 41 M. D. Anderson oral leukoplakia patients were randomized between August 2002 and March 2008 to receive either green tea extract or placebo. Participants took the extract, an oral agent, for three months at one of three doses - 500 per [...]

2009-11-05T13:05:14-07:00November, 2009|Oral Cancer News|
Read More
© - The Oral Cancer Foundation - Head & Neck Cancer IRS 501(c)3 Charity - 3419 Via Lido #205, Newport Beach, CA 92663 | Disclaimer / Privacy Policy
Go to Top