2/20/2008 Geneva, Switzerland Thomas Mulier Bloomberg.com Swedish-style snuff hasn't been proven to help people quit smoking, a European Union panel said, dealing a blow to tobacco companies that lobbied for lifting a ban on the product. Smokeless tobacco is addictive and hazardous to health, the committee said in a report on its Web site. Evidence that the snuff, known as snus, may help Swedish smokers stop isn't sufficient to lift an EU ban because it's "not possible to extrapolate the patterns of tobacco use" to other countries, the committee said. Snus is a moist form of snuff that is placed between the upper lip and gums rather than sniffed. The tobacco industry, led by British American Tobacco Plc and Swedish Match AB, has been lobbying the EU to lift the ban, which applies to all members of the bloc except Sweden. Cigarette makers have been moving into smokeless tobacco products, trying to create a new market as public smoking restrictions spread through the U.S. and Europe. "This conclusion implies that there will be no impetus for a change in policy for a lifting of the ban,'' wrote David Hayes, an analyst at Lehman Brothers who has an ``overweight" rating on Swedish Match. The EU banned snus for health reasons before Sweden joined. The country negotiated an exception to the rule when it became a member, becoming the only EU nation where the product can be sold legally. Shares Fall Swedish Match shares fell 4 kronor, or 2.8 percent, to 138 [...]

2/18/2008 Ketchum, ID staff CancerConsultants.com Patients with head and neck cancer who test positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV) have a better prognosis compared with those who do not have HPV. These results were recently published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Head and neck cancers originate in the oral cavity (lip, mouth, tongue), salivary glands, paranasal sinuses, nasal cavity, pharynx (upper back part of the throat), larynx (voice box), and lymph nodes in the upper part of the neck. Worldwide, head and neck cancer is diagnosed in approximately 640,000 people annually and is responsible for approximately 350,000 deaths each year. Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC) is the most common type of head and neck cancer. It originates in squamous cells, which are commonly part of the outermost layers of tissues. Human papillomaviruses (HPV) consist of more than 100 different viruses. Some types of HPV cause warts on the hands or feet; others cause genital warts; and some have been linked with cancer, most notably cervical cancer. Recent studies have suggested that HPV may also be strongly associated with the development of head and neck cancer. Researchers from several institutions in the United States recently evaluated data from 96 patients with advanced HNSCC who had participated in a previous clinical trial evaluating chemotherapy and radiation therapy for their disease. Patients’ cancers were tested for HPV. - HPV types 16, 33, or 35 were present in 40% of cancer. - Patients with HPV-positive cancer had [...]

2/17/2008 Knoxville, KY Kristi L. Nelson knoxnews.com A long, deep yawn. A bite of a chocolate bar or crab meat. A vigorous brushing and thorough flossing. For 2 1/2 years, Esther Cahal has forgone these and other small pleasures most people take for granted. An unusual complication from a rare form of particularly aggressive tongue cancer left Cahal's mouth locked shut, able to open barely wide enough to insert her little finger. She stays alive by hooking herself up to a feeding tube unit each night and sleeping in an upright position while she "eats" a liquid nutritional supplement for eight hours through a port in her stomach. A little more than a year ago, Cahal, facing a recurrence of her cancer, "decided that before I die, I'm going to eat again," Cahal said. "If this cancer's going to kill me, at least I'm going to have something good down my throat." But Cahal has had two "clear" scans for cancer - and now an innovative physical therapy treatment is helping open her up to experiencing food again. It started in February 2004, when Cahal's dentist found an ulcer on the right side of her tongue. She thought the skin was irritated by a tooth, but when the tooth was fixed, the ulcer still didn't heal. So she had a biopsy. "It came back as extremely aggressive cancer," Cahal said. "It was a surprise for everybody, because I didn't have any risk factors." The type of cancer Cahal had most [...]

2/14/2008 web-based article staff BBC News (news.bbc.co.uk) One million people a year will die from tobacco smoking in India during the 2010s, research predicts. The New England Journal of Medicine study found smoking already accounts for 900,000 deaths a year in India. The study warns that without action, the death toll from smoking will climb still further. It predicts smoking could soon account for 20% of all male deaths and 5% of all female deaths between the ages of 30 and 69. The researchers have calculated that on average, men who smoke bidi - small hand-rolled cigarettes common in India - lose about six years of life. Men who smoke full-size cigarettes shorten their lives by about ten years. And for women bidi smokers the figure is about eight years. The figures are based on a survey of deaths among a sample of 1.1 million homes in all parts of India carried out by about 900 field workers. Among men who died between the ages of 30 and 69, smoking caused about 38% of deaths from tuberculosis, 32% of deaths from cancer and 20% of deaths from vascular disease. Surprising findings Lead researcher Professor Prabhat Jha, of the University of Toronto, said: "The extreme risks from smoking that we found surprised us, as smokers in India start at a later age than those in Europe or America and smoke less." It is estimated that there are about 120 million smokers in India. The study found that, among men, about 61% [...]

2/10/2008 Escondido, CA Mike Stobbe NCTimes (www.nctimes.com) The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study. HPV now causes as many cancers of the upper throat as tobacco and alcohol, probably due both to an increase in oral sex and the decline in smoking, researchers say. The only available vaccine against HPV, made by Merck & Co. Inc., is currently given only to girls and young women. But Merck plans this year to ask government permission to offer the shot to boys. Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too. “We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine,” said study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins University. The study was published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. It also can cause genital warts, penile and anal cancer -- risks for males that generally don't get the same attention as cervical cancer. Previous research by Gillison and others established HPV as a primary cause of [...]

2/9/2008 Ketchum, ID staff CancerConsultants.com Researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have reported that the addition of radiation therapy (RT) following surgery improves survival in locally advanced squamous cell cancer of the head and neck (HNSCC). The details of this study appeared in the February 1, 2008 issue of Cancer. HNSCC is the most common type of head and neck cancer. Standard treatment for this stage of disease typically consists of surgery and radiation therapy with or without chemotherapy. The impact of radiation therapy on survival, however, has not been clearly established. Researchers recently conducted a clinical study to evaluate data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to determine the effect that radiation therapy has on survival for patients with locally advanced HNSCC. This study included 8,795 patients whose cancer had spread to lymph nodes. They were treated either with surgery alone or surgery plus radiation therapy. Patients had been diagnosed with cancer between 1988 and 2001. The median follow-up was just over four years. - At five years survival was improved among patients treated with radiation therapy (43.2%) compared with those treated with surgery only (33.4%). - Death caused by the cancer occurred in approximately 50% of patients treated with surgery and radiation therapy compared with 78% of patients treated with surgery only. The researchers concluded that the addition of “RT resulted in an approximately 10% absolute increase in 5-year cancer-specific survival and overall survival for patients with lymph node-positive HNSCC compared with surgery [...]

2/9/2008 Lyon, France staff PharmaLive (www.medadnews.com) A combined analysis of four phase II/III studies which enrolled more than 20,000 women confirmed that the quadrivalent (6,11,16,18) cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil® has sustained 98% to 100% efficacy in the prevention of vaccine virus type-related precancerous cervical lesions in young women. These new data were presented this week at the 19th International Congress on Anti-Cancer Treatment (ICACT) in Paris, France.[1] "The results complete Gardasil®'s impressive track record of sustained high efficacy. They include by far the longest follow-up for any cervical cancer vaccine in large phase III studies and strongly substantiate the evidence that the protection provided by Gardasil® will be long-lasting", comments lead study investigator Prof. Elmar Joura, from the University of Vienna, Austria. In light of the high and sustained efficacy of Gardasil®, the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board of the large phase III studies in young women (FUTURE I & II) had recommended that these studies be terminated as soon as feasible in order to provide the benefits of Gardasil® to the women in the placebo group. Thus, the studies were ended earlier than originally planned and the women in the placebo group have been vaccinated. In the primary study population of young women (16-26 years)[*], Gardasil® prevented 98%[†] of HPV 16/18-related precancerous cervical lesions (CIN2/3[‡] or AIS[§]) according to the combined analysis. Supplementary analyses in a sub-population of young women (16-26 years)[**] revealed 100%[††] efficacy against HPV 16/18-related CIN2/3 or AIS. The sub-population approximates even better than the [...]

2/9/2008 Blue Bell, PA staff InteliHealth (www.intelihealth.com) Human papillomavirus is becoming one of the main causes of oral cancer in men. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that HPV causes as many cases of upper throat cancer as tobacco and alcohol. The researchers attribute this to an increase in oral sex and a decline in smoking. The study looked at more than 30 years of data on oral cancer from the National Cancer Institute. It categorized about 46,000 cases of cancer, based on the cause, and determined that the incidence of HPV-related oral cancers had been rising steadily in men between 1973 and 2004. Within 10 years, HPV could cause more oral cancers than tobacco or alcohol, they say. On the more positive side, the tumors caused by HPV respond better to chemotherapy and radiation than others, The Associated Press reports. The findings could give a boost to efforts to make the Gardasil vaccine against HPV available to boys. Currently, it is only approved for use in girls and young women.

2/9/2008 Paris, France Shazia Qureshi Doctor's Guide (www.docguide.com) Combination therapy with capecitabine and docetaxel showed a partial response in 38.5% of patients with advanced head and neck cancer, according to findings from a study reported here at the 19th International Congress on Anti-Cancer Treatment (ICACT). Docetaxel and capecitabine previously have been shown to be useful drugs in the treatment of head and neck cancer," said the study's lead author, Joan Manel Mañé, MD, Medical Oncologist, Hospital de Cruces, Bilbao, Spain, who presented the study in a poster session on February 7. For this reason, her team conducted a study to evaluate the combination of these two drugs in nonselected patients with advanced ormetastatic head and neck cancer. Dr. Mañé and colleagues enrolled 33 patients with a mean age of 60 years who presented with squamous-cell locally advanced or metastatic (M1) head and neck cancer. One patient was female. The cancer was local in 49% of patients, local and M1 in 36% of patients, and M1 in 15% of patients. Of those patients whose cancer was staged as M1, the main site of the metastasis was the lungs in 76.5% of patients, lymph nodes in 11.8%, bone in 5.9%, and soft tissue in 5.9% of patients. The treatment regimen consisted of 75 mg/m2 of docetaxel on day 1, and capecitabine at a dose of 950 mg/m2 every 12 hours on days 2 to 14. Patients received this combination therapy every 3 weeks for a mean of 4 treatment cycles (range 1-7). [...]

2/7/2008 web-based article Henry Goldman and Bill Varner Bloomberg (www.bloomberg.com) Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people in this century, a 10-fold increase over the past 100 years, unless governments in poor nations raise taxes on consumption and mandate health warnings, the World Health Organization said. No country fully implements these most important tobacco- control measures, according to a 330-page report released today by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Geneva-based UN agency. Bloomberg, who helped fund the study, joined WHO Director-General Margaret Chan at a news conference in New York to discuss the findings. "This is a unique point in public health history as the forces of political will, policies and funding are aligned to create the momentum needed to dramatically reduce tobacco use and save millions of lives by the middle of this century," Chan said in a foreword to the report. The WHO said the tobacco "epidemic" causes the deaths of 5.4 million people a year due to lung cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. That figure might rise to 8 million per year by 2030, including 80 percent in "countries whose rapidly growing economies offer their citizens the hope of a better life," the report said. American States The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, said states are falling short on U.S. recommendations to boost insurance coverage of proven anti-smoking treatments that fight nicotine addiction. The Atlanta-based U.S. government agency said eight states' Medicaid programs, which serve [...]