Oral Cancer News

Controversies in Treatment Deintensification of Human Papillomavirus–Associated Oropharyngeal Carcinomas: Should We, How Should We, and for Whom?

Source: Journal of Clinical OncologyPublished: 2013By: American Society of Clinical Oncology (Harry Quon and Arlene A. Forastiere) Corresponding author: Arlene A. Forastiere, MD, Department of Oncology and the Sydney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1650 Orleans St, Rm G90, Baltimore, MD 21231-1000; e-mail: [email protected]. It has been little more than a decade since the recognition of the epidemiology, distinct molecular biology, and profile of risk factors, patient demographics, and tumor characteristics of human papillomavirus (HPV) –associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC). From prospective and retrospective studies, we know that patients with locally advanced, stage III/IV, HPV-associated OPSCC who are treated with standard cisplatin-based concurrent chemoradiotherapy have significantly better overall survival and reduced risk of recurrence compared with patients with HPV-negative OPSCC. More than 80% will likely be cured of their cancer. That said, it is also evident that a subset of patients demonstrate an aggressive phenotype with the development of distant spread and death as a result of their cancer. Given that the typical patient with HPV-associated OPSCC is younger (age 40 to 60 years) and without major comorbidities, increasing discussion has been focused on deintensification of treatment in the hopes of minimizing treatment-related morbidity without compromising the current cure rates. In particular, attention has been focused on reducing the morbidity of severe late swallowing complications that result in the need for enteral nutritional support, because this has been shown to substantially affect patient quality of life. Historically, typical rates [...]

Charlotte Parker2017-03-29T19:07:14-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

50 Years After Landmark Warning, 8 Million Fewer Smoking Deaths

Source: npr.orgPublished: January 7, 2014By: Richard Knox Last Saturday marked an important milestone in public health – the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health. Few if any documents have had the impact of this one — both on the amount of disease and death prevented, and on the very scope of public health. An analysis in the JAMA, the American Medical Association journal, estimates that 8 million Americans avoided premature death as a result of tobacco control efforts launched by the 1964 report. Those efforts range from cigarette warning labels to escalating taxes on cigarettes to proliferating restrictions on where people can smoke. They were augmented by a series of high-profile surgeon general reports detailing the dangers to smokers, unborn children and bystanders. But the impact of the 1964 report is even broader than that, according to Harvard historian Allan Brandt. "If we look at the history of public health – from the safety of cars and roads, other dangerous products, the environment, clean air, the workplace – all of these issues really have their origins in a moment 50 years ago around the first surgeon general's report," Brandt tells Shots. He's the author of a 2007 history, The Cigarette Century. But all that impact unfolded over decades, and for many years it didn't appear the report would launch such a revolution. In the 1970s, when Joanne Iuliucci of Staten Island, N.Y., started smoking at age 12, she says she had no idea that [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-15T17:17:56-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The global battle over e-cigarettes

Source: SALONPublished: December 26, 2013By: Lynette Eyb, GLOBALPOST FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2013 file photo made with multiple flash exposures, a model pulls on an electronic cigarette backstage before the Chado Ralph Rucci fashion show in New York. New York City is considering legislation that would include electronic cigarettes in the city's ban on smoking in bars, restaurants and other indoor public spaces. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) (Credit: AP) BORDEAUX, France — As more smokers take to electronic cigarettes, the debate about the impact “vaping” — as using the products is called — could have in the fight against tobacco smoking is becoming more acute. On one side, the head of one of Europe’s leading electronic cigarette industry groups has slammed the World Health Organization (WHO) for its lack of support for the booming e-cigarette market. Katherine Devlin, president of the Electronic Cigarette Industry Trade Association, whose members represent some 60 percent of the British market, said the WHO’s reluctance to endorse e-cigarettes is putting millions of lives at risk. “WHO has led a campaign against smoking which has led to the denormalization not only of smoking, but also of smokers, many of whom now feel like social pariahs,” she said in an interview. Vaping, she said, is a cleaner way of ingesting nicotine. “Our hope is that by normalizing vaping, we can help to further underline the message that smokers need to stop setting fire to tobacco sticks and inhaling [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-15T17:00:20-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

The Trouble With ‘Scientific’ Research Today: A Lot That’s Published Is Junk

Source: ForbesPublished: January 8, 2014By: Henry I. Miller and Stanley Young Many non-scientists are confused and dismayed by the constantly changing advice that comes from medical and other researchers on various issues. One week, coffee causes cancer; the next, it prevents it. Where should we set the LDL threshold for taking statins to prevent cardiovascular disease? Does the radiation from cell phones cause brain tumors? Some of that confusion is due to the quality of the evidence, which is dependent on a number of factors, while some is due to the nature of science itself: We form hypotheses and then perform experiments to test them; as the data accumulate and various hypotheses are rejected, we become more confident about what we think we know. But it may also be due to current state of science. Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results. Investigators who perform research in the laboratory have a high degree of control over the conditions and variables of their experiments, an integral part of the scientific method. If there is significant doubt about the results, they can repeat the experiment. In general, the more iterations, the more confidence about the accuracy of the results. Finally, if the results are sufficiently novel and interesting, the researchers submit a description of the experiments to a reputable journal, where, after review by editors and expert referees, it is published. Thus, researchers do the work and, in theory at least, they are [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-13T18:07:18-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Are e-cigarettes dangerous?

Source: CNN Published: January 7, 2014By: Harold P. Wimmer http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EqvlxEQaQnE Editor's note: Harold P. Wimmer is the president and CEO of the American Lung Association. (CNN) -- For the makers of electronic cigarettes, today we are living in the Wild West -- a lawless frontier where they can say or do whatever they want, no matter what the consequences. They are free to make unsubstantiated therapeutic claims and include myriad chemicals and additives in e-cigarettes. Big Tobacco desperately needs new nicotine addicts and is up to its old tricks to make sure it gets them. E-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed to children with flavors like Bazooka Bubble Gum, Cap'n Crunch and Cotton Candy. Joe Camel was killed in the 1990s, but cartoon characters are back promoting e-cigarettes. Many e-cigarettes look like Marlboro or Camel cigarettes. Like their old-Hollywood counterparts, glamorous and attractive celebrities are appearing on TV promoting specific e-cigarette brands. Free samples are even being handed out on street corners. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the promotion of e-cigarettes is reaching our children with alarming success. In just one year, e-cigarette use doubled among high school and middle school students, and 1 in 10 high school students have used an e-cigarette. Altogether, 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide use e-cigarettes. The three largest cigarette companies are all selling e-cigarettes. Because tobacco use kills more than 400,000 people each year and thousands more successfully quit, the industry needs to attract and [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-08T17:59:22-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer

Source: The New York TimesPublished: January 4, 2014By: George Johnson EVERY New Year when the government publishes its Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, it is followed by a familiar lament. We are losing the war against cancer. Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death. Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game. The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other. The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of [...]

Charlotte Parker2014-01-07T17:34:51-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Researchers and drug companies are ganging up for a new push against cancer

Source: www.economist.com Author: staff “There is no treatment.” This is the conclusion of an Egyptian papyrus, written around 3000BC, that is the oldest known description of the scourge that is now called “cancer”. And so, more or less, it remained until the 20th century, for merely excising a tumour by surgery rarely eliminates it. Only when doctors worked out how to back up the surgeon’s knife with drugs and radiation did cancer begin to succumb to treatment—albeit, to start with, in a pretty crude fashion. Now, however, that crudeness is rapidly giving way to sophistication, as a new wave of cancer treatments comes to market. In 2012 more than 500 potential cancer drugs were under investigation, according to a survey by IMS Health, an American research group—over five times as many as were being developed in the next biggest category, diabetes. Three trends are helping to fill this cancer-drug cornucopia. One is the increase in demand as people live longer, and thus become more likely to develop cancer. According to the World Health Organisation, there were 14m new cases of cancer around the world in 2012. In 2030 there will be nearly 22m. The second trend is the rising price of cancer drugs, particularly in America, the biggest market. More expensive drugs increase profitability. The third is a rapid expansion of scientific knowledge about cancer, the result of both the plummeting cost of genetic sequencing (see chart) and a better understanding of how to recruit the immune system to attack [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2014-01-05T13:21:25-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Surgery beats chemotherapy for tongue cancer, U-M study finds

Source: www.eurekalert.org Author: press release Patients with tongue cancer who started their treatment with a course of chemotherapy fared significantly worse than patients who received surgery first, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. This is contrary to protocols for larynx cancer, in which a single dose of chemotherapy helps determine which patients fare better with chemotherapy and radiation and which patients should elect for surgery. In larynx cancer, this approach, which was pioneered and extensively researched at U-M, has led to better patient survival and functional outcomes. But this new study, which appears in JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, describes a clear failure. "To a young person with tongue cancer, chemotherapy may sound like a better option than surgery with extensive reconstruction. But patients with oral cavity cancer can't tolerate induction chemotherapy as well as they can handle surgery with follow-up radiation. Our techniques of reconstruction are advanced and offer patients better survival and functional outcomes," says study author Douglas Chepeha, M.D., MSPH, professor of otolaryngology – head and neck surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School. The study enrolled 19 people with advanced oral cavity cancer. Patients received an initial dose of chemotherapy, called induction chemotherapy. Those whose cancer shrunk by half went on to receive additional chemotherapy combined with radiation treatment. Those whose cancer did not respond well had surgery followed by radiation. Enrollment in the trial was stopped early because results were so poor. Ten of [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-12-30T06:42:46-07:00December, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Changes in circulating microRNAs after radiochemotherapy in head and neck cancer patients

Source: 7thspace.com Author: staff Introduction: Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) are easily accessible and have already proven to be useful as prognostic markers in cancer patients. However, their origin and function in the circulation is still under discussion. In the present study we analyzed changes in the miRNAs in blood plasma of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients in response to radiochemotherapy and compared them to the changes in a cell culture model of primary HNSCC cells undergoing simulated anti-cancer therapy.Materials and methods: MiRNA-profiles were analyzed by qRT-PCR arrays in paired blood plasma samples of HNSCC patients before therapy and after two days of treatment. Candidate miRNAs were validated by single qRT-PCR assays. An in vitro radiochemotherapy model using primary HNSCC cell cultures was established to test the possible tumor origin of the circulating miRNAs. Microarray analysis was performed on primary HNSCC cell cultures followed by validation of deregulated miRNAs via qRT-PCR. Results: Unsupervised clustering of the expression profiles using the six most regulated miRNAs (miR-425-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-106b-5p, miR-590-5p, miR-574-3p, miR-885-3p) significantly (p = 0.012) separated plasma samples collected prior to treatment from plasma samples collected after two days of radiochemotherapy. MiRNA profiling of primary HNSCC cell cultures treated in vitro with radiochemotherapy revealed differentially expressed miRNAs that were also observed to be therapy-responsive in blood plasma of the patients (miR-425-5p, miR-21-5p, miR-106b-5p, miR-93-5p) and are therefore likely to stem from the tumor. Of these candidate marker miRNAs we were able to validate by qRT-PCR a deregulation of eight plasma [...]

Oral Cancer Foundation News Team - A2013-12-30T06:35:28-07:00December, 2013|Oral Cancer News|

Fifteen Years after Tobacco Settlement, States Falling Short in Funding Tobacco Prevention: Q&A with Danny McGoldrick

Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Published: December 10, 2013By: Danny McGoldrick On November 23, 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the nation’s major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs, joining four states—Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota—that had reached earlier, individual settlements. These settlements require the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years. Yesterday a coalition of health advocacy groups released the latest edition of A Broken Promise to Our Kids, an annual report on state use of tobacco funds for tobacco prevention and cessation efforts. As in years past, the report finds that most states fall short in the amount of money they allocate to prevent kids from smoking and to help current smokers quit. The groups that jointly issued the report include the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights. Key findings of the 2013 report include: • Over the past 15 years, states have spent just 2.3 percent of their total tobacco-generated revenue on tobacco preventionand cessation programs. • The states this year will collect $25 billion from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend just 1.9 percent of it—$481.2 million—on tobacco prevention programs. This means the states are spending less than two cents of every dollar in tobacco revenue to fight tobacco use. • States are [...]

Charlotte Parker2013-12-11T15:05:35-07:00December, 2013|Oral Cancer News|