9/17/2007 United Kingdom Christian Nordqvist MedicalNewsToday.com Patients with head and neck cancer may have poorer functioning in some driving proficiency compared to healthy individuals, according to a preliminary study published in Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery (JAMA/Archives), September issue. The authors explain "Driving is a complex task that requires adequate cognitive, psychomotor and visuoperceptualmotor functions that work together. These functions can be compromised to a greater or lesser extent in patients with cancer in the head and neck region who have received cancer treatment." Cancer treatment is such that a patient's head and neck mobility may be impede. Cancer treatment might also produce cognitive impairments, pain and psychological distress - exposing the driver to greater risks. Hon K. Yuen, Ph.D., O.T.R./L., Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, and team evaluated the driving skills of ten head and neck cancer patients, whose average age was 56, as well as 50 members of the community, whose average age was 48. They used a virtual reality driving simulator - the scientists monitored their average speed, break reaction times, how much their vehicles offset from the center of the driving lane (steering variability), total collisions and the Simulator Driving Performance Scale. The Simulator Driving Performance Scale assesses the driver's driving behavior and skills. The study was carried out 26.6 months after most of the patients' surgery and 20 months after cancer therapy. Here is a comparison between the two groups of people: Average break reaction time Cancer patients - 3,134.92 milliseconds General public [...]

9/17/2007 web-based article Claudia Pinto The Tennessean (Tennessean.com) Smoking and drinking alcohol aren’t the only habits that increase the risk of head and neck cancer, there is a lesser-known but just as deadly contributor: oral sex. The disease is striking an increasing number of younger adults aged 20 to 44, and the cause is attributed to a sexually transmitted disease known as human papillomavirus or HPV, according to a report in next month’s issue of Cancer, the American Cancer Society’s peer-reviewed journal. Dr. Wendell Yarbrough said he’s seeing the trend in patients he treats at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The rate of positive HPV tumors are increasing in the younger folks,” said Yarbrough, who is a Vanderbilt associate professor of otolaryngology and cancer biology and an Ingram professor of cancer research. “We’ve treated some people in their 20s. We used to never see it in people that young.” “Head and neck cancer used to be a disease of people in their 50s and 60s who smoked and drank a lot.” Yarbrough believes the reason for the change is an increase in HPV infection among the general public, due in part, people having more sexual partners and engaging in sexual activity earlier in life. Studies back up his views. Twenty-nine percent of American men and nine percent of American women have had 15 or more sexual partners in their lifetime, according to a study by the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. [...]

9/15/2007 Nashville, TN staff Newswire.ascribe.org The human papillomavirus (HPV) has been implicated as a cause of cervical cancer in women, but there's another devastating form of cancer also linked to HPV infection - head and neck cancer - and almost no one is talking about it. "Right now I think the public and most physicians have no idea that HPV relates to head and neck cancer," said Dell Yarbrough, M.D., Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center surgical oncologist. "In cancers of the oropharynx, which includes the tonsils, the base of the tongue, and part of the throat, about half of those tumors are HPV-positive. In the oral cavity, between 10 and 15 percent of tumors test positive for HPV, although here at Vanderbilt-Ingram we're seeing up to 20 percent." HPV is one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases in the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates nearly 6.2 million new genital HPV cases occur in the United States each year. Now researchers have documented a rise in some types of head and neck cancer related to HPV, especially cancer in the tonsils. The spike in tonsillar cancer coincides with reported changes in sexual habits among young people, including earlier age of sexual activity and an increase in oral sex. "Head and neck cancer used to be a disease of people in their 50s and 60s who smoked and drank heavily," said Yarbrough. "The younger population was at very low risk until recently. But now we're seeing an increased [...]

9/15/2007 web-based article various New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 357:1156-1158 Human Papillomavirus and Oropharyngeal Cancer To the Editor: The study by D'Souza et al. (May 10 issue)1 on oropharyngeal squamous-cell carcinomas associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) provides important epidemiologic insights into a cancer that is becoming increasingly common in the United States.2 However, the molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis in HPV-associated oropharyngeal squamous-cell carcinomas remain unclear. The integration of HPV type 16 (HPV-16) into the host genome is an important mechanism in cervical carcinogenesis,3 but there is no direct evidence that this process occurs in oropharyngeal squamous-cell carcinomas. The authors state that Southern blot, real-time polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR), and fluorescence in situ hybridization analyses4 have established integration sites but that these methods provide only indirect evidence. Direct evidence would require observation of the viral DNA sequence either flanked or attached to one end of human DNA (junction sequences). Mellin et al.5 did not observe this finding in HPV-16–positive tonsillar carcinomas. We previously used restriction-site PCR in more than 100 HPV-16 and HPV-18 cervical cancers to identify many of these junction sequences.6 However, when we used this same technique in 40 oropharyngeal squamous-cell carcinomas that were positive for HPV-16, we did not detect junction sequences (unpublished data). This finding, which suggests a mechanism of carcinogenesis that is distinct from that in cervical cancer, warrants further investigation. Odey C. Ukpo, M.S. Eric J. Moore, M.D. David I. Smith, Ph.D. Mayo Clinic Rochester, MN 55905 [email protected] References: 1.D'Souza G, Kreimer AR, Viscidi R, et [...]

9/15/2007 web-based article staff ScienCentralNews (www.sciencentral.com) It's a discovery in animals that would change everything if it turns out to be true in people. An injection of blood cells from cancer-resistant mice cures cancer in ordinary mice. As this ScienCentral News video explains, there may be a way to identify cancer-resistant people. The End of Cancer? A universal treatment that would work against any type of cancer has always seemed like a far-fetched fantasy. But now researchers at Wake Forest University have made a discovery in mice that might one day lead to a "magic bullet" against human cancers if it proves to be true in people. Several years ago, the researchers identified a rare strain of mouse immune to high, usually lethal doses of cancer cells. Now they have shown that not only are these mice cancer-resistant, but their immune cells are also capable of curing normal, non-resistant mice of any type of advanced cancer. As reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lead researcher Zheng Cui and his team injected white blood cells from the cancer-resistant mice into normal mice with aggressive cancers that should have killed them in two to three weeks. Instead, their cancer disappeared. "Cancer cells had already developed a large tumor in the mice, and at a different place [than] where we put the immune cells in," says Cui, "That would require the immune cells to find them at a different part of the body and then track them down to the [...]

9/13/2007 web-based article Katherine Bourzac Digital Pathology Blog (tissuepathology.typepad.com) Researchers at the University of Texas are developing a microfluidics device that detects oral-cancer cells in 10 minutes and is simple and cheap enough for use in the dentist's office. The device could be adapted to test for other cancers, including cervical cancer. It works well on cancer cells grown in the lab and is currently being tested on biopsies from oral-cancer patients. Many oral cancers are painless or, in their early stages, resemble dental disease, so patients and doctors may overlook them, says Carter Van Waes, chief of head and neck surgery at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The National Cancer Institute estimates that, this year, 22,560 people will be diagnosed with oral cancer, and more than 5,000 will die of the disease. "Even though oral cancer is not common, it's usually advanced when it's diagnosed," says Spencer Redding, chair of dental-diagnostic science at the University of Texas Health Science Center, in San Antonio. Redding is helping test the new device, which was developed by John McDevitt, professor of chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. "The goal is to identify patients earlier," when the survival rate is about 90 percent, says Redding. Patients diagnosed in the later stages of the disease don't respond well to treatment, and only about 50 percent survive. McDevitt and Redding envision a compact device that would be standard in dental offices. Any suspicious-looking sores in a patient's mouth could [...]

9/13/2007 Memphis, TN staff CancerConsultants.com According to an article recently published in Annals of Oncology, over half of patients diagnosed with cancer experience pain, despite guidelines that have been adopted for the reduction of pain. Patients diagnosed with advanced or terminal cancer experience an even higher rate of pain, with those diagnosed with head and neck cancer experiencing the most pain. Pain is one of the most feared consequences associated with the diagnosis of cancer. As cancer becomes more advanced, it grows and spreads throughout the body. This growth crowds organs, tissues, vasculature (veins, arteries, or capillaries), lymph nodes (part of the immune system), and/or bones. The cancerous growth itself can cause pain as it places pressure on nerves and it can interfere with normal biological processes, causing a blockage and/or buildup of fluid or other components. Pain has been recognized as an important focus of treatment among cancer patients. Guidelines have been established by healthcare panels for the treatment of pain, depending upon severity and other existing medical conditions of the patient. Often, patients with terminal cancer remain on pain medications throughout the duration of treatment once their disease has become advanced. In fact, controlling pain is one of the top priorities in end-of-life patient care. However, data regarding the prevalence of pain among patients with cancer remain limited. Researchers from the Netherlands recently conducted a clinical study to review data regarding the prevalence of pain among cancer patients. The data included a literature review regarding pain in different [...]

9/13/2007 Edmontaon, Alberta, Canada staff CanadianPress.com Imperial Tobacco Canada announced Wednesday it will test market a new type of smokeless tobacco in Canada called snus - and while the company is touting it as a safer alternative to cigarettes, it's been banned as a health risk in most of Europe. Benjamin Kemball, president and CEO of Imperial, said the powdered tobacco product will be sold at 230 retail outlets in Edmonton in the coming months to determine whether it might catch on with consumers. Users wad the moist powder between their lips and gum, where it dissolves. Kemball points to recent studies from Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia which suggest that snus is less harmful than cigarettes. "According to these independent reports, there is no increase to the risk of lung (or oral) cancer among snus users, compared to people who have never used any tobacco products at all," he said in an interview. "We should be looking at products such as this because if people are able to move away from cigarettes and to this sort of product, there will be a substantial reduction in risk to those people." The European Union banned snus in all countries except Sweden and Norway in 1992 after a World Health Organization report concluded that oral tobacco products were carcinogenic to humans. It's also banned in Australia. In 2004, the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice upheld the European ban, ruling that the dangers of snus merited that it be outlawed. [...]

9/11/2007 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada press release EarthTimes.org TapImmune Inc., a biotechnology company specializing in the development of immunotherapeutics for cancer and vaccines for infectious diseases, today announced FDA compliant testing company AppTec, headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, has begun preclinical testing of its lead product, a TAP-based therapeutic cancer vaccine. The immunotherapy vaccine is designed to treat a wide variety of TAP deficient carcinomas that include lung cancers, liver cancers, kidney cancers, head and neck cancers, breast cancers, melanomas, prostate cancers, colorectal cancers, and cervical cancers. This is the first step in the product development program that will bring the vaccine to Phase 1 Human studies. After this initial testing and certification, TapImmune will move forward with the production of commercial grade vaccine in FDA approved facilities to commence toxicology and Phase I clinical trials. The TAP vaccine performs a key step in moving characteristic markers called antigens to the surfaces of cells. Without TAP, there are no cancer markers, so the immune system fails to spot the rogue cells and the cancerous cells can grow undetected. In pre-clinical animal models, the Company's vaccine has shown effective restoration of TAP which restores and augments the marker (antigen) presentation and subsequent recognition and killing of cancer cells by the immune system. "This is a very promising technology that we believe could hold the key to making these types of cancers visible to our immune system thus allowing for an appropriate immune response," said Denis Corin CEO TapImmune Inc. "It's gratifying [...]

9/10/2007 London, United Kingdom staff medicexchange.com Positron emission tomography-computed tomography using fluorodeoxy-glucose F 18 (FDG-PET/CT) provides early, accurate detection of bone metastases from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, researchers report in the August issue of Archives of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery. Dr. Brian Nussenbaum of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri and colleagues evaluated 13 head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients with FDG-PET/CT findings suggestive of metastases. These patients were identified by retrospective review of data from 683 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma who had undergone the procedure during initial staging or restaging. All of the 13 patients lacked clinical symptoms of bone involvement and nine had serum alkaline phosphatase levels in the normal or minimally elevated range. Five patients underwent bone biopsy and 4 were confirmed as having metastasis. The fifth patient was found to have Rosai-Dorfman bone disease, a rare non-malignant condition, and was excluded from further analysis. In the remaining 12 patients, FDG-PET/CT identified a total of 27 bone lesions. At the time of metastasis identification, six of the patients had no other identifiable distant metastatic disease and two of these lacked disease at any other site. The findings influenced therapeutic decision making in five patients. The study "further shows the utility of obtaining PET/CT imaging for radiographically restaging patients with head and neck carcinoma," Dr. Nussenbaum told Reuters Health. Source: Arch Otolaryngology Head Neck Surg 2007;133:801-805.