4/1/2007 San Antonio, TX Don Finley MySA.com Slightly fewer than half of all patients diagnosed with head and neck cancer live five years from the moment the doctor delivers the bad news. But those who do survive two or three years out have a better chance of living another five. Doctors just weren't sure exactly how much better that chance was — until now. A San Antonio-led group of researchers has calculated those "conditional" survival rates — the five-year survival odds beginning a year or more after diagnosis — for head and neck cancers (excluding brain cancer), which account for 3 percent to 5 percent of all cancers. Such information has been available for breast, lung, brain, prostate and gastrointestinal cancers, but not head and neck cancer. "Head and neck cancer remains a disease where we still have a lot of progress to make," said Dr. Clifton David Fuller, a radiation oncology resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the lead author of the study that appears in the current issue of the American Cancer Society journal, Cancer. "Comparatively, few resources are devoted to it." Head and neck cancers are heavily linked to smoking and alcohol consumption. They're most common in people over age 50. An estimated 39,000 Americans developed head and neck cancers last year. Head and neck cancer sites include the lip, tongue, throat, nasal cavity, middle ear and other places. Most tumors begin in the squamous cells that line the mucous membranes. To calculate [...]

3/31/2007 web-based article Barry F. Polansky, DMD Dental Economics (de.pennnet.com) In one of my favorite audio programs “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale, the speaker recounts the following incident: “Some years ago, a reporter asked the late Nobel prize-winning doctor, Albert Schweitzer, ‘Doctor, what’s wrong with men today?’ The great doctor was silent a moment, and then he said, ‘Men simply don’t think!’” Motivational speaker Jim Rohn suggests that all success begins with the development of a personal philosophy. Creating a philosophy requires lots of self-reflection and thinking. Henry Ford said, “Thinking is the hardest work there is.” Thinking is hard work because most efforts produce nothing at all, but if you spend time in thought, eventually an idea will come that could change a person’s life forever. On the exhibit floor of the Jacob K. Javits Center at the Greater New York Dental Meeting, I was discussing a new technology, the VELscope from LED Medical Diagnostics. A mini-crowd was gathered around the booth, giving rapt attention to a salesman describing a technology that has been around for awhile, but primarily in the hands of dermatologists. The salesman was doing a nice job of describing the mechanics of how the VELscope - an imaging device - could help dentists detect intraoral tissue changes at an early stage, thereby preventing oral premalignant lesions (OPL) from progressing to dysplasia and eventually to invasive forms of carcinoma, such as squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). The salesman went on to point out that the incidence [...]

3/30/2007 San Francisco, CA press release University of California San Francisco News Release Massage and acupuncture are effective in decreasing pain and depression following surgery in cancer patients, according to a UCSF study. The findings of the randomized controlled clinical trial are reported in the March 2007 issue of the “Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.” “This pilot study confirmed that pain after surgery decreased when patients underwent a combination of massage and acupuncture. This is a significant finding because there are implications for further study to see if these therapies should be offered to hospitalized patients for symptom management,” said Wolf Mehling, MD, lead author and UCSF assistant professor of family and community medicine. The study compared the post-operative symptoms of pain, nausea and mood and the cost of symptom-related medications in two groups of hospitalized patients during the first three days after cancer-related surgery. One group underwent a combination of massage and acupuncture in addition to usual care, and one group had usual care alone. Usual care is defined as traditional treatment through medication. Study results showed a greater decrease in both pain and depressive mood in the group that underwent massage/acupuncture therapy along with usual care. The study was conducted at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. According to Mehling, 40 percent of people with cancer are treated with complementary and alternative medicine therapies. Although the measurable benefits of these therapies have been promising, there have been no conclusive results, he said. “The combination of massage [...]

3/29/2007 Madison, WI Naghma Khan et al. Cancer Res 2007;67(7):3475-82 To develop novel mechanism-based preventive approaches for lung cancer, we examined the effect of oral consumption of a human achievable dose of pomegranate fruit extract (PFE) on growth, progression, angiogenesis, and signaling pathways in two mouse lung tumor protocols. Benzo(a)pyrene [B(a)P] and N-nitroso-tris-chloroethylurea (NTCU) were used to induce lung tumors, and PFE was given in drinking water to A/J mice. Lung tumor yield was examined on the 84th day and 140 days after B(a)P dosing and 240 days after NTCU treatment. Mice treated with PFE and exposed to B(a)P and NTCU had statistically significant lower lung tumor multiplicities than mice treated with carcinogens only. Tumor reduction was 53.9% and 61.6% in the B(a)P + PFE group at 84 and 140 days, respectively, compared with the B(a)P group. The NTCU + PFE group had 65.9% tumor reduction compared with the NTCU group at 240 days. Immunoblot analysis and immunohistochemistry were used to determine effect on cell survival pathways and markers of cellular proliferation and angiogenesis. PFE treatment caused inhibition of (a) activation of nuclear factor-{kappa}B and I{kappa}B{alpha} kinase, (b) degradation and phosphorylation of I{kappa}B{alpha}, (c) phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (extracellular signal-regulated kinase 1/2, c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase 1/2, and p38), (d) phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (p85 and p110), (e) phosphorylation of Akt at Thr308, (f) activation of mammalian target of rapamycin signaling, (g) phosphorylation of c-met, and (h) markers of cell proliferation (Ki-67 and proliferating cell nuclear antigen) and angiogenesis (inducible nitric oxide [...]

3/29/2007 Singapore Tan Hui Leng Singapore News (www.channelnewsasia.com) It was intended to shock, and it succeeded — so well, in fact, that a flood of complaints from parents has caused the Health Promotion Board (HPB) to reschedule the screening time of its anti-smoking advertising campaign on television. It will now only be aired from 8pm, when youngsters are less likely to be watching TV. The 30-second commercial, which first aired on all the four main language channels last week, is a graphic depiction of a woman afflicted with oral cancer. The camera zooms in on a tight shot of her face with a diseased tongue, decaying teeth and chapped lips riddled with sores. Said HPB’s chief executive, Mr Lam Pin Woon: "HPB has reviewed and revised our advertising timing and channels to minimise causing any alarm to young children." Housewife Leong Sow Chan was one of the peeved parents. Her nine-year-old daughter was so traumatised by the commercial the first time she saw it that she had a nightmare that night. "She started screaming at about 3am and woke my husband up. He had to attend to her," said Madam Leong. While she still does not think the commercial is in appropriate taste, she admitted that it "definitely turns me and my non-smoking family off. We are so disgusted we either switch channels when the ad comes on, or look away". Indeed, the preliminary results seem to prove the power of the shock tactics. According to the HPB, since last [...]

3/29/2007 Vancouver, WA press release PrimeNewswire (www.primenewswire.com) A draft version of this press release was released by mistake on March 12, 2007. Gentle Dental apologizes for this error and the misinformation included in that draft. What follows is the corrected version of the press release. Gentle Dental, a leading provider of comprehensive, convenient and high quality dentistry, announced that it is evaluating several technologies to aid in the early detection of oral cancer. Gentle Dental and its affiliated dentists in eight states recognize the importance of early oral cancer detection and have included visual and tactile screening for oral cancer during all exams for years. Recently new technologies have come to market that augment doctors abilities to see oral abnormalities at extremely early stages, increasing the effectiveness of their screening process. Gentle Dental is now evaluating two of these, the VELscope and ViziLite, in its offices. Statistics from the Oral Cancer Foundation (www.oralcancer.org) indicate that the incidence of oral cancer is on the rise. In 2006 the number of people in the U.S. diagnosed with oral cancer rose for the first time in 50 years, and the Foundation predicts that this number will rise again this year by 11%, with approximately 34,000 people in the U.S. being diagnosed with oral cancers. Oral cancer will cause over 8,000 deaths, killing about one person every hour of each day. According to the foundation, of those 34,000 newly diagnosed individuals only half will be alive in five years -- a number which has [...]

3/27/2007 web-based article staff Journal of the American Dental Assoc, Vol 138, No 3, 296 Researchers have identified a marker on head and neck tumor cells that indicates which cells are capable of promoting the cancer’s growth. The finding, which appeared in the Jan. 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first evidence of cancer stem cells in head and neck tumors. Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, Ann Arbor, and Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif., took tumor samples from patients undergoing surgery for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, including cancers of the tongue, larynx, throat and sinus. They separated cells from the samples according to whether they expressed a marker on their surface called CD44. They then implanted the sorted cells into immune-deficient mice to grow tumors. The cells that expressed CD44 were able to grow new tumors, while the cells that did not express CD44 were not. Researchers found that the tumors that grew were identical to the original tumors and contained cells that expressed CD44, as well as cells that did not. This ability to both self-renew and produce different types of cells is a hallmark of stem cells. The percentage of cells within a tumor expressing CD44 varied from one sample to the next, with one sample having as high as 40 percent of these cells. Studies in other cancer types have found the stem cell population to be less than 5 percent. "The [...]

3/25/2007 web-based article staff Palangkaraya Post (palangkarayapost.com) This month, a team of researchers from London and the University of Connecticut announced that aggressive treatment of gum disease can improve the function of blood vessel walls in the body — potentially reducing the risk of heart attacks. A few weeks before that, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported a study of more than 51,000 male health professionals, which showed that men who had gum disease, or periodontitis, were far more likely than those without it to develop pancreatic cancer. Other studies have shown links between gum disease and diabetes, heart disease, stroke and even — though this is more controversial — pregnancy problems such as low-birth-weight infants. The evidence is accumulating faster than you can say “don’t forget to floss” that taking good care of your teeth — and treating gum disease aggressively — may be one of the best things you can do not just for your mouth, but for your overall health. With pancreatic cancer, for instance, previous studies had suggested such a link, but those studies were muddied because many participants smoked — and smoking is a risk factor for both diseases. This time, even among people who had never smoked, gum disease was linked to a doubling of the cancer risk, said epidemiologist Dominique Michaud, the first author, of the Harvard School of Public Health. It’s still not clear, cautioned Michaud, whether that means the gum disease led to the cancer. Chronic inflammation anywhere [...]

3/25/2007 Bend, OR Bend Weekly News Sources Bend Weekly (www.bendweekly.com) Oral cancer is diagnosed in more than 30,000 individuals in the US annually, claiming 10,000 lives each year. Early detection remains the best way to ensure patient survival and quality of life. Today, during the 85th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research, scientists from the University of California- Irvine present two novel, non-invasive, ultra-fast imaging approaches to oral cancer detection, diagnostic screening, and mapping. More than 2/3 of all oral cancer cases documented by the National Cancer Institute are diagnosed at an advanced stage. The five-year survival rate is 75% for those with localized disease at diagnosis, but only 16% for those with cancer metastasis. Earlier detection of oral lesions would greatly improve the prognosis of these patients. Accurate delineation of lesion margins would ensure effective removal of all the tissue that presents a threat to the patient's long-term health. Two basic facts indicate that early detection of oral malignancy should be possible to a far greater extent than is currently seen: (1) Accounting for 96% of all oral cancers, squamous cell carcinoma is often preceded by lesions on the oral mucosa. Malignant transformation, which is quite unpredictable, occurs in 1-90% of lesions over five years. Thus, oral cancer is often preceded by lesions which are visible to the naked eye prior to transformation. A non-invasive diagnostic modality would permit regular monitoring of these lesions, detection of lesion transformation, and the identification of treatment needs at a [...]

3/23/2007 London, England A. J. Mighell British Dental Journal 202, 328 - 329 (2007) - An investigation of where the Israeli public seek advice on mouth ulcers. - Nearly one third of those surveyed had a history of mouth ulceration. - Lay people could not distinguish an ulcer with features that would strongly suggest a malignant neoplasm from other types of mouth ulcer. - The vast majority would first seek advice from their general medical practitioner. -Less than 20% would first approach a general dental practitioner. -------------------------------------------------- Abstract Objective: To investigate where the public seek advice about mouth ulcers and to what extent the public approach the community pharmacy for advice. Subjects and methods: One thousand members of the general public were randomly chosen and surveyed throughout the day in the main shopping streets of two towns in Israel, Haifa and Tel Aviv. All participants were presented with four standard verbal questions designed to identify reactions to and past experience of mouth ulcers. All responses were recorded immediately on to data sheets and transferred to a computer for analysis of frequencies and percentages and Chi-square analysis. Results Nearly one third of those surveyed admitted to a history of mouth ulceration. The vast majority (66-69%) would first approach their general medical practitioner for advice, 13-17% would first approach a general dental practitioner, and only a small minority of the public (4-10%) would first approach the community pharmacy. Lay persons could not distinguish an ulcer with features that would strongly suggest a [...]