7/19/2006 San Francisco, CA staff Biocompare.com Researchers have discovered a potent inhibitor of the human papilloma viruses (HPV), particularly those types that cause cervical cancer and genital warts, according to a study published in PLoS Pathogens. The inhibitor is found in commercially available products, including sexual lubricants and baby food. In laboratory tests, carrageenan, a compound derived from red algae, prevented HPV infection by both genital wart and cancer-causing types. "We were floored by how much better it worked than anything else we have tested. It's effective at 100-fold lower concentration than the next best inhibitor we've found," said Dr. John Schiller, senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute. Normally, HPV attacks cells by attaching to proteins on their surface and then chemically manipulating access to the cells. Carrageenan thwarts this process by attaching to HPV and preventing its entry into cells. Christopher Buck, lead author of the study and post-doctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, searched for candidate inhibitory compounds by looking for substances that were structurally similar to a key cell surface component involved in HPV infection. "When carrageenan came up to be the clear winner, Chris started to search for products that might contain it," said Schiller. "It quickly became clear that it is widely used as a thickening agent in many foods and topically applied products. So he decided to search for sexual lubricants that might contain it as the gelling agent and came up with several. Although carrageenan was identified in a systematic screen, [...]

7/19/2006 Plantation, FL press release biz.yahoo.com CIGNA Dental today announced the expansion of its DHMO product suite to include a new series of schedules that highlight the importance of preventive care and wellness through a new split copay differential, oral cancer detection offerings, greater access to dental sealants, and more. "These DHMO plan enhancements are part of the overall broad product suite that we offer our employer customers. In fact, we are experiencing increased employer interest in adding DHMO to their plan offerings as another cost savings approach," says Rebekah Whitehouse, chief marketing officer of CIGNA Dental. The CIGNA Dental Care 06 Patient Charge Schedules (PCS), effective August 1, 2006, include procedures and copays that build upon its flexible and innovative dental plan offerings, giving CIGNA one of the most extensive national DHMO product lines. "With rising health care costs, employers are looking for ways to manage benefit expenses while maintaining healthy and productive employees," added Whitehouse. "Through wellness and cost savings features, these new plans provide a cost-effective option for employers and employees. The 06 Plans provide flexibility while focusing on comprehensive coverage and the importance of preventive care." Studies show that preventive dental care can help members avoid paying more money in the long-term for restorative and emergency treatment. This new product series offers members coverage for a wide range of dental services, with most preventive services covered at no or low cost. "Structuring dental plans that encourage use of preventive dental care supports our mission to provide [...]

7/17/2006 Houston, TX Juan A. Lozano Chron.com Knees bent and hands above his head, Francis Maloy lay on his back on a narrow, metallic table inside a white chamber, waiting for a giant wheel-like device to bombard the tumor in his chest with protons. "I had never heard of proton therapy. The last time I heard about protons I was in college taking physics," said Maloy, a 68-year-old retired Army colonel from Stuart, Fla., just before the procedure. Maloy, who has advanced lung cancer, is one of the first patients being treated at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's new $125 million Proton Therapy Center. It is the largest of the nation's four such facilities that treat cancer by targeting protons narrowly on the tumor itself, sparing the healthy tissue that with traditional X-ray radiation therapy is blasted along with the cancer cells. From inside one of five treatment rooms in the 94,000 square-foot center, the gantry looks like the airlock of a science-fiction spaceship. But behind it sits the bending magnets, electrical wires and monitors that make up the gantry, encased in a steel barrel, three stories tall and weighing 190 tons. The protons, which are stripped from the nucleus of hydrogen atoms in a tubular device called an injector, are sent to a compact particle accelerator — actually a ring of magnets about 20 feet in diameter — called a synchrotron. There they circle around until they gather enough energy to irradiate a tumor before being [...]

7/17/2006 Fort Worth, TX Bob Ray Sanders StarTelegram.com A 75-year-old Fort Worth man is the Billy Graham of the anti-smoking crusade. When Jerry Berkowitz finishes talking to schoolchildren, they start coming down the aisles to testify -- to ask questions and, in some cases, to give him something he gave up 25 years ago. At his home the other day, he recalled his first speech. It was to more than 300 students at Aledo Middle School. The youngsters were seated on the gymnasium floor, and as Berkowitz prepared to address them, he remembered administrators' warnings that the kids likely would be a little restless, partly because it was the last period of the day. But as soon as he began to speak, sounding somewhat like a robot from a science fiction movie, the kids were mesmerized, he said. At the end of his 25-minute presentation, "a little kid about this tall [just over waist high] handed me a pack of Marlboros and said, 'Hey, mister, take this away from me. I'll never smoke again, I promise.' " Soon afterward at a similar event, a young girl approached him. He had noticed her on the front row, staring straight at him during the entire speech. The girl was deaf, Berkowitz learned, and she had been reading his lips. "She handed me a brand of cigarettes I had never seen before and said, 'I've been trying to quit for years.' And I burst out crying," Berkowitz said as tears welled in his [...]

7/17/2006 Long Beach, CA Phillip Zonkel Long Beach PressTelegram.com Sabrina Mansfield is receiving her final hyperthermia treatment a therapy designed to kill her aggressive and recurrent cancer. She has seven catheters in her neck and head. Each one beams microwave energy to heat a precise location of her cancer-riddled tissue. When this heating is combined with radiation or chemotherapy, it increases the success rate of these therapies for eradicating cancer cells, according to recent research. "We needed to be extremely aggressive with Sabrina's treatment," says Dr. Behrooz Hakimian, Mansfield's radiation oncologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who recommended the combination therapy. "She probably had one chance of treatment at this point. I wanted her to have the best treatment." Mansfield received her treatment from Dr. Nisar Syed, director of radiation oncology at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, who is considered a leader in the field of hyperthermia. Syed has been administering the procedure for more than 22 years and has treated more than 3,000 patients. Of Syed's patients, he says approximately 25 percent had recurrent cancer after treatment. "Dr. Syed has the most experience in Southern California, if not on the West Coast, in using hyperthermia," Hakimian says. "He's magical with his hands." Hyperthermia works on selected cancers: head and neck, tongue, throat, cervix, prostate, melanoma, sarcoma and breast cancer on the chest wall. They can be locally advanced tumors that have not metastasized or recurrent cancers that have been treated with surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation. Sixty-five percent of Syed's patients [...]

7/15/2006 Viena, Austria Clemens Klug et al. Laryngoscope, July 1, 2006; 116(7): 1162-1167 Objective/Hypotheses: The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to investigate the effect of prior radiotherapy (XRT) on the outcome of microvascular free tissue transfer in the head and neck region. Methods: Four hundred fifty-five patients, subdivided into three groups, were analyzed. Groups I (no previous XRT, n = 110), II (previous radiochemotherapy with 50 Gy focus dosage in the primary treatment regime for oral cancer, n = 322), and III (secondary reconstruction after XRT-induced complications, n = 23) were compared regarding flap success rate, postoperative complications, postoperative mortality, duration of intensive care (DOIC), and hospitalization (DOH). Results: Flap success did not differ significantly across groups (I: 95.5%, II: 93.2%, III: 91.3%. Risk of postoperative complications was significantly lower for group I (12.7%) compared with groups II (23.9%) and III (39.1%). DOIC and DOH were significantly shorter for patients in group I than for those in groups II and III. Conclusions: XRT before free tissue transfer does not significantly increase flap loss or postoperative mortality but does increase postoperative complications and length of hospitalization. Authors: Clemens Klug, Dominik Berzaczy, Heidrun Reinbacher, Martin Voracek, Thomas Rath, Werner Millesi, and Rolf Ewers Authors' affiliations: From the Hospital of Cranio-Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery (c.k., d.b., h.r., r.e.), Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; the School of Psychology (m.v.), University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (t.r.), Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; and the Department [...]

7/15/2006 Mississauga, Ontario, Canada IC Munro et al. J Esthet Restor Dent, January 1, 2006; 18(3): 119-25 Tooth whitening products containing hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide were evaluated in this review for potential oral cancer risk from their use. Hydrogen peroxide is genotoxic in vitro, but not in vivo. Hydrogen peroxide was not considered to pose a genotoxic risk to humans. The animal toxicology data relevant to the assessment of the carcinogenicity of hydrogen peroxide do not indicate that it has significant carcinogenic activity at any site, including the oral cavity. Hydrogen peroxide was found to enhance the carcinogenic effects of potent DNA reactive carcinogens in experimental animals. However, these experimental conditions are artificial as they are related to high exposures and are of no relevance to potential human exposures to low quantities of hydrogen peroxide from the use of tooth whitening products. Clinical data on hydrogen peroxide-containing tooth whitening products show no evidence for the development of preneoplastic or neoplastic oral lesions. Exposures to hydrogen peroxide received by the oral cavity are exceedingly low, of short duration (30-60 minutes), and could not plausibly enhance any carcinogenic risk associated with exposure of the oral cavity to chemicals in cigarette smoke or to alcohol, both known risk factors for the development of oral cancer. Based on a comprehensive review of the available literature and research, the use of tooth whitening products containing hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide does not appear to pose an increased risk of oral cancer in the general [...]

7/15/2006 Baltimore, MD Karl B. Hille Examiner.com A possible cure for some types of mouth, larynx and throat cancer is being tested at the University of Maryland Medical Center. University researchers have begun testing “Trojan peptide” vaccines to treat squamous cell carcinoma, a common type of head and neck cancer. The vaccine targets specific proteins made by tumors, and in theory can stimulate the body’s immune system to destroy the cancer. “It’s really founded on very strong science,” said Dr. Scott Strome, who developed the vaccine and stands to benefit if it becomes an approved treatment. Currently, researchers are accepting patients for Phase I trials, which test the safety of a new therapy. If it proves safe, further trials will test the effectiveness of the vaccine. Strome said the vaccine is experimental and it is not known yet if it will reduce or eliminate patients’ tumors. Researchers hope the vaccine therapy will improve the survival rate and quality of life for patients. Cancers of the head and neck — including those of the throat, mouth, voice box, sinuses, salivary glands and skin — are often difficult to treat and have a high risk of recurrence, according to information provided by the University of Maryland. Treatments include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Much larger than traditional vaccine molecules, these peptides contain approximately 40 to 50 amino acids, Strome said. Researchers believe these larger peptides may trigger a stronger, two-pronged response by the body’s immune system. The vaccines prepare white blood cells [...]

7/15/2006 Sao Paolo, Brazil L. Cuffari et al. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod, July 1, 2006; 102(1): 56-61 OBJECTIVE: To identify pain as the initial symptom of oral cancer patients. STUDY DESIGN: Hospital charts of 1412 patients (1977 to 1998) with oral cancer were reviewed (238 female and 1174 male). Results: Pain was the initial complaint in 19.2% of the sample. Oral cancer (ratio 4:1) and initial pain (ratio 9:1; P= .001) was prevalent in men. There were 12 different complaints of pain: sore throat (37.6%), tongue pain (14.0%), mouth pain (12.9%); pain when swallowing (11.1%), dental pain (5.9%); earache (5.9%); pain in the palate (4.1%); burning mouth (3.3%); gingival pain (2.2%); pain when chewing (1.1%); neck pain (1.1%), and facial pain (0.7%). Pain was associated with advanced TNM staging and location of tumor in the tongue (P= .004) and the tongue/mouth floor (P< .006). Conclusion: There were 12 different descriptions of pain; pain was related to TNM staging in the tongue and the tongue/mouth floor. The data presented reinforce the suggestion that patients with orofacial pain need systematized evaluation and sometimes require an interdisciplinary approach. Authors: L Cuffari, JT Tesseroli de Siqueira, K Nemr, and A Rapaport Authors' affilation: Oral Surgery, Dental School of Universidade Bandeirante (UNIBAN), São Paulo, Brazil

7/15/2006 Iowa City, IA staff CancerConsultants.com The American Society of Clinical Oncology recently published guidelines about larynx preservation in patients with laryngeal cancer. The guidelines note the importance of balancing successful cancer treatment with patient function and quality of life. Head and neck cancers originate in the throat, larynx (voice box), pharynx, salivary glands, or oral cavity (lip, mouth, tongue). Most head and neck cancers involve squamous cells, which are cells that line the mouth, throat, or other structures. For patients facing the treatment of laryngeal cancer, an important consideration is whether the larynx can be preserved. Because the larynx is involved in speech and communication, complete removal of the larynx can have a dramatic and adverse effect on a patient’s life. Treatment approaches that preserve the larynx include radiation therapy alone, chemotherapy plus radiation therapy, and surgery that preserves the function of the larynx. Certain patients, however, may not be candidates for these approaches, and may require more extensive treatment. To guide the use of larynx-preservation approaches, the American Society of Clinical Oncology summarized the available evidence and released recommendations. Final decisions about treatment, however, will still require consideration of each patient’s individual circumstances. - For patients with limited laryngeal cancer (T1 or T2), the recommendations note that patients should initially be treated with the intent to preserve the larynx. In these patients, radiation therapy alone or larynx-preservation surgery each appear to produce similar survival outcomes. The recommendations include the qualification that “Limited-stage laryngeal cancer constitutes a wide spectrum [...]