4/25/2005 as reported by www.pccoaltion.com Consumer Reports on Health Following the back and forth of medical news is enough to give you whiplash. Supplemental estrogen, portrayed in the media for decades as a veritable fountain of youth, ends up being anything but when definitive studies show it can increase the risk of breast cancer, heart attack, and stroke. Initially heralded as safer than existing drugs, the pain relievers rofecoxib (Vioxx) and celecoxib (Celebrex) make the front pages again when later studies show they increase heart-attack risk. After riding a long wave of good press, the reputation of the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) crashes amid reports that the drug may make some teenagers suicidal. Indeed, medical news often seems to follow an all-too-familiar pattern: New drugs or therapies are introduced with glowing reports, followed a few years later by headlines blaring their dangers. "That pattern leaves many people confused or even angry," says Steven Woloshin, M.D., a professor at the Dartmouth Medical School's Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences. Some people react to that uncertainty by dismissing all medical news, while others overreact by adopting-or abandoning-medicines too soon. For example, in the 1990s many people stopped taking certain blood-pressure medications after a pair of studies linked them to increased heart-attack risk; subsequent research refuted that evidence, but only after some patients suffered adverse events because they stopped taking their medication. While some of the confusion stems from the natural unfolding of scientific knowledge, some comes from shortcomings in the way medical research is [...]

4/25/2005 Cuba Cubasi Cuba Travel Explorer TheraCIM h-R3, a humanized monoclonal antibody, received the certificate of first-category drug granted by the State Food and Drug Administration of China, for its production and commercialization in that Asian nation. According to Prensa Latina news agency, the drug is prescribed for the combined treatment of advanced head and neck epithelial cancer, of bad prognosis and resistant to the chemotherapy, explained PhD. Patricia Sierra, responsible on the Cuban side of this project. The h-R3 is a new type of drug obtained through biotechnology, with high effectiveness in the marking and specificity, and little side effect, that has been patented in other countries, including the United States. This drug will be produced and commercialized by Biotech Pharmaceutical, Chinese-Cuban Company constituted in 2000 by the CIMAB (representative of the Molecular Immunology Center) and three Chinese companies. Sierra, also general submanager of Biotech Pharmaceutical, pointed out that the industrial-scale cultivation of the recombinant antibody would kick off next September. To obtain that certificate, it was necessary to carry out clinical trials for more than one year with 120 patients affected by head and neck cancer in six hospitals of Beijing, capital of China, following strict protocols set for that aim. The studies wound up with very good results, with full response in 70% of the cases, without evidences of severe clinic toxicity, Prensa Latina assures in its note. That was the first time in which a humanized monoclonal antibody was subject to clinical test in China, country [...]

4/25/2005 Seattle, WA Bruce Taylor Seeman Seattle Times Chuck McDowell gave speeches. He sang with a band. But everything changed when his voice disappeared, leaving McDowell feeling frightened and isolated. "I was having to speak into an amplifier just to have a conversation at home," said the 46-year-old financial adviser from Duluth, Ga. "If I was in a restaurant, I could not be heard unless I put my amplifier on the table and turned it up." Eventually, McDowell had a growth removed from his vocal cords, a procedure he now jokingly recalls as easier than some haircuts. But in the 18 months it took to summon the courage for surgery, he experienced the unsettling questions familiar to nearly everyone at least once in a lifetime: Where did my voice go? How do I get it back? Experts believe that at any given time, more than 7 million Americans suffer from voice disorders, and that number is likely to grow. Longer lives may result in more voices muted by age-related fatigue. Meanwhile, the modern era — with so many service-sector jobs such as sales, and so much yapping on cellphones — is a recipe for voice strain. "Some people have a hypothesis, that the cellphone is the vocal endurance test for the new millennium," said voice-disorder specialist Dr. Michael Johns, director of the Emory Voice Center of Emory University in Atlanta. The key to effective voice production is healthy vocal cords, which experts call vocal folds. They lie horizontally in the [...]

4/25/2005 Lagos, Nigeria AI Ladehinde et al. Niger Postgrad Med J, March 1, 2005; 12(1): 18-22 Aims: This article reviews the present body of knowledge regarding the principle, transfer techniques, therapeutic strategies, clinical applications and limitations of gene therapy in the management of oral squamous cell carcinoma. Materials and Methods: Scientific publications on gene therapy between 1990 and 2003 were selected for the purpose of the review. These include clinical articles, experimental studies and review articles. Results: Viruses are the commonly used transfer system for the delivery of gene therapy. The viral vectors commonly used are: retroviruses, adenoviruses, herpesviruses, and adenoassociated viruses (AAV). Transfection of cancer cells in vivo with gene therapy is done by intralesional injection, and sometimes by topical application. Phase I and II clinical trials have established the safety and clinical efficacy of gene therapy in the treatment of oral squamous cell carcinomas in humans, especially in combination with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Phase III clinical trials and studies of the use of gene therapy as an adjuvant following surgery are presently underway. Conclusions: Gene therapy represents a new and innovative approach to the treatment of oral cancer especially in recurrent disease and adjuvant treatment. Oral squamous cell carcinoma is especially an attractive tumour target due to its frequent genetic mutations and accessibility for intra-tumoural administration of gene therapy. However, gene therapy has not yet been shown to be suitable for systemic delivery in cancer patients, hence the control of regional and metastasis is presently difficult. Authors: AI [...]

4/25/2005 Bethesda, MD Cheryl A. Thompson Am. J. Health Syst. Pharm. 2005; 62(9): p. 890-894 While September 30, 2004, may be remembered as the day that clinicians and patients started reconsidering the available pain relievers, the negative news about rofecoxib sent a shock wave through the world of preventive oncology. December 17 brought bad news about celecoxib. Researchers had been exploring the potential of long-term therapy with rofecoxib or celecoxib, both cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors, to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer. What the researchers found first was that the drugs apparently increased users’ risk for myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, and other cardiovascular events. The ability of COX-2 inhibitors to obstruct the activity of the inflammation-promoting enzyme and also interfere with inflammatory mediators such as interleukin-1 and nuclear factor kappa B had made that type of drug a potential chemopreventive for cancer, according to Ernest T. Hawk of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Buttressing this line of research was evidence that an excess of COX-2 played a role in the invasive and earlier stages of cancer at a large number of sites in the body, he explained. Hawk is a member of the steering committee for the NCI-sponsored Adenoma Prevention with Celecoxib study, which stopped administering the drug in December 2004 after an independent committee discovered an increased cardiovascular risk among drug recipients. He and an epidemiologist discussed the future for COX-2 inhibitors in cancer prevention at the American Society of Preventive Oncology annual meeting in San Francisco, held March 13–15. [...]

4/25/2005 T Minamikawa, M Umeda, and T Komori Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod, May 1, 2005; 99(5): 532-8 Objectives: Although sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) may reduce surgery-related complications related to unnecessary lymph node dissection and is now widely used for many patients with cutaneous melanoma and breast cancer, its use for oral cancer patients remains controversial. One of the main reasons for the reluctance to initiate SLNB for oral cancer is that the frequency of skip metastasis has not been clarified. The objectives of this study are to examine the frequency of skip metastasis and to evaluate SLNB for oral cancer. Study design: To shed light on these concerns, we first conducted a retrospective study of 296 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity who underwent neck dissection. Next, the accuracy of lymph node biopsy with and without detecting sentinel lymph node was examined. Results: Ten patients showed skip neck metastasis in the level III-V region without level I-II involvement. Of these patients, 7 underwent neck dissection when their initially N0 neck progressed to N+, 2 underwent neck dissection when local recurrence occurred, and only 1 underwent surgery as an initial therapy. Most patients who underwent neck dissection as the initial therapy showed skip metastasis. Intraoperative lymph node biopsy without any attempt to detect sentinel lymph nodes by means of blue dye or lymphoscintigraphy was performed on 68 patients with oral cancer. Sixty-one (90%) were diagnosed correctly, whereas 7 diagnosed as N- actually [...]

4/22/2005 Anaheim, CA Charlene Laino WebMD Health (my.webmd.com) New studies presented at a major cancer meeting reinforce the old adage that you are what you eat (and drink). One study shows that green tea may stave off prostate cancer. Another study suggests that eating a lot of hot dogs, sausage, and other processed meats may raise the risk of pancreatic cancerrisk of pancreatic cancer. Loading up on red meat also seems to increase the chance of developing pancreatic cancer, one of the most deadly of tumors, says study researcher Ute Nothlings, DrPH, MSE. "The findings suggest that eating less processed meat and less red meat might help prevent pancreatic cancer," she tells WebMD. Nothlings is a researcher at the Cancer Research Center at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Red meat has also been linked to an increase in colon cancer.linked to an increase in colon cancer. Diving Into the Meat of the Matter For the study, the researchers examined the relationship between diet and pancreatic cancer among nearly 200,000 men and women. When they first entered the study in the mid-1990s, all the participants filled out a detailed questionnaire that asked what foods they had eaten in the past year, how frequently they had eaten them, and how much they had eaten. By an average of seven years later, 482 of the men and women had developed pancreatic cancer. Those who ate more than 1.5 ounces of processed meat a day were about two-thirds more likely to have pancreatic [...]

4/22/2005 Beverly, MA Roger W. Sachs, D.M.D Damvers Herald on Townline.com The majority of oral carcinoma is preventable and the earlier the diagnosis, the better the cure. Oral cancers that are caught early have probably well over a 90-95 percent cure ratio, whereas those cancers that have gone on for a year or more, have cure rates that are greatly reduced. Oral cancer can be seen in any part of the mouth. The most common areas are the sides of the tongue and back of the mouth, at the point where the lower ridge meets the back of the mouth. Other areas include the lips and cheeks and under the tongue. Oral cancer can certainly start at any age, but the average s between the ages of 50-75. In my over twenty-five years of practice, with the exception of three cases, all of the cancer cases I have treated have been caused by smoking or alcohol abuse. The more recent phenomena of chewing tobacco may also cause oral carcinoma, but at present there is no conclusive proof. In oral surgery there is a saying that states "if you smoke long enough, you will get cancer." The medical and dental community would practically go out of business if smoking completely ceased. There would be hardly any oral cancer, lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease would be greatly reduced. In addition to smoking and alcohol abuse, other causes of oral cancer include spreading from other cancer sites, called metastasis, or cancers from [...]

4/22/2005 Israel Medical News Today (www.medicalnewstoday.com) In a recent study published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science paired the active ingredient of a garden remedy with advanced bio-technology to deliver a powerful punch against cancer. The cancer killing effectiveness lies in their technique of arming a cancer-targeting antibody with the destructive potential of the dietary molecule otherwise known as "allicin." Allicin is the product of an interaction between an enzyme, alliinase, and the small chemical alliin, which occurs naturally in plants such as garlic and onion as a defense mechanism against soil fungi, bacteria and parasites. Allicin molecules can easily penetrate biological membranes and kill cells, but their potency is short-lived hence the difficulty in finding a system to deliver them to a specific site. "The medicinal value of garlic is no longer an ancient Chinese secret," says the Institute's Prof. David Mirelman. "Years of scientific research led to the identification and understanding of allicin's mode of activity and we are currently studying ways to target and deliver its toxic punch." The team, including Mirelman, Prof. Meir Wilchek, Drs. Fabian Arditti, Talia Miron and Aharon Rabinkov of the Biological Chemistry Department, and Prof. Yair Reisner of the Immunology Department, together with Prof. Berrebi of Rehovot's Kaplan Hospital, adopted an approach that fastens the enzyme alliinase onto a specific antibody already in clinical use, Rituximabâ, designed to target and lock on to the surface of certain types of cancer cells such as lymphoma. When administered alone, [...]

4/20/2005 Ann Arbor, MI University of Michigan News Service The Detroit Oral Cancer Prevention Project has launched a citywide campaign to lower the oral cancer death rate in Detroit. “Our best hope for decreasing the rate of oral cancer is to get Detroiters in for a screening,” said project director Dr. Amid Ismail, from the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. “If caught early, oral cancer has a 90 percent cure rate.” The effects of later-stage oral cancer treatments, by contrast, can be devastating. Some patients require full or partial removal of the tongue, teeth, gums or oral tissues. Detroit has one of the highest rates of oral cancer in the nation. According to a recent study, 46 percent of all deaths from oral cancer in Michigan occur in the Detroit area. In African-American men, Detroit reported an oral cancer rate of 31 cases per 100,000 people, which was the highest rate reported among all states. The Detroit area, with one of the highest incidence and mortality rates of oral cancer in the state, had only 35 percent of its oral cancer cases detected at an early (localized) stage. Among the risk factors of oral cancer are tobacco use, moderate or heavy alcohol use, a diet low in fruits and vegetables, lack of access to early screening and dental care, and poor oral hygiene. The Detroit Oral Cancer Prevention Program seeks to reduce the oral cancer death rate in Detroit by half in the next five years. The campaign, titled [...]