cancer – Page 7 – Oral Cancer News

Researchers explain link between alcohol, cancer risk

Source: Dr.Bicuspid.com September 4, 2012 -- Almost 30 years after discovery of a link between alcohol consumption and certain forms of cancer, scientists are reporting the first evidence from research on people explaining how the popular beverage may be carcinogenic. The findings were reported August 22 during the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Philadelphia. The human body metabolizes the alcohol in beer, wine, and hard liquor into several substances, including acetaldehyde, a substance with a chemical backbone that resembles formaldehyde -- a known human carcinogen, according to lead author Silvia Balbo, PhD, a research associate at the University of Minnesota. "We now have the first evidence from living human volunteers that acetaldehyde formed after alcohol consumption damages DNA dramatically," Balbo stated in a press release. "Acetaldehyde attaches to DNA in humans in a way that results in the formation of a 'DNA adduct.' It's acetaldehyde that latches onto DNA and interferes with DNA activity in a way linked to an increased risk of cancer." To test the hypothesis that acetaldehyde causes DNA adducts to form in humans, Balbo and colleagues gave 10 volunteers increasing doses of vodka (comparable to one, two, and three drinks) once a week for three weeks. They found that levels of a key DNA adduct increased up to 100-fold in the subjects' oral cells within hours after each dose, then declined about 24 hours later. Adduct levels in blood cells also rose. "These findings tell us that alcohol, a lifestyle carcinogen, is metabolized into acetaldehyde [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-09-05T09:14:48-07:00September, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

It Costs More, but Is It Worth More?

Source: The New York Times- Opinion Pages By EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL and STEVEN D. PEARSON If you want to know what is wrong with American health care today, exhibit A might be the two new proton beam treatment facilities the Mayo Clinic has begun building, one in Minnesota, the other in Arizona, at a cost of more than $180 million dollars each. They are part of a medical arms race for proton beam machines, which could cost taxpayers billions of dollars for a treatment that, in many cases, appears to be no better than cheaper alternatives. Proton beam therapy is a kind of radiation used to treat cancers. The particles are made of atomic nuclei rather than the usual X-rays, and theoretically can be focused more precisely on cancerous tissue, minimizing the danger to healthy tissue surrounding it. But the machines are tremendously expensive, requiring a particle accelerator encased in a football-field-size building with concrete walls. As a result, Medicare will pay around $50,000 for proton beam therapy for a patient with prostate cancer, roughly twice as much as it would if the patient received another type of radiation. The higher price would be worth it if proton beam therapy cured more people or significantly reduced side effects. But there is no evidence showing that this is true, except for a handful of rare pediatric cancers, like brain and spinal cord cancer. For children, the treatment does a better job of limiting damage to normal brain cells and reducing the [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-08-28T09:24:52-07:00August, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

CDC says graphic anti-smoking ads work, more on way

Source: USA Today The federal government says its graphic ad campaign showing diseased smokers has been such a success that it is planning another round next year to nudge more Americans to kick the habit. The ads, which ran for 12 weeks in spring and early summer, aimed to get 500,000 people to try to quit and 50,000 to kick the habit long-term. "The initial results suggest the impact will be even greater than that," says Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which spearheaded the $54 million campaign. The ads showed real Americans talking about how smoking caused their paralysis, lung removal and amputations. He says it's the first time the U.S. government has paid for anti-smoking ads, although some media ran them free. The CDC doesn't have a tally yet on how many people actually tried to quit, but it says the ads generated 192,000 extra calls — more than double the usual volume — to its national toll-free quit line, 800-QUIT-NOW, and 417,000 new visitors to smokefree.gov, its website offering cessation tips. That's triple the site's previous traffic. "We do plan to do another (campaign) next year," Frieden says, adding that he has no details yet on the ads or their timing. He says the amount the CDC spent this year is a pittance compared with the $10 billion the tobacco industry spends annually to market its products. The nation's two largest tobacco companies, Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, declined [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-08-07T10:39:19-07:00August, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Oral Cancer in Swedish Snuff Dippers

Source: Anticancer Research Abstract Over recent decades there has been debate over whether or not Swedish snuff is carcinogenic in humans. Animal studies and molecular biological and experimental studies have shown the carcinogenic potential of Swedish snuff, but this has not been proved in prospective randomized studies. We present a case series of patients with oral squamous cell carcinomas diagnosed at the sites where the patients had used Swedish snuff for several years. Sixteen male patients were referred to and treated at Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Departments and Ear, Nose and Throat clinics at seven different hospitals in Sweden. The mean age of the patients at the time of diagnosis was 72.9 years and the mean time of snuff use prior to cancer diagnosis was 42.9 years. This case series shows that Swedish snuff may not be a harmless alternative to smoking. This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

Charlotte Parker2012-07-26T09:25:39-07:00July, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Darwin’s Principles Say Cancer Will Always Evolve to Resist Treatment

Source: ScienceDaily.com According to researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, cancer is subject to the evolutionary processes laid out by Charles Darwin in his concept of natural selection. Natural selection was the process identified by Darwin by which nature selects certain physical attributes, or phenotypes, to pass on to offspring to better "fit" the organism to the environment. As applied to cancer, natural selection, a key principle of modern biology, suggests that malignancies in distinct "microhabitats" promote the evolution of resistance to therapies. However, these same evolutionary principles of natural selection can be applied to successfully manage cancer, say Moffitt researchers who published an opinion piece in a recent issue of Nature Reviews Cancer. "Understanding cancer as a disease starts with identifying crucial environmental forces and corresponding adaptive cellular strategies," said Robert A. Gatenby, M.D., chair of the Department of Diagnostic Imaging. "Cancer is driven by environmental selection forces that interact with individual cellular adaptive strategies." Cancer cell development, like any natural selection (or Darwinian) process, is governed by environmental selection forces and cellular adaptive strategies, the authors wrote. Investigating cancer and its proliferation through genetic changes and ignoring the adaptive landscape is most likely futile. Under "selective pressure" of chemotherapy, in this case the "adaptive landscape," resistant populations of cancer cells invariably evolve. The authors say that tumors can be thought of as "continents" populated by multiple cellular species that adapt to regional variations in environmental selection forces. Their strategy in offering this metaphor, they wrote, is to "integrate microenvironmental [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-06-22T12:53:19-07:00June, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Big Tobacco Spending More Than a Super PAC to Defeat Cancer Research

Source: Livestrong.org My job requires me to be online all day keeping an ear to the ground on major issues related to cancer. I knew the Prop 29 fight in California was going to be fought against Big Tobacco, but I didn’t realize the scale of their funding machine. Why are LIVESTRONG, American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and many other health organizations for this proposition? Because it keeps kids from smoking, funds much needed cancer research and prevention programs. So it won’t surprise you that Big Tobacco is the driving force against the cancer research prop. Although it is not surprising, the amount of money they are pumping into California is unreal. To date, Big Tobacco has funneled 40 million dollars into their anti cancer research initiative compared to Yes on 29 Coalition’s 8 million raised. What I find most telling is when it comes to where these funds are from. Check out this visualization from MapLight.org – a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that reveals money’s influence on politics. This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

Charlotte Parker2012-05-17T09:52:34-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

1 of 6 cancer deaths worldwide caused by preventable infections

Source: Los Angeles Times One in every six cancer deaths worldwide is caused by preventable infections, a total of 1.5 million deaths yearly that could be halted by widespread vaccination programs, researchers reported Wednesday. Since 1990, that number has grown by about half a million, suggesting that vaccination programs are losing ground in the battle rather than gaining it. The vast majority of the cases are caused by three viruses and a bacterium, which are the leading causes of gastric, liver and cervical cancers. Cervical cancers account for about half of the infection-related cancers in women, while liver and gastric cancers account for about 80% of those in men. The causes of many cancers are largely unknown, but genetics and poor luck play big roles. The World Health Organization estimated in 2004 that nine lifestyle and environmental factors -- smoking being a particularly large one -- account for as many as 35% of the 12.7 million cancers that occur each year, about twice the proportion now linked to infections. Cervical cancers are caused primarily by the human papilloma virus (HPV), as are anal and penile tumors. Stomach cancers are caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses cause liver cancer. All such infections are readily preventable by vaccination. Other less common agents include the Epstein-Barr virus, which causes nasopharynx tumors and Hodgkin's lymphoma; human herpes virus type 8, which causes Kaposi's sarcoma, usually in conjunction with HIV; and the parasite Schistosoma haematobium, which causes bladder [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-05-09T13:43:12-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Beastie Boys Co-Founder Adam Yauch Dead at 47

Source: Rolling Stone Magaznie Adam Yauch, one-third of the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 47, Rolling Stone has learned. Yauch, also known as MCA, had been in treatment for cancer since 2009. The rapper was diagnosed in 2009 after discovering a tumor in his salivary gland. "It is with great sadness that we confirm that musician, rapper, activist and director Adam 'MCA' Yauch, founding member of Beastie Boys and also of the Milarepa Foundation that produced the Tibetan Freedom Concert benefits, and film production and distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories, passed away in his native New York City this morning after a near-three-year battle with cancer," reads an official statement from the Beastie Boys. "He was 47 years old." Yauch sat out the Beastie Boys' induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April, and his treatments delayed the release of the group's most recent album, Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. The Beastie Boys had not performed live since the summer of 2009, and Yauch's illness prevented the group from appearing in music videos for Hot Sauce Committee, Pt. 2. Yauch co-founded the Beastie Boys with Mike "Mike D" Diamond and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz in 1979. The band started off as a hardcore punk group, but soon began experimenting with hip-hop. The band broke huge with their first proper album, Licensed to Ill, in 1986; it was the biggest-selling rap album of the decade and the first to reach Number One on [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-05-07T14:59:10-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

$27 Million Verdict Against R.J. Reynolds for Cancer Victim

Source: JDsupra.com A Florida man was awarded $27 million in compensatory and punitive damages against tobacco company R.J. Reynolds last month after doctors told him that 44 years of smoking caused his lung cancer. Plaintiff had lung removed due to cigarette addiction Thousands of lawsuits pending against big tobacco companies First payouts by big tobacco expected to be made today Addictive Habits Emmon Smith, a minister in Mariana, Florida, started smoking when he was a 13-year-old boy in 1944. Despite numerous attempts to quit, he couldn’t kick the addictive habit until he was forced to in 1992 by a cancer diagnosis and subsequent removal of one of his lungs. Smith sued tobacco company R.J. Reynolds in 2008, and in March of this year a jury awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages; however, they found the plaintiff 30 percent at fault so he will receive only $7 million of the compensatory award, for a total of $27 million. Smith’s suit was led by attorney Richard Diaz as well as a team of attorneys from Crabtree & Associates and Ratzan Law Group. The Smith case was just one of more than 8,000 lawsuits against tobacco companies stemming from a 1990s class action known as the Engle case. In 2000, a Florida jury awarded class members a stunning $145 billion in punitive damages, finding that cigarettes are dangerous, addictive, carcinogenic, and most importantly, that tobacco companies knew all this and lied about it. “They found that [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-05-01T10:35:58-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

It’s Time to Stop Letting Congress Stomp on Nonprofit Advocacy Rights

Source: The Chronicle of Philanthropy Nonprofit organizations have fewer rights to speak out about important public-policy matters today than they did last year. The latest assault on advocacy came in a spending bill Congress approved to provide money to education, health, and human-service groups. These new restrictions on advocacy were passed as part of a coordinated campaign by conservatives to quash popular democracy. Unfortunately, as contrasted with past “defund the left” efforts, charity leaders didn’t find out about them in time to take action to prevent their passage. The challenges to nonprofit advocacy began more than three decades ago when the Heritage Foundation started making new restrictions a priority. This attack was pushed by the Reagan White House in the early 1980s, took the form of major Republican congressional legislative efforts in the mid-1990s, and has arisen in various forms since then. Some conservative lawmakers and Republican White House officials have tried to go so far as to limit what charities can do with private contributions; others have tried to restrict the types of activities that nonprofits can conduct with federal funds. Most of their efforts were stopped by groups whose missions were to serve as watchdogs to protect charities’ rights and the coalitions they organized. Nevertheless, conservatives succeeded in several attempts to chip away at nonprofit advocacy rights. For example, Congress voted to prohibit social-welfare organizations classified under Section 501(c)(4) from receiving federal grants if they lobby. Additionally, grantees of the Legal Services Corporation face greater restrictions on advocacy [...]

Charlotte Parker2012-04-27T10:42:00-07:00April, 2012|Oral Cancer News|