Hot Flashes May Be Welcome Sign In Women with Breast Cancer

Women on tamoxifen therapy who reported having hot flashes were less likely to develop recurrent breast cancer than those who did not report hot flashes, according to a study from the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Moreover, hot flashes were a stronger predictor of outcome than age, hormone receptor status or even how advanced the breast cancer was at diagnosis.... "This study provides the first evidence that hot flashes may be an indicator of a better prognosis in women with early stage breast cancer," said the study's senior author, John P. Pierce, PhD, director of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. "Our data support the possibility of a significant association between hot flashes and disease outcome."--Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Breast Cancer Surgery May Do Harm

Primum non nocere, or “first do no harm,” is an oft-repeated maxim of western medicine. But a paper by a Harvard Medical School (HMS) researcher presents new support for the possibility that breast cancer surgeons may be unintentionally doing just that. The paper, published in the International Journal of Surgery, hypothesizes that African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer because they are more likely to undergo surgery at a young age to remove cancerous tumors. That surgery may in fact exacerbate the cancer by unleashing agents into the body, inflaming previously dormant tumors elsewhere. “Sometimes surgery to remove a primary tumor can kick-start a dormant disease,” said Lecturer on Surgery Michael W. Retsky, the paper’s chief author. Doctors have long observed an increased likelihood of relapse among breast cancer patients in the two years after a tumor is surgically removed. In a 2005 paper, Retsky and his fellow researchers first proposed that surgery itself might be a cause of the relapse. In that paper, Retsky found that age was the decisive factor: pre-menopausal women were significantly more likely to experience relapses after surgery than post-menopausal women were. His new paper applies this theory to another apparent trend—the high mortality rates among African-American women afflicted with breast cancer. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Gene profiling predicts resistance to breast cancer drug Herceptin

Using gene chips to profile tumors before treatment, researchers at Harvard and Yale Universities found markers that identified breast cancer subtypes resistant to Herceptin, the primary treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. They say this advance could help further refine therapy for the 25 to 30 percent of breast cancer patients with this class of tumor. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

US drug firm to pay $3m in cancer suit

A Pennsylvania jury awarded $3 million on Tuesday to an Ohio woman who claimed a hormone replacement drug made by Wyeth had caused her breast cancer. The woman, Jennie Nelson, 67, of Dayton, was found to have breast cancer in 2001 after taking the drug, prempro, for five years to treat symptoms of menopause. Her lawyers said Wyeth knew for decades the drug could cause breast cancer but had failed to warn patients. More than 5,000 women have sued Wyeth over its hormone drugs Premarin and Prempro. Wyeth has won two cases and lost two cases, which have been heard in Arkansas and Philadelphia. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Rogue Gene Linked To Breast And Childhood Cancer Risk

Women who inherit one damaged copy of a gene called PALB2 have double the risk of developing breast cancer. And children who inherit two damaged copies have a newly identified serious disorder linked to childhood tumours, according to the findings from two papers published by scientists in Nature Genetics. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Investigation confirms breast cancer rate spike in ABC Brisbane, Australia studios

The ABC is supposed to report the news, but today in Queensland it's the ABC that is the news because of a mysterious and alarming spate of breast cancer cases at the national broadcaster's Brisbane studios. A five-month investigation into the cluster of cases has found that the incidence of the disease is unusual and significant. In scientific terms: a statistical spike. Ten breast cancer cases have surfaced at the Toowong studios in a decade and the experts say that means women working there are six times more likely to develop breast cancer than women in the general community. What makes it more alarming is that they don't know why. Staff at the offices in inner-west Brisbane are now set to move, after experts recommended that the site be abandoned immediately for safety reasons. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

HER2 Vaccine May Reduce Breast Cancer Recurrence

According to results recently presented at the 2006 annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), an experimental HER2 vaccine may reduce the risk of cancer recurrence in some women with high-risk early breast cancer. Although cure rates remain high for patients with early breast cancer, particularly women with node-negative breast cancer, some of these women will experience a cancer recurrence and may ultimately succumb to their disease. Therefore, a reduction in the risk of recurrence among high-risk women is warranted. HER2 is a protein that is overexpressed in twenty to thirty percent of breast cancers. Using a part of the HER2 protein (the E75 peptide), researchers have developed an experimental anticancer vaccine. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

As Postmenopausal Hormone Replacement Therapy Drops, Breast Cancer Recurrence Rates Drop

One year after millions of post-menopausal women in the United States stopped using Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in 2002, the number of new breast cancer cases dropped by 7% nationwide. Researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center believe the two are linked - that the incidence of breast cancer went down largely because so many older women stopped using HRT. The investigators are reporting their findings at the 29th annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Breast cancer may be sexually transmitted

A new study has revealed that breast cancer could be sexually transmitted. Emeritus Professor James Lawson of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have found the same form of the human papillomavirus (HPV) associated with cervical cancer in almost half the breast tumor samples they tested. It`s the first study of its kind in Australia, although international studies have also found cervical cancer-related HPV in breast cancer cells. He says while the evidence is far from conclusive, "it`s possible and totally worthy of investigation" to suspect that HPV could also cause breast cancer. Lawson says it`s possible that HPV is spread by sexual activity or during showers or baths, when the virus could be transferred from the genital area to the breasts via the nipple ducts. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Bisphenol-A May Trigger Human Breast Cancer

A new study finds the strongest evidence yet for the hypothesis that widespread environmental exposure to bisphenol A during fetal life causes breast cancer in adult women. [The researchers] exposed pregnant rats to bisphenol A at doses ranging from 2.5 to 1,000 µg per kg of body weight per day. By the time the pups exposed at the lowest dose reached the equivalent of puberty (50 days old), about 25% of their mammary ducts had precancerous lesions, a proportion three to four times higher than among the nonexposed controls. Mammary ducts from all other exposure groups showed elevated levels of lesions. Cancerous lesions were found in the mammary glands of one-third of the rats exposed to 250 µg/kg/day.
Bisphenol A, a known estrogenic compound, is ubiquitous in the environment. Many people receive exposures of about 2.5 µg/kg/day, and mammary gland development in rats and humans is very similar. Therefore, Soto says, "bisphenol A could be one factor causing the increase in breast cancer incidence over the past 50 years." --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Possible Link Between Prostate Cancer and Female Sibling Breast Cancer

Black men with prostate cancer were four times more likely than other black men to have a sister diagnosed with breast cancer, a University of Michigan study shows. When about 200 men were questioned about family medical history in a Flint men's health study, the men with prostate cancer also were much more likely to have a brother diagnosed with prostate cancer. That confirmed a link found in previous studies.
--Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Extra weight lowers Breast Cancer risk before menopause, increases it afterward

Women who are heavier in young adulthood have a lower risk of developing breast cancer before they reach menopause, new research shows. The finding, published in the Nov. 27 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, confirms and expands on previous research suggesting that larger body size before menopause helps fend off breast cancer. That's not a license for women to gain weight, however, experts stressed. "We have to remind women that obesity is pretty much bad for everything else and, as soon as you become postmenopausal, obesity is one of the strongest predictors of breast cancer," said lead researcher Karin B. Michels, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Triple Negative Breast Cancer Linked with Higher Rate of Distant Metastases

According to the results of a study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, women with early-stage breast cancer that is estrogen receptor-negative, progesterone receptor-negative, and HER2-negative (triple negative breast cancer) are more likely than other women to develop distant metastases. Women with triple negative breast cancer did not, however, have an increased risk of local recurrence. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Red Meat-Breast Cancer Link Is Junk Science

“Breast cancer risk linked to red meat, study finds,” headlined the Washington Post’s front page last Tuesday. “Younger women who regularly eat red meat appear to face an increased risk for a common form of breast cancer, according to a large, well-known Harvard study of women's health,” began the Post’s report. The researchers studied 90,659 women aged 26-46 over 12 years. Red meat intake was assessed three times via self-administered questionnaire during those 12 years. By the end of the study period, 1021 cases of invasive breast cancer had been documented. Contrary to the Post’s headline, however, the researchers actually reported no statistically significant correlation between red meat intake and all types of breast cancer.
Now you might think that the researchers would have stopped at that point and moved on to some other more promising health scare. Instead, they opted to dig deeper into their data. They seemingly struck health scare gold by mining an apparent statistical correlation between red meat intake and so-called “hormone receptor-positive” breast tumors – that is, tumors in which hormones like estrogen and progesterone are thought to play key roles. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Flame-grilled foods linked with higher risk of breast cancer

Women who eat flame-grilled meats may run a significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to women who never eat grilled meat, according to a new study. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University examined the diets and eating patterns of 312 women with breast cancer and 316 women without the disease, and found that women who ate flame-grilled foods more than twice per month experienced a 74 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who never ate flame-grilled foods. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Breast Changes Reduce Cancer Risk

BREAST CHANGES WITH AGE REDUCE CANCER RISK. Women whose milk glands shut down with age may have a reduced risk of breast cancer, according to new research from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic followed more than 8,700 women and found that those whose milk glands shut down — a process called involution — had about half the risk of developing breast cancer as women whose milk glands didn't. The authors say this may be another clue to help evaluate breast cancer risk in women. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--

Heavy Red Meat Consumption Raises Breast Cancer Risk Significantly

If an American woman consumes one-and-a-half servings of red meat each day, her risk of developing breast cancer is double that of a woman who consumes three servings per week or less, say researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA. You can read about this new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine.The scientists examined data on 90,000 pre-menopausal women in the Nurses Health Study II (1989-2003). All the participants had completed questionnaires which included details on their eating and drinking habits. The questionnaires were first filled-in in 1995, and then in 1995, and finally in 1999. The study also had an update, every two years, on who had developed breast cancer. It was also possible to determine whether those who had developed breast cancer, did so as a result of an oestrogen or progesterone trigger. A total of 1,021 women developed breast cancer, of which 512 were oestrogen and progesterone-receptor positive, 167 were oestrogen and progesterone-receptor negative, 110 mixed, and 232 unknowns. --Click the title of this post to read the full article from its source--