breast cancer
Of the nearly 30 million American women who undergo screening mammograms every year, up to 11 percent receive "probably benign" test results -- and therefore are asked to come back for a follow-up mammogram in three to six months. But according to a new study by UC Davis researchers, such frequent re-testing may be unnecessary. The study appears in tomorrow's issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The UC Davis researchers examined the mammography records of nearly 60,000 women enrolled in the national Women's Health Initiative project, one of the largest preventive health studies in the United States. Among the women who had probably benign mammograms, only 1 percent went on to develop breast cancer within two years, the investigation found.
Taking a combination of the hormones estrogen and progestin does not improve the quality of life for women who are free of menopause-related symptoms, but does expose them to a slightly higher risk of heart attacks, strokes and breast cancer, a new multi-center national study concludes. For that reason, medical scientists now recommend against the combined therapy in the absence of such symptoms.
A new study published by researchers at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center, in collaboration with researchers at Yale University, has identified two molecular predictors of breast cancer spread, or metastasis. This study may one day lead to tests of breast cancer tissue that will help physicians determine whether a woman's breast cancer is likely to spread, or metastasize.
Of all the neoplastic cells in human breast cancers, only a small minority - perhaps as few as one in 100 - appear to be capable of forming new malignant tumors, according to just-published research by scientists in the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The discovery could help researchers zero in on the most dangerous cancer cells to develop new, more effective treatments.
In the wake of recent reports showing a correlation between hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and serious illnesses such as stroke, breast cancer and heart disease, many women are looking elsewhere for treatment options for their menopausal symptoms. According to Duke OB/ GYN Claude Hughes, M.D., soy can be effective in treating some of the symptoms of menopause, which are caused by declining levels of estrogen. The most common symptoms include hot flushes (flashes), night sweats, mood swings, depression, forgetfulness, insomnia, as well as thinning of vaginal tissues and stress incontinence.
According to an article in the February 5 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, coronary artery disease in young women appears to be related to estrogen deficiency, and there may be a link to psychosocial stress. The findings are based on an analysis of statistics compiled from a major ongoing investigation of heart disease in women that is led by cardiac researchers in Los Angeles. "Although coronary artery disease is the leading killer of premenopausal women, taking even more lives than breast cancer does, most studies have focused on heart disease in older women. Our findings demonstrate for the first time that young women with low blood estrogen levels have a significantly greater prevalence of coronary artery disease," said C. Noel Bairey Merz, M.D., the article's first author.
A special breathing technology may help spare healthy lung, heart and liver tissue from the effects of radiation during treatment for early stage breast cancer. Kolby Sidhu, M.D., an instructor in radiation oncology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, leads a clinical trial examining the effectiveness of the Active Breathing Coordinator (ABC), a device that is aimed at helping patients to hold their breath in a consistent manner while receiving radiation. This inhalation in turn increases the separation between the breast tissue and the heart, reducing the heart's exposure to radiation during treatment.
Before women undergo induced abortions, doctors should -- as part of the informed consent process -- offer them information about the subsequent small but apparently real increased risk of pre-term delivery and depression, researchers say. Clinicians also should mention the unproven possibility that their chance of developing breast cancer could climb slightly later in life. Those are conclusions a team of doctors reached after completing a review of the best studies of the long-term physical and psychological health effects of intentional abortions.
Important disparities in breast-cancer diagnosis, treatment and survival among American women of various racial and ethnic backgrounds are documented in a new study by researchers in Seattle. The findings are based on the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind to evaluate the relationship between race/ethnicity and breast-cancer stage, treatment and survival. The study evaluated data from nearly 125,000 women representing all major racial/ethnic populations and subpopulations in the United States, the majority of which have only been tracked by national cancer registries since the late 1980s.
With a high-tech fix for faulty cellular editing, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have moved a step closer to developing treatments for a host of diseases as diverse as breast cancer, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis. Many human diseases have been linked to defects in a cellular editing process called pre-messenger RNA splicing. Adrian Krainer, a molecular biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has spent years investigating this complex editing process, which takes the information coded in genes and makes it available for building proteins. In a new study published in the journal Nature Structural Biology, Krainer's team has devised a clever way to correct RNA splicing defects implicated in breast cancer and spinal muscular atrophy (a neurodegenerative disease). In principle, the technique could provide the ability to correct RNA splicing defects associated with any gene or disease.
Women diagnosed with a specific form of benign breast disease called atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH) are at increased risk of developing breast cancer, but the risk is not the same for both breasts, researchers report this week. The findings, reported in the British medical journal The Lancet, challenge the long-held belief that the risk for breast cancer in women with this diagnosis was the same in both breasts, an assumption that could be used as an argument for double mastectomy to prevent cancer. Instead, the researchers found that women with this type of abnormality were three times more likely to develop breast cancer than are women without this diagnosis, and that three-fourths of subsequent breast cancers occurred in the same breast.
A new study suggests that the use of combination hormone therapy is associated with a modest increase in breast density, which is a known risk factor for breast cancer. The findings appear in the Jan. 1 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The degree of breast-cancer risk that is associated with breast density is greater than that associated with almost all other known breast-cancer risk factors. A previous analysis of data from the Postmenopausal Estrogen/Progestin Interventions (PEPI) Trial, a randomized trial looking at the effects of postmenopausal hormone therapy (estrogen alone or estrogen plus three different progestin regimens) on breast density, showed that some women who used combination estrogen/progestin therapy experienced an increase in breast density. However, the analysis did not look at the magnitude of that increase.
Until now, researchers thought that breast cancer nearly always began when cells in the epithelium went haywire. But new research suggests that genetic mutations can ? and do ? occur initially in a deeper layer of breast tissue, called the stroma. This presents a serious concern for physicians, who believed that breast tumors spread from epithelial tissue. "Genetic alterations in carcinomas, including breast cancers, have always been attributed to epithelial cells," said Charis Eng, Klotz professor and director of the Clinical Cancer Genetics Program at Ohio State University. She co-authored a new study that looks at genetic mutations in breast tissue.
Breast cancer tumors that stop responding to the drug tamoxifen actually change their cellular characteristics and become responsive to other types of drugs, including Herceptin, according to oncologists at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center. "In the process of becoming resistant to tamoxifen, the tumors alter their qualities and become receptive to Herceptin and other drugs that target the HER-2 receptor," said Kimberly Blackwell, M.D., assistant professor of oncology at Duke.
A new clinical trial has shown that reducing the interval between successive doses of a commonly used chemotherapy regimen improves survival in women whose breast cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. While previous research has evaluated the use of various forms of "dose dense" chemotherapy, this is the first major controlled study to show a clear survival benefit for women with node-positive breast cancer.
