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News & Views: Breast cancer gene test helps predict who can skip chemo
Posted on September 30, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: Cancer | | Add comment |

Michael Jarret/Genomic Health

A large study confirms that a test doctors have been using for a decade works well for low-risk patients. More work is needed to draw conclusions about chemotherapy for women with riskier tumors.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Can healthy eating reverse some cancers?
Posted on August 7, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: Cancer, MD Unit4, Metabolic Disease | | Add comment |

Courtesy of TED

Dr. Dean Ornish studied how lifestyle changes could help people with chronic heart disease; he wanted to figure out if there was a way to do the same with some types of cancer.

Read more and watch his TED talk at NPR.org.

News & Views: What if chemo doesn’t help you live longer or better?
Posted on July 27, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

iStockphoto

Terminal cancer patients sometimes get chemotherapy in the belief that it will ease their symptoms. But a study finds that many who get the treatment near death actually have a poorer quality of life.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: More Mammograms May Not Always Mean Fewer Cancer Deaths
Posted on July 22, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

iStockphoto

A comparison of women in 547 U.S. counties found that getting more women in for screening mammograms didn’t lower death rates from breast cancer. More small cancers were found.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Teens Dying Of Cancer Face Intensive Treatments In The Final Days
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

James Bridges/Temple Hill
Entertainment/Kobal Collection

Young cancer patients are more likely than older adult patients to be hospitalized or get chemo in the month before death, a study finds. Talking about end-of-life wishes is crucial, researchers say.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Despite National Progress, Colorectal Cancer Cancer Hot Spots Remain
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit1, CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Alyson Hurt/NPR

Since 1970, the national colorectal cancer death rate has been cut in half. But progress has lagged in the Lower Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and counties in eastern Virginia and North Carolina.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: When it comes to SPFs and sunscreens, we’re still in the dark
Posted on June 18, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit1, CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

iStockphoto

Changes in sunscreen labels designed to make them clearer don’t seem to be doing the job, a survey finds. Less than one quarter of people knew that SPF value relates to preventing sunburns.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: It’s time to pay attention to ‘below-the-belt’ cancers
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images

That’s another way of referring to gynecological cancers, which strike more than 1 million women a year — and are on the rise in the developing world.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Thoughts Can Fuel Some Deadly Brain Cancers
Posted on May 15, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit1, Cancer, ND Final Project, ND Unit1, Neurological Disorders | | Add comment |

Scott Camazine/Science Source

A doctor-scientist’s long quest to help children with a rare form of brain cancer has led to the discovery that high levels of brain activity can make glioma tumors grow faster.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Why Some Doctors Hesitate To Screen Smokers For Lung Cancer
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Medical Body Scans/Science Source

Medicare now pays for some long-term smokers to get an annual test. These scans could save thousands of lives each year, but some doctors still worry risks outweigh benefits.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Federal Panel Revisits Contested Recommendation On Mammograms
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Kari Lehr/Image Zoo/Corbis

In 2009, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said the benefits of mammograms for women under 50 were small at best. A firestorm ensued. Now the organization is back with the same message.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Screening Tests For Breast Cancer Genes Just Got Cheaper
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

iStockphoto

A company has priced its test for mutations linked to breast and ovarian cancer at $249 — far less than the thousands of dollars another firm charges. But is there a downside for the worried well?

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: The Great Success And Enduring Dilemma Of Cervical Cancer Screening
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

American Cancer Society/AP

The Pap smear has dramatically decreased rates of cervical cancer, but testing too often has a downside, too. Many women say they aren’t yet ready to follow new guidelines and skip the annual tests.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: The hidden cost of mammograms: More testing and overtreatment
Posted on April 21, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Hero Images/Corbis

Each year the U.S. spends billions of dollars on unnecessary tests and treatments that result from inaccurate mammograms, some scientists say. They’re calling for more selective screening.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Personalizing cancer treatment with genetic tests can be tricky
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: Cancer | | Add comment |

Kevin Curtis/Science Source

Genetic profiling of cancer cells can help guide treatment, but such profiles can be ambiguous. Results would be more accurate if all labs tested normal cells from each patient too.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Angelina Jolie Pitt has ovaries removed, citing cancer fears
Posted on March 24, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

angelina jolie

Writing in the New York Times, the actress, who had a preventative double mastectomy two years ago, says she carries a gene that gives her an elevated risk of cancer and describes the decision to undergo preventative surgery to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.

Read more her full statement at NYTimes.com.

News & Views: Stats split on progress against cancer
Posted on March 23, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

cancer line graphMatthias Kulka/Corbis

When you dig into the numbers on cancer, the results are mixed. Overall, deaths are up. But survival five years after diagnosis has improved for many forms of the disease, including breast cancer.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Why hasn’t the war on cancer been won?
Posted on by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit1, CA Unit5, Cancer, News | | Add comment |

doctor searchingVidhya Nagaragjan for NPR

Medical researchers have made only modest progress treating the most common cancers since the war on cancer was declare in 1971. The disease has proved far more complicated than doctors had hoped.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: How much can women trust that breast cancer biopsy?
Posted on March 19, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

slide pathologists use to look for signs of cancer in biopsyBoilershot Photo/Science Source

A new study finds pathologists are great at spotting cancer, but less so at identifying atypical cells and DCIS, which is troubling because both conditions can go on to become invasive cancer, and misdiagnosis could lead to women getting too much treatment — or not enough.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Harnessing the Immune System to Treat Cancer
Posted on February 9, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

what if you could help the immune system respond to cancer cells?

Our immune systems constantly fight off disease — protecting us from colds, flu and infection, but could they also help us treat cancer? An experimental new treatment called immunotherapy is helping patients’ immune systems fight cancer.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: Can Connecticut force a teenager to undergo chemotherapy?
Posted on January 20, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: CA Unit4, CA Unit5, Cancer | | Add comment |

Cassandra, a 17-year-old with Hodgkin lymphoma

A 17-year-old says she doesn’t want to undergo treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma, but her doctors and the state say she will die without it. The Connecticut Supreme Court is hearing the case.

Read more at NPR.org.

News & Views: A bed of mouse cells helps scientists identify new cancer treatments
Posted on January 7, 2015 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: Cancer | | Add comment |


Dr. Richard Schlegel and postdoctoral fellow Nancy Palechor-Ceron use a microscope to look at human epithelial cells growing on mouse fibroblasts at Georgetown University Medical Center. Source: Lauren Wolkoff/Georgetown University.

Historically, it has been difficult to culture human cell lines in the lab, but the discovery that human cells grow well on a bed of mouse cells has opened the door for new studies of human disease. Using this new technique of culturing human cancer cells on a bed of mouse cells, researchers at Georgetown University have identified a new treatment for cervical cancer — a drug that is used to treat malaria.

Read the full story at NPR.org.

News & Views: Paint the Tumor
Posted on November 22, 2013 by Katherine Malanson | Categories: Cancer, Neurological Disorders, News | | Add comment |

In an effort to help surgeons identify and remove brain tumors, scientists have developed a paint that is attracted to specific channels on cancerous cells. The hope is that with this paint, doctors can more accurately remove just the tumor and not any healthy brain tissue. By sparing the surrounding healthy brain tissue, patients will have fewer symptoms after surgery. Read more at NPR’s coverage: Why Painting Tumors Could Make Brain Surgeons Better

News & Views: Cancer Dilemmas
Posted on January 28, 2013 by Jane Newbold | Categories: Cancer, News | | Add comment |

Digital collage with partial female nude, upper- and lowercase letters suggestive of notation for dominant and recessive alleles, a golden coffin silhouette nestled in radiating outlines, and a sketchy outline of a human head, among others
Illustration by Stuart Bradford. Source: New York Times website.

How far would you go to avoid getting a certain type of cancer? How far would you go to avoid getting it again? In Facing Cancer, a Stark Choice, New York Times writer Tara Parker-Pope talks about the dramatic increase in women with breast cancer or at risk of breast cancer seeking to have healthy breasts removed. Commentator Jeanne from Ohio suggests that cosmetics are also a factor.

Cancer’s Dark Matter
Posted on by Jane Newbold | Categories: Cancer, News | | Add comment |

The New York Times summarizes two recent papers on melanomas, the most dangerous type of skin cancer, that provide strong evidence that such cancers start not with mutations in genes, but mutations in the DNA regions that control them. The vast majority of our human genetic code comprises of these and other non-coding regions of DNA; what was once dismissed as mostly ‘junk DNA’ might be better called ‘dark matter’, considering how much we still have to learn about their function.

Using HIV to Fight Cancer
Posted on January 23, 2013 by Jane Newbold | Categories: Cancer, Infectious Disease, News | | Add comment |

University of Pennsylvania photo of T cells and tiny magnetic beads
Caption via New York Times: “Tiny magnetic beads force the larger T-cells to divide before they are infused into the patient.” (Photo: University of Pennsylvania)

The HIV virus causes AIDS, one of the top ten causes of death worldwide. It is also the surprising key to a new cancer treatment with revolutionary promise. The New York Times tells the story.