Taiwan recorded 73,293 new cancer cases in 2006, with the largest number being colorectal cases, according to the latest cancer incidence report released yesterday by the Department of Health=.
The figures mean that on average, a new cancer patient was being diagnosed in the country every 7 minutes, 10 seconds in 2006, up slightly from the average of 7 minutes, 38 seconds in 2005, when 68,907 new cases were recorded, according to Chao Kun-yu, deputy chief of the DOH’s Bureau of Health Promotion.
The report showed that for the first time, colorectal cancer replaced liver cancer as the most common type among new cases recorded in a single year.
A late-stage clinical study of Pfizer Inc’s (PFE) Sutent was halted early after the drug showed significant benefit in patients with a rare form of cancer, the drugmaker said on Thursday, sending its shares up 3.5%.
An independent committee monitoring the study recommended halting it after concluding that patients on Sutent stayed free of disease progression for longer than those on placebo plus best supportive care.
The patients in the study had advanced pancreatic islet cell tumors, a rare cancer with limited treatment options, according to Pfizer.
In seeming contradiction to previous studies where findings supported the benign or beneficial effects of alcohol consumption, a current study by researchers at the University of Oxford in Great Britain has linked even minimal alcohol use and cancer in women. The type of alcohol consumed was irrelevant.
The so-called Million Women Study of middle-aged women in the United Kingdom found that low to moderate consumption of alcohol increased the risk of and might be responsible for 13 percent of breast, liver, rectal and certain digestive tract cancers.
A new drug that blocks cancer’s main source of growth has been created in the lab and proven effective in mice, cientists are reporting. It is now being readied for clinical trials in patients.
Far more potent than similar compounds already in clinical trial, the drug short-circuits the normal ability of cells to sense the need to grow and divide — a signal that cancer cells exploit to spread in the body.
The scientists are working with clinicians to test the drug’s effectiveness against a range of cancers that have proven difficult to treat.
Marijuana use could increase the risk of testicular cancer, according to a study by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center out this week.
If a man has smoked marijuana on a weekly basis or has been exposed to hashish for an extended period of time, the chances of testicular cancer double compared to someone who has never smoked marijuana.
The study found that marijuana could also decrease sperm quality, decrease testosterone levels and cause impotency, since these are similar side effects of testicular cancer.
While treatment for inflammatory breast cancer has improved in recent years, it still carries a worse prognosis than many other forms of breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, the 5-year survival rate for inflammatory breast cancer is 40 percent, compared with 87 percent for all breast cancers.
In typical breast cancers, the tumor forms a lump that a person can feel or see on a mammogram. In the inflammatory kind, which makes up 1 to 2 percent of the roughly 180,000 new breast cancer cases per year, the cancer “is often not a mass,” says Dr. Eric Winer, chief of the Division of Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “Instead, the breast is often warm, red, swollen and tender.” The cancer is often misdiagnosed as an infection treatable by antibiotics.
Do men who frequently smoke pot have a higher risk of testicular cancer than those who do not? It’s possible, according to a new study. However, the researchers say the link is currently a “hypothesis” that needs further testing.
Testicular cancer is relatively rare — a man’s lifetime chance of developing the disease is about 1 in 300 (and dying of it is about 1 in 5,000). Frequent or long-term marijuana smokers could have about double the risk of nonusers, according to the report in the February 9 issue of the journal Cancer.
Can EVOO — extra-virgin olive oil — cut the risk of breast cancer?
Yes — but only the 20% to 30% of breast cancers that express the HER2 molecules, suggest studies by Javier A. Menendez, PhD, at the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Girona, Spain, and colleagues.
The Spanish researchers wondered why some studies show that the olive-oil-rich Mediterranean diet cuts breast cancer risk while other studies do not. They theorized that the active compounds in olive oil only affect certain cancers.
Women who underwent chest radiation therapy for a childhood cancer have a significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer at a younger age. Yet a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that many of them do not undergo the recommended screenings.
“Most young women at risk of breast cancer following chest radiation for a pediatric cancer, including women at highest risk (Hodgkin lymphoma survivors), are not being appropriately screened,” Kevin C. Oeffinger, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues write.
An autonomous institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore has announced the discovery of a human protein called Bax-beta (Baxß), which can potentially cause the death of cancer cells and lead to new approaches in cancer treatment.
“Our research findings reveal that Baxß protein levels are normally kept at essentially undetectable levels in healthy cells by the protein degradation machine in cells known as proteasomes,” said Dr Victor Yu, who led the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) research team.
