health - "cancer"

Although annual breast cancer screenings are recommended for most women ages 40 and older, physicians debate the value of regular mammograms for elderly women, who are more likely to die from unrelated causes, the New York Times reports.read more

HealthDay - TUESDAY, July 8 (HealthDay News) -- The thicker the skin cancertumor, the more likely it will spread or reoccur, according to a newlypublished study.

Susan Niebur was feeling low. Normally, this working mom in Silver Spring, Maryland, can keep a shocking number of balls in the air and still smile. She's a physicist who works part-time as a consultant to NASA; an at-home mom; an animal-rescue volunteer; and a daily blogger. But Niebur, 35, is also a full-time cancer patient, and one night last fall her characteristic attitude of resolve and optimism failed her.

Introduction Endocrine-dependent, estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer cells proliferate in response to estrogens, synthesized by the cytochrome p450 aromatase enzyme. Letrozole is a potent non-steroidal aromatase inhibitor registered for the treatment of postmenopausal women with advanced metastatic breast cancers and in the neoadjuvant, early and extended adjuvant indications. Since crosstalk exists between ER and insulin-like growth factor I receptor (IGF-IR), the effect of combining a selective IGF-IR inhibitor, NVP-AEW541, with letrozole was assessed in two independent in vitro models of estrogen-dependent breast cancer. Methods MCF7 and T47D cells stably expressing aromatase (MCF7/Aro and T47D/Aro) were used as in vitro models of aromatase-driven breast cancer. The role of the IGF-IR pathway in breast cancer cells stimulated only by 17b-estradiol (E2) or androstenedione (Delta4A) was assessed by proliferation assays. Combination of letrozole and NVP-AEW541 was asse

IntroductionObesity has been consistently associated with postmenopausal breast cancer risk. Proteins secreted by adipose tissue or involved in regulating body mass may play a role in breast tumor development. Methods:We conducted a nested case-control study among postmenopausal women from the American cancer Society cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) Nutrition Cohort to determine whether genes associated with obesity increase risk of breast cancer. Tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (tagSNPs) were selected to capture common variation across seven candidate genes that encode adipose-related proteins: ADRB2, ADRB3, GHRL, HSD11B1, IRS1, IRS2, SHC1. Thirty-nine SNPs were genotyped in 648 cases and 659 controls. Logistic regression models were used to examine the association between each tagSNP and risk of breast cancer while adjusting for matching factors and potential confounders. We also examined whether these SNPs were associated with measures of adult adiposity.Results:Two o

I once had a dear friend, James, who was infected with HIV. He was bright, funny, and never let his diagnosis get in the way of living! After years of...

After losing a breast, author Debra Jarvis wrote that she started acting 'like an adolescent boy' and looking at other women's breasts, wondering which were real, reconstructed, or imported! ...

With unprecedented levels of obesity across the Western world, and incidence of associated heart disease, cancer and diabetes rising, there is a major drive to find new treatments. Scientists from Germany have recently discovered that extracts of a traditional herbal remedy derived from Tabebuia impetiginosa can act to delay the absorption of dietary fat in animal models.

Scientists have identified a new antitumor drug that might prove useful in developing treatments for multiple human cancers. The research, published by Cell Press in the July 8 issue of the journal cancer Cell, advances the understanding of one of the most frequently disrupted tumor suppressor proteins in human cancer and provides new insight into the regulation of the complex process of cellular protein degradation under normal and pathological conditions.

So far, large clinical trials focused on the benefits of screening for breast cancer have ignored the booming population of elderly women.