When it hit the market in 2004, vaping (e-cigarettes) was marketed as a hip, sexy, and even healthier alternative to smoking. Millennials, just coming of age, took the bait and ran with it; one study of the youth population shows, 27.5% vape on a regular basis, a number approximately 22 percentage points greater than high schoolers smoking conventional cigarettes. However, as a wave of high-profile vaping-related lung ailments, since dubbed EVALI — E-cigarette, or Vaping, product use-Associated Lung Injury — began to hit the headlines, the medical community quickly issued a unanimous watch-cry: Like smoking, vaping is injurious at best and deadly at worst. Vaping…
Author: Brett Johnson
Cervical cancer may be the fourth most common type of cancer for women worldwide, but luckily it is amongst the most preventable types of cancers. This particular type of cancer is so common because of its association with a very common sexually transmitted infection: the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is found in 99% of cervical cancer diagnoses. With this knowledge, and understanding that cervical cancer is a slow progressing disease, there have been many advancements in preventing HPV infections and monitoring for potentially cancerous cells. As January is National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, it is important to be familiar with how best to protect…
Holidays, parties, and snowbirds — who said winter was insufferable? Unfortunately, not everyone can be so in winter’s wonders; with the cold comes a set of threats to which cancer patients are particularly sensitive. Cancer can make otherwise ordinary situations difficult, and winter is no different. Patients need to be acutely aware of winter’s inherent health risks, risks that healthier people often shrug off with little thought. Flus & Colds Winter is flu season, and something to take very seriously: 2019 figures are still being tallied, but since October of last year, the CDC reports 20.4 million cases of influenza,…
The patient had run out of treatment options. Her cancer, a rare form of sarcoma, had metastasized and was no longer responding to therapies. As a next step, doctors at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis began to treat her largest tumor with proton beam radiation. The goals were to slow the tumor’s growth and keep the 67-year-old patient as comfortable as possible, recalled one of her doctors, Brian Baumann, M.D., a radiation oncologist. But after one course of proton radiation, the doctors noticed a surprising change in her scans: Not only had the irradiated tumor shrunk, but so had untreated…
Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, can be treated effectively through surgery when it’s caught early. But once it has spread from the original site of the tumor to other organs in the body, it can become highly lethal. A new NCI-supported study may provide important insights into why some melanomas are more likely to spread, or metastasize, than others. The researchers showed that melanoma cells are more likely to metastasize if they produce high levels of a transporter protein called MCT1. This protein enhances the cells’ ability to take up an extracellular nutrient called lactate, which increases their ability to…
An investigational drug extended survival of adults with the blood cancer acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to results from a large clinical trial. The drug, CC-486, is related to another therapy called azacitidine (Vidaza). CC-486 is a pill that can be taken at home, whereas azacitidine is given as an injection under the skin or as an infusion through a vein and is administered at a hospital or doctor’s office. Azacitidine is used to treat patients with some types of blood cancer, either alone or in combination with other drugs. In the new study, CC-486 was tested as a maintenance therapy for adults with…
What was the rationale for testing finasteride as a way to prevent prostate cancer? Finasteride blocks the activity of an enzyme called 5-alpha reductase. This enzyme converts the hormone testosterone into dihydrotestosterone, which is the most potent androgen in the prostate. Interestingly, men born with a deficiency of 5-alpha reductase, a rare genetic condition, have undetectable levels of PSA and do not get prostate cancer. So, it made sense that finasteride, already approved for the treatment of male pattern baldness and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), might also reduce the risk of developing prostate cancer. There was a 25% relative reduction…
New results from two clinical trials suggest that either of two types of radiation therapy after breast-conserving surgery for women with early-stage breast cancer can reduce the risk of the cancer returning. In the randomized clinical trials, both whole-breast irradiation (WBI) and accelerated partial-breast irradiation (APBI) were associated with low rates of the cancer recurring in the breast where the disease originally developed. The median follow-up ranged from more than 5 years to more than 10 years. US and Canadian researchers presented results from both trials at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on December 6. WBI is typically given to the whole breast in a series of…