Cancer CarePoint Blog

Rheumatoid Arthritis And Cancer

ScienceDaily.com describes a study of the link between arthritis and cancer. Excerpts below.

Link: ScienceDaily: New Insights Into The Link Between Rheumatoid Arthritis And Cancer

An inflammatory disease of the immune system, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with increased occurrence of lymphoma--or cancers of the lymphatic system, which plays an integral role in the body's ability to fight infection. While various studies have affirmed this link, none have been able to pinpoint the specific effects of disease activity on lymphoma risk, let alone distinguish them from the effects of disease treatment.

Are certain RA patients more vulnerable to developing lymphoma? Do certain RA therapies--from standard NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) and DMARDs (disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs) to novel immunosuppressive agents like TNF (tumor necrosis factor) blockers--work to alleviate or aggravate lymphoma risk? On a quest for answers, researchers in Sweden conducted the largest investigation of the link between RA and lymphoma to date. Their findings, featured in the March 2006 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis), indicate a substantially increased risk of lymphoma among patients with severe RA. Very high and prolonged inflammatory activity, not its treatment, is the major risk factor.

Given the many uncertainties surrounding the link between lymphoma and chronic inflammatory diseases, this study has substantial clinical implications. As its lead author, Dr. Lars Klareskog of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, observes, since lymphoma risk is strongly associated with exceptionally severe and longstanding RA activity, aggressive treatment may reduce the risk by reducing cumulative inflammation. "From a drug safety perspective," he notes, "our results provide background data that should be considered essential for the evaluation of lymphoma risk following therapy with TNF blockers, for example, as well as other new drugs."

Source Article: "Association of Chronic Inflammation, Not Its Treatment, With Increased Lymphoma Risk in Rheumatoid Arthritis," Eva Baecklund, Anastasia Iliadou, Johan Askling, Anders Ekbom, Carin Backlin, Fredrik Granath, Anca Irinel Catrina, Richard Rosenquist, Nils Feltelius, Christer Sundström, and Lars Klareskog, Arthritis & Rheumatism, March 2006, 54:3, pp. 692-701.

State Medical Board - Tennessee

Here's a link to the state medical board for Tennessee.

Tennessee Board of Osteopathic Examiners

Here are links to the states contiguous to Tennessee.

Alabama
Alabama State Board of Medical Examiners

Arkansas
Arkansas State Medical Board

Georgia
Georgia Composite State Board of Medical Examiners

Kentucky
Kentucky Board Medical Licensure

Louisiana
Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners

Mississippi
Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure

Missouri
Missouri State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts

Virginia
Virginia Board of Medicine

AMA Links to all state medical boards

Virus Found in Prostate Cancer Patients - Yahoo! News

Yahoo News reports that researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the Cleveland Clinic may have found a link between a virus and prostate cancer. Excerpts below.

Link: Virus Found in Prostate Cancer Patients - Yahoo! News.

...researchers found a virus in some prostate cancer patients, a finding that opens new research avenues in the most common major cancer among men in the United States.

The virus, closely related to one previously seen only in mice, was found in cancerous prostates removed from men with a certain genetic defect. The researchers, with the University of California, San Francisco and the Cleveland Clinic, warn that they have not discovered any links between the virus and prostate cancer, but they were nonetheless excited about prospects for future research.

Infectious disease-causing viruses are already blamed for causing some liver cancers and cervical cancer. That has planted nagging suspicions in the minds of scientists that some diseases may play important roles alongside genetics, environment and chance in causing breast, stomach and several other forms of cancer.

Researchers are not sure how the virus infected people, but suspect it has been passed on genetically for many generations.

Higher cancer risk from air pollution

IndyStar.com describes the results of an EPA study of air pollution and health. Excerpts below.

Link: Higher cancer risk: It's in our air | IndyStar.com.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Air Toxics Assessment -- the most ambitious attempt yet to look at cancer risks from breathing chemicals -- outlines lifetime cancer risks in states, counties and census tracts. It is based on 133 chemicals emitted in 1999 by businesses and traffic.

The EPA determines risk by calculating how many additional cancer cases could result if a million people in a particular area were exposed equally to the same level of air pollution 24 hours a day for 70 years. The agency says any lifetime risk greater than 1 in a million could be cause for concern.

The analysis shows that risks in many areas are being driven not so much by big industrial sources as much as smaller factories and commercial businesses, such as dry cleaners and gas stations.

"The EPA data (show) we are exposing a large fraction of the American population to levels of various pollutants that exceed acceptable thresholds, and re-emphasizes that there really needs to be careful public discussion and debate on this issue," said Dr. Stephen Jay, chairman of the Indiana University School of Medicine's department of public health.

The risk "comes down to a question of human health on the one hand and the cost and trouble" of controlling pollution, Jay said. "It's a trade-off here."

A portrait of pediatric radiologists in the United States

A study of pediatric radiologists in the American Journal of Roentgenology suggests shortages in the future. Excepts below.

Link: Entrez PubMed

OBJECTIVE: In recognition of the importance of pediatric radiology and the apparent shortage of radiologists in the field, the purpose of this study was to provide an extensive and detailed portrait of pediatric radiologists, their professional activities, and the practices in which they work.

RESULTS: Approximately 3% of radiologists, some 800-900 physicians, are pediatric radiologists. Depending on how pediatric radiologist is defined, two thirds to three quarters of them spend 70% or more of their clinical work time doing pediatric radiology. Unlike other radiologists, a greater percentage of pediatric radiologists desire a reduction in workload (with a corresponding reduction in income) than desire an increase in workload. Pediatric radiologists who spend 70% or more of their clinical work time in their field are older than radiologists in general (average age, 55 vs 51 years), and the fraction of pediatric radiologists younger than 45 years is lower than for other subspecialists ( approximately 20% vs 37%). Pediatric radiologists are disproportionately women (one third or more, depending on definition, are women, vs 19% for other subspecialists and 15% for nonsubspecialists), hospital-based, in academic practices (approximately half vs one fifth for other subspecialists), and in the main cities of large metropolitan areas.

CONCLUSION: A shortage of pediatric radiologists exists and is likely to intensify. Access to pediatric radiologists is probably a problem except for children in large metropolitan areas who connect readily to academic hospitals. Means to overcome these problems need to be actively sought.

via Sumer's Radiology Site

Skin Cancer and Tanning

USNews.com describes a study published by the AMA showing that cosmetic tanning can increase skin cancer risks. Excerpts below.

Link: USNews.com: Though you haven't spent a lifetime outdoors, you can still get skin cancer.

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the incidence of basal cell carcinoma (a slow-growing tumor of the basal cells at the bottom of the epidermis) among women under the age of 40 more than doubled between 1976 and 2003, to 31.6 per 100,000. The rate for men increased only slightly during that time. The study also found that both women and men showed significant increases in squamous cell cancer, which occurs in the middle layer of the epidermis. Like basal cell cancer, squamous cell cancer typically doesn't metastasize and is rarely ever fatal.

The reasons for the rise in skin cancer are clear, say doctors. "Either they're getting lots of chronic sun exposure because they're out all the time or using tanning beds, or it's these intense burns that they're getting," says Leslie Christenson, a dermatologic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic and one of the study's authors. Stepped-up screening for skin cancer and the thinning ozone layer, which allows more of the sun's ultraviolet rays in, may also play a role. The Indoor Tanning Association notes that the study didn't address whether the women tanned indoors or outdoors.

The nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation (skincancer.org) recommends that people who go out in the sun wear a broad-spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor, or SPF, of at least 15. This will block 93 percent of the sun's ultraviolet type B rays, which are primarily responsible for skin cancers. Sunscreen should be reapplied every two hours and right after swimming. In addition, sunbathers should wear fairly tight-knit clothing, sunglasses, and a hat. Try to stay in the shade between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when the sun is hottest.

via The Skin Cancer Blog

High stress promotes skin cancer

News Target reports on a study by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center showing how stress increase the risk of skin cancer. Summary below.

Link: High stress promotes skin cancer

It's not just sunburn that causes skin cancer: stress is also a major contributing factor according to new research. Reduce the levels of stress in your life, and your resistance to skin cancer more than doubles.

...stress is also caused by dietary factors such as the consumption of nutrient depleting foods and ingredients: white flour, processed grains, added sugars, hydrogenated oils, fast foods and so on.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say that chronic stress may speed up the process in those at high-risk for the disease.

Their new study, published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, shows that mice exposed to stressful conditions and cancer-causing UV light develop skin cancers in less than half the time it took for non-stressed mice to grow tumors.

The Hopkins investigators say that if what they are seeing in mice has relevance in man, stress-reducing programs like yoga and meditation may help those at high risk for skin cancer stay healthy longer.

via The Cancer Blog via The Skin Cancer Blog

A Cancer Promoting Protein Shows Up In An Unexpected Place In The Cell

ScienceDaily.com describes a New York University Medical Center and School of Medicine study that discovered a protein that may induce cancer cells to commit suicide. Excerpts below.

Link: ScienceDaily: A Cancer Promoting Protein Shows Up In An Unexpected Place In The Cell

Researchers have discovered a protein widely known to cause the out-of-control growth of cells can actually be manipulated to induce those cells to commit suicide, providing a novel target for the development of anti-cancer drugs, according to the results of a new study led by New York University School of Medicine researchers.

In the study, the cover story in the Feb. 17 issue of Molecular Cell, the researchers report they have discovered a new mechanism that regulates the action of K-Ras, a cellular protein that plays an important role in many human cancers. "The general feeling was that we had learned everything about ras that there is to know," says Mark Philips, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Cell Biology, and Pharmacology at NYU School of Medicine, who led the study. "But here is a completely new twist on the story."

The researchers "add a striking new dimension to our understanding of how Ras protein function can be regulated," writes Larry A. Feig, Ph.D., Professor of Biochemistry at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, in an editorial accompanying the study.

New scanner boosts breast-cancer tests

The Northwest Herald describes a new type of breast scanner build by Duke University scientists that may be better at finding small tumors. Excerpts below.

Link: Northwest Herald - Online

Duke University scientists have built a new type of breast scanner that they say is better at finding small tumors than standard breast-cancer screening, while exposing patients to less radiation. And the new scanner does all that without having to smash a woman's breasts as a traditional mammogram does.

A Duke physicist and a doctoral student have determined that their device can find lesions in cadavers and in models designed to approximate breast tissue that are half the size of the tiniest lumps mammography can detect. They expect to begin testing on women within two years.

Mammograms can reliably detect lumps about 4/10s of an inch in diameter, though they also pick up much smaller calcium deposits that might indicate disease. The American Cancer Society recommends that women get mammograms annually starting at age 40, sooner if they have a family history of breast cancer.

Radiation exposure already is minimal in mammograms. But the device by Martin Tornai, a biomedical physicist and associate professor of radiology, and doctoral student Randolph McKinley reduces it even further, to about 1/10 the dose delivered by a traditional mammography scanner.

Traditional mammography scanners use low-energy X-rays to produce a two-dimensional image.

via Sumer's Radiology Site

Oncologists Could Gain Therapeutic Advantage By Targeting Telomere Protein

ScienceDaily.com reports that the Washington University School of Medicine has identified a protein that could make cancer cells easier to kill with radiation. Excerpts below.

Link: ScienceDaily: Oncologists Could Gain Therapeutic Advantage By Targeting Telomere Protein

Inactivating a protein called mammalian Rad9 could make cancer cells easier to kill with ionizing radiation, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The researchers found that Rad9, previously considered a "watchman" that checks for DNA damage, is actually a "repairman" that fixes dangerous breaks in the DNA double helix. They found Rad9 is especially active in telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes.

Because of this new role, Rad9 has gained the researchers' interest as a potential target for cancer therapy -- knocking out Rad9 would enhance the power of radiation treatments by making it easier for radiation to inflict fatal damage to a tumor's genetic material. Their study appears in the March issue of the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology, which is now available online.

"Our study suggests that if we could inactivate Rad9 in tumor cells, we would be able to kill them with a very low dose of radiation and gain a therapeutic advantage," says senior author Tej K. Pandita, Ph.D., associate professor of radiation oncology and on the faculty of the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.