Yahoo! News reports on a study of stress and cancer by Dr. Anil Sood of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and colleagues. Excerpts below.
Link: Study finds stress worsens ovarian cancer - Yahoo! News
Stress causes ovarian cancer tumors to grow and spread more quickly in mice, U.S. researchers reported on Monday in a study that provides one of the first biological links between stress and cancer.
In the mice, stress hormones attach directly to tumor cells and stimulate new blood vessel growth and other factors that lead to faster and more aggressive tumors, the researchers said.
The study published in the journal Nature Medicine also found that a blood pressure drug reverses the effect.
Studies aimed at finding out if stress causes cancer have not come up with a clear answer -- and some have clearly ruled out any link between stressful life events, such as divorce or job loss, and later cancer.
But many people believe stress can cause cancer.
This study provides a new understanding of how chronic stress and stress factors drive tumor growth," Sood said in a statement.
So then the researchers gave the mice a beta-blocker heart drug called propranolol, which lowers blood pressure using these same stress receptors, called beta adrenergic receptors.
"The concept of stress hormone receptors directly driving cancer growth is very new," Sood said.
"Not much had been known about how often these receptors are expressed in cancer, and more importantly, whether they had any functional significance. Our research opens a new area of investigation."
This is so exciting to me--Propranolol preventing my ovarian cancer to spread. I can't wait to talk to Dr. Sood about this whole idea. I am not finding much on the net about it--so far just l article. Surely there is more somewhere--I just can't locate it. Frustration.
I don't want ANYMORE of this OVCA!!! Propranolol could be my cancer's demise. Leslie juneau
Posted by: LEslie Juneau | May 22, 2007 at 10:43 PM