Category: Hair Diseases

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For more than a century, doctors have dreamed of using the body’s own defenses to keep cancer in check, but most efforts either did nothing or over-revved the immune system causing terrible side effects or even death.

A half dozen experimental trials presented at the ongoing American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago show that researchers are finally making significant progress in both melanoma where therapies began, as well as in other cancers.

Read the rest at USA Today — Immune therapies improve treatment of cancers

Cancer can put the “brakes” on the immune system, and a skin cancer treatment called Yervoy was the first to take these brakes off. There’s now “several new papers looking at lifting two different brakes that seem to be more effective with fewer side effects.”

Immunotherapy appears to help treat those with bladder, genitourinary, head and neck cancers, and malignant brain tumors, as well as melanoma and lung cancer.

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Men diagnosed with prostate cancer will often put off chemotherapy, with their doctor’s approval. But new research suggests that men who get chemotherapy early on may actually live longer.

Typically, men with prostate cancer will start their treatment with simply active surveillance of their tumors, before starting hormone therapy. Men will undergo chemotherapy only when their tumors become resistant to hormone therapy. But a recent clinical trial found that men treated early with chemotherapy lived longer than men who underwent the standard treatment.

The clinical trial randomized 790 men with recently diagnosed prostate cancer into two groups. One followed the standard treatment guidelines, and the other received chemo right away alongside their hormone therapy. The men who underwent chemotherapy lived over a year longer than the men on the standard treatment regime.

Read the rest — Early Chemo May Help Men With Prostate Cancer Live Longer, Study Says

The study was deemed among the most noteworthy of the thousands of studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

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Disease-causing bacteria can linger on surfaces commonly found in airplane cabins for days, even up to a week, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“Many air travelers are concerned about the risks of catching a disease from other passengers given the long time spent in crowded air cabins,” says Kiril Vaglenov, of Auburn University who presented the data. “This report describes the results of our first step in investigating this potential problem.”

In order for disease-causing bacteria to be transmitted from a cabin surface to a person, it must survive the environmental conditions in the airplane. In the study Vaglenov and his colleagues tested the ability of two pathogens, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and E. coli O157:H7 to survive on surfaces commonly found in airplanes. They obtained six different types of material from a major airline carrier (armrest, plastic tray table, metal toilet button, window shade, seat pocket cloth, and leather), inoculated them with the bacteria and exposed them to typical airplane conditions.

Read the rest — Harmful bacteria can linger on airplane seat-back pockets, armrests for days

I believe that an additional study needs to be done on hair recirculation on airlines. If one person has a flu type syndrome or other diseases such as tuberculosis, the diseases are spread as the air recirculates in the airplane. How many times have you had a friend or family member get sick after flying? Should our fear of flying extend to these situations?

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Prostate cancer might be a sexually transmitted disease caused by a common infection, according to a study. Experts say the research has limitations and is not proof, though.

Scientists at the University of California found evidence of a link between prostate cancer and the STD trichomoniasis, in which a common parasite is passed on during unprotected sexual contact.

The parasite is believed to infect around 275 million people worldwide. Furthermore, over three-quarters of men harboring it have no symptoms and may not seek treatment, resulting in chronic inflammation of the prostate.

Read the rest — Prostate Cancer ‘Could Be Transmitted Sexually’

The prostate cancer/STD link isn’t confirmed and the article points out that this research was done in a lab setting (not in actual patients). As always, more research is needed.

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Based on data from a new study at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, men who demonstrate evidence of chronic inflammation seen in prostate biopsies stemming from chronic prostatitis may have close to twice the risk of developing prostate cancer compared to those without inflammation.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men in the US.

The link between developing cancer and having chronic inflammation was even more striking for men with aggressive or high-grade prostate cancer, reflected in a Gleason score between 7 and 10. The Gleason score is a numeric scale for assessing risk of developing invasive or high-grade prostate cancer based on microscopic evaluation of prostate tissue.

The research was published April 18 in the Journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

The data from the current study is derived from information about men in the placebo arm of the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial by the Southwest Oncology Group. The goal of the trial was to evaluate if the drug finasteride could prevent prostate cancer. Regardless of whether there were any concerning signs of cancer such as high prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels, the protocol called for biopsies to check for prostate cancer at the conclusion of the trial.

Read the rest — Is There A Link Between Prostate Cancer And Chronic Inflammation?

This was an observational study that shows an association between prostate inflammation and prostate cancer, but researchers can’t prove that inflammation causes the cancer. If it can be determined that inflammation leads to cancer, perhaps it can be prevented. In any case, much more research will need to be done.

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Stacy Erholtz was out of conventional treatment options for blood cancer last June when she underwent an experimental trial at the Mayo Clinic that injected her with enough measles vaccine to inoculate 10 million people. The 50-year-old Pequot Lakes mother is now part of medical history.

The cancer, which had spread widely through her body, went into complete remission and was undetectable in Erholtz’s body after just one dose of the measles vaccine, which has an uncanny affinity for certain kinds of tumors.

Erholtz was one of just two subjects in the experiment and the only one to achieve complete remission. But the experiment provides the “proof of concept” that a single, massive dose of intravenous viral therapy can kill cancer by overwhelming its natural defenses, according to Dr. Stephen Russell, a professor of molecular medicine who spearheaded the research at Mayo.

Read the rest — Mayo Clinic trial: Massive blast of measles vaccine wipes out cancer

The two trial patients were injected with 100 billion infectious units of the measles virus (the normal vaccine contains 10,000 infection units). Clearly more research must be done before these findings can be confirmed in large randomized clinical trials.