Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Sandy Hutchens loves a fresh brewed cup of green tea.

Although scientists are reluctant to endorse green tea as a cancer prevention method, evidence continues to grow regarding the chemically complex drink’s potential benefits – including results of a new randomized, controlled trial by researchers at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, which suggest it had some inhibiting effect in patients with a pre-malignant condition known as oral leukoplakia.

As reported in a report published online Nov 5 by Cancer Prevention Research(1), a team headed by Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulo, MD, professor of medicine in M.D. Anderson’s Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology, tested green tea extract taken orally for three months by 41 patients diagnosed with oral leukoplakia and therefore at high risk of developing oral cancer.

The patients were divided into cohorts taking either placebo or one of three different doses of green tea extract 500 mg/m2, 750 mg/m2 or 1,000 mg/m2 [mg/m2 refers to milligrams per meter squared of body mass – calculated by a formula using height and weight to reflect a person’s relative size].

The researchers assessed clinical response in oral pre-malignant lesions and found:

• 58.8% of patients at the highest doses displayed clinical response,

• Compared with 18.2% among those taking placebo.

They also observed:

• A trend toward improved histology [cell & tissue integrity],

• And a trend towards improvement in a handful of biomarkers that may be important in predicting cancer development.

Patients were followed for 27.5 months and at the end of the study period, 15 developed oral cancer.

• Although there was no difference in oral cancer development overall between those who took green tea and those who did not,

• Patients who presented with mild to moderate dysplasia [abnormal cell growth] had a longer time to develop oral cancer if they took green tea extract.

Although encouraged by the results, Dr. Papadimitrakopoulo cautioned against any recommendations that green tea could definitely prevent cancer.

“This is a phase II study with a very limited number of patients who took what would be the equivalent of drinking eight to 10 cups of green tea every single day,” she said. “We cannot with certainty claim prevention benefits from a trial this size.”

Dong Shin, MD, (professor of hematology and medical oncology at Emory School of Medicine, and a Cancer Prevention Research editorial board member) agreed, but said this trial is certainly a step in the right direction. “A clinical trial with a natural compound is no easy task, and these researchers have accomplished that,” Dr. Shin stated in a companion article commenting on the trial(2). “The lack of toxicity is also important because often when you give supplements at higher doses than what would occur naturally, you induce nausea and vomiting. That did not happen in this trial.”

Neither researcher had a reason why patients concerned about cancer should not drink green tea, but they cautioned against relying on the beverage to definitively reduce their risk of cancer.

“The goal of this kind of research is to determine whether or not these supplements have long-term prevention effects,” said Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou. “More research – including studies in which individuals at high risk are exposed to these supplements for longer time period – is still needed to answer that sort of question.”

While we know that there is no balm for the sense of helplessness that arises from learning a loved one has cancer, a national research study is focused on giving average Canadians occasion to aid in someone’s future grief. Personal health data from 300,000 Canadians over the next 30 years will give researchers a better understanding of risk factors for cancer.

“We know a bit about some of the causes of cancer, but we clearly don’t know all of them,” said Dr. Marilyn Borugian, scientist at the B.C. Cancer Agency. “People still walk into doctor’s offices everyday who don’t have the common risk factors and their illness can’t be explained.”

Borugian is the director of the province’s portion of the study, called the BC Generations Project.The project just launched its drive to enlist 40,000 B.C. residents between the ages of 40 and 69. Participants will complete a questionnaire about health and lifestyle, have various physical measurements taken, and provide blood and urine samples. “The purpose is to try and get at solutions around cancer prevention and early detection,” Borugian said.

The anonymous data will be tracked over 30 years and then compared against the provincial cancer registry. Information from those who develop cancer, diabetes and heart disease will be placed side by side with those who remain healthy. The result will hopefully be a clear reading on what was at play before the person got sick, potentially pointing to contributing factors or causes, Borugian said.

“If I take a blood sample from someone who’s already become ill, then (I’ve) confused the picture with things that might be the result of the stresses or weight loss or medications as a result of the illness,” she said.

Chris Dawkins, of Vancouver, gave his blood during the 90-minute process with two loved ones in mind: his father, who died of cancer, and his sister-in-law, a breast cancer survivor who persuaded him to join the study.

“I’m wishing something like this had happened years ago, so that we had that body of knowledge and those trends and that information that we could have relied on before now,” said the 64-year-old. “My father died in 1961 and there’s been a lot of (other) pain and heartbreak since then, and I was thinking that if a project like this had gotten off the ground several years ago, we would have been so much ahead of the game.”

Along with B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada are participating in the cohort study, which is supported by $42 million from Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and regional funding.

While an assessment clinic is currently open in the city of Vancouver, another one will open in the following year in Victoria. A mobile assessment van will also tour small communities in the province. One advantage of the study is that the data collected is about how participants are living at present, as opposed to asking afflicted people to recall their habits from years past, Borougian said.

Gary Howell is a cancer survivor. He participated in the Breast Cancer Fund’s 2009 Climb Against the Odds trek up Mt. Shasta in California. Hutchens Cancer Prevention feels that this article by Mr. Howell is so important in spreading information about the need to focus on prevention that we quoted it in its entirety.

The month of October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. There have been numerous articles, events, fundraisers and television programs oriented toward this theme and many of them feature the term “cure” prominently in the title.

Certainly a cure for breast cancer would be a welcome occasion, but this focus unfortunately can mask the many avenues of breast cancer prevention that are already documented; many are already available to women and some need additional research and/or legislation.

Between 1973 and 1998, the incidence of breast cancer in the U.S. increased by more than 40 percent. In 2008, an estimated 250,000 U.S. women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,500 died of the disease.

Clearly something is happening to cause this increase. Women need to be informed about risk factors that have developed during this 25-year period and we all need to work together to eliminate them. I would like to emphasize this point by illustrating it with a very personal example.

My wife, Nancy, reached menopause at the relatively early age of 42 and experienced the array of annoying symptoms that often characterize this event; hot flashes and moodiness being the most acute. Like so many women, she embarked on a regimen of hormone replacement therapy, or HRT, and the symptoms disappeared.

Nancy’s mother began menopause at that same age and took HRT for 34 years without event. Being her mother’s daughter, she followed her footsteps. There is no history of breast cancer in her family; but in the United States, where a woman’s lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is an alarming 1 in 8, no more than 1 in 10 women with breast cancer has a genetic history of the disease!

Nancy is one of the fortunate women whose routine mammogram screening revealed the cancer in its earliest stage before a palpable lump had developed and before the cancer spread to the lymph system. Following a regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, the odds are very good that Nancy’s cancer will not return.

I can assure you, however, that Nancy would have gladly disabused herself of the benefits of HRT in favor of avoiding the exhausting and painful treatments that were prescribed.

An estimated 80,000 synthetic chemicals have been registered for use in the United States in the last 40 years, but fewer than 10 percent of them have been fully tested for their effects on human health. Scientific evidence links toxic chemicals and radiation in our every day environment to the high rates of breast cancer. Some of this exposure is from seemingly benign sources such as cosmetics, beauty creams, sunscreen lotions, plastics and foodstuffs containing artificial hormones and additives.

We must:

* Educate ourselves and our loved ones about risky behaviors.

Some suggested links on the internet are:

http://www.breastcancerfund.org

http://www.safecosmetics.org

http://www.healthandenvironment.org

* Become involved in the legislative process. Three suggested links are:

Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, http://www.1in8@mbcc.org

National Women’s Health Network, http://www.womenshealthnetwork.org

Jane Cusumono Foundation, http://chateauwallyfilms.com/breastcancerresources.htm

This month, when you notice pink ribbons in the grocery and department stores, and football players, golfers and politicians wearing pink, keep in mind that we not only need a cure for breast cancer, but remember also that prevention is so much easier than treating this devastating disease.

Is Prevention the Cure for Cancer?