Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Teresa Heinz, the wife of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, disclosed today that she is battling breast cancer in an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“I was diagnosed and treated for stage one cancer (two different types) in both breasts. The cancer was detected at an early stage thanks to a mammogram and the work of a remarkable physician who insisted on investigating beyond what the mammogram could show,” she writes, “I have had two operations and my prognosis for a full recovery is good.”

Heinz editorializes that women should ignore new guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that stated women at average risk don’t need regular screenings and that mammograms in older women can be reduced to every two years, versus previous annual guidelines.

She opines that the task force is “predisposed to choose numbers over people.”

“Our busy lives are full of those. What we need are more reasons to keep those appointments, more support of the value of prevention and refinement of diagnostic procedures, and more choices.”

The Obama administration has distanced itself from the task force’s recommendations amid backlash from women’s and medical groups. The Department of Health and Human Services did not endorse the findings.

The Associated Press reported that Heinz was treated by a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital that she had recommended to Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Kerry’s 2004 running mate John Edwards, who was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after their failed presidential bid.

Heinz told AP she has not spoken with Elizabeth Edwards since her own diagnosis.

Sandy Hutchen Cancer Prevention: Kangaroos are now in the skin cancer prevention business

Understanding how kangaroos repair their DNA could be the key to preventing skin cancer in the future, according to new research by Dr Linda Feketeová and Dr Uta Wille from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology at the University of Melbourne.

Together with scientists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, Dr Feketeová and Dr Wille are working toward reducing the number of skin cancer-related cases by investigating the chemistry behind potential skin cancer therapies.

The teams are investigating a DNA repair enzyme found in kangaroos and many other organisms, but not humans. This enzyme is very effective in repairing a particular type of DNA damage linked to many skin cancers.

“As summer approaches, excessive exposure to the sun’s harmful UV light will see more than 400,000 Australians diagnosed with skin cancer,” says Dr Feketeová.

“Other research teams have proposed a ‘dream cream’ containing the DNA repair enzyme which you could slap on your skin after a day in the sun. We are now examining whether this would be feasible by looking at the chemistry behind the DNA repair system.”

Using highly sophisticated technology, the groups are simulating the skin’s UV exposure in the laboratory, and then analysing the DNA repair process in a specialised mass spectrometer instrument.

“We were quite surprised that the DNA’s repair process also resulted in a number of chemical by-products, which have never been seen before,” says Dr Wille

“Our plan is to study these products to understand if the DNA repair enzyme could be incorporated into a safe and effective method for skin cancer prevention.”

“But there is still much to investigate before this ‘dream cream’ will be available at the pharmacy, so don’t throw out your sunscreen just yet!” adds Dr Feketeová.

This work will be published as a “hot paper” in the upcoming edition of Chemical Communications.

(Source: University of Melbourne: Chemical Communications: December 2009)

Researchers from the University of Michigan have reported that women at high-risk of breast cancer understand the risks and benefits of tamoxifen [Nolvadex®] prevention, but only 6% choose to take it. The details of this study were published in an early online publication in Breast Cancer Research on November 12, 2009.

Several large clinical trials have shown that tamoxifen can decrease the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women. There are, however, two issues that have prevented widespread use of tamoxifen for breast cancer prevention:

* Who is at risk? The definition of who is high risk is problematic and differs from trial to trial. Generally, high risk includes women with a family history of breast cancer, early menarche, later or no childbirth, or previous breast biopsy, even if negative.

* What are the side effects? In one study, it was found that less than one in five women at high risk would take tamoxifen due to their fears of side effects and the fact that they assumed they were at relatively low risk for developing breast cancer.

Two reports in the February 21, 2007 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute document that tamoxifen can prevent hormone-positive breast cancer in women at high risk.

Researchers affiliated with the Royal Marsden Randomized, Double-Blinded Tamoxifen Breast Cancer Prevention Trial reported 20-year follow-up data. This trial randomly allocated 2,494 women at high risk of developing breast cancer to receive tamoxifen or placebo for eight years. A total of 82 women in the tamoxifen group and 104 in the placebo group developed invasive breast cancer. Researchers affiliated with the first International Breast Cancer Intervention Study (IBIS-I) reported that the breast cancer preventative effects of tamoxifen persist for at least 10 years after a five-year treatment period. This trial randomly allocated 7,145 women at increased risk for developing breast cancer to receive five years of tamoxifen or placebo. With a 96-month follow-up, there were 142 breast cancers in the tamoxifen group and 195 in the placebo group. They observed a preventive effect during the entire period of observation. The main side effects were an increased risk of deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism during but not after tamoxifen treatment. The estimated risk for developing estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer was 34% lower in the tamoxifen group.

The authors of the present trial sought to determine why few women with increased risk of breast cancer use tamoxifen for chemoprevention. They evaluated 632 women with an average 2.56% risk of developing breast cancer within five years. These women were presented with a tailored decision aid concerning the effectiveness of chemoprevention with tamoxifen and the known side effects. After reviewing the decision aid, 29% of women said they would seek more information from their own physician, and 6% said they would agree to take tamoxifen. These researchers thought that these women had adequate knowledge to make a decision. The stated: “Participants were concerned about the risks of tamoxifen, and many believed that the benefits of tamoxifen did not outweigh the risks.”

Discovering Key to Tamoxifen’s Effectiveness in Treating Breast Cancer may Mean New Treatments