Food that fight Fatigue

A heavy or fatty meal — think Thanksgiving dinner — can make you tired. Some foods or eating strategies do just the opposite. Candy and other simple sugars give you a quick burst of energy — but that boost fades quickly and can leave you feeling depleted and wanting to eat more. On the other hand, whole grains and healthy unsaturated fats supply the reserves you can draw on throughout the day. So to keep your energy up and steady, limit refined sugar and starches.

New Drug Benefits Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer

The drug cabazitaxel improved the survival of some patients with advanced prostate cancer compared with those who received standard chemotherapy, according to results  from a randomized phase III clinical trial presented March 5, 2010, at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium  in San Francisco. Although the benefit was modest (several months), there currently are no effective treatments for patients with this form of the disease, called metastatic castration-resistant, or hormone-refractory, prostate cancer. These results led toFDA approval of cabazitaxel on June 17, 2010, for men with this type of prostate cancer. The study results were published October 2, 2010, in Lancet.

“This is the first positive study of its kind,” said Nicholas Vogelzang, M.D., chair and medical director of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee of the company US Oncology, who moderated a press briefing on March 3 ahead of the symposium. Cabazitaxel should clearly be considered now as an alternative for men in whom standard chemotherapy has failed, he added.

The international TROPIC (Treatment of Hormone-Refractory Metastatic Prostate Cancer Previously Treated with a Taxotere-Containing Regimen) study included 755 men whose prostate cancers had progressed despite treatment with hormone therapy and subsequent chemotherapy with docetaxel, which is the standard drug used to treat men with advanced disease. The participants were randomly assigned to receive cabazitaxel plus prednisone or another chemotherapy drug, mitoxantrone, also in combination with prednisone.

With a median follow-up of 12.8 months, median overall survival for men in the cabazitaxel group was 15.1 months compared with 12.7 months for patients in the mitoxantrone group. This translates into about a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death, said lead investigator Oliver Sartor, M.D., of the Tulane Cancer Center.

Cabazitaxel—which, like docetaxel, is part of a class of drugs known as taxanes—was designed to be active in cells that develop resistance to docetaxel, which happens in many patients with this disease. The drug appears to elude a mechanism in prostate cancer cells that pumps anticancer drugs out of the cells before they have a chance to be effective, the researchers said.

The improvement in overall survival was consistent across different patient subgroups, such as those stratified by age, race, and certain co-morbidities, Dr. Sartor said. And men treated with cabazitaxel also had improvements in important measures such as length of survival without tumor growth (progression-free survival) and significant tumor shrinkage following treatment (response rate).

In terms of side effects, patients who received cabazitaxel were more likely to experience febrile neutropenia, a high fever associated with significant reductions in white blood cells called neutrophils. So, Dr. Sartor advised, patients treated with cabazitaxel need to be “carefully watched” for this toxicity.

Because there is no well-accepted standard treatment for men whose tumors no longer respond to docetaxel, choosing the treatment with which cabazitaxel would be compared was difficult, Dr. Sartor noted. Mitoxantrone was chosen instead of a placebo because it has some activity in these types of patients, he explained.

“It’s a promising feature that you can treat patients with a taxane-based chemotherapy in a second-line setting and still have a response and reasonable tolerance,” said Daniel George, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and urologic surgery at the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. And patients who respond well to first-line treatment with docetaxel tend to fare better with second- and third-line therapies, Dr. George added. “So, for those patients this may be even more of an advance.”

The results also further confirm that in patients with advanced prostate cancer, chemotherapy isn’t strictly a last ditch treatment, Dr. George said, but that it “can really extend survival even further than we originally recognized.”

Noting that advances in treating cancer have always been incremental, Dr. Vogelzang said that the results were similar to those from the 2004 study that demonstrated the benefit of docetaxel as treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

The third annual symposium was co-sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology.

Adapted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin

New Drug Benefits Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer

The drug cabazitaxel improved the survival of some patients with advanced prostate cancer compared with those who received standard chemotherapy, according to results  from a randomized phase III clinical trial presented March 5, 2010, at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium  in San Francisco. Although the benefit was modest (several months), there currently are no effective treatments for patients with this form of the disease, called metastatic castration-resistant, or hormone-refractory, prostate cancer. These results led toFDA approval of cabazitaxel on June 17, 2010, for men with this type of prostate cancer. The study results were published October 2, 2010, in Lancet.

“This is the first positive study of its kind,” said Nicholas Vogelzang, M.D., chair and medical director of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee of the company US Oncology, who moderated a press briefing on March 3 ahead of the symposium. Cabazitaxel should clearly be considered now as an alternative for men in whom standard chemotherapy has failed, he added.

The international TROPIC (Treatment of Hormone-Refractory Metastatic Prostate Cancer Previously Treated with a Taxotere-Containing Regimen) study included 755 men whose prostate cancers had progressed despite treatment with hormone therapy and subsequent chemotherapy with docetaxel, which is the standard drug used to treat men with advanced disease. The participants were randomly assigned to receive cabazitaxel plus prednisone or another chemotherapy drug, mitoxantrone, also in combination with prednisone.

With a median follow-up of 12.8 months, median overall survival for men in the cabazitaxel group was 15.1 months compared with 12.7 months for patients in the mitoxantrone group. This translates into about a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death, said lead investigator Oliver Sartor, M.D., of the Tulane Cancer Center.

Cabazitaxel—which, like docetaxel, is part of a class of drugs known as taxanes—was designed to be active in cells that develop resistance to docetaxel, which happens in many patients with this disease. The drug appears to elude a mechanism in prostate cancer cells that pumps anticancer drugs out of the cells before they have a chance to be effective, the researchers said.

The improvement in overall survival was consistent across different patient subgroups, such as those stratified by age, race, and certain co-morbidities, Dr. Sartor said. And men treated with cabazitaxel also had improvements in important measures such as length of survival without tumor growth (progression-free survival) and significant tumor shrinkage following treatment (response rate).

In terms of side effects, patients who received cabazitaxel were more likely to experience febrile neutropenia, a high fever associated with significant reductions in white blood cells called neutrophils. So, Dr. Sartor advised, patients treated with cabazitaxel need to be “carefully watched” for this toxicity.

Because there is no well-accepted standard treatment for men whose tumors no longer respond to docetaxel, choosing the treatment with which cabazitaxel would be compared was difficult, Dr. Sartor noted. Mitoxantrone was chosen instead of a placebo because it has some activity in these types of patients, he explained.

“It’s a promising feature that you can treat patients with a taxane-based chemotherapy in a second-line setting and still have a response and reasonable tolerance,” said Daniel George, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and urologic surgery at the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. And patients who respond well to first-line treatment with docetaxel tend to fare better with second- and third-line therapies, Dr. George added. “So, for those patients this may be even more of an advance.”

The results also further confirm that in patients with advanced prostate cancer, chemotherapy isn’t strictly a last ditch treatment, Dr. George said, but that it “can really extend survival even further than we originally recognized.”

Noting that advances in treating cancer have always been incremental, Dr. Vogelzang said that the results were similar to those from the 2004 study that demonstrated the benefit of docetaxel as treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

The third annual symposium was co-sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology.

Adapted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin

New Drug Benefits Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer

The drug cabazitaxel improved the survival of some patients with advanced prostate cancer compared with those who received standard chemotherapy, according to results  from a randomized phase III clinical trial presented March 5, 2010, at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium  in San Francisco. Although the benefit was modest (several months), there currently are no effective treatments for patients with this form of the disease, called metastatic castration-resistant, or hormone-refractory, prostate cancer. These results led toFDA approval of cabazitaxel on June 17, 2010, for men with this type of prostate cancer. The study results were published October 2, 2010, in Lancet.

“This is the first positive study of its kind,” said Nicholas Vogelzang, M.D., chair and medical director of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee of the company US Oncology, who moderated a press briefing on March 3 ahead of the symposium. Cabazitaxel should clearly be considered now as an alternative for men in whom standard chemotherapy has failed, he added.

The international TROPIC (Treatment of Hormone-Refractory Metastatic Prostate Cancer Previously Treated with a Taxotere-Containing Regimen) study included 755 men whose prostate cancers had progressed despite treatment with hormone therapy and subsequent chemotherapy with docetaxel, which is the standard drug used to treat men with advanced disease. The participants were randomly assigned to receive cabazitaxel plus prednisone or another chemotherapy drug, mitoxantrone, also in combination with prednisone.

With a median follow-up of 12.8 months, median overall survival for men in the cabazitaxel group was 15.1 months compared with 12.7 months for patients in the mitoxantrone group. This translates into about a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death, said lead investigator Oliver Sartor, M.D., of the Tulane Cancer Center.

Cabazitaxel—which, like docetaxel, is part of a class of drugs known as taxanes—was designed to be active in cells that develop resistance to docetaxel, which happens in many patients with this disease. The drug appears to elude a mechanism in prostate cancer cells that pumps anticancer drugs out of the cells before they have a chance to be effective, the researchers said.

The improvement in overall survival was consistent across different patient subgroups, such as those stratified by age, race, and certain co-morbidities, Dr. Sartor said. And men treated with cabazitaxel also had improvements in important measures such as length of survival without tumor growth (progression-free survival) and significant tumor shrinkage following treatment (response rate).

In terms of side effects, patients who received cabazitaxel were more likely to experience febrile neutropenia, a high fever associated with significant reductions in white blood cells called neutrophils. So, Dr. Sartor advised, patients treated with cabazitaxel need to be “carefully watched” for this toxicity.

Because there is no well-accepted standard treatment for men whose tumors no longer respond to docetaxel, choosing the treatment with which cabazitaxel would be compared was difficult, Dr. Sartor noted. Mitoxantrone was chosen instead of a placebo because it has some activity in these types of patients, he explained.

“It’s a promising feature that you can treat patients with a taxane-based chemotherapy in a second-line setting and still have a response and reasonable tolerance,” said Daniel George, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and urologic surgery at the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. And patients who respond well to first-line treatment with docetaxel tend to fare better with second- and third-line therapies, Dr. George added. “So, for those patients this may be even more of an advance.”

The results also further confirm that in patients with advanced prostate cancer, chemotherapy isn’t strictly a last ditch treatment, Dr. George said, but that it “can really extend survival even further than we originally recognized.”

Noting that advances in treating cancer have always been incremental, Dr. Vogelzang said that the results were similar to those from the 2004 study that demonstrated the benefit of docetaxel as treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

The third annual symposium was co-sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology.

Adapted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin

New Drug Benefits Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer

The drug cabazitaxel improved the survival of some patients with advanced prostate cancer compared with those who received standard chemotherapy, according to results  from a randomized phase III clinical trial presented March 5, 2010, at the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium  in San Francisco. Although the benefit was modest (several months), there currently are no effective treatments for patients with this form of the disease, called metastatic castration-resistant, or hormone-refractory, prostate cancer. These results led toFDA approval of cabazitaxel on June 17, 2010, for men with this type of prostate cancer. The study results were published October 2, 2010, in Lancet.

“This is the first positive study of its kind,” said Nicholas Vogelzang, M.D., chair and medical director of the Developmental Therapeutics Committee of the company US Oncology, who moderated a press briefing on March 3 ahead of the symposium. Cabazitaxel should clearly be considered now as an alternative for men in whom standard chemotherapy has failed, he added.

The international TROPIC (Treatment of Hormone-Refractory Metastatic Prostate Cancer Previously Treated with a Taxotere-Containing Regimen) study included 755 men whose prostate cancers had progressed despite treatment with hormone therapy and subsequent chemotherapy with docetaxel, which is the standard drug used to treat men with advanced disease. The participants were randomly assigned to receive cabazitaxel plus prednisone or another chemotherapy drug, mitoxantrone, also in combination with prednisone.

With a median follow-up of 12.8 months, median overall survival for men in the cabazitaxel group was 15.1 months compared with 12.7 months for patients in the mitoxantrone group. This translates into about a 30 percent reduction in the risk of death, said lead investigator Oliver Sartor, M.D., of the Tulane Cancer Center.

Cabazitaxel—which, like docetaxel, is part of a class of drugs known as taxanes—was designed to be active in cells that develop resistance to docetaxel, which happens in many patients with this disease. The drug appears to elude a mechanism in prostate cancer cells that pumps anticancer drugs out of the cells before they have a chance to be effective, the researchers said.

The improvement in overall survival was consistent across different patient subgroups, such as those stratified by age, race, and certain co-morbidities, Dr. Sartor said. And men treated with cabazitaxel also had improvements in important measures such as length of survival without tumor growth (progression-free survival) and significant tumor shrinkage following treatment (response rate).

In terms of side effects, patients who received cabazitaxel were more likely to experience febrile neutropenia, a high fever associated with significant reductions in white blood cells called neutrophils. So, Dr. Sartor advised, patients treated with cabazitaxel need to be “carefully watched” for this toxicity.

Because there is no well-accepted standard treatment for men whose tumors no longer respond to docetaxel, choosing the treatment with which cabazitaxel would be compared was difficult, Dr. Sartor noted. Mitoxantrone was chosen instead of a placebo because it has some activity in these types of patients, he explained.

“It’s a promising feature that you can treat patients with a taxane-based chemotherapy in a second-line setting and still have a response and reasonable tolerance,” said Daniel George, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and urologic surgery at the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. And patients who respond well to first-line treatment with docetaxel tend to fare better with second- and third-line therapies, Dr. George added. “So, for those patients this may be even more of an advance.”

The results also further confirm that in patients with advanced prostate cancer, chemotherapy isn’t strictly a last ditch treatment, Dr. George said, but that it “can really extend survival even further than we originally recognized.”

Noting that advances in treating cancer have always been incremental, Dr. Vogelzang said that the results were similar to those from the 2004 study that demonstrated the benefit of docetaxel as treatment for advanced prostate cancer.

The third annual symposium was co-sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, and the Society of Urologic Oncology.

Adapted from the NCI Cancer Bulletin

Tumor Cells In Mice Destroyed By Drug From Mediterranean Weed

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, working with Danish researchers, have developed a novel anticancer drug designed to travel - undetected by normal cells - through the bloodstream until activated by specific cancer proteins. The drug, made from a weedlike plant, has been shown to destroy cancers and their direct blood supplies, acting like a "molecular grenade," and sparing healthy blood vessels and tissues. 

In laboratory studies, researchers said they found that a three-day course of the drug, called G202, reduced the size of human prostate tumors grown in mice by an average of 50 percent within 30 days. In a direct comparison, G202 outperformed the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, reducing seven of nine human prostate tumors in mice by more than 50 percent in 21 days. Docetaxel reduced one of eight human prostate tumors in mice by more than 50 percent in the same time period. 

In a report in the journal Science Translational Medicine, the researchers also reported that G202 produced at least 50 percent regression in models of human breast cancer, kidney cancer and bladder cancer. 

Based on these results, Johns Hopkins physicians have performed a phase I clinical trial to assess safety of the drug and have thus far treated 29 patients with advanced cancer. In addition to Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Texas-San Antonio are participating in the trial. A phase II trial to test the drug in patients with prostate cancer and liver cancer is planned. 

The drug G202 is chemically derived from a weed called Thapsia garganica that grows naturally in the Mediterranean region. The plant makes a product, dubbed thapsigargin, that since the time of ancient Greece has been known to be toxic to animals. In Arab caravans, the plant was known as the "death carrot" because it would kill camels if they ate it, the researchers noted. 

"Our goal was to try to re-engineer this very toxic natural plant product into a drug we might use to treat human cancer," says lead study author Samuel Denmeade, M.D., professor of oncology, urology, pharmacology and molecular sciences. "We achieved this by creating a format that requires modification by cells to release the active drug." 

By disassembling thapsigargin and chemically modifying it, the researchers created a form that Denmeade likens to a hand grenade with an intact pin. The drug can be injected and can travel through the bloodstream until it finds the site of cancer cells and hits a protein called prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA). PSMA is released by cells lining tumors of the prostate and other areas, and in effect "pulls the pin" on G202, releasing cell-killing agents into the tumor and the blood vessels that feed it, as well as to other cells in the vicinity. Specifically, G202 blocks the function of a protein called the SERCA pump, a housekeeping protein necessary for cell survival that keeps the level of calcium in the cell at the correct level, the researchers report. 

"The exciting thing is that the cancer itself is activating its own demise," says senior study author John Isaacs, Ph.D., professor of oncology, urology, chemical and biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins. 

Because the drug is targeted to the SERCA pump, which all cells need to stay alive, researchers say it will be difficult for tumor cells to become resistant to the drug, because they cannot stop making the protein. 

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Breast Cancer Risk Linked To Bra Size.

The same gene that can determine a woman’s breast size could also be linked to her odds of developing breast cancer, with larger cup-sizes more likely to develop tumors, according to the results of a new study California-based personal genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe.

The firm reported that they were able to identify “seven single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) significantly associated with breast size, including three SNPs also correlated with breast cancer,” according to CBS News reports. The study, which has been published in the journal BMC Medical Genetics, marks the first time that a genetic correlation between breast size and the risk of developing breast cancer has been made.

In the study, the researchers contacted more than 16,000 women of European ancestry. Each study participant identified their bra size on a 10-point scale, ranging from smaller than AAA to larger than DDD, and also answered questions regarding their age, genetic ancestry, pregnancy history, breast surgery history, and breast feeding status, CBS News and Tamara Cohen of the Daily Mail reported.

The women were then grouped into 10 categories based on their cup sizes, and the researchers identified genome regions associated with differences in breast development, the UK National Health Service (NHS) explained.

The 23andMe scientists then compared those genome regions with those known to be associated with increased breast cancer risk, before conducting a secondary analysis of 29 DNA variations also linked to breast cancer and finding out whether or not those variations were also associated with breast size among the study group, the NHS added.

They found that two out of seven unique genome variations “significantly associated” with breast size were also associated with breast cancer, and a third variation, discovered in the secondary analysis, had a “possible association” but one that was not statistically significant.

“There are surprising connections between some of the genes involved in determining breast size and the genes involved in breast cancer,” lead author Nick Eriksson told The Huffington Post. However, he also emphasized that the link is somewhat “uncertain” and that “based on current knowledge, it’s not a strong risk factor” in terms of breast cancer development.

“While the precise relationships between breast size, density, obesity and breast cancer remain difficult to untangle, understanding the biology… may aid in the development of novel screening tools,” Eriksson added in a separate interview with the Daily Mail’s Cohen.

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Breast Cancer Risk Affected By Fertility Drugs As Indicated By Series Of Study.

 

Women using fertility drugs who did not conceive a 10-plus week pregnancy were at a statistically significant reduced risk of breast cancer compared to nonusers; however, women using the drugs who conceived a 10-plus week pregnancy had a statistically significant increased risk of breast cancer compared to unsuccessfully treated women, but a comparable risk to nonusers, according to a study published July 6 in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute.

Ovulation-stimulating fertility drugs temporarily elevate estrogen levels in women, and estrogen is known to play an important role in breast cancer.  While some studies report increased breast cancer risk following infertility treatment, other analyses have been inconclusive.

In order to determine the risk of young-onset breast cancer after use of ovulation-stimulating fertility drugs, Chunyuan Fei, Ph.D., at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and colleagues, conducted a sister-matched case-control study, in part funded by Susan Komen for the Cure, called the Two Sister Study (which was developed from the Sister Study), which looked at women diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 50 years and their breast cancer-free control sisters, who were studied between September 2008-December 2010.  They looked specifically at fertility-drug exposure according to whether or not it had resulted in a pregnancy lasting at least 10 weeks.

The researchers found that women who had used fertility drugs showed a non-statistically significantly reduced risk of breast cancer compared to women who did not use fertility drugs and women who used fertility drugs and did not conceive a 10-plus week pregnancy were at a statistically significantly lowered risk of breast cancer compared to nonusers.  Women who had used fertility drugs and conceived a 10-plus week pregnancy did, however, have a statistically significantly increased risk of breast cancer compared to women who had been unsuccessfully treated.  “Our data suggest that exposure to a stimulated pregnancy is enough to undo the reduction in risk associated with a history of exposure to ovulation-stimulating drugs,” the authors write.  They believe the exposure to the fertility drugs potentially raises risk by modifying pregnancy-related remodeling of breast tissue. However, successfully treated women had a comparable level of breast cancer risk to non-users.

The authors note a few limitations of the study, including the reliance on self-reported fertility drug usage, and lack of data on specific diagnosis for infertility.

In an accompanying editorial, Louise A. Brinton, Ph.D., of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, feels that the findings of the study are hard to understand in the context of previous studies with results ranging from a lowered risk to a higher risk to no relationship between the drugs and the risk of early onset of breast cancer.  Brinton explains that the reduced overall risk associated with drug usage may be related to the fact that one of the drugs, clomiphene, is a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) similar to tamoxifen, an established chemo-preventative.  On the other hand, increased risk seen in successfully treated women may be related to the increased exposure to ovarian hormones, as well as “the dual effect of pregnancy on breast cancer risk, namely a short-term transient increase that dissipates with time and eventually leads to a long-term risk reduction,” Brinton writes.  Another complicating factor in interpreting the study’s results is its focus on women who developed breast cancer before age 50, which is more often associated with genetic factors than breast cancers diagnosed at a later age.

Brinton concludes that additional research is needed to understand these associations.  “Because of such complexities, results from individual investigations must be cautiously interpreted and weighed against the considerable benefits associated with fertility drug usage, including a high probability of carrying pregnancies to term, which can lead to substantial long-term reductions in breast cancer risks.”

Source: Journal of The National Cancer Institute.

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Heavy Tea Drinkers Are At Higher Risks Of Prostate Cancer.

A new study from Scotland has found that men who are heavy tea drinkers may be at higher risk for prostate cancer. However, the researchers point out their study was not designed to find causes, so all they can say is that heavy tea drinking is linked to a higher risk for prostate cancer and not necessarily the cause of it.

Study leader Dr Kashif Shafique of the Institute of Health & Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow, told the media:

"We don't know whether tea itself is a risk factor or if tea drinkers are generally healthier and live to an older age when prostate cancer is more common anyway."

"Most previous research has shown either no relationship with prostate cancer for black tea or some preventive effect of green tea," said Shafique.

He and his colleagues write about the findings of their prospective study in a paper that was published online in the journal Nutrition and Cancer on 14 June.

The data they used covered 6,016 Scottish men aged from 21 to 75 years who were enrolled on the Midspan Collaborative study between 1970 and 1973 and were followed for up to 37 years.

The men had filled in questionnaires about their general health, smoking habits, and usual consumption of tea, coffee, and alcohol, and they also attended a screening examination.

When they analyzed the data the researchers found a statistically significant link (P=0.02, so unlikely to be due to pure chance) between tea drinking and overall risk of developing prostate cancer.

After water, tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world.

They found the men who drank the most tea (more than seven cups a day, just under a quarter of all the men) had a 50% higher risk of developing prostate cancer than those who drank the least (0 to 3 cups a day).

Overall, 6.4% of the men who drank the most tea developed prostate cancer during the study period, compared with 4.6% of those who consumed the least. 

The researchers found no significant link between tea drinking and low or high grade cancerincidence:

"Men with higher intake of tea are at greater risk of developing prostate cancer, but there is no association with more aggressive disease," write the authors, who conclude:

"Further research is needed to determine the underlying biological mechanisms for the association."

Shafique said:

"We found that heavy tea drinkers were more likely not to be overweight, be non alcohol-drinkers and have healthy cholesterol levels. However, we did adjust for these differences in our analysis and still found that men who drank the most tea were at greater risk of prostate cancer."

Dr Kate Holmes, Head of Research at The Prostate Cancer Charity, said in a statement released on Tuesday: 

"Whilst it does appear that - of the 6,000 men who took part in this study - those who drank seven or more cups of tea each day had an increased risk of developing prostate cancer, this did not take into consideration family history or any other dietary elements other than tea, coffee and alcohol intake. It is therefore unclear as to whether there were other factors in play which may have had a greater impact on risk."

"We would therefore not wish any man to be concerned, as a result of this study, that drinking a moderate amount of tea as part of a healthy diet will put them at an increased risk of developing prostate cancer," she added.

Dr Carrie Ruxton is a dietician who sits on the Tea Advisory Panel, a health information group funded by the tea industry's UK Tea Council. On Tuesday, the Telegraph reported her saying:

"The study doesn't show a cause and effect relationship between tea drinking and cancer risk."

"Tea drinking is simply a marker for some other issue. That may be down to issues with stress, or perhaps diet," said Ruxton.

In the ten years leading up to 2010, the incidence of prostate cancer in Scotland went up by 7.4%. It is the most common cancer amongst Scottish men. 

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Treating Prostate Cancer Safely And Lowering The Risk Of Recurrence

A recent Phase I/II clinical trial has shown that a new combination of radiation therapies developed at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center escalates radiation doses to safely and effectively treat prostate cancer and lower the risk of recurrence with minimal radiation exposure to nearby healthy tissue and organs. 

Recently published in the journalBrachytherapy, a novel treatment protocol designed by Michael Hagan, M.D., Ph.D., radiation oncologist at VCU Massey Cancer Center, that combines intensity-modulated radiation therapy with high-dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy was tested on 26 prostate cancer patients. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy uses computer-controlled linear accelerators to modulate the intensity of an external radiation beam to more accurately deliver radiation to tumors. HDR brachytherapy is an internal form of radiation therapy that uses small radioactive pellets implanted near the tumor. 

"Recent studies have shown that both higher daily doses and higher total doses of radiation are better than standard doses in controlling prostate cancer, but these higher doses may be associated with higher rates of bladder and bowel complications," says the study's lead author Mitchell Anscher, M.D., Florence and Hyman Meyers Chair of Radiation Oncology and program co-leader of Radiation Biology and Oncology at VCU Massey Cancer Center. "Our study was designed to reduce radiation exposure to nearby healthy tissue and organs and we were pleased to find that this unique dosing schedule is safe and effective." 

The toxicity of the therapy was relatively low and all 26 patients were able to complete treatment. The treatment required only one HDR brachytherapy implant, and all participants were treated as outpatients. After 4.5 years, none of the patients relapsed and the rate of long-term side effects was low. 

"Our goal is to improve outcomes for our patients, so we are continually researching ways to reduce unnecessary radiation exposure to healthy tissues and make treatments shorter and more manageable. We're hopeful our findings will lead to better tumor control rates and fewer complications for men with prostate cancer," says Anscher. 

Moving forward, the researchers plan to continue exploring prostate cancer therapies using higher dose rates and shorter treatment times. The next step will likely be a four-treatment study utilizing stereotactic body radiosurgery, a technique popular with brain cancer that provides higher accuracy and requires fewer treatments by focusing high-powered X-rays on a very small area. 

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Circumcision A Possible Protection Against Prostate Cancer.

A new analysis led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that circumcision before a male's first sexual intercourse may help protect against prostate cancer. Published early online inCancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study suggests that circumcision can hinder infection and inflammation that may lead to this malignancy. 

Infections are known to cause cancer, and research suggests that sexually transmitted infections may contribute to the development of prostate cancer. Also, certain sexually transmitted infections can be prevented by circumcision. Therefore, it stands to reason that circumcision should protect against the development of some cases of prostate cancer. This is what lead author Jonathan L. Wright, MD, an affiliate investigator in the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division, and his colleagues set out to test. 

For their study, the investigators analyzed information from 3,399 men (1,754 with prostate cancer and 1,645 without). Men who had been circumcised before their first sexual intercourse were 15 percent less likely to develop prostate cancer than uncircumcised men. This reduced risk applied for both less aggressive and more aggressive cancers. (Specifically, men circumcised before their first sexual intercourse had a 12 percent reduced risk for developing less aggressive prostate cancer and an 18 percent reduced risk for developing more aggressive prostate cancer.) 

Sexually transmitted infections may lead to prostate cancer by causing chronic inflammation that creates a hospitable environment for cancer cells. Other mechanisms may also be involved. Circumcision may protect against sexually transmitted infections, and therefore prostate cancer, by toughening the inner foreskin and by getting rid of the moist space under the foreskin that may help pathogens survive. 

"These data are in line with an infectious/inflammatory pathway which may be involved in the risk of prostate cancer in some men," said Dr. Wright, who is also an assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. "Although observational only, these data suggest a biologically plausible mechanism through which circumcision may decrease the risk of prostate cancer. Future research of this relationship is warranted," he added. 

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN

Causes of Prostate Cancer

What are the causes of prostate cancer?

Nobody is really sure of what the specific causes are. There are so many possible factors, including age, race, lifestyle, medications, and genetics, to name a few.

• Age
  
  Age is considered as the primary risk factor. The older a man is, the higher is his risk. Prostate cancer is rare among men under the age of 45, but much more common after the age of 50.


• Genetics
  
  Statistics indicate that genetics is definitely a factor in prostate cancer risk. It is more common among certain racial groups - in the USA prostate cancer is significantly more common and also more deadly among Afro-Americans than White-Americans. A man has a much higher risk of developing cancer if his identical twin has it. A man whose brother or father had/had prostate cancer runs twice the risk of developing it, compared to other men. Studies indicate that the two genes - BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 - which are important risk factors for breast cancer and ovarian cancer have also been implicated in prostate cancer.
  
  In a study scientists found seven new sites in the human genome that are linked to men's risk of developing prostate cancer.


• Diet
  
  
  
  A review of diets indicated that the Mediterranean diet may reduce a person's chances of developing prostate cancer.Another study indicates that soy, selenium and green tea, offer additional possibilities for disease prevention - however, a more recent study indicated that combination therapy of vitamin E, selenium and soy does not prevent the progression from high-grade prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia (HGPIN) to prostate cancer. A diet high in vegetable consumption was found in a study to be beneficial.
  
  A US pilot study on men with low risk prostate cancer found that following an intensive healthy diet and lifestyle regime focusing on low meat and high vegetable and fruit intake, regular exercise, yoga stretching, meditation and support group participation, can alter the way that genes behave and change the progress of cancer, for instance by switching on tumor killers and turning down tumor promoters.
  
  Other studies have indicated that lack of vitamin D, a diet high in red meat may raise a person's chances of developing prostate cancer.


• Medication
  
  Some studies say there might be a link between the daily use of anti-inflammatory medicines and prostate cancer risk. A study found that statins, which are used to lower cholesterol levels, may lower a person's risk of developing prostate cancer.


• Obesity
  
  A study found a clear link between obesity and raised prostate cancer risk, as well as a higher risk of metastasis and death among obese people who develop prostate cancer.


• Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) 
  
  Men who have had gonorrhea have a higher chance of developing prostate cancer, according to research from the University of Michigan Health System.


• Agent Orange
  
  Veterans exposed to Agent Orange have a 48% higher risk of prostate cancer recurrence following surgery than their unexposed peers, and when the disease comes back, it seems more aggressive, researchers say. Another study found that Vietnam War veterans who had been exposed to Agent Orange have significantly increased risks of prostate cancer and even greater risks of getting the most aggressive form of the disease as compared to those who were not exposed.

Follow @FoSHhizZleMAVIN