Marriage Benefits May Extend to Cancer Survival

While searching the internet for cancer news, one article kept popping up that I just had to read. It was titled “Marriage Benefits May Extend to Cancer Survival.” Wait one minute, not drugs but Marriage!

 

In this article, it is stated that married people with cancer are about 20% less likely to die over a three year period compared to unmarried people with cancer. Also, married people with cancer were 17% less likely have metastatic cancer, this is suggests that their cancer is being caught at an earlier stage and receiving the appropriate treatment. This may seem crazy, but my mom did decide to get checked out after my dad was diagnosed with cancer and she was diagnosed with 0 stage breast cancer. The support from my dad did cause her to get the appropriate treatment early, so this study can have some truth. The reason why being married is a benefit, is because they have more social support, someone to share the burden of their diagnosis which may reduce depression and anxiety.  

 

This can study suggest that is not just marriage but increased of social support to people will cancer could benefit their health. Friends or loved ones or someone who cares can potentially make a difference in the outcome by going with the patient to the doctor and treatments.

 

The researcher analyzed information from 734,800 people who were diagnosed with cancer between 2004 and 2008. After taking into account factors that could affect patient survival, such as age, income and cancer stage, married people between 12% and 33%  are less likely to die from cancer than those who were not married.

 

Survival benefits linked with marriage were greater than that linked with chemotherapy. This of course does not insinuate that you should not get chemotherapy, but suggest the strength of the potential benefits of social support. Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital said there are other differences between married and unmarried people, but unmarried people may be more likely to engage in unhealthy lifestyle behaviors that could contribute to their increased risk of mortality.

 

This is not a study telling patients not to take treatment but an encouragement to get support from people who care. If you were diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, would you have a support system to help you with the burden and make sure you get what you need?  Should hospitals supply more than just a support group or support systems for those who are going through treatment? If a loved one or a friend was to call you up and needed you help with their treatment, would you help if you knew some way it could help them survive?

 

Here is the article if you would like to read about this study:

http://www.livescience.com/39866-marriage-cancer-survival.html

Mircales Can Happen

Most of my blogs will be written from my own point of view regarding my personal experience with cancer in my family.  As I have stated in my first blogs, my father has stage 4 kidney cancer. Since being diagnosed and dealing with the surgeries and treatment, he has not only “beaten the odds” but has surprised and impressed his doctors by how well he has responded to the treatments.  So, this week my blog will review an article regarding how some cancer patients respond to treatments. 

 

            Dr. David Solit, an oncologist in New York, decided to create a study on why some cancer patients beat the odds and respond to treatment and while other worsened and died. This study started with a woman who was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer and volunteered for a 45-patient study of the Novartis drug Afinitor.  During this study, every patient died but her, they discovered she had two gene mutations that made her receptive to the treatment. Many doctors have seen this happen where some patients are “super responders” and had remarkable recoveries from cancer drugs while other patients have little or no help from those cancer drugs.  When cancer drugs only help a small group of patients, the drugs are abandoned from the trial. However, Dr. David Solit has began a new research where a sample of the tumor from the “super responders”  patients will undergo whole genome sequencing. The mutations that are different from normal cells are analyzed for one that would be considered suspects. The women with the advanced bladder cancer had two genes that stood out, TSC1 and NF2. The combination of these two genes led her to survival of her bladder cancer. TSC1 mutation being linked to the bladder cancer, Dr. David Solit discovered a “biomarker” that will help identify a possible appropriate drug for patients that have a type of cancer with this mutation. The next part is to design a test for the TSC1 mutation and use the test to screen patients.

            Since many drugs have been abandoned because of how few patients respond, there may be a way to resurrect these drugs, if the genetic links are established. Avastin was approved to treat cancer, but in 2011 the FDA withdrew its approval because it was not effective enough to justify its risks. Many cancer research facilities are testing tumor samples from exceptional responders from past drug trials for genetic analysis. This study will help doctors know if the tumor outsmarted the drug.

            This seems like a great study in finding out why some cancer drugs helps some and others it helps very little or not at all. There are a few questions that arise out of this study. Should some of these drugs that have been abandoned, be used again in new trials? Is the risk of these abandoned drugs too high? Will this study cause false hope and cause too much patient lose?

            As seen in my first blog, I am all for testing new drugs in order for the patient to gain some success. However, no matter the case, someone may die from this study and that is not something to take lightly.  I lost my Grandma to cancer and I just hope that her case, they were able to find something that helped the doctors save another life.   

 

Here is the article if you would like to look into this new drug study:

http://news.yahoo.com/looking-lessons-cancers-miracle-responders-120343443--finance.html

Digital PCR of Cancer Tumors

As seen in my last blog, cancer is the topic of choice. This will most likely be the topic for most of my blogs.

 

 Instead of talking about a new anti-cancer treatment, I found an interesting article on how a digital biology company demonstrated digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in tumors from blood samples and not to from a biopsy. 

 

            RainDance Technologies, Inc. demonstrated its “RainDrop Digital PCR System” by taking plasma samples from patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. These samples were screened for seven of the most common mutations in codons 12 and 13 of the KRAS oncogene. The results from the digital PCR were compared to quantitave PCR (qPCR) results that were taken from a biopsy of the tumor. This presentation showed that detecting cancer mutation in a blood sample can be done.  The RainDrop Digital PCR system can also be used to detect glioma-associated mRNA mutations from cerebrospinal fluid and BRAF mutations present in trans-renal DNA from urine could also be measured.  This technology will help clinicians detect mutations without putting patients through many lengthy, painful and dangerous procedures.

 

            I know, in order to get a biopsy sample, the patient has to undergo an invasive or non-invasive surgical procedure, either way it is a painful procedure for the patient and costly.  According to my father, the procedure was lengthy and painful when he had to have a biopsy of the tumor on his bone, he could feel the needle going into the bone. With digital PCR, this would have not been an issue and there would be much less pain. I am not a fan of needles, but I would rather have blood drawn from a vein, then a needle going into my bone. Hopefully this technology will start to show up in most clinical laboratories, so that cancer detection can be made easier for the patient. 

 

What are your thoughts on this new technology?  We do know the current biopsy sampling works, will this system be as accurate or is it too new?  Should cost be a factor when considering newer technologies for detecting cancer?  If it is too expensive or too new some insurance companies will not cover the cost of the procedure? Should this hinder research?

 

Here is the article on this presentation.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/09/11/5197343/raindance-publication-demonstrates.html

 

 

Tumor Cells Commiting Suicide

Cancer has affected many families around the world. My family is no expectation to this disease; both my mother and father have been diagnosed with cancer. Since their diagnosis, I have made a decision to go into cancer research. Since cancer is a topic of interest to me, I decided to look for new developments in cancer research. One article stood out to me, “New Cancer Treatment Makes Tumor Cells Commit Suicide.”

In this article, researchers at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, have developed a drug that attacks the proteins that help form the structure of cancer cells, while the healthy cells are left alone. This drug is called TR100.  The article was published in Cancer Research in August 2013. 

The two proteins that give the cancer cell their structure is actin and myosin. These proteins are also found in human muscle cells. Actin and myosin have been the targets for chemotherapy for many years, which is why chemotherapy can take a toll on the human body. The TR100 targets a specific type of myosin called tropomyosins. This protein is found in cancer cells but not muscle cells. The TR100 will damage the structure of the protein and the cell will break itself down and other cells will absorb, recycle and reuse the material that was broken down. This does seem too good to be true, because, there is one down fall associated with  the use of TR100. The tropomyosin that is found in cancers is also found in stem cells. Once the stem cell evolves  and becomes  a heart, lung or brain cell, then the tropomyosin is changed and the TR100 is no longer toxic to that cell. The TR100 can affect parts of the body that have stem cells that are still active, such as bone marrow and the brain.

Dr. Stehn, who is one of the scientist on this project, tested the TR100 drug on heart, liver and brain cells in  his lab.  The results of his tests showed no harm to the cells that were tested.  The TR100 drug has been tested on neuroblastoma and melanoma cells. The results of the test  concluded that the cancerous cells had been killed and the healthy cells were not affected. The main use of the TR100 drug  is focused on children’s cancer that seems to be hard-to-treat. TR100 may go into clinical trials in 2015.

Doctors know this is not a “silver bullet”; a combination of treatments to help the cancer patient will be necessary. Doctors also know that there will  be down falls to new clinical drugs that are in the trial phase. Do the negative effects out weight the good? Will this hurt the children later in life?  Only clinical studies can answer those questions. I am  hopeful that this drug is used in  clinical trials in 2015.   The studies may show that TR100 affects  other types of cancers that some doctors may write off as a lost cause. Two questions have surfaced, (1) “Do you think TR100  should be used in clinical trials with children?” or (2)Should more research and study be conducted  using rats?

Refer to the below link if you would like to look into this study for this miracle drug.

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-new-drug-causes-cancer-cells-to-self-destruct-082013

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/73/16/5169.full.pdf+html