Intake of vitamin D during adolescence and early adulthood was most consistently associated with a significantly reduced risk of ER+/PR+ tumors.

An association was found between ever having taken cod liver oil at ages 10 to 19 years and a significantly reduced risk of breast cancer.

Similar to the dietary findings, the team found that greater sun exposure earlier in life was more consistently associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer.

There were early indications that Ginkgo has antioxidant and other properties that might preserve memory, this trial shows that it does not.  It also didn’t affect the rate of coronary heart disease or stroke.

It’s possible that an effect would have been observed, if the study had gone on longer, because it takes many years to progress from initial brain changes to clinical dementia.  That study is now underway.

The findings suggest there are other genetic mutations that play a role in breast cancer.  Women with a strong family history might consider more frequent screening, including breast MRI.  Also, these women should use anti-cancer drugs such as tamoxifen to prevent getting breast cancer.

For information about breast cancer, see the breast cancer malpractice lawyers of Pennsylvania, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA.

One (1%) percent of patients who had an abnormality detected on the initial or repeat CT scan ended up having a major thoracic operation that resulted in a diagnosis that the nodule was not cancer.  Of 82 subjects who underwent thoracotomy or video-assisted thorascopic surgery to rule out malignancy, 28 ultimately received a noncancer diagnosis.  Among 69 patients who had non-small cell lung cancer, 40 had stage 1 disease at diagnosis

Some believe that these findings mean low dose CT scans will cause unnecessary biopsy.  Those people will say that it is acceptable for doctors to engage in "watchful waiting" of pulmonary nodules and that it is not necessary to biopsy the nodule.   The idea is that most of the nodules will not be lung cancer.  However, if you are the person whose nodule is cancer, that is not an acceptable approach.  That approach will cause unnecessary suffering in death in many people.  Guidelines should not always be based on statistics alone.  The fact is that low dose CT scans of the chest can identify lung cancer at an early stage and treatment at that stage can cure the person.

For more information about lung cancer, see the lung cancer attorneys of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Gardasil is only approved for use in girls and women.  Merck is now going to apply for approval to use it in males.  It will also be interesting to find out whether vaccinating men protects female sexual partners.  That has not yet been studied.

For more information about cervical cancer, see the cervical cancer attorneys of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The relationship between migraine and breast cancer was dependent on the estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) status of the tumor.  Women with no history of migraine were at significantly reduced risk of ER+/PR+ ductal carcinoma, ER+/PR- ductal carcinom, and ER+/PR+ lobular carcinoma.  The risk of ER-/PR- ductal carcinoma and ER+/PR- lobular carcinoma did not differ significantly between migraineurs and women without migraine.

This study tells us that by altering exposure to hormones during premenopausal years, we can reduce the risk of developing breast cancer in the postmenopausal years.

More information about breast cancer is available at the breast cancer attorneys of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Davidson received a bachelor's degree from Wellesley College and earned her medical degree at Harvard Medical School in 1979. She has been involved in breast cancer research for nearly 25 years, and has been at Johns Hopkins since 1986.

Her research focuses partly on the breast cancer cases that do not respond to estrogen-blocking therapy because the women's tissues lack receptors for the female hormone.  She has worked on ways to resensitize women to those treatments, and on substances designed to slow growth and spread of cancer cells.

UPCI receives $174 million in research grants and is ranked 10th nationally in the funding by the National Cancer Institute.

This appointment reflects UPMC's desire to be a national player in breast cancer research and treatment.

For more information about breast cancer, see the breast cancer attorneys of Pennsylvania.

Studies in countries where hip resurfacing has been used longer than in the United States, including Sweden and Australia, have now repeatedly shown a higher failure rate for women who undergo the procedure than for men.  According to a recent study from Britain, women who undergo hip resurfacing are more likely to need a second corrective operation soon after the first, compared with women who get a conventional full replacement hip.  And earlier this week, researchers released a study of resurfacing patients in the United States that raised similar cautions.

The attorneys at Berger & Lagnese specialize in medical malpractice cases involving surgical errors.  If you or someone you love had a surgery, for hip replacement or something else, and the result was less than good, contact the lawyers at Berger & Lagnese for a free consultation.

They might even prevent a defibrillator from delivering a lifesaving shock, say doctors who tested them.

"Headphones contain magnets, and some of these magnets are powerful," said the study's leader, Dr. William Maisel, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and a heart device consultant to the federal Food and Drug Administration.

"I certainly don't think people should overreact to this information," but it's smart to keep small electronics at least a few inches from implanted medical devices, and not let someone.

Dr. Maisel's research was presented yesterday at an American Heart Association conference.

Nearly 2 million people worldwide have pacemakers, defibrillators or other devices to help their hearts beat faster, slower or more regularly. headphones.

When headphones were about an inch from the device, interference was detected nearly one-fourth of the time -- in four of the 27 pacemaker patients and 10 of the 33 with defibrillators. A pacemaker reset itself in one patient.

The interference took place whether the headphones were plugged in or not and whether the music device was on or not.

The study of nearly 18,000 people with normal cholesterol found that the drugs, already among the most widely prescribed in the United States, also lowered the risk of death from heart disease by 20 percent, suggesting that millions more people should be put on a daily regimen.

The effects were so beneficial that the planned four-year study was halted after less than two years, researchers said Sunday at a New Orleans meeting of the American Heart Association.

"These are very, very dramatic findings," said Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Dr. Nabel, who was not involved in the research, noted that the institute already has an expert panel revising guidelines for treatment and prevention of heart disease and that the new results are likely to be included in their recommendations.

The revision would most likely call for testing a wide range of healthy people with a simple blood test for above-normal levels of a compound called C-reactive protein, which indicates increased arterial inflammation that can be treated with statins.

The new study focused on a specific drug -- rosuvastatin, sold as Crestor by drugmaker AstraZeneca, which funded the research.

But Dr. Tim Gardner of the Christiana Care Health System in Wilmington, Del., and current president of the American Heart Association, said, "This is likely to be a class effect, not a specific drug effect. This is a win for all statins, I would say."

The new treatment could prevent 50,000 heart attacks, strokes and deaths each year if it were widely adopted, experts said.

The findings "really change what we are going to do in the future," said Dr. W. Douglas Weaver of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, president of the American College of Cardiology. "This targets a patient group that normally would not be screened or treated to prevent cardiovascular disease."

Critics, however, charged that such wide use would cost the U.S. health-care system more than $9 billion a year at a time when health-care costs are climbing dramatically and could expose large numbers of people to potential side effects. Crestor is one of the most expensive statins, costing about $3.45 per day, but generic statins typically sell for less than $1 per day.

About 120 people would have to take the drugs for two years to prevent one heart attack, stroke or death, Dr. Mark Hlatky of Stanford University wrote in an editorial accompanying the report, which was published online yesterday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Nonetheless, the findings will most likely be widely adopted soon, Dr. Gardner said. "It will be incorporated into practice guidelines after all the nuances are sorted out," he said.

Statins, first introduced in 1987, block the production of cholesterol in the liver. High cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart attacks and stroke because it contributes to the buildup of plaque that blocks arteries, preventing oxygenated blood from reaching the heart or brain.

An estimated 450,000 Americans die of heart disease each year, and 150,000 die from strokes.

More than 13 million Americans now take statins regularly, and worldwide sales total more than $22 billion per year, the bulk of that in the United States.

Half of heart attacks occur in patients with normal cholesterol levels, so researchers have been looking for other important risk factors.

Three years ago, Dr. Paul Ridker of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and his colleagues studied results from clinical trials in which statins had been used to treat high cholesterol levels and concluded that, in addition to their cholesterol-lowering ability, the drugs also reduced arterial inflammation, which can lead to the buildup of plaque.

The finding was part of a series of studies that showed statins have a number of beneficial effects beyond their ability to reduce cholesterol. Several reports have shown that they also help prevent glaucoma and cataracts and inhibit dementia. Others suggest that they also moderate the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and increase bone density. These benefits may be related to their ability to reduce inflammation.

For more free information about heart disease, please contact the attorneys at Berger & Lagnese, LLC in Pittsburgh, PA.

Vitamin E even appeared to raise the risk of bleeding strokes, a danger seen in at least one earlier study.

Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Md.

She has no role in the research but reviewed and discussed it yesterday at an American Heart Association conference. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About 12 percent of Americans take supplements of C and E despite growing evidence that these antioxidants do not prevent heart disease and may even be harmful.

Male smokers taking vitamin E had a higher rate of bleeding strokes in a previous study, and several others found no benefit for heart health.

As for vitamin C, some research suggests it may aid cancer, not fight it. A previous study in women at high risk of heart problems found it did not prevent heart attacks.

Few long-term studies have been done. The new one is the Physicians Health Study, led by Drs. Howard Sesso and J. Michael Gaziano of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

It involved 14,641 male doctors, 50 or older, including 5 percent who had heart disease at the time the study started in 1997. They were put into four groups and given either vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or dummy pills. The dose of E was 400 international units every other day; C was 500 milligrams daily.

After an average of eight years, no difference was seen in the rates of heart attack, stroke or heart-related deaths among the groups.

However, 39 men taking E suffered bleeding strokes versus only 23 of the others, which works out to a 74 percent greater risk for vitamin-takers.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and several vitamin makers. Results were so clear that they would be unlikely to change if the study were done in women, minorities, or with different formulations of the vitamins.

For more free information about heart disease, please contact the lawyers at Berger & Lagnese, LLC in Pittsburgh.

The study included adults taking Coumadin for problems such as heart rhythm abnormalities, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), stroke, heart valve replacements or pulmonary embolism. 

Patients who received written information or written information plus verbal instructions were less likely to suffer bleeding events than those who received no instructions beyond those printed on the prescription bottle.

Again, we see that communications by doctors and pharmacists are not adequate.  If communications improved, we could reduce the number of bleeding events and have earlier recognition of medication side effects.  Unfortunately, poor communication often leads to patient injuries due to medical malpractice.

For more information, see the medical malpractice attorneys of Pennsylvania.

Now a senior at Fox Chapel High School, Akansh, 17, of Aspinwall , has identified a biomarker in urine that elevates with prostate cancer.

Because he and researchers assisting him plan to publish their findings, he's yet to publicize the biomarker he's discovered. He also said more research is necessary to support early findings.

"I think it's a big field of research with a lot of possibilities," said Akansh, who has yet to choose a college to pursue a possible career in cancer research.

Akansh is a regional finalist in the Siemens Math, Science & Technology competition this weekend at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of six regional finals will be held next weekend at Carnegie Mellon University.

Nationwide, 30 teams and 30 individuals are competing for scholarships ranging from $1,000 to $100,000. Sponsored by the Siemens Foundation, the competition focuses solely on student research without regard to grades, achievement-test scores or outside activities. At each regional final this weekend and the next two weekends, five individuals and five teams will compete for the Dec. 5-8 finals at New York University. More information is available at www.siemens-foundation.org.

Akansh is one of 96 students and 60 projects from a pool of 1,205 projects chosen to compete in the regional finals.

"Kids are taking on things that plague mankind, and projects range from alternative fuels to cures for cancer," Jim Whaley, Siemens Foundation president said. "It's just incredible."

In 2007, the grand-prize winners did bone-growth research on zebra fish and developed a procedure to combat drug-resistant tuberculosis.

By rule, students can have advisers but must do their own original research. The College Board administers the competition for the Siemens Foundation, and experts in each topic picks the winners.

Akansh, using advisers from the University of Michigan, does his research each summer. Early focus on amino acids eventually broadened to metabolites in the urine.

"For almost three years, what I've been learning is that the cancer rates in America are rising," Akansh said. "The only feasible way to reduce or eliminate it is by diagnosing it at the early stage to reduce it's effect."

For now, doctors use the Prostate Specific Antigen as the clinical standard for early detection of the disease. Because PSA is not specific for prostate cancer, diagnosis must be confirmed with a biopsy.

Akansh studied urine metabolites from 14 men with elevated PSA levels. He used spectroscopy and spectrometry along with statistical analysis to quantify and identity metabolites that were elevated in the presence of prostate cancer.

His goal is to identify "highly reliable and practical biomarkers that can serve as distinguishing factors of clinical and diagnostic tools for prostate cancer," his prospectus states.

"Every single man in America has the threat of prostate cancer," Akansh said. "This opens the gateway to future research."

• After 18 weeks, compared to their counterparts on diets without grape powder, the rats that had the grape powder had lower blood pressure, better heart function, reduced inflammation in their bodies, and less heart muscle damage.
  


• The rats that had the blood pressure medication and high salt diet also had lower blood pressure, but their heart damage was greater than in the grape powder fed groups.

The basis for distinction between malignant and benign is that 3-D power Doppler ultrasound can detect the  higher flow velocities in the malignant tumor-feeding vessels have higher flow velocities when seen on Doppler and benign breast masses have slower flow velocities.

More information about breast cancer can be found at the breast cancer malpractice lawyers of Pennsylvania, serving Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Erie, Uniontown, Beaver and Washington PA.

A seven-year trial involving more than 35,000 subjects and conducted at 400 sites around the United States was suspended this month, after researchers began tallying the effects and found, at best, no benefit and at worst, signs of trouble.  Participants were told to stop taking their supplements and assured that their health would be monitored for roughly the next three years.

Researchers found a slightly elevated risk of prostate cancer in subjects taking only Vitamin E and a small increased risk of developing diabetes in men taking only selenium. The National Institutes of Health, which funded the study, said that those effects may have been due to chance. 

Previous studies had suggested that selenium and Vitamin E, taken alone or together, might decrease the risk of developing prostate cancer by 60% and 30%, respectively.

Studies done in the 1990s found that beta-carotene supplementation failed to prevent lung cancer, and in fact appeared to increase the odds that male smokers would develop lung cancer.

In other clinical trials, researchers are exploring whether lycopene, a plant-based substance, might reduce the risk of prostate cancer.

For more information about cancer, see the medical malpractice lawyers of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The discovery could help in developing individualized ways of diagnosing and treating lung cancer, the top cancer killer, the researchers said.

"Although similar, smaller cancer gene sequencing projects have been reported, our study is the largest to date and provides the statistical power to detect significantly mutated genes," study co-author Richard Wilson, director of Washington University's Genome Sequencing Center in St. Louis, said during a Tuesday teleconference.

The research, known as the Tumor Sequencing Project, has important implications for the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer, Wilson said. "But we consider it just a beginning. Over the next few years, we expect to extend this study both in terms of the number of individual cases that we study and the extent of the cancer genome we can explore," he said.

Before the new research, 10 genes linked to adenocarcinoma had been identified, including six of the 26 reported in this study. The findings were published in the Oct. 23 issue of Nature.

For the study, researchers looked for genetic mutations in lung cancer cells. These changes occur in the tumor and are not inherited or found elsewhere in the body, Dr. Matthew Meyerson, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and an associate professor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said during the teleconference.

"These mutations are important, because mutated genes can be targets for anti-cancer therapy," Meyerson said.

The researchers determined the DNA sequence of 623 genes in 188 lung adenocarcinomas. Then they compared the DNA sequence of these genes with the same genes in normal tissue from the same patients.

"By doing this, we identified 26 genes that are frequently mutated in lung adenocarcinoma," Meyerson said. "Most of these gene mutations are newly discovered."

Some of these genes have been implicated in other cancers, such as colon cancer, leukemia and lymphoma. "These genes could soon be new targets for lung cancer treatments," Meyerson said.

The researchers also looked at genetic mutations found among different adenocarcinoma patients. Most cases of lung cancer (90 percent) occur in smokers. Among smokers, there were many more gene mutations than those found in the lung cancer tumors of nonsmokers.

Tumors for smokers had as many as 49 mutations, while none of the nonsmokers had more than five mutations, the researchers reported.

"Our study could achieve a real impact on the care of lung cancer patients," Meyerson said. "It is important to study the role of the mutated genes in the growth and survival of lung cancer cells, which will help us work toward new treatments."

Dr. Norman H. Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association, called the new research another positive step in understanding cancer and could lead to new therapies.

"The methods of this study are powerful, and the sample is large, thus it is a good study. We can expect more like this," Edelman said. "The genetic basis of cancer is very complex, and this represents another piece of the puzzle. Whether or not finding newly implicated genes will lead to new therapies, as the authors suggest, is, of course, something to be hoped and waited for."

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and around the world. More than 1 million people worldwide die of lung cancer each year, including more than 160,000 people in the United States. Lung adenocarcinoma, the most frequently diagnosed form of lung cancer, has an average five-year survival rate of just 15 percent, the researchers said.

While the drug can add months to the lives of people without a mutation in a gene called K-ras, those who have the mutation won't see any benefit from this additional therapy, reports the study, which is published in the Oct. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

"We believe that, in the context of pre-treated advanced bowel cancer, the K-ras mutation status of the cancer should be determined before using cetuximab, and cetuximab should only be given to patients with tumors that do not have the mutation," said study author Dr. Christos S. Karapetis, a senior consultant medical oncologist and director of clinical research in the department of medical oncology at Flinders Medical Centre in Australia.

Karapetis said that about four in 10 people with colon cancer have the K-ras mutation.

Erbitux works by interrupting cell growth and division. It does this by binding to a receptor known as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). A mutation in the K-ras gene is believed to interfere with cetuximab's ability to disrupt EGFR, according to the study.

For the study, 572 people with advanced colorectal cancer were randomly assigned to receive either weekly treatment with cetuximab and supportive care (287 people) or supportive care alone (285 people). All had undergone other treatment options without success.

Almost 400 tumor specimens from the study volunteers were tested for K-ras mutations (198 from the cetuximab group and 196 from the supportive care group). Just over 42 percent of the tumors evaluated were found to have mutations in the K-ras gene.

Even with cetuximab treatment, people with K-ras mutations had no significant changes in overall survival or in progression-free survival. Those without the mutations, on the other hand, appeared to benefit significantly from the therapy.

People with no K-ras mutations who were treated with cetuximab had nearly twice the overall survival rate compared to the supportive care group -- 9.5 months versus 4.8 months. And, the time of progression-free survival was also nearly doubled for those treated with cetuximab -- 3.7 months versus 1.9 months in the supportive care group.

"Patients with a colorectal tumor bearing mutated K-ras did not benefit from cetuximab," the researchers concluded.

"This study suggests that if someone has this particular mutation, they won't respond to this drug," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. "The bottom line is that this study is important and really has the potential to impact how we treat patients with colorectal cancer with this very expensive drug."

He added that other researchers have noted similar results for K-ras mutations in earlier-stage colorectal cancer.

"This is one more refinement on personalized medicine, and we're moving into an age of molecular markers that eventually will guide treatment. If someone has a cancer in the future, that cancer will be analyzed for what kind of cancer it is, and then we'll know what the best treatments are for that cancer," Lichtenfeld said.

Another important molecular marker that guides treatment is already in use for breast cancer treatment, according to Lichtenfeld. Breast cancers are tested for HER2, a type of estrogen and progesterone receptor. Those with this molecular marker are likely to have a more aggressive type cancer, but also a type of cancer that responds to treatment with the drug trastuzumab (Herceptin).

"I'm excited about the future, and this study shows we can be more targeted with our targeted therapies," said Lichtenfeld.

The vaccine does not cause any more cases than usual of eight different adverse events, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.

The report to the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices was based on 375,000 doses of the vaccine given from August 2006 to July of 2008.

"As with all approved vaccines, CDC and FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) will continue to closely monitor the safety of the HPV vaccine," the CDC said in a statement.

Gardasil protects against the four types of human wart virus, also known as human papilloma virus or HPV, that are most likely to cause cervical cancer.

Because HPV is sexually transmitted and very common, most people are infected as young adults and to protect them, the vaccine must be given before girls are sexually active. This has led to some controversy.

The CDC said it received 10,326 reports of adverse events following HPV vaccination in the United States.

"Of these reports, 94 percent were reports of events considered to be non-serious, and 6 percent were reports of events considered to be serious," the CDC said. These included 27 deaths.

Such reports do not necessarily show that a vaccine has caused a disease or event -- they simply show that someone fainted, became ill or had an allergic reaction around the time they also received the vaccine.

"Reports of non-serious adverse events after HPV vaccine have included fainting, pain and swelling at the injection site (the arm), headache, nausea and fever," the CDC said.

"Fainting is common after injections and vaccinations, especially in adolescents."

Some of the serious events included Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare disorder that causes muscle weakness. It can be caused by a number of infections.

"There has been no indication that the HPV vaccine increases the rate of GBS in girls and women above the rate expected in the general population, whether or not they were vaccinated," the CDC said.

Eleven of the deaths were traced to diseases such as diabetes or meningitis and unrelated to the vaccine, while the others were being investigated or did not provide enough information to assess, the CDC said.

GlaxoSmithKline has an HPV vaccine called Cervarix, which is used mostly in Europe.