Archive for the 'Breast Cancer' Category

It’s common knowledge that keeping fit and maintaining an optimal weight are great ways to achieve overall health. But for breast-cancer survivors, the stakes are much higher.

Research indicates that excess weight can lead to increased levels of the hormone estrogen — and estrogen has been tied to the development of breast cancer in women.

Dr. Duc Vuong, a weight-loss surgeon in Houston, spells out the issue plainly.

“Overweight women have larger breasts,” he says. “These women have more exposure to estrogen, which we think increases their risk of several different cancers, including breast and uterine cancer.”

Vuong says more women are beginning to recognize the connection between excess weight and cancer, and that’s prompting them to take action.

Women on the move
After her second breast-cancer diagnosis two years ago, Ilya Sloan, who was then in her mid-60s, realized that the 200 pounds she carried on her short frame could have played a role in her getting the disease.

Her oncologist told her about a clinical research weight-loss study at the Arizona Cancer Center, where Sloan works as a community events coordinator.

Read more at MSNBC

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and second leading cause of cancer-related death in women, in the United States.

However, little is known about breast cancer in women in their early 40s and younger.

Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, who founded and directs the Program for Young Women with Breast Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, says that evidence shows that young age is a risk factor for disease recurrence and death.

It is controversial whether the poorer prognosis is a reflection of delays in diagnosis, differences in tumor biology, or the effectiveness of treatment, but accumulating evidence indicates that biologic differences may play an important role.

“In addition to being at higher risk of dying from breast cancer than older women, young women with breast cancer are at increased risk of psychosocial distress at diagnosis and in follow-up when compared with older women,” explains Partridge.

“Young women with breast cancer face a variety of unique medical and psychosocial concerns as a result of their diagnosis and subsequent treatment. In particular, fertility and family planning, menopausal symptoms, and sexual functioning are of great concern to this patient population.”

Read more at Medical News Today

Substances called heterocyclic amines (HAs) found in cooked meat and fish don’t appear to boost a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer after menopause, Swedish researchers report.

However, low intake of these substances combined with high consumption of omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are found in most types of vegetable oil, may indeed increase the likelihood that post menopausal women will develop breast cancer, Dr. Emily Sonestedt, of Lund University, Malmo, and her colleagues found.

“The interaction in the present study between omega-6 PUFAs and HAs is not easily explained, and points toward the importance of examining the impact of food patterns rather than the influence of single dietary factors,” Sonestedt and her team stated.

HAs form in meat or fish cooked at high temperatures, and have been tied to breast cancer in rats. Rats fed a fatty diet having a high omega-6 content developed even more tumors in response to dietary HAs than rats given a low fat diet.

Sonestedt’s team examined whether HA consumption was related to breast cancer, and whether omega-6 PUFA intake played a role in this relationship, in women enrolled in the Malmo Diet and Cancer study.

Read more at Reuters

We all know, for almost a decade, the effects of alcohol. In moderation, alcohol is good for heart.

But, now, new researches are showing a strong relation between alcohol and breast cancer, an important health concern among women.

It reports that alcohol consumption is directly related to the occurrence of breast cancer.

So, women who drink alcohol are at greater risk of developing breast cancer. Moreover, the risk is directly proportional to the alcohol consumption quantity.

In other words, an increase in the alcohol consumption quantity increases the risk of breast cancer development.

Scientists have recently estimated that the woman’s risk of developing breast cancer rises by six percent for every additional amount of alcohol consumption on a standard daily basis.

The recent evidence recommends that all types of alcohol–wine, beer and whisky—increases the risk of breast cancer.

So, remember that the type of alcohol–wine, beer or whisky—you take makes no difference, it differs only with the alcohol consumption quantity.

The incidence of breast cancer is more among post-menopausal women, who consume alcohol excessively. It is because alcohol is a major risk factor for the development of most common form of breast cancer.

The results of a new study support an interaction between severe life events, psychological distress, and breast cancer.

“Young women who are exposed to severe life events more than once should be considered as a risk group for breast cancer and treated accordingly,” Dr. Ronit Peled said.

Peled, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel, and colleagues studied 255 women younger than 45 years old who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and compared them with 367 healthy women of a similar age.

The team evaluated interactions between breast cancer and severe life events — such as the loss of a parent, close relative or spouse, or the divorce of parents before age 20 — and mild to moderate life events — e.g., separation from a spouse, loss of a job, an economic crisis, or severe illness in a close relative.

After correcting for potentially influential variables, their analysis revealed a positive association between exposure to more than one adverse life event and breast cancer.

For these women, the risk of breast cancer was increased by 62 percent. “It wasn’t enough to be exposed to one life event, a woman had to be exposed to more than one event,” Peled said.

A new promising enzyme target for a specific type of breast cancer, Brk, has been identified in research.

In a specific subset of breast cancer patients, the tumor cells produce high levels of the protein ErbB2 (also called HER2) which pushes the cells to proliferate without limit, a characteristic common of all cancers.

Approximately one in four patients are in this group, and their clinical prognoses are considerably worse than other patients.

While Herceptin and Lapatinib, concomitantly administered with other chemotherapic agents, have improved the prognosis for many of these patients, there is significant potential for development in this area.

In particular, they are able to suppress ErbB2, but are not effective against all tumors that secrete it. Additionally, when patients’ tumors do respond, they usually become resistant over time.

According to the authors of this study, this suggested that another element might factor into the progression of these tumors.

According to the authors “The limited success of existing therapy suggested to us that factors besides ErbB2, or proteins that collude with ErbB2, might nullify the effects of Herceptin and Lapatinib.”

Women at elevated risk for breast cancer - or a recurrence of the disease - increasingly are choosing double mastectomies as a protective measure against cancer’s rebound, doctors said.

Emmy Award-winning actress Christina Applegate, who underwent a mastectomy for breast cancer earlier this month, announced yesterday that she also chose a preventive mastectomy, commonly called a prophylactic mastectomy, on the opposite side.

Applegate, 36, said she carries the BRCA 1 gene mutation. Over a lifetime, BRCA 1 can increase the risk of the disease by as much as 85 percent.

She said her choice of a prophylactic mastectomy was to pre-empt the possibility of developing breast cancer in the future.

Genomic testing in recent years not only allows women to learn whether they’re carriers of a mutation, but a positive test can pave the way for making an excruciatingly difficult decision, said Dr. Brian O’Hea, medical director of the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center.

In addition to BRCA 1, the gene carried by Applegate, another, BRCA 2, also can increase the risk of breast cancer.

Carriers of BRCA 1 and 2 also have elevated ovarian cancer risks. The genes can be transmitted by either parent, and are a leading cause of breast cancer that occurs before the age of 40.

When someone well-known such as Christina Applegate is diagnosed with breast cancer, many adult women become concerned as to what the future holds for them.

While it’s true that 1 out of 8 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in her lifetime, there are also a lot of misconceptions about the disease floating around.

Although Applegate is just 36 years old, the fact remains that breast cancer is more likely to strike women over the age of 50.

Still, many women under the age of 40 may now be tempted to run out and demand mammograms.

But mammograms are ineffective for most young women, told Dr. Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families.

“Young women’s breasts are dense and if they get mammograms, their breasts show up very white on mammograms and cancer shows up as white,” she said.

“But, as women get older, their breasts are less dense and show up gray on a mammogram, which makes it easy to identify the white cancer.

If there is a family history, and women are worried, they can start earlier and in this case a digital mammography may work better than a traditional mammography.”