Scientists identify proteins that can predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis

"Early research suggests a path to predict and prevent lung cancer."

That was the headline of a recent story by Nina Agrawal that appeared on the online site of The New York Times. 

The subhead? "Scientists have identified proteins that could signal increased lung cancer risk, as well as a drug that could reduce the odds of a tumor developing."

A team of more than 80 researchers "working across four continents have identified a set of proteins in the blood that accurately predict lung cancers more than five years before diagnosis," the story says.

It indicates, too, that the scientists "also found early evidence that an existing anti-inflammatory drug [canakinumab] could significantly reduce lung cancer risk in people with elevated concentrations of these proteins, which they linked to inflammation."

The findings were published in the journal Cell. Lung cancer, the Times story says, "kills more people worldwide than any other cancer." Fewer than one-third of people diagnosed survive past five years.

Dr. Charles Swanton

"Prevention is the solution in my mind," the article quotes Dr. Charles Swanton, oncologist and director of the Francis Crick Institute in the United Kingdom who was senior author of the  paper. 

Swanton, who recently joined the board of Novartis, the maker of canakinumab, also contends that the findings suggest "smoke causes mutations and inflammation, which together cause cancer."

The drug, according to the story, "nearly halved the risk of lung cancer among 2,300 patients in the trial who had higher-than-average expression of the 14 proteins."

Dr. Peter Mazzone, a pulmonologist at the Cleveland Clinic, on the other hand, offers a massive caveat. He's quoted as warning about canakinumab's potential side effects, including increased risk of infection and sepsis, and says that "even within a narrow population, it could still be too toxic for the benefit to outweigh the harms. It's possible that a different medicine that targets the same pathway could work and would be safer." 

More information on new research can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, aVitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my website at https://woodyweingarten.com for details.

Screening for lung cancer, the deadliest in U.S., misses most cases, new study reveals

Because of missed diagnoses, cancer and public health officials are calling for changes in lung cancer screening guidelines.

That conclusion, according to a recent story by Allyson Chiu in The Washington Post, was from a new study published in “JAMA Network Open,” a peer-reviewed journal.

Dr. Ankit Bharat

A majority of the lung cancer patients in this country would not meet the screening criteria as it  exists currently, the Post quoted Dr. Ankit Bharat, the study’s lead author and executive director of the Canning Thoracic Institute at Northwestern Medicine, as saying.

“If we have a more broader screening program, similar to breast and colon, then we would be able to detect substantially more patients at an earlier stage," he added.

 

The story indicates that if screening were made available for anyone between 40 and 80, nearly 94% of lung cancer cases could be detected, preventing at least roughly 26,000 deaths each year — "if even 30% of people get screened.”

 

The study had shown that of approximately 1,000 patients treated at Northwestern Medicine, only 1/3 met the requirements for screening. Eligible were people 50 to 80 who had a history of heavy smoking in the past 15 years, but women, minorities, and people who never smoked “were disproportionately excluded.”

 

Bharat noted that “lung cancer is the biggest cause of cancer deaths in this country. It kills more people than breast, colon, and prostate put together.”

 

The Post piece also quoted Dr. Narjust Florez, a thoracic medical oncologist and co-director of the Young Lung Cancer Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to the effect that “waiting for symptoms leads to most patients having a Stage 4 diagnosis.”

More information on studies can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, aVitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten aimed at male caregivers. My other books are MysteryDates — How to keep the sizzle in your relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my website at https://woodyweingarten.com for details.

Face of lung cancer — once older men with a history of smoking — has changed significantly

Many lung cancers are now found in non-smokers, and scientists want to know why.

According to the headline of a story by Nina Agrawal and Allison Jiang in The New York Times early this week, "the face of lung cancer — once older men with a history of smoking — has changed." Significantly.

Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States, notes the article that then goes on to say that "the disease's incidence and death rates have dropped over the last few decades, thanks largely to a decline in cigarette use, but lung cancers unrelated to smoking have persisted."

Worldwide, "roughly 10 to 25 percent of lung cancers now occur in people who have never smoked," the piece continues, "Among certain groups of Asian and Asian American women, that share is estimated to be 50 per cent or more."

Dr. Maria Teresa Landi

The thinking used to be that smoking was "almost the only cause of lung cancer," the story quotes Dr. Maria Teresa Landi, a senior investigator at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. 

Landi is studying "the role that environmental exposure, genetic mutations, or other risk factors might play. She and other researchers "have already found some early hints, including a clear link to air pollution," Agrawal and Jiang's article states.

The piece also quotes Dr. Heather Wakelee, chief of oncology  at the Stanford University School of Medicine, to the effect that "we all still think about the Marlboro man as whaat lung cancer looks like." 

In many cases, however, that's no longer the case. "We're just baffled as to why," Wakelee adds.

One large study led by Landi and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, the Times story reports, "is looking at the mutational signatures, or patterns of mutations across the cancer genomes, of 871 non-smokers with lung cancer from around the world."

Their latest findings from the study, dubbed Sherlock Lung and published in Nature this month, "showed that certain mutations, or changes to DNA, were much more common in people who lived in areas with high amounts of air pollution —  for example, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Uzbekistan," the article says.

More information on the multiple kinds of cancer can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers. I am, in fact, hard at work on a second edition. 

My other books are Mystery Dates — How to keep the sizzle in our relationship; The Roving I, a compilation of 70 of my newspaper columns; and Grampy and His Fairyzona Playmates, a whimsical fantasy intended for 6- to 10-year-olds that I co-authored with my then 8-year-old granddaughter. Check out my blog at https://woodyweingarten.com for more info on them.

U.S. bans last type of asbestos still being used, joining 50 countries that already prohibit it

The phaseout will take more than a decade but the United States has just banned the last type of asbestos still in use.

Its move means America will join 50 other nations that have already prohibited the deadly carcinogen that's linked to lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer that forms in the lining of some internal organs.

A story by Coral Davenport in yesterday's editions of The New York Times notes that the Biden administration's action marks the first time since 1989 that the "federal government has moved to significantly restrict the toxic industrial material."

Davenport's piece says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation would ban the use, manufacture, and import of chrysotile asbestos, also known as white asbestos, a mineral used in roofing materials, textiles, and cement, as well as gaskets, catches, brake pads, and other automotive parts.

It is also a component, the story adds, in diaphragms used to make chlorine (which in turn is used in pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and to purify drinking water).

Michael Regan, EPA administrator, is quoted as saying that "President Biden understands that [concern over the dangerous chemical] has spanned generations and impacted the lives of countless people."

Critics, who feel that the new rule is insufficient, point to asbestos being "linked to an estimated 40,000 deaths annual in the United States," the story indicates.

Mesothelioma, it goes on to say, "disproportionately affects firefighters, who are exposed to asbestos through damaged buildings and have a much higher risk of developing the cancer than the general population."

Linda Reinstein

Linda Reinstein, president and founder of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, is quoted to the effect that her group is "alarmed that the rule allows an unnecessarily long transition period and creates inconsistent compliance deadlines for certain asbestos users that will enable dangerous exposure to chrysotile asbestos to continue for years to come."

Davenport's story maintains that the new rule "stands in sharp contrast to the position of the Trump administration, which fought legislation that would have banned asbestos." The piece further states that Trump "inaccurately declares asbestos '100 percent safe' in his 1997 book, Trump: The Art of the Comeback, and claimed the movement to remove asbestos 'was led by the mob, because it was often mob-related companies that would do the asbestos removal."

More information about substances that can cause disease can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Columnist suggests three strategies that could possibly reduce your risk of contracting cancer

By employing three strategies, you may reduce your cancer risk. 

That, at least, is the opinion of Dr. Jerry Saliman, whose Senior Life column in an earlier-this-month edition of j. the Jewish News of Northern California, focused on those strategies — being on the lookout, catching symptoms early, and paying attention to risky behavioral factors.

Dr. Jerry Saliman

Regarding the first strategy, Saliman writes that unfortunately only four types of cancer screening have received a high-level record recommendation from a U.S. task force: colon, lung, breast, and cervix.

As to the second line of reasoning, the columnist, a Bay Area physician who retired from Kaiser South San Francisco after a 30-year career and now is a volunteer internist at Samaritan House Medical Clinic in San Mateo, suggests that "by catching cancer early, the survival rates may be four times higher compared with later-stage detection."

Saliman adds, about the last strategy, that the American Cancer Society's prevention studies have been crucial in detailing risk factors — including, in the 1950s, being the first to identify smoking as a major reason for cancer. The ACS has since, via its ongoing research, "found that older age and smoking have the highest relative risk for developing any cancer for both men and women."

Additional risks for men, his column says, "are family history of cancer, red meat consumption, alcohol intake, and physical inactivity."

More information on risks can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Younger women are now getting lung cancer at higher rates than men, new study ascertains

According to a story by Dani Blum in editions of The New York Times a few days ago, younger women are now getting lung cancer at higher rates than men — despite an overall drop in the rates of new cases over the last several decades.

The Times piece cites a new study by the American Cancer Society noting that "lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States" and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "estimates that, nationwide, around 197,000 are diagnosed with the disease each year."

Ahmedin Jemal

Blum's story quotes Ahmedin Jemal, an author on the study and senior vice president of surveillance and health equity science at the ACS, as indicating that cigarette smoking "remains the leading cause of lung cancer, and while there have been widespread efforts to reduce smoking, women have generally been slower to successfully quit."

Regardless, "about 15 to 20 percent of lung cancer cases in women are among those who have never smoked," Jamal reportedly added.

He suggested that those women may have been exposed to second-hand smoke.

Dr. Jyoti Patel, medical director of thoracic oncology of the Lurie Cancer Center at Northwestern Medicine, also believes that, according to the story, "women might metabolize carcinogens differently from the way men do."

Furthermore, Blum's piece says, Dr. Patrick Forde, an associate profession of oncology at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, thinks that "air pollution has been linked to lung cancer and it's possible that women could be particularly susceptible to it, for reasons researchers are still working to understand."

The story also contends that ultimately there is no clear-cut explanations for the disparities. "The differences are really not obvious," Dr. Humberto Chi, a pulmonary median doctor at the Cleveland Clinic is quoted. "This is definitely an area for future studies."

Additional information regarding a multiplicity of cancers can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers. 

Next big advance may be new cancer vaccines that could treat cancers in a variety of organs

Research may be turning a corner, with many scientists predicting new cancer vaccines that would work within five years on breast, lung, ovarian, skin, and pancreatic cancers.

According to a recent Associated Press story by Carla K. Johnson, "these aren't traditional vaccines that prevent disease, but shots to shrink tumors and stop cancer from coming back." 

Dr. James L. Gulley

The article quotes Dr. James L. Gulley, who helps lead the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute that developed immune therapies, including cancer treatment vaccines. He says, "We're getting something to work. Now we need to get it to work better."

Cancer vaccines, like other immunotherapies, boost the immune system to find and kill cancer cells. For a vaccine to work, the piece quotes Dr. Nora Disis of UW Medicine's Cancer Vaccine Institute in Seattle as saying, it needs to teach the immune system's T cells to recognize cancer as dangerous. "If you saw an activated T cell, it almost has feet. You can see it crawling through a blood vessel to get out into the tissues," she said.

Dr. Steve Lipkin, a medical geneticist at New York's Weill Cornell Medicine, also is quoted: "Vaccines are probably the next big thing. We're dedicating our lives to that."

More information about vaccines can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Mayo Clinic offers tips on what to do to lower risk of getting skin, breast, and lung cancers

February is National Cancer Month, so the Mayo Clinic News Network has had Laurel Kelly compile tips on how you might be able to prevent three cancers.

The trio — skin, breast, and lung cancer — comprise the "top three most common cancers diagnosed in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute," says the story that appeared in the daily Marin Independent Journal this week.

Regarding skin cancer, what's advised is to limit or avoid exposure to ultraviolet, or UV, radiation. "Avoid the sun during the middle of the day," Kelly writes. "Wear sunscreen and protective clothing year-round. Avoid tanning beds. Also, be aware of sun-sensitizing medications, and check your skin regularly and report changes to your health care team."

About breast cancer, the article urges limiting alcohol, eating healthfully, maintaining a good weight, and being active. Regular mammograms and other screenings can detect it early.

And the Mayo Clinic piece notes that insofar as lung cancer is concerned, smoking, as has been known for years, is the greatest risk — a peril that "increases with the length of time and number of cigarettes you've smoked." A reduction in danger is possible by quitting, regardless of how many years you've smoked, the story contends.

More information on how to prevent and treat diseases can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Joe Biden uses anniversary of JFK 'moonshot' speech to lift off fighting-cancer metaphor

With a nod to a John Fitzgerald Kennedy speech about space travel, Joe Biden has drawn attention to his own "moonshot" to fight cancer.

The president has used his metaphor to push a federally backed study that seeks to validate using blood tests to screen against multiple cancers.

A recent Associated Press story by Zeke Miller and Carl K. Johnson indicates the Biden's endorsement could make the study "a potential game-changer in diagnostic testing to dramatically improve early detection of cancers." 

The Biden bully-pulpit push came at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston that marked the 60th anniversary of JFK's "moonshot" speech.  

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cancers are the second highest killer of Americans after heart disease. The American Cancer Society has estimated that 1.9 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed this year, with more than 600,000 deaths predicted.

Biden, the AP story says, "hopes to move the U.S. closer to the goal he set in February of cutting U.S. cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years and to dramatically improve the lives of caregivers and those suffering from cancer."

Danielle Carnival, PhD

The article quotes Danielle Carnival, a PhD and the White House cancer moonshot coordinator, as saying that the best way to proceed "is to really test out the technologies we have today and see what works and what really has an impact on extending lives."

She cites as "one of the most promising technologies" the "development of blood tests that offer the promise of detecting multiple cancers in a single blood test."

Cancer, of course, has long been a Biden priority — stemming from the loss of his son, Beau, in 2015 to brain cancer. The president wrote in his memoir "Promise Me, Dad" that he chose not to run in 2016 primarily because of his son's death.

Scientists now understand, the AP piece notes, "that cancer is not a single disease but hundreds of diseases that respond differently to different treatments."   

Any effort to reduce the cancer death rate, the story continues, "will need to focus on the biggest cancer killer, which is lung cancer. Mostly attributable to smoking, lung cancer now causes more cancer deaths than any other cancer. Of the 1,670 daily cancer deaths in the United States, more than 350 are from lung cancer."

Dr. Roy Herbst, a lung specialist at Yale Cancer Center, thinks the current situation is "tragic." The moonshot, he observes, "is going to have to be a social fix as well as a scientific and medical fix. We're going to have to find a way that screening becomes easier, that it's fully covered, that we have more screening facilities."

Biden wants Americans who've delayed cancer screenings because of the pandemic to seek them out quickly, "reminding them that early detection can be key to avoiding adverse outcomes."

More information about the federal government funding research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Screenings for lung cancer could pose serious risks for patients, two expert physicians declare

False-positives from cat scans for lung cancer could do more harm than good.

At least that's the conclusion of two cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco.

The two — Dr. Rita Redberg and Dr. Sanket Dhruva — published their view in a recent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Their piece notes that while "more Americans are worried about cancer than Covid-19, according to a recent Gallup poll," the screenings often lead "to significant harm."

Dr. Rita Redberg

How? Redberg, who has served on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, and Dhruva contend that CT scans (computed tomography) "generally lead to more 'incidental findings,' without clinical significance, than to actual cancers being detected. And at least 20% of patients will receive false-positive findings." 

They go on to say that "at a minimum, this 'overdiagnosis' causes significant anxiety and stress. But it can also lead doctors to order more invasive procedures such as lung biopsies and sometimes surgery to remove part of the lung. Moreover, CT scans use X-ray radiation, which is associated with increased cancer risk."

On the other hand, cat scans might save a patient from lung cancer, which is now the leading cause of cancer death in the United States (130,000 people die from it each year).

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended an annual CT scan for some patients with a heavy smoking history after shared decision-making — because it's been proven in clinical trials that it reduces the death rate when "performed on patients at high-risk — those age 50 to 74 who smoked about one pack per day for 30 years."

The Medicare Evidence Development and Coverage Advisory Committee, which Redberg has chaired and which is made up of independent experts, concluded, according to the op-ed, "there was not sufficient evidence that the benefits of a robust CT scan policy exceeded the harms."  

The op-ed further maintains "research shows that shared decision-making is rarely happening prior to CT scans, despite the Medicare requirement. When any conversation does occur, doctors underemphasize, or omit altogether, the risks — while overemphasizing the benefits. Medicare has failed to enforce its own shared decision-making requirement, meaning that hundreds of thousands of patients are agreeing to lung cancer screening scans without being fully informed of the risks and shortcomings of the test."

Dr. Sanket Dhruva

Redberg and Dhruva also contend that "published studies have shown that engagement in thoughtful shared decision-making about CT scans led about 40% of patients to decline lung cancer screening."

Doctors "owe it to patients," they conclude, "to equip them with the information and tools to make fully informed decisions."

More information about tests that can be risky can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Many physicians now favoring multiple options other than chemotherapy to treat cancers

A growing number of cancer patients, especially those with breast and lung malignancies, are being spared chemo in favor of other options.

At least that's the conclusion of The New York Times.

According to a recent story by the paper's most prolific cancer specialist, Gina Kolata, because "there is a growing willingness among oncologists to scale back unhelpful treatments" and because genetic tests "can now reveal whether chemotherapy would be beneficial," there are many better options for patients than chemo.

Among them, the article notes, are "an ever-expanding array of drugs, including estrogen blockers and drugs that destroy cancers by attacking specific proteins on the surface of tumors."

These alternative treatments, the piece notes, are increasingly being used for breast and lung cancers, and many others as well, sparing "thousands each year from the dread chemotherapy treatment, with its accompanying hair loss, nausea, fatigue, and potential to cause permanent damage to the heart and to nerves in the hands and feet."

And even when chemo is indicated, Kolata's story says, "doctors often give fewer drugs for less time."

Dr. Lisa Carey

"It's a totally different world," the article quotes Dr. Lisa Carey, breast cancer specialist at the University of North Carolina.

That view is supported by Dr. Robert Vonderheide, lung cancer specialist who heads the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center, who says that docs used to discuss whether to give patients two different types of chemo or three but now "are walking in to see even patients with advanced lung cancer and telling them, 'No chemo.'"

Kolata's piece calls the change "a quiet revolution" that has stemmed from "a slow chipping away" at the number of people for whom chemo — which for decades was considered "the rule, the dogma" — is recommended.

More information on new therapies can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Can you beat the odds of contracting disease?

Cancer prevention can be bettered by narrowing screenings, doing a Mediterranean diet, tracking genes

Smarter prevention is helping more Americans beat the odds of getting cancer.

That's the gist of a story by Marygrace Taylor in a Parade magazine some time ago — a story that's subdivided into categories that detail smarter screening, knowing your genes, eating Mediterranean, favorably using social media and eliminating from your lifestyle such an impediment to good health as tobacco.

Under the headline "The People vs. Cancer," the article notes that the overall cancer death rate is continuing to drop.

Referring to lung cancer, the piece contends there's growing evidence that "across-the-board testing might not be beneficial." Instead, it suggests, screening for those most at risk might be best.

Parade then quotes Dr. Peter Mazzone, Cleveland Clinic pulmonologist, to the effect that "the goal is to find ways — other than age and smoking history, to identify high-risk patients."

Mazzone had co-authored lung cancer screening guidelines with the American College of Chest Physicians for low-dose chest CT scans.

By specifically utilizing tests such as breath or blood tests that look for certain biomarkers, experts can minimize the harm done to patients (such as unnecessary biopsies), Taylor writes.

Genetic testing, on the other hand, can be enhanced by those who track their family's health history.

The story cites Dr. Charis Eng, director of the Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare and chair of the Cleveland Clinic's Genomic Medicine Institute, who maintains that tracing a family tree should include determining who had what:

"The most important things are what's the diagnosis, age when diagnosed, family history and familial clustering of a disease."

It's also important to know, she told Parade, how a given disease presented itself. Such as "if a family member has been diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, we think there might be BRCA1 or BRCA2 [mutated gene] in the family."

Eating well, Taylor also indicates, can be a big preventive.

That may mean loading up "on whole grains, fruits and vegetables, nut and beans, olive oil and lean protein like fish." The writer, alluding to a Current Nutrition Reports review, notes that "a Mediterranean-style eating plan has been shown to protect against several types of cancer, including colon, prostate, stomach, esophageal, liver and endometrial cancers."

That diet in postmenopausal women, she adds, also was shown in a Dutch study to "slash the risk for certain breast cancers by up to 40 percent."

The story also quotes Jennifer McDaniel, a registered dietitian and co-author of Prevention Mediterranean Table, as saying that the cancer-fighting effect might also be due to what's not on the diet — foods like processed grains, white bread and rice, red meat and full-fat dairy products.

Why? McDaniel says that eating that way may support a healthy body weight and lower inflammation levels, which in turn help prevent some cancers.

Want to learn about other possible ways to avoid disease? Check out "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Less smoking may have aided drop in disease

Higher percentage of women now getting lung cancer, Time says, despite dip in mortality rates

Women now account for "disproportionately high number" of lung cancer diagnoses.

That's true despite overall mortality rates having "fallen significantly in recent decades" — and in spite of women traditionally having "smoked less than men and thus developed and died from lung cancer less often."

At least that's the conclusion of an article in Time magazine by Jamie Ducharme, a piece from the end of last year just sent to me by a friend for this blog.

Ducharme's story indicates that part of the reason for the overall dip in the disease, the most deadly form of cancer in the United States, is because medical advances have been occurring for decades, and because there have been major decreases in smoking.

But the "why" of the shift from "what was historically a men's disease" apparently is not apparent. 

Alice Berger, PhD.

"It's completely unknown right now," Time quotes Alice Berger, a Ph.D. who researches genetics and cancer at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

And Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, co-author of a study in the New England Journal of Medicine, is also quoted as saying "smoking habits cannot totally explain the demographic shifts" even though his 2018 report "showed that "rates of long-cancer incidence actually rose over the past 20 years among women born around either 1950 or 1960."

Researchers have determined, in fact, that "the type of lung cancer most common among nonsmokers disproportionately affect women, and young women are more likely to have a gene mutation often found in the tumors of nonsmokers."

The mutation, not incidentally, does respond well to newer targeted therapies, Berger notes in the piece. 

She also repeats a theory that "quirks of female sex hormones or women's immune systems could be responsible" for the disproportion.

A lot more information on scientific research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Doctors cite value of immunotherapy

Lung cancer patients are heavily benefitting from new treatments, Parade magazine reports

A lot of good news has been developing in the past several years about finding and treating lung cancer, according to Parade magazine.

A recent article by Marygrace Taylor suggests that, despite the disease growing for both never-smokers and women, "there's reason to be optimistic."

How so?

"There's been a huge jump in how long people are living with lung cancer," the piece quotes Dr. Nathan Pennell, Cleveland Clinic oncologist, as saying. "It's an extraordinary change."

Dr. Nathan Pennell

The Parade story then goes on to cite the value of such treatments as immunotherapy, which "helps the immune system better recognize and remove cancer cells without necessarily impacting normal cells," according to Dr. Jacob Sands, an American Lung Association spokesman. 

More than 1,000 clinical trials are currently studying how patients "can benefit from checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapy drugs that block proteins that cancer cells use to stave off attacks from the immune system," Taylor writes.

Pennell adds that "we now know that if you add a checkpoint inhibitor to chemo, people live substantially longer" — and most likely with fewer side effects.

Dr. Jacob Sands

Sands also points to the efficacy of an advanced screening tool like low-dose CT scans, which "catch cancers at earlier stages when they're more likely to be cured."

Another new weapon in the war against lung cancer is stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), a specialized form of highly targeted radiation "often used to treat patients with early-stage lung cancer when surgery isn't an option."

One recent trial, the article reports, found the treatment "could double survival time without progression of [the] disease."

Finally, advanced bronchoscopy, which uses a lighted tube to examine abnormal parts of the lung just as traditional bronchoscopy does but also utilizes "smaller, more powerful tools" to create 3D maps of patients' lungs and helps doctors access areas that the traditional method can't reach.

More information about innovations in cancer treatments can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers.

'Gaping hole' is found in U.S. health system

N.Y. Times article exposes major economic hardships that some cancer caregivers are facing

America's health system is badly flawed because it's making caregivers of patients with cancer and other diseases work much too hard to negotiate it — especially economically.

Aaron E. Carroll

That's the basic conclusion of a recent The New York Times article by Aaron E. Carroll, a professor at Indiana University School of Medicine.

In the piece, Carroll says his friend, international fraternity CEO Jim Fleischer's story about a rare cancer taught him about the problem in our health system.

Despite his friend having "great insurance" and "enough money" and getting "excellent care," he discovered the "impossibility and hardship faced by…friends and family members who are caregivers."

The situation, Carroll writes, is "hugely disrupting and expensive. There's no system for it. It's a gaping hole." 

The writer cites as an example that following his surgery and chemotherapy, his friend's wife, mother-in-law, friends and co-workers needed to take lots of time off to care for him and take him to appointments.

Carroll also suggests that "if it was this hard for [Jim], it's probably unbearable for many others with fewer resources. People can be financially ruined by illness — and health insurance won't fix that."

Last year, the Times piece notes, "it's estimated that more than 1.7 million people faced a cancer diagnosis. The year before, America spent more than $147 billion caring for people with cancer. But that doesn't include the costs outside of health care."

This year, the article continues, "the National Cancer Institute will spend more than $5.7 billion on cancer research. Almost none of that will investigate how to support the families of those who have the disease."

Researchers in the past have estimated the "economic burden for caregivers for patients with lung and colorectal cancer," Carroll says. "They reported that the average cost to a caregiver in the initial phase of treatment was more than $7,000," with an additional $20,000 spent after treatment on so-called continuing care.

Another study cited caregiving costs for breast cancer at $38,000, lung cancer at $72,000, for ovarian cancer $66,000, for lymphoma $59,000.

Carroll concludes that it's crucial to recognize "that the efforts of caregivers are probably just as important to health as the drugs and procedures the medical system provides."

More details about the issues that helpmates have can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

'Precision medicine' altering treatment focus

FDA clears pricey oncology therapy drug for multiple cancers with a shared mutation

The federal Food and Drug Administration has approved a drug, Vitrakvi, for a wide range of cancers based on a shared mutation.

According to a recent Washington Post story by Laurie Mcginley that was reprinted in newspapers across the country, the decision shifts treatment focus away from tumor location, apparently "an advance for the sometimes controversial field of 'precision medicine.'"

The FDA action on Vitrakvi (aka larotrectinib) marks the second treatment to receive the agency's "clearance based on a common biomarker found in an array of cancers."

The approval was given simultaneously for adults and children, contrary to the more typical FDA action regarding oncology drugs whereby kids are not considered until much later than adults.

Vitrakvi is intended, Mcginley's story says, "for patients with advanced solid tumors containing what's called an NTRK gene fusion, a hybrid of two genes that can promote uncontrolled cell growth. Cancers of the thyroid, lung and head and neck, among others, can be caused by the defect."

Dr. Scott Gottlieb

According to a story in the online magazine Healio, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a FDA commissioner, notes that approval of the new site-agnostic oncology therapy "marks another step in an important shift toward treating cancers based on their tumor genetics rather than their site of origin in the body."

The breakthrough drug (that was tested in three clinical trials), the Washington Post piece adds, "is for patients whose cancer has spread or who would experience severe complications by undergoing surgery and have no satisfactory alternatives."

Precision medicine has spawned both enthusiasm and skepticism, partially because both the drugs and the tests can be quite expensive.

The drug's manufacturer, Loxo Oncology, Inc., and its partner, Bayer, announced that "the wholesale acquisition cost will be $32,800 for a 30-day supply of capsules for adults. The cost for the liquid formulation for children…will start at $11,000 per month."

Patient affordability "is one of the big barriers to precision medicine right now," McKinley quotes Carolyn Presley, a geriatric oncologist at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, as saying. "Show me the money — how are you going to pay for it?"

Elizabeth Jaffee, Johns Hopkins oncologist, nevertheless predicted that precision medicine "is going to be the way to treat cancer in the future," the Washington Post story reports.

More information on research into cancer can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

American Cancer Society vs. U.S. advisory group

Agency and task force disagree on when people should start screening for colon cancer 

Whether U.S. adults should start colon cancer screening at age 45 or 50 is still in doubt.

The most recent guidelines from the American Cancer Society advocate the former, but an influential government advisory group, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, still believes the latter age is perfectly okay.

According to an Associated Press story by Mike Stobbe a while back, the cancer society admits its recommendation of the earlier age "could cause confusion for doctors and patients." 

Both groups, however, apparently recommend six other kinds of screening exams, "from inexpensive take-home stool tests performed every year to colonoscopies done every 10."

Dr. Rich Wender

The best test, the cancer society's Dr. Rich Wender is quoted as saying, "is the test that gets done. All of these tests are good tests, and the choice should be offered to patients."

Most colon cancer occurs, according to the story, "in adults 55 and older, and the good news is rates of cases and deaths have been falling for decades."

Colon cancer, combined with rectal cancer, is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States — the top cause being lung cancer.

Some 140,000 Americans were expected to be diagnosed with colon cancer this year, "and about 50,000 will die from it," Stobbe's piece reports.

Only "about two-thirds of people 50 and older have been following screening guidelines," the article notes, quoting Dr. Marcus Plescia of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials as saying that "it's hard enough to get people to do it at all."

But Dr. Andrew Wolf, lead author of the American Cancer Society study, reportedly said his agency had considered and rejected that reasoning.

More information about conflicting research and findings can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer,"  a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers

'Fundamental change' in treating tumor cells

Nobel Prize goes to American, Japanese working separately on cancer immunotherapies

Two researchers who worked on game-changing therapies that unleash brakes against cancer have won 2018's Nobel Prize for medicine.

James P. Allison (left) and Tasuko Honjo

The pair — Dr. James P. Allison of the MC Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Dr. Tasuko Honjo of Kyoto University in Japan — found "checkpoint inhibitor" therapies that "greatly increased survival of cancer patients and may produce even greater results when combined with traditional therapies," according to an online story this week by Tina Hesman Saey in ScienceNews, the nonprofit magazine of the Society for Science & the Public.

The article indicates that "all previous types of cancer therapy were directed at the tumor cell, but Allison's and Honjo's approach was to remove brakes that keep the immune system in check."

The two, who were working separately, will equally share the prize of just over $1 million.

An earlier piece by Saey and Aimee Cunningham in ScienceNews noted that they had identified proteins that act as brakes on tumor-fighting T cells.

A Reuters story said the "scientists' work in the 1990s has since swiftly led to new and dramatically improved therapies for cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer, which had previously been extremely difficult to treat."

Treatments known as immune checkpoint blockade that resulted from their work, the piece added, "'have fundamentally changed the outcome' for some advanced cancer patients," the Nobel institute said."

The discoveries consequently spawned a multi-billion dollar market for new cancer medicines.

Reuters quoted a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, Kevin Harrington, as contending the two scientists' work had revolutionized cancer treatment:

"We've gone from being in a situation where patients were effectively untreatable to having a range of therapy options that, when they work, work very well indeed," he said in a statement. "For some patients we see their tumors shrink or completely disappear and are effectively cured."

More information on research can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Deaths from lung, breast, prostate cancer dip

United States cancer mortality rates have dropped 26% since 1991, new report indicates

The good news: U.S. cancer death rates have continued to fall.

The bad news: While the incidence has dropped for some cancers, it has risen for others.

Those conclusions, according to a story by Judy George on the MedPage Today website yesterday, are based on a statistical report from the American Cancer Society.

Cancer mortality in the U.S. fell 1.7% from 2015 to 2015 — a decline that "continued a long-running trend, with a 26% drop since 1991," George's piece indicates. 

Rebecca Siegel

Her story notes that "the reduction was fueled largely by fewer deaths from lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer," and cites information from Rebecca Siegel of the ACS and colleagues in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. 

"Steady reductions in smoking, plus better detection and treatment, accounted for a significant part of the decline," the MedPage Today article adds.

Dr. Otis W. Brawley

The article also quotes Dr. Otis W. Brawley, chief medical officer of the ACS, from a statement: "A decline in consumption of cigarettes is credited with being the most important factor in the drop in cancer death rates."

Over the past decade of available data, the story continues, "the overall cancer incidence in men fell by about 2% per year, with the pace accelerating in recent years."

But in women, "declines in lung and colorectal cancers were offset by increasing or stable rates for breast, uterine corpus and thyroid cancers and for melanoma."

Liver cancer incidence has also continued to rise in women.

Siegel's piece also says that researchers have predicted "1,735,350 new cancer cases and 609,640 cancer deaths in the United States in 2018."

More information about mortality rates can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

'Transformative" treatments deemed possible

Race underway to create gene therapies for breast, prostate, ovary, lung, pancreas cancers

Pharmaceutical companies and universities are in a race to develop "utterly transformative" gene therapies, according to a recent article by Denise Grady in The New York Times.

The story says "one of the big goals now is to get them to work for many [cancers other than leukemia, for which approval is expected soon], including those of the breast, prostate, ovary, lung and pancreas."

The radically new class of treatments, it also says, may "re-engineer and turbocharge millions of patient's own immune cells, turning them into cancer killers that researchers call a 'living drug.'"

Dr. Stephan Grupp

The Times piece contends that the new leukemia drug, called CAR-T therapy, "has been utterly transformative in blood cancers," according to Dr. Stephan Grupp, director of the cancer immunotherapy program at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, "and a leader of major studies."

Although Grupp cautions that it will take at least five years to make an accurate determination, he maintains that if the treatment "can start to work in solid tumors, it will be utterly transformative for the whole field."

The treatment apparently is also being studied in conjunction with "glioblastoma, the aggressive brain tumor that Sen. John McCain was found to have."

Grupp says one particularly encouraging potential avenue of research with children involves earlier stages of disease "instead of very late, as rules now require," the Times story indicates. 

Earlier treatment, it reports him as believing, "might help some patients avoid bone-marrow transplant, a grueling, last-ditch treatment. Children with less advanced disease also tend to have milder side effects."

Other studies are underway to combine the new therapy "with immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors, which help unleash the cancer killing power of T-cells" — which the story describes as the white blood cells "often referred to as the soldiers of the immune system."

One of the big problems with the new treatment — which "involves removing millions of…T cells…from the patient's bloodstream, genetically engineering them to recognize and kill cancer, multiplying them and then infusing them back into the patient" — is its cost factor.

The process, the story explains, is very expensive (at least $300,000 per treatment, other articles have said)  "because each treatment has to be made separately for each person."

The treatment was developed at the University of Pennsylvania and licensed to Novartis.

More information about cancer research and clinical trials can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.