Information for your health

The drug Nexavar can prolong the lives of people with liver cancer by an average of three months, new research shows.

"The results unequivocally showed that sorafenib (Nexavar) increased the survival of patients with a more than 30 percent reduction in the likelihood to die at any time point during follow-up," said study senior author Dr. Jordi Bruix, a senior consultant in the liver unit of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cancer findings in a new study of cholesterol drug Vytorin are "likely to be an anomaly" unrelated to the drug, makers Merck & Co (MRK.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Schering-Plough Corp (SGP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said in a letter to doctors.

The study, called SEAS, found a higher incidence of cancer among patients who took Vytorin compared with a placebo, according to findings released on Monday. Researchers also reported more deaths from cancer among Vytorin patients, although that difference was not statistically significant.

Warning is contrary to other studies

The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH – The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff Wednesday: Limit cellphone use because of the possible risk of cancer.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cellphone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A new study in the July 19 issue of The Lancet suggests that amyloid plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease may not be the cause of the disease.

The study showed that removal of amyloid plaques from the brain did not stop progression of Alzheimer’s.

In the study, Dr. Clive Holmes from the Memory Assessment and Research Centre at Moorgreen Hospital in Southampton and colleagues looked at data on 80 Alzheimer's patients who had received an experimental vaccine called AN1792.

Researchers have successfully grown functional human blood vessels in lab mice using cells from adult human donors, according to a new study in Circulation Research: Journal of the American Heart Association. The success could be an important step in developing strategies to grow issue in a laboratory for treatment of heart attack, acute injuries and wound healing.

A study found Amgen Inc's experimental drug denosumab reduced the risk of osteoporosis and fracture in men receiving treatments for prostate cancer that can cause bone loss, the company said Monday.

The study of more than 1,400 men with non-metastatic prostate cancer undergoing androgen deprivation treatment showed denosumab rendered greater increase in bone mineral density than a placebo. The increase was seen at the Lumbar spine and non-vertebral sites.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study shows that some women with breast cancer fail to complete their radiation therapy, pointing to a need to help more women to see their treatment through to the end.

Researchers found that of 24,500 U.S. women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1992 and 2002, after surgery, radiation therapy was completed by 87 percent.

While that figure is "reassuring," the researchers report in the journal Cancer, the 13 percent of patients who did not complete therapy still represents a fairly large number of women.

Researchers from four leading cancer centers have confirmed that an analysis involving a panel of genes can be used to predict which lung cancer patients will have the worst survival. The finding could one day lead to a test that would help determine who needs more aggressive treatment.
The study, the largest of its kind, appears online in Nature Medicine.

Researchers have developed a plant-based cancer vaccine tailored to a patient's specific tumour type and capable of kick-starting the body's immune response, according to a study issued yesterday.

While they have not yet determined whether the immune response is sufficient to destroy the cancer, the researchers are hopeful the technique could one day lead to a cure for at least some types of the deadly disease.

Senior author Ronald Levy, of the Stanford University Medical Centre, said, ''The idea is to marshal the body's own immune system to fight cancer.''

Researchers from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, have developed a model that illustrates how HIV evades the immune system. The study incorporates detailed interactions between a mutating virus and the immune system.

HIV avoids recognition by the human immune response through the generation of viral variants called "escape mutants". This avoidance seems to thwart effective control of virus replication, causing HIV-infected patients to progress to AIDS. However, it remains difficult to fully understand the dynamics of immune escape, as data from infected patients is relatively sparse.