Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 31st 2023
In conclusion, an SBP level below 130 mmHg was found to be associated with longevity among older women. The longer SBP was controlled at a level between 110 and 130 mmHg, the higher the survival probability to age 90. Preventing age-related rises in SBP and increasing the time with controlled BP levels constitute important measures for achieving longevity.
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Source: Fight Aging! - July 30, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Cancer Treatment Increases Biological Age
The established non-surgical forms of cancer treatment, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, induce cellular senescence via stress and damage to cells. The target for these harmful effects is the cancer, but other cells are also inevitably stressed to the point of entering a senescent state. An increased burden of senescent cells in tissues throughout the body is a feature of aging. These cells directly contribute to dysfunction of tissues and organs via secreted signals, the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). When maintained over the long term, the SASP contributes to the onset and progression of age-related cond...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 26, 2023 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
More intensive treatment of DCIS reduces the risk of invasive breast cancer
This study showed that increased cancer risk persisted for more than 15 years after a diagnosis of DCIS, and that more intensive therapy than lumpectomy alone — whether with mastectomy, radiation therapy, or endocrine therapy — reduced the risk of invasive breast cancer among women with DCIS. The lowest risk of invasive breast cancer was in women who chose mastectomy.
The risk of invasive breast cancer was seen regardless of severity of DCIS. Women who had low- or moderate-grade DCIS, as well as high-grade DCIS, had long-term increased risk.
Women who are recently diagnosed with DCIS should work with their treatment te...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 19, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Kathryn Rexrode, MD, MPH Tags: Breast Cancer Women's Health Source Type: blogs
Comparing Prognostic Breast Cancer Tests
Back in the late 2000 ' s, I heard about the new Oncotype Dx test that was just coming available for women who had early stage breast cancer and could help in the decision making process - whether to chemotherapy or not. The test was supposed to tell your risk of recurrence. That was great news (of course I was not eligible because of my medical history...) and many women found their risk and made the big chemotherapy decision.New research has looked at the results of these tests and compared them. They looked at these four tests: Oncotype Dx Recurrence Score, PAM50-based Prosigna Risk of Recurrence Score (ROR), Breast Can...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 16, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer recurrence test results Source Type: blogs
Treatment Resistance Breast Cancer
Most breast cancers are hormone receptor positive or (ER+) and are treated with multiple therapies including chemotherapy and hormone therapies including tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors. But the problem is then that after they metastasize, a third of them become resistance to treatment and will cause your demise." Such endocrine therapies, including tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitor drugs, can prevent recurrence of early breast cancer, and can slow the progression of metastatic disease. However, in about one-third of patients with metastatic ER-positive breast cancer, treatment with endocrine therapies leads ...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 15, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer research clinical trials metastatic cancer Source Type: blogs
Brachytherapy for Breast Cancer Follow Up
Back in 2007, when I was diagnosed and treated for my breast cancer, I heard about this new technique for the radiation portion of treatment,brachytherapy. I was jealous. It was not offered at my hospital. The big thing I liked was that it took so much less time for treatment.Breast cancer treatment takes a LONG time. I was diagnosed at the end of May, after two surgeries that went into July, I finished chemo in December, and needed one more surgery (don ' t ask). I was then facing 7 weeks of radiation. I just wanted to be done. Since brachytherapy wasn ' t available I had the standard radiation treatment. I couldn ' t eve...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 11, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer research radiation Source Type: blogs
More'Uplifting' News on Breast Cancer Recurrences
Sometimes I wish they would stop researching breast cancer so we stop getting such ' good ' news. New research was meant to look at whether some hormone receptor positive breast cancer patientscould stop taking tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors such as Femara, Aromasin, or Arimidex. However they found instead that ER/PR+ breast cancers can ' smolder ' (their word, not mine) for twenty years or more, before recurring.Aromatase inhibitors and tamoxifen inhibit the production of estrogen which feeds these ER/PR+ breast cancers. The longer you are on the medication, the longer you are protected from a recurrence. However, some...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - February 3, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer research frustration Source Type: blogs
That Lingering Risk Thingy
I can ' t say how much this just aggravates me. You get breast cancer. You get treatment and then they say we will see you once a year. You are NED (No Evidence Of Disease) for now. If you are hormone receptor positive (ER+/PR+) you get to take a little pill (tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors) that should help you stay that way.But there is always that lingering risk of recurrence. That ' s the one thing none of us want. A newstudy which looked at data from 88 different clinical trials over more than 20 years found that the risk of recurrence lingers after the AIs are ended." Researchers from the Early Breast Cancer Triali...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - December 11, 2017 Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer recurrence cancer research femara Source Type: blogs
The heartbreak of counselling younger couples after a cancer diagnosis
My patient mix comes in waves — some months it is mostly women with breast cancer struggling with adjuvant endocrine therapy or men in the aftermath of surgery for prostate cancer. These past two months, it has been young adults, and my heart has taken a beating.
There is something quite different from my perspective between talking to a couple who has been together for 30 or more years and hearing the struggles of couples who have been together for one or two years, or at the most, eight.
For the former couple — their wrinkles appearing in tandem, their relationship comfortable and weathered by common experien...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 8, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Anne Katz, RN, PhD Tags: Conditions Cancer Source Type: blogs
The public perception of oncologists: Is it really true?
I had taken care of her for years. We had faced a new diagnosis, the toxicities of adjuvant treatment, the promises of having no evidence of disease (NED as my friend, Molly, refers to it), only to have it shattered with the first recurrence. Over the next three years, she had undergone treatment — chemotherapy, a trial of endocrine therapy, more chemotherapy, each punctuated by brief respites so she could “feel what it’s like not to be sick all of the time.” Recently, we opted to proceed with experimental therapies. I referred her to our phase I group and she had enrolled in a phase I trial.
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Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 7, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Don S. Dizon, MD Tags: Physician Cancer Source Type: blogs
Cancer screening in those with metastatic disease
“Your cancer has come back.”
These are words no one treated for cancer wants to hear, yet they are words I have said far too often in my own career. In this case, I had said this to a patient I had cared for ever since her initial diagnosis. At that time, she had stage III breast cancer. After her surgery, she took the chemotherapy I recommended and then the endocrine therapy. Things seemed to be going so well.
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Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how. (Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog)
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - June 18, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Don S. Dizon, MD Tags: Conditions Cancer GI Source Type: blogs
When patients ignore the evidence: Try to understand their values
I still remember being taken aback by how young she was. “She” was Mary — a 28-year-old woman who had completed chemotherapy for stage II breast cancer. She was treated elsewhere and had moved cities when her husband got a promotion.
“I’m still getting used to this area, but I am happy my hair came back before we had to move. I can’t imagine trying to set up a new house and have to go through my cancer history with strangers. I just don’t want to be that young mother with cancer.”
We reviewed her medical history, the details of her pathology, her prior treatment and current endocrine therapy.
“How ar...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - March 13, 2014 Category: Family Physicians Tags: Physician Cancer Source Type: blogs
