Although the childhood pneumococcal conjugate vaccine has been a boon in reducing the incidence invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD), the public and the medical community must not get complacent, as non-vaccine strains, some resistant to antibiotics, are on the rise, say scientists at a meeting June 3 in Boston.
People with advanced colon cancer who have smoked cigarettes or used other tobacco products for many years may have an increased risk that their colon cancer will return, according to research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), May 30-June 3, in Chicago.
Patients treated for locally advanced head and neck cancer may respond better to treatment with the addition of cetuximab to chemotherapy, according to a University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) phase II study. In the study, 39 patients with stages 3 or 4 head and neck cancer were treated initially with a combination of docetaxel, cisplatin and cetuximab, after which they received radiation therapy and additional cisplatin and cetuximab. Cetuximab, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in March 2006 and also known as Erbitux, is often prescribed for metastatic colorectal cancer and is used in conjunction with radiation therapy to treat squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck. This is the first time it has been used in combination with docetaxel and cisplatin as induction therapy.
For the past 70 years the treatment of choice for advanced, metastatic prostate cancer has been androgen-deprivation therapy. That is, the suppression of circulating testosterone -- the hormone that fuels prostate-cancer growth -- via surgical castration (orchiectomy) or medical castration with testosterone-blocking drugs. While such therapy buys time for patients, it is not a cure, as inevitably the cancer becomes resistant to the androgen deprivation and continues to grow.
The interaction of sex, age and ethnicity has a significant impact on overall survival in metastatic colorectal cancer (MCRC) patients, a study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) and USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center suggests.
A gene therapy invented at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center is the first to succeed in a U.S. phase III clinical trial for cancer, as announced May 28 at the American Society of Gene Therapy annual meeting in Boston.
Cancer patients should avoid the routine use of antioxidant supplements during radiation and chemotherapy because the supplements may reduce the anticancer benefits of therapy, researchers concluded in a commentary published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
