“Breakthrough” pain, a transitory exacerbation of pain that has been generally stable, can be unpredictable and can escalate rapidly in patients with cancer. Oral opioid agents are not always the answer because they may act too slowly. A nasal morphine-chitosan solution might be a fast, reliable, convenient way to tame breakthrough pain, say British researchers [...]
A baby aspirin taken daily reduces the risk of recurring polyps in patients with advanced adenomas or colorectal cancer, researchers reported at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. Their study of 1,121 patients had an unexpected finding: the lower dose (80 mg) had a greater preventive effect, reducing the risk of [...]
A vaccine that protects against human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16), the virus that causes cervical cancer, produces antibodies against HPV16 at the site where cervical cancer develops—a promising indication of the vaccine’s effectiveness. Because antibody levels appear to decrease around the time of ovulation, however, the vaccine might be less effective during that time. A vaccine [...]
Estrogen-progestin combination therapy (Prempro™, Wyeth), which was recommended for many years to treat the symptoms of menopause, also appears to make mammograms less reliable or more difficult to read and may delay the diagnosis of breast cancer. Findings from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) in 2003 prompted millions of American women to discontinue hormone replacement [...]
Millennium Pharmaceuticals has announced the FDA’s approval of bortezomib (VelcadeTM) for patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least two prior courses of therapy and have demonstrated disease progression. Myeloma is the second most common cancer of the blood, responsible for approximately 1% of all cancers and 2% of all cancer deaths. A proteasome [...]
A chemotherapy cocktail that contains docetaxel (Taxotere®, Aventis) has shown promise in improving survival rates for women with early-stage breast cancer while reducing the likelihood of recurrence. Researchers presented their findings at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held from December 2-6, 2003. In a study of almost 1,500 women, 87% of those who were [...]
Letrozole (Drug Femara®, Novartis) has been shown to lower the risk of return of hormone-dependent breast cancer by 43% in older women who have already taken tamoxifen, a weak synthetic version of estrogen. This international study, coordinated by the National Cancer Institute of Canada Clinical Trials Group in Kingston, Ontario, was stopped early (halfway through) [...]
