plus 4, Poor countries see troubling rise in breast cancer - The Guardian

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• Poor countries see troubling rise in breast cancer - The Guardian
• Wyeth Gets New Trial in Breast Cancer Case - Courthouse News Service
• Weight Training Boosts Breast Cancer Survivors’ Body Image ... - Redorbit.com
• NASA Technology Might Treat Breast Cancer - OfficialWire
• Phase 3 study of eribulin for locally advanced or metastatic breast ... - Monthly Prescribing Reference

Poor countries see troubling rise in breast cancer - The Guardian Posted: 04 Nov 2009 09:55 AM PST LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) â€" Nurses were training women in rural Mexico to examine their breasts for cancer when one raised her hand to object. If she lost her breast, Harvard public health specialist Felicia Knaul recalls the woman saying, "My man would leave me" â€" and with him, the family's income. International cancer specialists meet this week to plan an assault on a troubling increase of breast cancer in developing countries, where nearly two-thirds of women aren't diagnosed until it has spread through their bodies. Adding to the problem, some worrisome data suggests that breast cancer seems to strike women, on average, about 10 years younger in poor countries than it does in the U.S. No one knows why. "Today in most developing countries you see a huge bulge of young, premenopausal women with breast cancer," says Knaul, who heads Harvard's Global Equity Initiative and was herself diagnosed at age 41 while living in Mexico. "We should help them to know what they have and to fight for their treatment." But from Mexico to Malawi, stigma like Knaul witnessed a few weeks ago may prove as big a barrier as poverty. "One of the trainers said, 'If he'd leave you for that, he's not worth having,'" Knaul says. But she acknowledged that will be a hard message for some women's economic realities. "It's not a trivial consideration," agrees Dr. Lawrence Shulman of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, who is part of a team working to begin cancer care in parts of Africa where "the women are often seen as really either vessels for producing children or as sex slaves." But some success in treating HIV and tuberculosis in those areas has him "hopeful we can make a difference. I don't think it's a pipe dream." Knaul and Shulman on Tuesday were bringing together an international task force of health specialists and prominent charities to begin planning a two-pronged approach. First, train midwives and other rural health providers to perform regular breast exams, using the power of touch in places where mammography machines simply are too expensive. That won't catch the very smallest tumors, but specialists agree it could improve diagnosis dramatically in some areas. Second, the task force will start negotiating lower prices for generic chemotherapy for poor countries, following the same model that has helped transform AIDS care in parts of Africa. You don't need in-country cancer specialists to administer that chemo, says Shulman â€" just a network of oncologists who can provide help or instruction to local health officials by e-mail or phone, as he has advised colleagues in Malawi. Breast cancer long has been considered a cancer mostly of wealthier countries. Indeed, about 192,000 new cases are expected in the U.S. this year, where long-term survival is high thanks in part to good screening. The true prevalence in most developing countries is unknown, because of poor diagnosis and bad record-keeping. But new Harvard research estimates they'll be home to 55 percent of the world's 450,000 expected breast cancer deaths this year. The report predicts the poorest countries will experience a 36 percent jump in breast cancer by 2020. One problem: In wealthy countries, earlier diagnosis can lead to breast-saving surgery instead of breast removal. Even countries like Rwanda and Malawi have clinics that perform mastectomies if patients can travel to the capitals, Shulman says. But few have radiation equipment, making breast-conserving surgery there not an option yet. (He is hunting a radiation unit for Rwanda but says that's in the very earliest stages of planning.) Mexico is a mixed situation, with radiation, other treatments and diagnostic mammography available in some places. That's how Knaul â€" whose husband is a former health minister of Mexico â€" was diagnosed, early enough that mastectomy and chemotherapy give her good odds. But she fumes that while Mexico's poor and rural women often get Pap smears to check for cervical cancer, "no one even suggests they check your breasts" at the same visit. She founded an advocacy group â€" Cancer de Mama â€" to help, noting that Mexico's insurance program for the poor covers breast cancer care but they must get diagnosed first. --- EDITOR'S NOTE â€" Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Wyeth Gets New Trial in Breast Cancer Case - Courthouse News Service Posted: 03 Nov 2009 08:16 AM PST (CN) - Wyeth Pharmaceuticals will get a new trial on punitive damages in the case of an Arkansas woman who got breast cancer after taking hormone-replacement therapy drugs, the 8th Circuit ruled. In the late 1980s, Donna Scroggin began taking Upjohn Co.'s estrogen drug, Ogen, and Provera, a progestin drug, for her menopause symptoms. Her doctor switched her to Wyeth's Premarin and Prempro, an estrogen-progestin combination drug. She was diagnosed with cancer in both breasts in 2000 and had to undergo a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Scroggin sued Wyeth and Upjohn, claiming they failed to warn her of the risks of developing breast cancer from their estrogen and progestin drugs. The trial was divided into two parts: liability and punitive damages. The jury found Wyeth and Upjohn liable and awarded Scroggin $2.75 million in compensatory damages and $27 million in punitive damages. U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson overturned the punitive damages award in July 2008, saying testimony from Scroggin's expert witness, a former Food and Drug Administration official, "should have been excluded" at trial. The St. Louis-based appeals court upheld the compensatory damages award and agreed that Upjohn is not liable for punitive damages. But the three-judge panel also granted Wyeth a new trial on punitive damages. "Scroggin presented sufficient evidence to submit the question of punitive damages to the jury, even without (the expert's) testimony," Judge Wollman wrote. The court noted that Judge Wilson had thoroughly examined the evidence on a piece-by-piece basis, finding that each piece failed to clearly show reckless indifference. "[T]his individualized treatment of the evidence may inadvertently have obscured the full scope of Wyeth's conduct that the evidence collectively portrayed," Wollman said.  The judge added: "A jury could reasonably construe Wyeth's documents as repeated efforts over many years to undermine information and studies that attempted to show a breast cancer link."  This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Weight Training Boosts Breast Cancer Survivors’ Body Image ... - Redorbit.com Posted: 04 Nov 2009 06:49 AM PST Posted on: Wednesday, 4 November 2009, 08:55 CST Results Point to New Ways to Measure – and Improve – Quality of Life Among Survivors In addition to building muscle, weightlifting is also a prescription for self-esteem among breast cancer survivors, according to new University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine research. Breast cancer survivors who lift weights regularly feel better about bodies and their appearance and are more satisfied with their intimate relationships compared with survivors who do not lift weights, according to a new study published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. Survivors' self-perceptions improved with weight lifting regardless of how much strength they gained during the year-long study, or whether they suffered from lymphedema, an incurable and sometimes debilitating side effect of breast surgery. "It looks like weight training is not only safe and may make lymphedema flare ups less frequent, but it also seems help women feel better about their bodies," says senior author Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a member of Penn's Abramson Cancer Center. "The results suggest that the act of spending time with your body was the thing that was important –– not the physical results of strength." The new insights come from a randomized controlled trial that tested the impact of twice-weekly weight lifting for 12 months on survivors' health and emotional status. In the first report from the trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in August, Schmitz and colleagues found that lymphedema sufferers who lifted weights were less likely to experience a worsening of their arm-swelling condition. But the benefits extend further: Survivors who participated in regular weight-lifting during the trial had a 12 percent improvement in their body image and satisfaction with their intimate relationships over the 12 months of the study, compared with a 2 percent improvement reported by the women in the control group of the study. Both groups of women benefited emotionally from the weight lifting in the study, called the Physical Activity and Lymphedema (PAL) trial. Unlike many medical study questionnaires that ask about general quality of life factors, the one used in this study was developed specifically for – and by -- breast cancer survivors. Called the Body Image and Relationship Scale, the questionnaire was developed with the help of survivors who had participated in previous clinical trials. The new data are drawn from questionnaires completed by 234 breast cancer survivors at the beginning and end of the trial. "They told us the basic quality of life questionnaire didn't cover what was important to them," Schmitz says. "They told us what was changing with regular weight lifting and what they cared about, including feeling more proud of their bodies, feeling more comfortable in their own skin, feeling more empowered emotionally because they were more physically powerful, feeling sexier, feeling more like they could wear sleeveless things, feeling more comfortable having people touch their upper bodies, and some of them reported their sex lives improved." To Schmitz's surprise, no such quality of life questionnaire existed when she initiated the PAL trial, so she and her team designed the Body Image and Relationship Scale. "There has been an aching need for this assessment tool, not just here, but internationally," Schmitz says. "The survey has already been translated into five other languages – Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Swedish – and efforts to use it in clinical practice are underway. These are the issues that women have reported that they cared about for a long time but nobody was ever asking them the question." Other study authors included Rebecca M. Speck, Cynthia R. Gross, Julia M. Hormes, Rehana L. Ahmed, Leslie A. Lytle and Wei-Ting Hwang. --- On the Net: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Breast Cancer Research and Treatment More News in this Category This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

NASA Technology Might Treat Breast Cancer - OfficialWire Posted: 04 Nov 2009 01:05 AM PST U.S. scientists say they're trying to determine if a NASA imaging technique can predict radiation therapy tissue damage experienced by breast cancer patients. The Rush University Medical Center and Argonne National Laboratory researchers said the imaging technique -- called three-dimensional thermal tomography -- is used by NASA to inspect the space shuttle. The scientists are examining the utility of the technology for use in radiation oncology. Rush University Professor Dr. Katherine Griem said approximately 80 percent of breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment develop acute skin reactions that range in severity. The study's goal is to determine if the NASA imaging technology can measure the thermal effusivity of skin tissue -- a measure of its ability to exchange heat with its surroundings. "Our initial data with radiation induced skin changes are quite encouraging," said Dr. Alan Coon, chief resident of radiation oncology at Rush and primary author of the study. "In addition to finding decreases in effusivity of the treated areas many days before the development of skin reactions, we have also seen that the magnitude of these decreases varies with the grade of the reactions. This exciting result bodes well for the clinical utility of this technique in predicting the severity of a skin reaction before it occurs." Preliminary study results are being displayed during the American Society for Radiation Oncology's annual meeting this week in Chicago. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

Phase 3 study of eribulin for locally advanced or metastatic breast ... - Monthly Prescribing Reference Posted: 30 Oct 2009 06:22 AM PDT Elitek approved for management of plasma uric acid levels in cancer patients October 19, 2009 Elitek (rasburicase, from sanofi-aventis), a recombinant urate oxidase enzyme, has been approved for the initial management of plasma uric acid (PUA) levels in adult patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and solid tumor malignancies who are receiving anti-cancer therapy expected to result in tumor lysis syndrome (TLS) and subsequent elevations of plasma uric acid. FIRST - BXN Mouthwash compounding kit available September 22, 2009 CutisPharma has expanded its FIRST Mouthwash product line with the introduction of the FIRST - BXN Mouthwash compounding kit. Orphan drug designation granted to Paclical for ovarian cancer April 14, 2009 Oasmia Pharmaceutical was granted orphan drug designation by the FDA for its drug candidate, Paclical (paclitaxel), for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Mozobil approved for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma December 18, 2008 The FDA has approved Mozobil (plerixafor, from Genzyme) injection to be used in combination with granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) to mobilize hematopoietic stem cells to the bloodstream for collection and subsequent autologous transplantation in patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) and multiple myeloma (MM). Vinblastine sulfate shortage October 23, 2008 Bedford and APP Pharmaceuticals have announced a shortage of vinblastine sulfate for injection due to manufacturing delays. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.

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