Wednesday, February 17, 2010

plus 3, Study: Aspirin helps in the treatment of breast cancer - WBIR

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plus 3, Study: Aspirin helps in the treatment of breast cancer - WBIR

Study: Aspirin helps in the treatment of breast cancer - WBIR

Posted: 17 Feb 2010 04:37 AM PST

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Studies have touted the benefits of aspirin to prevent heart disease and cancer.

Now there's evidence that aspirin may also prevent cancer already in the body from spreading.

A Harvard review of 4,000 breast cancer survivors finds a simple aspirin can cut the chance of that cancer spreading or death by 50 percent.

"If it bears out, then this might be one more thing that women with breast cancer can do to live longer and better," said Harvard doctor Michelle Holmes.

In fact, women who took two to five aspirins a week lowered their risk of metastasis 60 percent and death by 71 percent.

"That would seem to imply that there really was some sort of anti-inflammatory effect going on to help these women to live longer," Dr. Holmes said.

Researchers found similar benefits from drugs called "nsaids" like ibuprofen.

Dr. Wayne Frederick heads Howard University's Cancer Center.

He calls this study promising.

"I absolutely would be interested in having my patients take aspirin if this, in truth, prevents them from dying from recurrence," Fredrick said.

But that's a long way off.

Scientists say they need more research to prove whether a simple aspirin can help women live longer.

This was an observational study which means patients reported how much aspirin they took.

Scientists will need to conduct a large clinical trial to verify aspirin?s benefits

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Aspirin may help prevent return of breast cancer - USA Today

Posted: 17 Feb 2010 12:05 AM PST

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The study is the first to find that regular aspirin users had a lower risk of dying from breast cancer, according to the study, published online today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Aspirin may help control cancer by fighting inflammation, says study author Michelle Holmes of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. Breast cancers produce more inflammatory chemicals than normal breast cells. Lab tests show that aspirin keeps breast tumor cells from growing and invading other tissue.

A study in August also found that aspirin offered a potential benefit against colon cancer.

Yet neither study proves that aspirin keeps cancers in check, Holmes says. That's because doctors in each study merely followed patients for several years, noting which patients developed cancer and, of those, which took aspirin. So it's possible that something other than aspirin controlled their tumors, Holmes says.

For proof, doctors would need to conduct a "gold standard" trial in which doctors randomly assign one group of patients to take a aspirin, then compare their progress with patients randomly assigned to a placebo, says Eric Jacobs, a scientist at the American Cancer Society.

Until then, breast cancer survivors should be cautious about aspirin and consult their doctors before taking it, Holmes says. She notes that patients who are being treated for cancer usually are told to avoid aspirin because it can act like a blood thinner. That could be a problem for women who are having radiation and chemotherapy, which also lower the number of blood cells, she says.

Even healthy people can develop serious gastrointestinal bleeding from aspirin, Jacobs says.

And Holmes says no one should try to take aspirin instead of conventional cancer therapy. The nurses in the study had all completed their cancer treatment, Holmes says. The study didn't measure the dose of aspirin women took.

But Holmes notes that many of the more than 2 million American breast cancer survivors already take a daily low-dose aspirin to reduce their risk of heart attack.

"If a woman who had breast cancer is already taking aspirin, she might take comfort in knowing that perhaps she is also helping to keep her breast cancer from coming back," Holmes says.

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Australian scientists find breast cancer link - Investors Business Daily

Posted: 15 Feb 2010 09:00 PM PST

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Flower power may cut resistance to breast cancer drug tamoxifen - New Kerala

Posted: 16 Feb 2010 11:01 PM PST

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Washington, Feb 17 : Researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center claim tamoxifen, the world's most prescribed breast cancer agent, along with a compound found in the flowering plant feverfew may prevent initial or future resistance to the drug.

The experts reported the finding online Feb. 12 in FASEB.

"A solution to tamoxifen resistance is sorely needed, and if a strategy like this can work, it would make a difference in our clinical care of breast cancer," says the study's lead investigator, Robert Clarke, PhD, DSc, a professor of oncology and physiology and biophysics at Lombardi, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).

Clarke added that the purified research chemical they tested, parthenolide, a derivative of feverfew, is being tested by other scientists as treatment for a variety of cancers, as well as other health conditions. Feverfew has long been a staple of natural medicine, and is particularly known for its effects on headaches and arthritis.

"The chemical clearly has potential, and we ought to be able to figure out fairly quickly if it can help solve tamoxifen's resistance problem," Clarke says.

Tamoxifen is a treatment of choice for breast cancer that is estrogen receptor positive, meaning that the hormone estrogen drives cancer growth. Most newly diagnosed breast cancers fall into that category. But about half of these cancers do not initially respond to tamoxifen, which is designed to block the hormone from binding to the cell's protein receptor, and many patients that do respond are at risk for developing resistance and cancer relapse.

--ANI

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