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Cigarette smoke carcinogens: they hurt HER more than HIM

May 5, 2009 by Raquel Billiones  
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lips_with_smokeHealth problems and outcomes can vary depending on gender. Men and women can have different susceptibility to certain diseases. Several recent studies indicate that women are more susceptible to carcinogens in cigarette smoke than men.

Swiss researchers followed up 683 lung cancer patients who have been referred to a cancer center between 2000 and 2005. The results showed that female cancer patients tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than their male counterparts.

According to lead researcher Dr Martin Frueh

“Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens.”

When people are asked what the leading cause of cancer death among women in the US is, the reply is usually breast cancer. However, the correct answer is actually lung cancer. Lung cancer used to be considered a “man’s disease.” However, since smoking became popular among women, the incidence of lung cancer among women has dramatically increased.

Irish researchers, however, report a silver lining to the cloud of lung cancer. It seems that women have better outcomes than men after surgical removal of lung tumors. The researchers studied 640 patients whose non-small-cell lung cancer was surgically removed over a 10-year period, 239 of whom were women. They found that median survival after surgery was 2.1 years for men, and 4.7 years for women.

Apparently, lung cancer is not the only evidence of women’s vulnerability to the adverse effects of cigarette smoke. American researchers reported last year that cigarette smoke carcinogens also cause colorectal cancer and that women are more susceptible than men. The study followed up 2,707 patients who had colonoscopy between 1999 and 2006.The patients’ average age was 57 years. The study looked at the extent of tobacco exposure, which was expressed in terms of “pack years ” calculated by multiplying the packs of cigarettes smoked per day by the number of smoking years.

According to lead researcher Dr. Joseph Anderson

“While men and women shared a similar two-fold risk for developing significant colorectal neoplasia, women required less tobacco exposure in pack years than men to have an increase in colorectal cancer risk.”

According to the National Cancer Institute, cigarette smoke contains more 4,000 chemicals. More than 60 of these are classified as carcinogenic. The aforementioned studies only looked at the effects of carcinogens on the smokers. It is also a well-known fact that second hand or environemental smoke passes on some of these carcinogens to non-smokers.

 Why women are more susceptible to carcinogens in cigarette smoke is not so clearly understood. However, it is something that should be taken seriously.

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Know your carcinogens: Radon

February 4, 2009 by Raquel Billiones  
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Resource post for February

January was National Radon Action Month. I must apologize for missing that opportunity to post something on radon. However, it is never too late to take action against radon, any day, any month, anytime of the year.

But what is radon?

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless -and is carcinogenic. This means you can’t really know it is there but this carcinogen is the leading cause of lung cancer deaths among nonsmokers in America and claims the lives of about 20,000 Americans each year, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Radon is released when uranium, a naturally-existing radioactive chemical in soil, rocks and water decays naturally and gets into the air we breathe. The link between lung cancer and radon was first observed in miners who were exposed to the gas underground. However, high amounts of radon can also be found above the ground. A radon concentration level of 4 pCi/L is considered to be hazardous to our health.

How do you get exposed to radon?

Radon exposure can happen anywhere - in offices, schools, and yes - at home. And because home is where people spend most of their time, that is also the place where radon exposure is the greatest. The closer a room is to the ground, the higher is the risk for radon to seep inside. That is why the EPA and the Surgeon General recommend that all homes below the third floor should be tested for radon. Basements are especially at risk.

Radon also occurs in ground water, such as wells and water supplies using ground water. However, research has shown that your risk of lung cancer from breathing radon in air is much larger than your risk of stomach cancer from swallowing water with radon in it.

Radon is found in all 50 states of the US but with varying levels. The EPA has a map showing radon potential zones. You can check out the potential radon levels of your state in the EPA site.

How do you check for the presence of radon in your home?

Unless you test for it, there is no way of telling how much radon is present in a building. The EPA recommends that each home be tested for radon. Radon test kits are available commercially and are usually easy to use. Radon testing can be done two ways, namely:

What happens if your home tests positive for radon?

The EPA recommends that a short-term test be performed first. If the radon levels is 4 pCi/L or more, then a second short-term test or a long-term term test is necessary. If subsequent tests show persistent high levels of radon, it doesn’t mean to say that the house is completely worthless and unliveable. There are radon reduction systems which can reduce radon levels in a building to acceptable levels, even up to 99%. The most common method is some of a ventilator pipe and fan system which sucks out the radon from the building and releases it outside. It also helps to seal cracks in the floor and walls and other opening where radon can possibly seep through. Other systems, however, may be necessary depending on the structure and design of the house.

Even if the radon levels in your home have been successful reduced to acceptable levels, it is advisable to test for radon before buying or renting a home or building to avoid radon problems.

National Radon Action Month

The EPA has recommended four things you can do during National Radon Action Month which are however valid anytime of the year.

The International Radon Project

Radon testing is common in the US and other developed countries but not in many other parts of the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) launched the International Radon Project in 2005. Through a network of partner agencies of member countries, WHO will “collect and analyse information on radon risk, radon policies, radon mitigation and prevention as well as risk communication.”

For more information about radon, check out the following links:

Picture credits: EPA, International Radon Project, Stock.xchng

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John Updike succumbs to cancer at age 76

January 27, 2009 by Raquel Billiones  
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The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for Fiction John Updike died on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 from lung cancer, according to Associated Press. He was 76. He is described as a “prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire.” His most famous works were the Rabbit series (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest) and The Witches of Eastwick which was made into a movie and a musical play.

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November Resource Post: Lung Cancer Awareness Month

November 3, 2008 by Raquel Billiones  
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November is International Lung Cancer Awareness Month. And I am greatly honored to start my post in this blog with this very relevant event.

During this month, all over the world, advocacy groups, medical associations and people from all walks of life are organizing activities with the aim of stepping up awareness about of lung cancer.

According to the Lung Cancer Alliance

Lung Cancer Awareness Month (LCAM) is a national campaign dedicated to increasing attention to lung cancer issues. By organizing rallies, distributing educational material, holding fund-raising events, contacting Congress, and speaking to the media, those involved in LCAM bring much-needed support and attention to a disease that each year kills more people than breast, prostate, colon and pancreas cancers combined.

Some of the activities are listed below.

United States

Lung Cancer walks and runs

What better way to show your support than to participate in a walk or run. Your participation will not only be supporting the lung cancer awareness cause, it will also be good for your health. A couple of walks and runs have already been organized last weekend including CancerCare’s 6th Annual Lung Cancer Walk in Woodbury, New York last Sunday. However, some more are being planned on the coming weekends of this month.

Cocktails and dinners

Workshops and fairs

Other events

Europe

In the UK several charity organizations formed a coalition called Lung Cancer Awareness Month Working Group. These organizations work to raise lung cancer awareness during the Lung Cancer Awareness Month every November. Some of the members of the coalition are listed below. Please check their websites for this month’s activities.

Also take note that schedules of events sometimes can change at short notice. Please contact the organizers for confirmation.

Do you know of any events I’ve missed? Please drop me a line!

In the meantime, as we welcome the first snow and frost and suffer the first coughs and colds of this season, let us turn our thoughts to those who are or have been affected by lung cancer in one way or another.

Photo credits: stockxchng

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No more excuses. No more lung cancer

September 29, 2008 by Tina Radcliffe  
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These are the the promises of the Lung Cancer Alliance, the only national non-profit organization dedicated solely to patient support and advocacy for people living with lung cancer and people at risk for the disease.

Hall of Fame Orioles’ Shortstop, Cal Ripken, Jr. is the honorary spokesperson for the Lung Cancer Alliance, joining forces with the organization in the Face in the Fight campaign. Ripkin is working with the Alliance to help reverse the stigma surrounding the disease. It isn’t about blame but about support and compassion.

Read more

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Lung Cancer Deaths in Non Smokers

September 9, 2008 by Tina Radcliffe  
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WebMD today shared the results of an American Cancer Society research study that showed that the mortality incidence in men is higher than women in lung cancer among non smokers. While there are no clear answers as to why, the following information was noted:

  • Men died more from lung cancer than did women in all age and racial groups studied.
  • Women and men 40 years old and older had similar rates of lung cancer, when the figures were standardized.
  • African-Americans — and Asians living in Korea and Japan — had higher death rates from lung cancer than did people of European extraction.
  • There were no time trends seen when researchers compared lung cancer rates and death rates among U.S. women ages 40 to 69 during the 1930s to nonsmoking women of today’s population.
  • Women in East Asia had higher and more variable lung cancer rates than did women in other areas of the world where women don’t smoke very much.

Lung Cancer Facts From The American Cancer Society:

Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women. There will be an estimated 161,840 deaths from lung cancer (90,810 among men and 71,030 among women) in 2008, accounting for around 29% of all cancer deaths. More people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.

Risk Factors for Lung Cancer From Mayo Clinic:

  • Tobacco use
  • Second Hand Smoke Exposure
  • Sex: Females (possibly due to estrogen) have a greater risk
  • Exposure to Radon
  • Exposure to Asbestos
  • Family History
  • Excessive Alcohol Use

What About That Second Hand Smoke?

Live with a smoker? Your risk of lung cancer increases by twenty to thirty percent. And–more than 3,000 people die each year from exposure to second hand smoke.

Need more facts? See the National Cancer Institute Fact Sheet

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Arthritis Drug Celebrex Maybe Beneficial Against Lung Cancer

June 4, 2008 by Gloria Gamat  
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Celebrex - a widely prescribed pain killer for people with arthritis - is in the limelight recently because it has been found to reduce the levels of lung cancer biomarkers.

The last cox-2 inhibitor in the U.S. market, Celebrex (celecoxib) - a product of Pfizer - is one of the most common NSAID (non-steroidal antinflammatory drug).

CELEBREX is an NSAID that relieves arthritis pain, stiffness, and inflammation. For many people, just one 200-mg dose provides 24-hour relief. CELEBREX has never been taken off the market; on average, more than 1 million prescriptions are filled for CELEBREX each month.

During the ASCO Annual Meeting on Sunday, researchers reported that Celebrex may reduce levels of a biomarker indicating risk for lung cancer.

According to Dr. Shakun Malik, director of the lung cancer program at Georgetown’s Lombardi Cancer Center, in Washington, D.C.:

“This is a very early study. It hasn’t shown any effect on actual lung cancer. All it is showing is that it affects biomarkers. The hypothesis is that if biomarkers are affected, it will help, but we haven’t shown that as of yet.”

Yes indeed, maybe too early to tell whether Celebrex will be beneficial in lung cancer, but at least it is good to know the effects of an NSAID and COX-2 inhbitor to lung cancer biomarkers. Maybe if the mechanism are interrelated, then perhaps arthritis research can learn from cancer research in its quest for better arthritis drugs.

The cox-2 enzyme is expressed in both precancerous lesions in lung tissue, as well as in lung cancer, and it has an inflammatory aspect that can stimulate more cell growth within the lung.

This study involved more than 200 patients, all of whom had a history (current or prior) of a greater than 20-pack-years cigarette habit. All participants underwent biopsies at the opening of the study, at three months and again at six months.

They were then randomized to take either Celebrex or a placebo for three months, after which they either continued on that course or switched to the other arm.

Over three months, high-dose Celebrex (400 milligrams twice a day) did reduce expression levels of Ki-67, as well as the cox-2 enzyme and a third biomarker, NF-kappa-B.

Read more from the US News and World Report.

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Where Do We Stand in the War on Cancer? The Biggest Advances in 2007

January 14, 2008 by Lesly Maranan  
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During his 1970 inaugural address, American President Richard Nixon declared a War on Cancer. Promising to allocate at least $100 million in funding to investigate the causes for what was then the second-leading cause of death in the United States, Nixon followed through in 1971 by signing the National Cancer Act. Key objectives of this act included infusing basic sciences research funding, ramping up clinical trials and making the National Cancer Institute a free-standing body under the National Institutes of Health.

Nearly forty years later, physicians and scientists are making great strides in better understanding the etiology, management and treatment in all forms of cancer. Recently, the American Society for Clinical Oncology released a report entitled, Clinical Cancer Advances 2007: Major Research Advances in Cancer Treatment, Prevention, and Screening. This annual review, which is available as a .pdf, podcast, and slideshow at the People Living With Cancer website, includes the following highlights: 

Primary Liver Cancer Patients Get the Option for Systemic Treatment: Until recently, surgical techniques were the first line of treatment in liver cancer patients because response to chemotherapy was so poor. In 2007, results of a large study showed that advanced liver cancer using sorafenib (Nevaxar), a targeted chemotherapeutic, lived 44 percent longer than patients who did not. Read more

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Natural Cancer Killers Take off During Flu Season: Cancer Research Roundup

November 9, 2007 by Lesly Maranan  
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Here’s a quick glance at a few interesting cancer research studies that have come out recently, edited here for your weekend reading pleasure — enjoy!

Transplanting killer cells into cancer patients: Apparently, there are some people just aren’t prone to getting cancer due to a higher than normal healthy stock of immune system soldiers called granulocytes. Wake Forest University-based Dr. Zheng Cuit and his colleagues are looking to see if they can transplant some of those natural born killer cells into cancer patients — um, as long as it’s not flu season.

Average cancer-killing ability appeared to be lower in adults over the age of 50 and even lower in people with cancer. It also fell when people were stressed, and at certain times of the year.

“Nobody seems to have any cancer-killing ability during the winter months from November to April,” says Cui, who presented preliminary results at the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence meeting in Cambridge, UK, earlier this month.

See “‘Cancer-resistant’ people lend out their killer cells“ for more.

Looks like access to better diagnostic technologies doesn’t get people to the doctor any sooner:  A new paper published in The Journal of the American College of Surgeons finds that individuals diagnosed with colorectal and lung cancer who live in cities often present in later stages than their counterparts in less urban areas.

“The proportion of urban patients presenting with metastatic cancer is alarming,” said Ian Paquette, MD at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH. “This study highlights the need for better screening efforts for colorectal cancer and the need to develop an effective screening program for people at high risk for lung cancer.”

This finding is contrary to the common assumption that rural patients with cancer present at a later stage of disease in comparison with urban patients.

Read more at “Study reveals differences in cancer stage presentation between rural and urban patients.”

Take a break this weekend — your body may thank you.  A recent study headed by Dr. Yonghua Yang at MCG Cancer Center has recently helped expose how environmental stress can contribute to the incidence of cancer.

This fundamental finding about the relationship between stress and cancer opens the door for treatments that increase SENP1 activity, making it easier for cells that are becoming cancerous to die, says Dr. Yang, first author on a paper published in the November issue of Nature Cell Biology.

“This is one of the things that makes cancer cells so durable, one way they survive so well,” says Dr. Yang. “We want to see if we can block that process and make cells die.”

Find out more information at ”Relationship between environmental stress and cancer elucidated.”

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Smoking is BAD for you?

November 1, 2007 by Lesly Maranan  
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I know that I’m not saying anything new with this post, but after reading an recent article answering the question “Did the Marlboro Man Die of Lung Cancer?”, I had to wonder if there was anyone else out there aware of the sharp, poetic irony associated with the death of not one, but two men who played the role of the Marlboro Man in ads for Marlboro cigarettes. Didn’t they get the memo that smoking is bad?

To be fair, at least thirteen men have played the Marlboro Man throughout the years and only two have died of lung cancer: Wayne McClaren in 1992, and David McClean in 1995. And also to be fair, at the time these gentlemen began their stints on the Marlboro Man ad campaign, cigarettes were not yet associated with a high risk of cancer development and more importantly, smoking was supposed to be cool.

Fortunately, times have changed, and we are now fully aware of the deadly risks associated with tobacco use and cancer. A quick search on the American Cancer Society web site states that smoking is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the US alone, and that tobacco use accounts for about 30% of all cancer deaths and 87% of all lung cancer deaths.

Anyway, back to the whole Marlboro Man ad campaign: what a racket that was! That was quite possibly the most genius ad campaign ever conceived. What woman has not dreamed of a rough and rugged cowboy, noticeable stubble enhancing an unbelievably handsome-as-sin face, wearing chaps and riding up on a stallion complete with a saddle made for two? This was a brilliant advertising strategy. Who cares if this guy is lighting up? He’s smoking hot! (Okay, that was bad — I admit it.) Read more

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NOTE: The contents in this blog are for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as medical advice, diagnosis, treatment or a substitute for professional care. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional before making changes to any existing treatment or program. Some of the information presented in this blog may already be out of date.