Kidney, or Renal, Cancer

This kidney cancer overview and associated articles will give you everything you need to know to help you increase your personal odds of beating kidney cancer - the symptoms, the diagnosis and all the latest options on treatments and therapies - from cancer drugs and chemotherapy to surgery, radiotherapy and complementary therapies; including all the very latest alternative and new therapies and information. We will even cover the causes.

This article has been compiled by Chris Woollams from worldwide research and expert sources*

Read the whole article or just go to the elements you wish to read by clicking on the title below.

• Your Kidneys
• The Causes of Kidney Cancer
• Different types of Kidney Cancer
• Symptoms
• Diagnosis
• Treatment options
• What next?
• Building an integrated programme

Your Kidneys

Two broad bean-shaped kidneys, each the size of a tennis ball, lie behind the intestines with one either side of the spine. A large renal artery takes blood to each., so that they can filter the blood, removing waste materials as urine, which passes down the ureter to the bladder, and from there down the urethra to the outside world.
The newly cleaned blood then passes through the renal vein and back to the heart.
The kidneys do not just clean your blood. They also produce certain hormones like calctriol (which helps regulate blood calcium levels), erythropoietin (which helps stimulate red cell production in the bone marrow) and rennin (which helps regulate blood pressure).
Obviously the filtration of toxins in the blood, lays the kidneys open to toxic damage.  

The Causes of Kidney Cancer

There are several factors that appear to increase risks:

• Cigarette smoking - Several studies have shown that long-term smoking doubles risk; and it is thought that one third of kidney cancers are associated with smoking.
• Being overweight - There seems a rough correlation that risk increases with excess weight, and especially obesity. This is probably due to hormone imbalances and the propensity of fat, which is an excellent solvent) to store toxins.
• High Blood Pressure There is some indication of increased risk.
• Kidney diseases People with kidney disease, especially those needing dialysis, have a higher risk of kidney cancer.
• Age most cases occur in the over 60s. The disease is rare before that age.
• Chemical Carcinogens Chemicals such as asbestos, cadmium and lead are indicated, often from the workplace. Organic solvents and pesticides are appearing on the radar too. And working in the steel and coal industries has also been linked to an increased risk.
• Some Drugs For example, some over-the-counter painkillers have been linked to increased risk, especially where they have been used long-term.
• Caffeine Excess intake of caffeine has been linked to the disease.

There has been some discussion over a causal role for fat, red meat and processed foods, but research appearing n the December 3, 2008 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute disproved this.

Kidney cancer is twice as likely in males, than females.

Return to top

Different types of Kidney Cancer

Kidney cell cancer is not a single disease but is in fact made up of a variety of cell types with differing clinical outcomes. A family history of kidney cancer increases risk of developing the disease, particularly among individuals who have a sibling diagnosed with kidney cancer.
Genetic, hereditary factors are important. In several cancers genetic predisposition can be influenced by chemical toxins (including hormones) and this is true for kidney cancer. For example, a faulty gene lies behind von Hippel-Lindau disease(VHL), Birt-Hogg-Dube (BHD)syndrome, hereditary papillary renal carcinoma (HPRC) and hereditary leiomyomatosis and renal cell cancer (HLRCC). Kidney cancers that develop because of inherited faulty genes are also more likely to happen at a younger age and are more likely to cause several tumours, which can affect both kidneys.
It is hoped that understanding the different forms of the disease will allow, eventually, for more targeted treatments.
By far the most common type of kidney cancer is renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which accounts for 90% of all kidney cancers. This is a cancer that forms in the lining of very small tubes in the kidney that filter the blood and remove waste products. Other forms you may have are renal pelvis carcinoma (cancer that forms in the center of the kidney where urine collects) or Wilms tumour, which is a type of kidney cancer that usually develops in children under the age of 5.
Kidney cancer accounts for 3 per cent of all UK cancers and is increasing at around 2 per cent per year over the last 30 years.
One of the problems with kidney cancer is that there are usually no symptoms until the cancer is well developed. This makes prognosis poor and most orthodox treatments seek to extend survival times rather than claim to provide cures.
If the cancer is detected in its early stages surgery or HIFU may be enough. They are used on a tumour within the kidney.

Return to top

Symptoms

• Blood in the urine this may be only occasional. However, blood in the urine does not mean you have cancer it could be caused by inflammation, kidney styones or simple infections.
• Pain in the side or mid/lower back; a lump in the abdomen.
• Anaemia and tiredness.
• Fever/sweating.
• Sudden weight loss.
• Secondary hormone effects such as increased blood pressure, excess production of red blood cells, and increased blood calcium levels (resulting in thirst, sickness, tiredness, and constipation).

Return to top

Diagnosis

Initially, blood tests, urine tests and liver function tests can be used. A painless ultrasound can usually detect a kidney cancer. Also an intravenous dye and then an X-Ray may be used.
If a kidney cancer is diagnosed, you will be sent for further tests to evaluate the aggressivity of the cancer (the Grade) and to see if it has spread (the Stage). Doctors need to know how much of the kidney is damaged, how many tumours there are, and if there is spread to adjacent lymph nodes or further afield. These tests can include:
CT (CAT) scans - where detailed pictures of areas inside the body, are taken from different angles. The pictures are made by a computer linked to an x-ray machine. A dye may be injected into a vein or swallowed to help the organs or tissues show up more clearly.
MRI tests - (magnetic resonance imaging) where a magnetic imaging system linked to a computer makes a series of detailed pictures of areas inside the body.
Biopsy where a sample of tissue cells is taken so they can be viewed under a microscope by a pathologist to check for signs of cancer. With renal cell cancer, a thin needle is inserted into the tumour and a sample of tissue taken.

Return to top

Treatment options

The orthodox options are

1. Surgery removal of the whole of a kidney or just the tumour within. This may be through normal surgery or keyhole surgery. Adjacent lymph nodes may be removed if affected. A new alternative where the cancer is confined to the kidney is HIFU a high intensity ultrasound combined with thermal conditioning. This can melt the tumour. You can find out more by clicking this link.
   Sometimes arterial embolisation may be used, especially if the patient is too weak to have surgery. Here a substance is injected into the artery supplying blood to the kidney, so that the blood supply to the infected organ ceases. A tumour deprived of blood should then die.
2. Radiotherapy Radiotherapy is commonly used to treat kidney cancer where there is spread to other areas. Care has to be taken to prevent the radiotherapy beam damaging other organs. You can read how to improve the success of your radiotherapy treatment by clicking this link.
3. Chemotherapy
   Two immunotherapy drugs have been used over the past few years - interferon and interleukin, although the former, interferon, is much more commonly employed. The aim is to stimulate the immune system to kick out the cancer. You can read a personal story of a patient taking interferon by clicking this link.

However, as we covered in icon, when 4 new drugs were turned down by NICE, a leading UK Professor said interferon didnt work very well! (About 75% of the 3,600 people with advanced kidney cancer do not respond well to interferon)
Some work has been tried using vaccines to stimulate the immune system to fight the kidney cancer cells but the most promise comes with a new breed of drugs, called monoclonal antibodies:

• Sutent (sunitinib),
• Avastin (bevacizumab),
• Nexavar (sorafenib)
• Torisel (temsirolimus)

Monoclonal antibodies do only work for a particular targeted group of people. Sometimes there are tests to show if you are someone who would benefit from a particular drug. Professor Peter Littlejohns, the clinical and public health director of Nice, originally said the institute took account of how much extra a new drug would cost to produce an extra year of healthy life. The four kidney drugs cost up to six times the normal NHS limit of about 30,000 a patient per quality-adjusted life year.

For information on your Cancer Drugs and chemotherapy click here.

Return to top

What next?

According to the American National Institute of Cancer Sunitinib has already been linked with heart failure and hypertension. According to Memorial Sloan-Kettering there are better drugs on the way!  A Phase III Clinical Trial on Everolimus has been stopped, so clear was its success (NB: according to the Hospital). Everolimus, a once-daily oral therapy, targets the mTOR protein, which acts as a central regulator of tumour cell division, cell metabolism, and blood vessel growth.

However, the response to these drugs may be none, or just a couple of months increased survival. And again I quote Sloan-Kettering: More than 400 patients participated in this study, all of whom had disease that had progressed with currently available targeted therapies sunitinib and/or sorafenib. Patients were randomised to receive everolimus or placebo. After six months, 26 percent of patients in the everolimus group had disease that had not progressed, compared to only 2 percent of the placebo group. The average difference in progression free survival was four months for everolimus, compared to 1.9 months for the placebo group.
Put another way, after 6 months 74 per cent had a disease that had progressed.

Return to top

Building an integrated programme

Of course, there are other things a person can do. You can try to remove heavy metals from your body: Selenium, chlorella and beneficial bacteria can all help, (There are even clinical trials on beneficial bacteria and their ability to chelate/bind to heavy metals in the body).You can read about all of these in detail on our web site.
You might be thinking about an all-over body treatment like the Gerson Therapy, or the work of Dr Nicholas Gonzalez in New York who has Clinical Trial behind his Diet therapy.
You may want to explore Dietary therapies and nutritional supplements. Indole-3-carbinol has been shown in several research studies to be able to reduce toxicity in cells, including very dangerous dioxins. We have a whole section on our web site on this. Or you may want to find out more about complementary therapies, energy therapies and the like. You can read our kiddies guide on these by clicking this link.
You might also like to read the personal story Never Give Up (click here). It is one womans account of her fight to save her husbands kidneys when he developed cancer.

If you are looking for supplements click on the tab at the top of the page and go to the Natural Selection shop where they have selected the best of the best and you can buy with confidence.

Return to top

The CANCERactive Difference:   Intelligent Information. Independent Voice.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Click here for more details.

Want the latest news on this? Email: