Cancer Watch Autumn 2011

Autumn 2011
Hyperthermia breakthrough treatment for breast cancer
Doctors at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden are pioneering a new treatment for breast cancer which kills breast cancer cells by heating them up. The procedure uses a targeted electrical current to heat tumours to 70-90c, under local anaesthetic. The treatment can take as little as 10 minutes. Hyperthermia as a way of killing cancer cells was developed several decades ago after scientists noted that sometimes when cancer patients developed a fever their cancer went into remission. Hyperthermia treatment maybe full body, or localised. The use of localised hyperthermia is called Ablation. We have a full report on our web site (www.canceractive.com).
At CANCERactive we have been almost a lone voice over the past 8 years in supporting a similar localised Ablation (HIFU) for Prostate cancer. With HIFU, ultrasound is used to heat solid tumours and ’melt them away’. An overnight stay in hospital is all that is required. Although there has been huge resistance to HIFU in the traditional UK cancer establishment, a recent report in icon magazine about the work of Professor Mark Emberton in London should now convince patients of its effectiveness in treating solid, localised tumours with minimal fuss, and minimal side-effects. Ablation is also used around the world for cancers in the kidneys, bone and liver, where they are solid and non-metastasised.
The new treatment for breast cancer has been used successfully by doctors on over 80 patients. Three separate studies have now shown the therapy to be safe and effective. All patients having the treatment have been monitored for two years to date and none has had a recurrence. The treatment is known as Preferential Radio-Frequency Ablation. Dr Karin Leifland, the radiologist overseeing the research, says the technology could become an alternative to surgery for women with early stage breast cancer.

According to Leifland, ’it is like boiling an egg’.  The tumour is heated to such an extent that the cancer cells are killed off, while leaving the surrounding tissue unharmed.  The treatment is suitable mainly for women with tumours which are smaller than 2 cm and are contained in a single lump.  There is no pain or scar afterwards and within minutes of the treatment, women can leave the hospital and go home or back to work.  It is also much cheaper than surgically removing a lump.

Within five years, this could be a mainstream treatment. The actual treatment is not expensive, although the scanning required to check women afterwards particularly MRI scans which are needed because they give much greater detail than other types of scans are costly. However, it is still a cheaper option than surgery as the woman does not need to stay in hospital overnight or have a general anaesthetic.
On our web site (www.canceractive.com) readers will find an article, ’Does Surgery Spread Cancer?’ A number of research studies suggest that it does and several nurses wrote to us after reading the report noting that sometimes operations to remove tumours in the breast seemed to result in a speeding up of metastases. This new treatment seems to avoid this complication completely.
Radiotherapy damage may be prevented by Flaxseed
Eating flaxseed could help protect patients from the damaging effects of radiotherapy on healthy cells. A 24 June 2011 report in BioMed Central shows that dietary flaxseed can protect against the harmful effects of radiation. The cancer studied was small cell lung cancer, or ED-SCLC. The study was conducted by the Pearlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and used mice. Not only did flaxseed reduce radiation damage, but it was shown to repair damage after radiotherapy ceased. A clinical trial on humans is now proposed. The Flaxseed-fed mice survived doses of radiation that killed the control group.
Amongst other benefits, flaxseed is known to help oxygenate the blood through its short-chain omega-3 content.
...and radiotherapy damage can be lessened by taking probiotics
According to researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, radio-therapy patients who take probiotics prior to treatment may experience less intestinal damage. The research, published in the online journal Gut, looked at the effects of radiation on mice. Those who had been given a probiotic mix that included Lactobacillus rhamnosus before exposure, were protected against radioactive damage in their intestines.
Dr. William F. Stenson and colleague Dr. Nicholas V.Costrini stated "If the epithelium breaks down as the result of radiation, the bacteria that normally reside in the intestine can be released, travel through the body and cause serious problems such as sepsis. The dose of probiotic was only moderate in humans it would equate to the amount commonly found in a typical serving of yogurt.
New Prostate Treatment Trial stopped early on success
Doctors at London’s Royal Marsden Hospital have trialed a new and powerful alpha radiation drug and found that prostate cancer patients ived longer experiencing less pain and side effects. The drug trial of 922 people has been so successful it has been stopped early.
Lead researcher Dr Chris Parker described developments as "a significant step forward", while Cancer Research UK said it was a very important and promising discovery.
Radiation has been used to treat tumours for many years aiming to damage the genetic code inside cancerous cells. Alpha particles arethe big, bulky, bruisers of the radiation world. Dr Parker told the BBC:".. more damaging. It takes one, two, three hits to kill a cancer cellcompared with thousands of hits for beta particles.
Alpha particles also do less damage to surrounding tissue. He added: "They have such a tiny range, a few millionths of a metre. So we can be sure that the damage is being done where it should be. In 90% of patients with advanced prostate cancer, the cancer has spread to the bone. No successful orthodox treatments exist. The alpha particles from radium-223 chloride, act like calcium and stick to bone. Half of the patients were given the radium-223 chloride drug alongside traditional chemotherapy, while the other patients received chemotherapy and a dummy pill.
The death rate was 30% lower in the group taking radium-223.Those patients survived for 14 months on average compared to 11 months in thedummy group.
The trial was abandoned as "it would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment to those taking placebo", said Dr Parker.
Melanoma skin cancer increases not correct
A new study in the British Journal of Dermatology (over aperiod from 1991 to 2004) shows that, whilst there were nearly 4,000 cases of melanoma, with an annual increase of 9.39 to 13.91 cases per 100,000 per year,the increased incidence was almost entirely due to minimal, stage 1 disease.’There was no change in the combined incidence of the other stages of thedisease, and the overall mortality only increased from 2.16 to 2.54 cases per100,000 per year We therefore conclude that the large increase in reported incidence is likely to be due to diagnostic drift, which classifies benign lesions as stage 1 melanoma.
The report goes on to look at the stage 1 lesions and concludes most have nothing to do with sun damage.
(Ed: In other words, people are being diagnosed with melanoma even when they have a minimal, often non-cancerous lesion. The researchers called these extra cases ’an artifact’! They also added that themajority of lesions do not correspond with sites damaged by the sun. As we told people in our Safe Sun campaign launch 18 months ago, most of the ’sun causes melanoma/skin cancer scaremongering is just junk science. Melanoma patientshave low vitamin D levels implying a lack of sunshine; they have higher oestrogen levels, for example because they take the contraceptive pill; and there arechemicals in some sun creams that are known to be photoactive carcinogens andoestrogen mimics (xenoestrogens). It is time to sort out the mythology once and for all).