Increase your personal odds of survival by empowering yourself with the latest news and research on Kidney Cancer, or Renal cancer; news you can use today and incorporate into your integrative cancer treatment programme.
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CONTENTS
Just click on the title below to read the article.
Go to: ’An Overview of Kidney Cancer - causes, symptoms and alternative treatments
2023 Research
2022 Research
2021 Research
2020 Research
2019 Research
2016 Research
Prior Research
2008 Research
2006 Research
2005 Research
Cancer Prevention half can be avoided
According to the World Cancer Research Fund, if Governments just promoted healthy foods and exercise just over one third of cancers would be prevented (http://www.wcrf-uk.org).
The research presented showed that exercise and healthy food can prevent 36 per cent of lung cancers, 39 per cent of breast and pancreatic cancers, over 60 per cent of mouth cancers, 25 per cent of kidney cancers and 45 per cent of colorectal cancers.
Of course, if you take icon regularly, you could prevent even more. We have told you how avoiding EMF’s, mammograms, dairy, chemical hormones, pesticides, certain chemicals in the home and toiletries and personal care products, taking melatonin, selenium, fish oils and vitamin D can all add to this prevention figure further. Oh and there’s a lot more easy to do things too. In every issue.
Child Kidney cancer genetic factors as a cause
Scientists have discovered that defects in certain genes that control growth cause a significant proportion of Wilms Tumour; the most common childhood kidney cancer, according to a study published in the journal Nature Genetics, and undertaken by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research and partly funded by Cancer Research UK.
The study demonstrates for the first time that defects in growth genes can cause Wilms Tumour in otherwise healthy children.
Lead investigator Professor Nazneen Rahman, Professor of Human Genetics at The Institute of Cancer Research said, "This discovery represented a significant step forward in understanding the causes of Wilms Tumour. Children with the growth gene abnormalities face about a 20 per cent risk of developing Wilms Tumour and it is also more likely for these children to develop cancer in both kidneys. Wilms Tumour is very treatable and most children can be cured.’
Researchers have also helped to develop a molecular test for the abnormalities.
In some rare cases, the growth gene abnormality can be inherited. In these families, testing siblings of the child with Wilms tumour can identify those who are carriers of the abnormality who can be offered screening to detect a Wilms tumour early.
Kidney cancer. New drug, same problem
In the same week as NICE is turning down four kidney cancer drugs because they are not cost effective comes this from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center New York:
A Phase III Clinical Trial on Everolimus has been stopped, so clear was its success (Ed: according to the Hospital). Results were presented in May 2008 at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology.
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. It is currently being evaluated for the treatment of several other cancers including lymphoma and neuroendocrine tumours.
The international, multicenter Phase III clinical trial has found that the experimental targeted therapy everolimus (RAD001) significantly delayed cancer progression in patients with metastatic kidney cancer whose disease had worsened on other treatments.
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. ’Based on the results of this trial, everolimus could become another tool in our armamentarium and, in the future, kidney cancer is likely to be managed as a chronic disease with these types of treatment advances,’ said Dr Motzer, leader of the Sloan-Kettering team.
Everolimus was well tolerated by patients and the most common side effects were mouth ulcers, anaemia, skin rash and weakness. So here we have a drug that is better than the ones top Professors are ridiculing NICE for refusing to allow out of the NHS budget, and even this does not work in 76 per cent of cases. Fortunately we can say that for a quarter of patients there is a longevity benefit. Will NICE feel this worth funding? (Ed: See our viewpoint article ’Drugs an expensive habit’).
New standards of care in Kidney Cancer
Memorial Sloan-Kettering reports on its own Phase III trials that the drug sunitinib malate (sutent) is more effective than the conventional treatments for patients with advanced kidney cancers. Dr Motzer and his co-authors concluded that Sunitinib is the ’reference standard of care’ (MSKCC-Feb 2007).
Renal Cancer Increased Survival With Temsirolimus
In phase III open-label trials, temsirolimus significantly improves overall survival compared with Interferon a first-line treatment of poor-risk patients with advanced renal carcinoma (Lancet Oncology Vol 7 July 2006).
Chaparral - A Native Therapy?
Chaparral, an evergreen desert shrub, long used by native Americans to treat everything from colds to cancer has now been shown by the Medical University of South Carolina to, indeed, have the ability to shrink some tumours. In the 50’s to 70’s, Chaparral tea was used as an anti-cancer drink but the FDA warned people off it, claiming possible liver and kidney damage.
This latest research used injectable refined extracts of Chaparral injected into patients with head and neck cancers that had not responded to previous treatments. No negative effect with either liver or kidneys was seen.
"Clinical trials of M4N (a refined extract taken from Chaparral) will be important", said a spokesman at Cancer Research UK.
Insulin resistence/intolerance found to increase cancer risk
A while ago, at CANCERactive we told you all about Insulin Resistance. ’Do you have trouble losing weight?’ This is a common sign, as are low levels of HDL, high triglycerides, high blood glucose levels and more. And while you are not a true diabetic, the principles seem the same for an estimate of up to 70 per cent of the population, who (frankly) just eat badly. We have also given you a number of research studies showing glucose drives cancer.
Not surprisingly, insulin resistance is a step along the road to diabetes and heart disease. Now it has been shown to be a step along the road to cancer too.
New research published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, concluded that ’there is a strong link between insulin resistance and the risk of developing postmenopausal breast cancer.’ Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York have concluded that the elevated insulin levels linked to insulin resistance result in post-menopausal women having a higher risk of breast cancer.
The researchers also found that elevated blood glucose and triglyceride levels raised the risk of breast cancer by 1.7 times. Increased diastolic blood pressure (the second number when you have your blood pressure measured ) raised the risk of breast cancer 2.4 times.
Two factors are important here:
- Although this research was conducted looking at breast cancer, you can bet this is true for many cancers, male and female.
- Yet again it highlights the point we consistently make about the daft sugar-laden diets given to cancer patients in UK Hospitals.
We have complained that the NHS booklet on ’a diet for chemotherapy’ shows little drawings of cheese burgers, milk shakes and sticky doughnuts on every page. My daughter was given ice cream and Ribena endlessly in her oncology unit.
Of course the good news for everyone preventers and people with cancer - is that insulin resistance and blood sugar levels are controllable and reverse-able. Just change your diet!!!
I will list here for everyone’s benefit some of the tips from my book ’The Rainbow Diet and how it can help you beat cancer’:
- Eat six small meals a day, not one or two big ones
- Eat whole foods and whole grains (never refined, processed or fast foods)
- Avoid alcohol, fizzy soft drinks, sweets, cakes, white bread, white pasta, biscuits, chocolate. Diet drinks are especially bad! As are smoothies and purchased fruit juices; even many so-called health drinks.
- Eat raw most days, on an empty stomach if possible
- Eat your fruit first thing in the morning on an empty stomach
- Eat steamed or grilled never fried
- Avoid Dairy (lactose is a sugar)
- Take probiotics in several strains
- Ensure you have no yeast excesses in your body (take cinnamon, oregano, Pau D’Arco and wormwood).
- And eat fresh raw garlic.
Remember, research from North Western shows that if you lose excess weight you reduce risk and even improve survival times.
The book contains far more detailed advice.
Being overweight increases cancer risk fact
Cancer Research UK have just researched 4,000 people and come up with the staggering fact that 97 per cent of people have no idea that being overweight is a significant cancer risk. Of course, had they read our report on the research we conducted 4 years ago they would have known that people haven’t much a clue what does cause cancer anyway. Indeed we went into all the key issues in our 2004 Cancer Prevention Conference, which was poorly attended by the ’major’ charities.
As we have been telling people for seven years, it all depends which report you read, and how much overweight you are, but to be just 7 kgs overweight knocks over 5 years off your life expectancy, and a whopping 13 years if you smoke as well. .All this is well documented in my book, ’Everything you need to know to help you beat cancer’ indeed it has been there since the first edition some 7 years ago.
All this comes in parallel with new Swedish research showing overweight women tend to be diagnosed with higher grade cancers than ladies who have restrained their weight.
One of the real issues is that many overweight people are in denial. We have had ladies write to us with breast cancer and they are 13 kgs over normal weight for their height. One described herself as ’cuddly’, another as ’being a bit chunky’.
In our original 2004 prevention research, people stated that giving up smoking was important, as was avoiding excess alcohol, and staying out of the sun. As we pointed out at the time, ’Burning is bad, sunshine is sensible’. 4 years ago there was too much bad science coming from cancer charities suggesting sunshine was carcinogenic. In fact there is actually a great deal of research that suggests that a daily dose of sun shine promotes vitamin D synthesis in the body, and reduces cancer risk. A few people also knew that exercise was a risk reducer. But, in all, few people knew any information about preventing cancer (unlike Heart disease or AIDS) and blame for this lack of information can only be laid at the doors of the Government and the cancer charities. It was in response to this research finding that CANCERactive decided to adopt the Precautionary Principle (that where there is expert research expressing concern, we will pass on that research information so that the people of Britain can make more informed choices). As a result just compare the volume of Prevention Topics we cover against those listed on the major charities web sites. Pesticides? EMF’s? Melatonin? Toxic Chemicals, from dioxins to oestrogen mimics in plastic bottles and preservatives?
Anyone who is unsure of the factors that may increase cancer risk should go to the prevention part of our web site where they will find more information on more possible causes than on any other UK charity web site. As you will see, we have given some weight to the issue of cancer prevention!
Men more likely to get cancer the issue is why?
Men are almost 40 per cent more likely than women to die from cancer, reveals a report published by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN).
And they are 16 per cent more likely to develop the disease in the first place.
After excluding breast cancer and cancers specific to one or other sex from the analysis, the difference is even greater with men being almost 70 per cent more likely to die from cancer and over 60 per cent more likely to develop the disease.
The researchers then looked at the figures, excluding lung cancer as well, because the disease and its main risk factor, smoking, is known to be more common in men.They expected to see that, across the broad range of remaining cancer types, men and women were just as likely as each other to die from and get the disease. But they found that for all of these cancers combined, men were still 70 per cent more likely than women to die from cancer and 60 per cent more likely to get cancer.
Experts suggest that a possible explanation for the differences seen for some types of cancer could be down to stereotypical male behaviour like down-playing important early symptoms and having an unhealthy lifestyle.
Even rogue cancer DNA repairs itself
CRUK scientists (Nature) have discovered a sensor which exists even in cancer cells. Some drugs try to damage cancer DNA. This sensor system is actually a family of proteins (alkyltransferase-like proteins or ATL’s) warns the cell and activates the DNA repair systems and so the drugs lose their effect.
Organic foods are better ignore the UK Food Standards Agency
All over the UK papers comes news of the ’ruling’ from the FSA that ’organic food is no more nutritious than other foods’. According to that well known medical journal, the Daily Mail, ’watchdogs’ have declared this to be true.
Claiming to be the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind, researchers for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’ trawled through more than 50,000 studies on the value of foods since 1958.’ The results were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Dr Alan Dangour (a public health nutritionist, no less) who was the lead researcher stated that, ’Currently there is no research to support the selection of organically produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority’.
Spokesperson Gill Fine from the FSA burbled on about, ’Ensuring people had accurate information’ and ’no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic foods’.
What staggers us at CANCERactive is that in order to resolve this very same question the EU has just spent 12 million of tax payers’ money conducting as near as can be, the definitive Clinical Trial, growing fields of organic food in parallel with normal pesticide and fertiliser-grown crops and then employing top scientists to give us the results. The FSA, which is after all a Government funded unit, ought to know this and use the data. And be clear, Gill: The ’accurate information’ is that there is a considerable difference. And this is just from early assessments. The project will continue for a few more years yet, as that is how long it takes to be sure. Professor Carlo Leifert, one of the CANCERactive patrons, is a lead member of the team.We covered the early conclusions in this very magazine.
The Daily Mail falls into the usual ’bad science’ trap too, meandering on about 50 years of research and 50,000 studies. But, the researchers didn’t use 50,000 studies, they used, sorry selected, 55 that ’met their criteria’, whatever they were. So one concludes therefore they left out a mere 49,945 studies from their conclusions. Perhaps one was the definitive EU study?
Then there is Dr Alan ’no evidence to support nutritional superiority’ Dangour. I quote about 10 - 15 such studies in my book ’The Rainbow Diet and how it can help you beat cancer’. Leifert and his team have a hundred more! What planet do these people live on? Al, old chap, there is rather a lot of scientific evidence actually; I cannot believe you think there is none..
But for the last word we will return to Gill ’no additional health benefit’ Fine. All I can conclude is that she finds pesticides tasty and of absolutely harmless. Of course that view would put her directly at odds with the EU, which recently concluded that there were ’deep concerns’ and cited health hazards including cancer as a need for more regulation. It is puzzling that Gill ’ensuring people have accurate information’ Fine does not seem to be telling you all about research studies showing that farmers using pesticides develop more multiple myeloma, and another that this is due to the pesticide making pre-cancerous MGUS proteins in the blood, or (for example) that some third world suppliers to British retailers still use the banned pesticides of DDT and Lindane, each linked to higher rates of Breast Cancer. (If she is unsure, she could always trawl through back issues of Cancer Watch for more ’accurate information’.)
For the record, there is concern that organic foods grown on depleted soils offer little in additional mineral content over mass-farmed foods. How could they? On basic vitamins there is quite a lot of evidence that organic food is superior, but sometimes not by much. The real advantage seems to come in the area of complex natural compounds (like resveratrol, quercitin, omega 3 or polyphenols) where organic foods score much more highly. For example, the use of fungicide negates the need for grapes to produce fungus fighting resveratrol of their own several studies have measured this. And even 10 years ago researchers didn’t know too much about these compounds or their health benefits, and so did not research for them. How many such studies were in the ’selected’ group?
Personally I don’t think everybody should rush off and buy everything organic we have told you which foods research studies show are more likely to hold their pesticides, and which do not. So in a number of cases there is not a lot to worry about. But red fruits like strawberries and greens like broccoli do need extra caution before using the sprayed versions.
It is all very sad really. I think that the people, and especially the patients who want to beat cancer deserve better than this. But then, that’s why we set up CANCERactive.
Need to prevent thousands of older people dying from cancer, prematurely
As many as 15,000 people over 75 could be dying prematurely from cancer each year in the UK, according to research presented today at the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) conference.
These premature deaths could be prevented if cancer mortality rates in the UK dropped to match countries in Europe and America which have the lowest rates.
The researchers from the North West Cancer Intelligence Service (NWCIS) in Manchester compared cancer death rates in the UK with Europe and America.
They found that over the past decade the numbers of people dying from cancer in the under 75s has significantly dropped in the UK. But, little progress has been made in the over 75s and the gap in death rates with other countries is getting wider.
Dr Tony Moran, lead researcher from NWCIS, said It’s worrying that so many older people die from cancer in the UK compared with other countries. But, it’s not clear why this is. Research is urgently needed to understand the reasons for the extra deaths so that steps can be taken to prevent them.
New scientific study reveals flaws, even fraud, in Clinical Trials
Scientific study. Clinical Trial, Gold Standard. Non Sequetor. Well, at least according to Dr Daniele Fanelli at the University of Edinburgh. In a recent study Fanelli lists findings such as
Most clinical results are misleading
- 5 per cent of scientists have admitted falsifying results
- One third of scientists admitted observing such bad practice in others
Fanelli’s report states that the misconduct is more prevalent in clinical, medical, and pharmaceutical research. So much for the ’gold standard’; but then he goes on to refer to the high profits at stake where a few word changes can make all the difference, even if it’s not fraud but ’presentation’.
He also comments on studies that criticise vitamins suggesting that all too often, doses used are too low to have an effect, or the where vitamin tested is known not to have an effect on a particular disease whereas another, untested one, is.
All this coincides with a USA FDA report that reports deficiencies and flaws in up to 20 per cent of US drug clinical trials.
Can cancer scans cause damage?
New research from the University of Vermont asks questions of ’imaging agents’, The original research looked at kidney patients who took contrasting agents (the CARE Study), like iopamidol and iodixanol, to enhance the contrast between healthy and damaged areas.
Apparent almost one in three of the patients subsequently experienced some negative health effect, with just over one in ten having a heart attack.
Researchers suggested that it was essential to conduct some proper clinical trials on the use of all contrasting agents whether they be used in CT scans or other such analyses.
This report follows findings in the medical journal Radiology where people who had numerous CT scans over their lifetime had a significantly increased risk of cancer. In fact, CT scans increased the risk of cancer nearly three times to 12 percent.
Immune system boosted to beat kidney cancer
Christie Hospital, Manchester are now using ’a tough but pioneering advanced kidney cancer immunotherapy treatment which is showing promising results.
The hospital has released limited data on their research to date which involves using high doses of Interleukin-2, which they call an aggressive drug to boost the patients’ own immune systems
Professor Robert Hawkins of Christie said patients were carefully selected as not everyone can take the level of treatment. To date a quarter of all patients treated are now in remission, despite some being in very advanced states of cancer.
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