Herceptin and Chemotherapy - Treatment for Early-Stage Breast Cancer Patients

Herceptin, the cancer drug for late-stage breast cancer patients, is also effective for women with early-stage of breast cancer. But it is said that the drug will cause heart damage. However, researchers has also found the way to reduce the risk, that is by chemotherapy regimen.

A study conducted by the Breast Cancer International Research Group, early results of which were announced in September, found that Herceptin plus standard chemotherapy reduced the risk of disease recurrence in early breast cancer by 51 percent.

"The chemotherapy combinations we tested with Herceptin proved to be superior to the best available standard therapy for early breast cancer," Dr. Dennis Slamon, the study's principal investigator and director of clinical/translational research at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center, said in a statement.

Herceptin was approved for advanced or late-stage breast cancer treatment in 1998. It is an antibody-based drug to target tumor cells and spare normal cells.

The finding of this new treatment method for early-stage breast cancer will drastically lower the cost of current pricey treatment.


Related news:

Researchers concluded that giving baby a dummy during sleep may reduce cot death risk or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) as much as 90 percents.

Dummies usually have a bulky external handle, that could make sure that air reaches the nose or mouth when the baby’s face is buried by bedclothes. Besides, sucking on a dummy will help to develop the nerves that control the upper airway and may reduce impact of other risk factors for SIDS.

The findings reinforce recommendations made recently by the American Academy of Pediatrics that pacifiers be used at nap and bedtimes in the first year of life.

In the latest study, published today in the British Medical Journal, Dr. De-Kun Li and his colleagues at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California, in collaboration with researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, interviewed 185 mothers who had just lost their infants to SIDS and 312 mothers whose babies were developing normally.

But previous studies found that using dummy may rise the risk of suffering earache, colic, wheezing, diarrhoea, fever; and tend to have crooked teeth and a baby will have slow speech development.

Well, there will always be pros and cons to a study. In this case, maybe giving dummy to a baby during sleep is a good solution to help reducing the risk of SIDS, but sucking on a dummy too often may not bring more beneficial effects to the baby itself. That's just my thought. We'll see further development of this study.


Then a second tranche of growth factors is released to encourage bone marrow cells to zero-in on the same site.

Once there, they cluster in groups, forming a support structure which stabilises the malignant cells that arrive later to begin forming a secondary, or metastatic, tumour.

"By blocking bone marrow cells using antibodies, we are capable of preventing tumour cells implanting and thus the spread of cancer."
This experiment brings hope to cancer sufferers. But as this study was carried out in mice, it is necessary to start clinical trials on patients to make sure that the same method also works in human.



More articles about cancer:

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  The drugs for gout and ulcerative colitis are febuxostat and infliximab. Febuxostat will be the first new medicine for gout in the last four decades. While infliximab, popular with its generic name Remicade, is medicine for arthritis and Chron's disease but also shown to reduce the symptoms of ulcerative colitis.

  Over a year, febuxostat was three times more effective at lowering urate to a healthy level. But the febuxostat patients had only slightly fewer gout attacks by the end.
  "You need to be able to follow these patients, I believe, much longer" to see if febuxostat reduces gout attacks better, said lead researcher Dr. Michael Becker, a rheumatologist and professor at University of Chicago.
  
  After about a year, about 20 percent of patients on Remicade and just 9 percent on a dummy medication had so few symptoms that they were taken off steroids, immune-suppressing drugs that have serious side effects and cannot be taken very long.
  

  Gout is a form of arthritis, that is immensely a painful disease and mostly affects the joints. While ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory bowel disease, in which ulcers form in the surface lining of the colon and rectum.
  
  Recent study conducted by researchers from Ohio State University (OSU) College of Nursing and School of Public Health and supported by National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), one of National Institutes of Health (NIH), shows that childhood weight problems linked to mom's obesity before pregnancy.

  A mother's weight within one to two months before she became pregnant had the greatest impact on a child's weight at all three age intervals.
  
  If a woman was overweight before she became pregnant, her child was nearly three times more likely to be overweight by age 7 compared with a child whose mother was not overweight or obese, according to the study.
  
  The risk that a child would be overweight at a young age increased with the degree of the mother's obesity.
  

  The research also shows several factors that may put a child at higher obesity risk:
  
  • Race and ethnicity
    More black and Hispanic children were overweight than white children
    
  • Maternal smoking during pregnancy
    Smoking during pregnancy is suspected as the key of risk that increases the chances of overweight in children
    
  • Age of the mother when giving birth
    Breast feeding (only play small role in this case)
    

  "A child who is overweight by her second birthday is more likely to be overweight at a later age," said Dr. Salsberry. "Prevention of childhood obesity needs to begin before a woman becomes pregnant," she added.
  

  Pamela Salsberry, Ph.D., is the lead author and associate professor at OSU.
  
  
  
  Interesting topics:
  
  • 
    Recently, researchers from the University of North Carolina examined brain volume and head circumference in children with and without autism and find a symptoms of autism.

    Findings from the study confirm the presence of generalized cerebral cortical gray matter and white matter brain volume enlargement at age 2 in individuals with autism. Researchers say, given the strong relationship between head circumference and brain volume, the onset of this enlargement is likely to be during the postnatal period and may begin as late as the latter part of the first year of life.
    

    Cerebral cortex is the outer layer of brain that is responsible for all forms of conscious experience, including perception, emotion, thought and planning, while gray matter is the darker-colored tissues of the central nervous system; in the brain to identify information processing centers; and the white matter is nerve tissue that is paler in color than gray matter and doesn't contain nerve cells, used to show the connections between processing centers.
    
    
    

    Related article:
    Study finds that people who do a lot of visually intense work, like reading book or computer display tend to squint in order to make objects appear more clearly defined or to the glare. Apparently, squinting may lower the rate of eye blink. And blinking less may dry eyes and iritate them.

    A study of 10 college students showed that the more they squinted, the less they blinked, the team at Ohio State University said.
    
    The less they blinked, the more their eyes ached or burned, said James Sheedy, a professor of optometry who led the study.
    

    You may also like to read: Dermatologist Dr. Dale Pearlman reveals the "secret ingredients" in curing head-lice. It is the White Cetaphil, gentle skin cleanser, a widely sold, soap-less cleanser for people with sensitive skin.
    
    The head lice treatment method by Dr. Dale Pearlman is called Nuvo method, using Cetaphil cleanser. You can learn it
    Although as described in in the September 2004 issue of the journal Pediatrics by Dr. Pearlman, that the Nuvo method was more than 96 percent effective at killing head lice, several health experts said that the study had several important limitations and suggested parents to use other better-known methods of killing head lice until more conclusive research was done.
    
    Moreover, in the terms and conditions of the official Nuvo treatment
    Image is courtesy of clipart.com