Archive for the ‘Research Information’ Category

Vitamins and calcium supplements can dramatically reduce the risk of breast cancer – even when you take them at the standard daily dose.

Vitamin supplements reduce the risk by around 30 per cent, and calcium supplements do even better, and lower the risk by 40 per cent. But it’s all about developing good habits, and taking the supplements every day, and for a while. “It is not an immediate effect. You don’t take a vitamin today and your breast cancer risk is reduced tomorrow,” said Jaime Matta, one of the researchers from Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico.

The research team discovered the effectiveness of vitamins when they compared a group of 268 women with breast cancer with457 healthy women. They discovered that the supplements helped repair DNA, a complex biological process involving more than 200 proteins that, if disrupted, can lead to cancer.

(Source: American Association for Cancer Research, 101st annual meeting, 2010).

Article from www.healthychoices.co.uk

One in three breast cancer patients who have experienced breast screening may be treated unnecessarily.  A study by Karsten Jorgensen and Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen looked breast cancer trends at least seven years before and after government-run screening programmes for breast cancer started in parts of Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden.

The research by BMJ (British Medical Journal) Jorgensen and Gotzsche did not cite any funding for their study.

Once screening programmes began, more cases of breast cancer were identified, as found in this study.  When a screening programme is successful, there should be a drop in the number of advanced cancer cases detected in older women, as their cancers should have been caught earlier when they were screened.

Jorgensen and Gotzsche found the national breast cancer screening which in Britain is mainly mammography, offered to women between the ages of 50 and 69, reported thousands more cases than previously identified and one third of the women identified as having breast cancer didn’t actually need to be treated.

Some cancers never cause symptoms or death, and can slow growing. Any identifiable cancer is treated, but the treatments can have harmful side-effects and be psychologically scarring.

Jorgensen stated that such information needs to be given to women so they can make an informed choice. ‘There is a significant harm in making women cancer patients without good reason.’

Women are encouraged to have a breast screening without them being informed of the risks involved, and may as a result have unnecessary treatment if a cancer was identified, even if it might never threaten their health.

‘Mammography is one of medicine’s ‘close calls,’ … where different people in the same situation might reasonably make different choices’(H. Gilbert Welch Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Research) ‘Mammography undoubtedly helps some women but hurts others.’

The study found that overtreatment occurs wherever there is widespread cancer screening.

Cancer Research UK stated that Britain’s breast cancer screening programme was partly responsible for the country’s reduced breast cancer cases.

It is important for women to go for screening when invited, though it was crucial for women to be informed of the potential benefits and harms of screening.

Source: www.bmj.com

By: Len Saputo, MD

The most devastating loss of life from breast cancer occurs between the ages of 30 to 50. Fortunately, women today have more options available to them to help in the detection of breast cancer than in the past decades. Unfortunately, education and awareness of these options and their effectiveness in detecting breast cancer at different stages in life are woefully deficient.

The first part of this in-depth article explores the latest findings on the effectiveness and shortcomings of various detection methods used by the mainstream medical community, including mammography, clinical breast exams, ultrasound, and to a lesser extent, magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) and PET scans.

To read more about this topic, click here

The second part of this article goes beyond mammography, exploring a highly advanced but much maligned detection tool for breast cancer — breast thermography. Breast thermography, which involves using a heat-sensing scanner to detect variations in the temperature of breast tissue, has been around since the 1960s. However, early infrared scanners were not very sensitive and were insufficiently tested before being put into clinical practice, resulting in misdiagnosed cases.


Modern-day breast thermography boasts vastly improved technology and more extensive scientific clinical research. In fact, the article references data from major peer review journals and research on more than 300,000 women who have been tested using the technology. Combined with the successes in detecting breast cancer with greater accuracy than other methods, the technology is slowly gaining ground among more progressive practitioners.

“Beyond Mammography” concludes that breast thermography needs to be embraced more widely by the medical community and awareness increased among women. Not only has it demonstrated a higher degree of success in identifying women with breast cancer under the age of 55 in comparison to other technologies, but it is also an effective adjunct to clinical breast exams and mammography for women over 55. Finally, it provides a non-invasive and

safe detection method, and if introduced at age 25, provides a benchmark that future scans can be compared with for even greater detection accuracy.

Agnese DM. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

Surg Technol Int. 2005;14:51-6.

Although mammography remains the most widely used tool for the early detection of breast cancers and evaluation of palpable abnormalities, a number of other imaging tools are being developed and used. Ultrasonography (US) is an excellent adjunct to conventional mammography. In addition to identifying solid and cystic abnormalities, US can often distinguish benign and malignant solid nodules.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) also is useful in assessing the extent of disease within the breast, particularly in women with dense breasts. MRI may be a more sensitive screening tool in women at elevated breast cancer risk. Newer techniques based on the metabolic activity of breast tumors also have been developed.

One such technique is scintimammography, which uses radiolabeled tracers to detect breast malignancies. Positron emission tomography (PET), which relies on the high metabolic rate of tumors, also has been described as a method to evaluate breast disease. Other techniques, such as optical tomography and thermography, rely on angiogenesis and generated heat to identify cancers.

These and other tools may help to improve both the sensitivity and specificity of cancer detection. Ideally, this improved detection results in improved outcomes in those who have breast cancer and avoidance of unnecessary procedures in those who do not.

Source: Thermology.com/research

Initial Reappraisal Using High-Resolution Digital Technology in 100 Successive Cases of Stage I and II Breast Cancer

The Breast Journal, Volume 4, Number 4, 1998, 245-251

Department of Oncology, St. Mary’s Hospital, Montreal, Quebec; Department of Radiotherapy, London Cancer Center, London, Ontario; and Ville Marie Breast and Oncology Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Our initial experience would suggest that, when done concomitantly with clinical exam and mammography, high-resolution digital infrared imaging can provide additional safe, practical, and objective information. Our initial reappraisal would also suggest that infrared imaging, based more on process than structural changes and requiring neither contact, compression, radiation nor venous access, can provide pertinent and practical complementary information to both clinical exam and mammography, our current primary basic detection modalities.

Source: www.thermology.com/research

Am J Surg. 2008 Oct;196(4):523-6.

Arora N, Martins D, Ruggerio D, Tousimis E, Swistel AJ, Osborne MP, Simmons RM
Department of Surgery, New York Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell, New York, NY

BACKGROUND: Digital infrared thermal imaging (DITI) has resurfaced in this era of modernized computer technology. Its role in the detection of breast cancer is evaluated.

METHODS: In this prospective clinical trial, 92 patients for whom a breast biopsy was recommended based on prior mammogram or ultrasound underwent DITI. Three scores were generated: an overall risk score in the screening mode, a clinical score based on patient information, and a third assessment by artificial neural network.

RESULTS: Sixty of 94 biopsies were malignant and 34 were benign. DITI identified 58 of 60 malignancies, with 97% sensitivity, 44% specificity, and 82% negative predictive value depending on the mode used. Compared to an overall risk score of 0, a score of 3 or greater was significantly more likely to be associated with malignancy (30% vs 90%, P < .03).

CONCLUSION: DITI is a valuable adjunct to mammography and ultrasound, especially in women with dense breast parenchyma.

Source: www.thermology.com/research

The British Medical Journal published a paper which asks serious questions about the relevance of this practice.

The study in question focuses on breast cancer screening in Denmark. Mammography has previously been said to reduce risk of dying from breast cancer in Denmark by 25 per cent. However, as the authors of this recent study point out, just because breast cancer mortality fell after the introduction of mammography, does not mean that mammography is responsible. The reduction in mortality might be due to other factors, such as changes in risk factors or improvements in treatment.

To get a more accurate picture reading the effectiveness of mammography, the researchers compared changes in breast cancer deaths in regions where mammography had been introduced, and compared this with death rates in regions where mammography had not been introduced. Here’s what they found:
Over a 10-year period where screening could have saved lives, in women of an age who might benefit from screening (women aged 55-74), death rates from breast cancer fell by 1 per cent per year. This decline was not statistically significant.
In comparison, death rates in non-screened areas fell by 2 per cent per year over the same time period. And this fall was statistically significant.

The authors of this study also compared these findings with death rates in women too young to have benefitted from mammography. In the screened area, death rates fell by 5 per cent per year. In the non-screened areas, death rates fell by even more, though (6 per cent year).

The authors point out that their findings are not new, and in fact are in line with findings from other parts of the World. For example, they note:
“In the UK, where screening started in 1988, the decline in breast cancer mortality from 1989 until 2007 was 41% in women aged 40-49 years, who were not invited to screening, 41% in women aged 50-64 years, who were invited to screening from 1988, and 38% in women aged 65-69 years, who were invited from 2002. Furthermore, the drop in breast cancer mortality in the relevant age group began before the screening programme started, and was largest in the age group that was too young to be invited (40-49 years) if the whole observation period is considered (1971-2007).”

They also draw our attention to a European study that found that falls in breast cancer mortality in countries offering and not offering screening were of a similar size. The greatest declines were seen in women who were too young to be offered screening, which points to factors other than screening (such as improvements in treatment) as the real reason for declining breast cancer death rates.
Here are the conclusions from the BMJ study:
“We were unable to find an effect of the Danish screening programme on breast cancer mortality. The reductions in breast cancer mortality we observed in screened regions were similar or larger in non-screened regions and in age groups younger than that screened. The mortality reduction is therefore more likely to be explained by changes in risk factors and by improved treatment than by screening mammography. Our results are similar to what has been observed in other countries with nationally organised programmes. We believe it is time to question whether screening has delivered the promised effect on breast cancer mortality.”

Mammography on the outside appears so obviously the right thing to do to many. As a result, it perhaps has not been subjected to as much scrutiny as it should have been. It seems to me that there is at least some evidence which seriously calls into question the usefulness and appropriate of this practice.

Mammography is, in my view, a highly politicised practice, and as with such things, there are always going to be individuals on both sides of the debate. For a long time it’s been ardent supporters of mammography that have largely had the floor. What is gratifying, I think, is that more and more the other side of the story is getting an airing. It is because of this that women may, eventually, be in a position to make a truly informed decision about whether to have a mammogram or not.

References:
1. Jørgensen KJ, et al. Breast cancer mortality in organised mammography screening in Denmark: comparative study Per-Henrik Zahl, Peter C Gøtzsche BMJ 2010;340:c1241
2. Levi F, et al. Monitoring the decrease in breast cancer mortality in Europe. Eur J Cancer Prev 2005;14:497-502

Source: www.drbriffa.com/blog – 26th March 2010