Re: URINE TEST MAY DETECT BREAST CANCER

[Guest guest]

I this the same bloodtest as this one? Or is october month of breastcancer the

reason why companies come with those spectacular results?

Gr. kees braam

-- WSJ(8/19) Simple Blood Test Predicts Breast-Cancer Survival --

(From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL) By Forelle

A SIMPLE BLOOD TEST can predict how long a woman may survive with metastatic

breast cancer, giving doctors a powerful new tool which some scientists believe

can be used to customize treatments for individual patients. The test, by

Immunicon Corp., of Huntingdon Valley, Pa., measures the number of tumor cells

circulating in the blood stream. That number offers a remarkably precise

predictor of a patient's survival, according to a study published today in the

New England Journal of Medicine. In the study, which was funded by Immunicon,

researchers found that women with five or more tumor cells in a small test tube

of blood died in an average of 10 months. That compares with more than 18

months for those with fewer than five tumor cells in their blood. About 75,000

U.S. women this year will find out they have metastatic breast cancer, or

cancer which has spread beyond the breast. Almost all will die from the

disease, even after enduring unpleasant, toxic therapies, which can add years

to life if they're appropriate but uselessly sap women's strength if they're

not.

The test, which delivers results in a matter of weeks, could help doctors figure

out faster if a particular treatment is working. It can take months to see if

tumors have shrunk on traditional imaging scans -- and by then it can be too

late to save a patient's life. If the test shows a therapy isn't reducing the

tumor-cell count, doctors can change course, says Massimo Cristofanilli, the

study's lead author and an oncologist at M.D. Cancer Center in

Houston. The test will be commercially available as early as this fall.

The test, which will be marketed by a unit of & , costs a few

hundred dollars, far cheaper than imaging tests such as PET scans. But others

caution that the test, while promising, may not yet be ready for widespread

clinical use. The test wasn't designed to determine whether switching therapy

is better that sticking with the same one after a discouraging tumor-cell test.

The unanswered question is, If " I stop the treatment that I've just begun and

switch to something else, will they do better? " says Clifford Hudis, chief of

the Breast Cancer Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in

New York.

The blood test -- which Immunicon is developing for several other cancers,

including prostate -- is one of the most recent advances in the field of

" personalized medicine, " in which therapies are tailored to individual

patients. Customizing treatment is particularly important for later-stage

cancers because there are now a growing array of therapies, and oncologists

must decide which to use on each patient, and in which order.

" This is an example of how targeted and individualized therapy may be evolving

and the promises it may hold, " says Cheryl Perkins, a senior clinical advisor

at the G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Breast cancer can often be eradicated by early treatment, but once it has spread

elsewhere in the body it is considered incurable, with the average woman living

only 18 to 24 months after the diagnosis of metastatic cancer. It's hard to

predict whether someone will die quickly, or whether she will be one of the

rare few -- such as study participant Ana Davila, who has so far beaten the

odds after breast cancer was found to have moved to her bones in 2000. Ms.

Davila, of Hidalgo, Texas, had very low blood-tumor cells -- and four years

later she is undergoing another round of chemotherapy and hoping to return to

her job as a preschool teacher in September.

Immunicon's test involves attaching tiny magnetic particles to cells in the vial

of blood. A magnetic field draws those cells out, and a computer scans them and

determines which are tumor cells. The study, which examined only 177 women,

needs to be validated in larger tests, says Somlo, director of breast

oncology at City of Hope, a major cancer center in Duarte, Calif. In the long

run, the new test " might help in giving us a simpler way of predicting "

survival, Dr. Somlo says. But " it is certainly not a methodology I would rely

upon 100% " in telling patients their prognosis, he adds.

Currently, doctors use other methods to gauge how long a women will survive,

such as looking for tumor cells in bone marrow or looking for antigens,

proteins which are the body's defensive response to the tumor, in the blood.

One of the test's most important potential uses will be in clinical trials. Dr.

Cristofanilli, the study author, says it could be used to help pharmaceutical

companies performing trials fine-tune their drugs to patients. If a subset of

patients in a trial shows a reduction in the number of tumor cells, that could

indicate that the drug is working for those patients. Those patients could be

studied to see what attributes they have in common, and the drug could thus be

tested only on those patients most likely to do well on it. Also in the long

run, the test might eventually be used to evaluate women with localized

cancers, perhaps catching them before the cancer takes root elsewhere in the

body. " We are trying to work out the technique with newly diagnosed patients, "

Dr. Cristofanilli says. The difficulty is that the number of circulating cells

in these patients is extremely low, and they are consequently hard to find.

Ultimately, the method could help patients with other types of cancers. The test

" will work, we believe, on virtually any solid-tumor cancer, " says L.

kson, the company's chief executive officer. Immunicon scientists have

detected circulating tumor cells in patients with metastasized prostate, lung,

colorectal and ovarian cancers, among others. The cells almost never appear in

healthy patients or those with non-malignant tumors.

Citeren szukidavis@...:

>

> Urine test may detect breast cancer

>

> US scientists have identified a telltale enzyme that seems to detect breast

> cancer early and track tumour's growth BOSTON - Researchers in the United

> States have developed a simple urine test that appears to detect breast

> cancer

> early and accurately track tumour growth.

>

> The findings are still preliminary, but if further research supports them,

> the test could be a major advance in the effort to catch breast cancer before

> it

> turns deadly.

>

> The scientists, who work for Harvard University at Children's Hospital

> Boston, are searching for similar markers in urine for other cancers.

>

> Earlier this year, a team at the National Cancer Institute reported that

> other tumours, including prostate cancer, may also be detectable with urine

> tests.

>

> That would be more convenient and less expensive than the scans, blood tests

>

> and biopsies commonly used to screen for and diagnose cancers.

>

> Scientists say a screening test that diagnoses cancer without needle jabs,

> intrusive scopes, surgery or radiation would be widely used, improving the

> odds

> that tumours would be detected before they spread to other organs, when they

>

> are most treatable and least dangerous.

>

> Breast tumours are typically found with a mammogram or when they become large

>

> enough to be felt. By then, they may have spread.

>

> Furthermore, almost half the women in the US do not get annual mammograms.

> The result is that 37 per cent of breast cancers are diagnosed after they

> have

> spread, according to the American Cancer Society.

>

> Children's Hospital researchers evaluated their new test, which identifies

> the presence of an enzyme called Adam 12, in experiments using urine samples

>

> from 71 women known to have breast cancer, from early to late stages.

>

> The test successfully identified 67, or 94 per cent, of the cases. In a

> control population of 46 women without cancer, there were seven false

> positive

> results, or 15 per cent.

>

> In these seven women, the amounts of telltale enzyme were very low, the

> researchers said. The findings have been accepted for publication in the

> Journal Of

> Biological Chemistry.

>

> 'Our data demonstrate for the first time that Adam 12 can be detected in the

>

> urine of breast cancer patients,' researchers Marsha Moses, Roopali Roy and

> their associates wrote in the paper. 'Increased urinary levels of this

> protein

> correlate with breast cancer progression.'

>

> If the results can be repeated in a larger group of patients, the urine test

>

> would offer the first non-invasive way to detect breast cancer early, monitor

>

> a tumour as it expands, and perhaps keep track of how well treatment is

> working.

>

> Ms Moses' goal is to offer a test kit that doctors can use routinely in their

>

> offices and in hospital laboratories and, eventually, at home. She said that

>

> a test could be available within a few years.

>

> 'This is important and exciting work,' said Dr Park, a cancer

> specialist at the University of California at San Francisco, because it may

> link an

> enzyme that plays a role in the growth of a tumour with a detectable measure

>

> of how fast the tumour is expanding.

>

> The urine test for breast cancer seems to identify patients with tumours and

>

> also warns of a tumour's severity, distinguishing among patients in varying

> stages of cancer.

>

> Ms Moses said her experiments showed that when the amount of Adam 12 in urine

>

> spikes sharply, the tumour may be entering a more dangerous growth phase. As

>

> a breast tumour gets bigger, and begins sending its deadly 'seeds' to lymph

> nodes and various organs, the enzyme level increases.

>

> She said the warning's accuracy may improve if Adam 12 can be combined with

> other biomarkers in the urine that her laboratory is studying. -- IHT

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

there is quite a bit of thought that the mammograms themselves can aide

cancer to develope. Are they really so necessary all the time? I think it is

diet,

exposure, age....life cycles, etc carole

[Guest guest]

Good news in breast cancer screening

As you know, I've been one of America's most outspoken critics

of the diagnostically useless, tumor-promoting mammogram. And

now, finally, I've got some reason to rejoice.

A new survey recently released by a government advisory panel

called the Institute of Medicine (a pro-mammogram group, by the

way) reports an 8% DECREASE in the number of breast-

squashing - er, I mean mammogram - facilities in the United

States over the last 4 years. Now this is a trend in mainstream

medicine that's worth trumpeting!

According to a recent New York Times online piece, the likely

reasons more than 800 mammography clinics have closed up shop

range from low reimbursement rates from Medicare and insurance

companies and the skyrocketing cost of malpractice coverage.

Also, a fear of lawsuits as a result of missed tumors may be

contributing to reluctance among doctors and clinics that once

offered mammogram services to continue doing so.

Funny, isn't it, how mainstream medical advisory bodies like the

Institute of Medicine can't put two and two together: If more

mammograms equal more lawsuits and higher premiums, it must

be because they AREN'T RELIABLE. If they were really

beneficial, accurate diagnostic tools, they'd have a good enough

track record that no one would be suing, right?

But whatever the reason, the end result is that fewer breasts under

the Stars and Stripes will be compressed and irradiated, and that's

a GOOD thing.

In case you haven't been with me very long, the reason for my

staunch opposition to routine mammography is twofold: One,

because mammograms can't detect tumors much smaller than what

a good conventional breast exam can (they often miss tumors that

are quite large, in fact); and Two, because evidence shows that the

extreme compression of a cancerous tumor can actually cause it to

FRAGMENT AND SPREAD.

To all those out there - doctors, lawyers, butchers, bakers or

candlestick makers - who think I'm off my rocker for believing

that to disturb a cancerous breast tumor by compression is to cause

it to spread, I offer this recent item from Reuters Health.

A recent study of 663 cancerous women published in the Archives

of Surgery reveals that those subjects whose cancerous breast

tumors were needle biopsied - in other words, intentionally

ruptured for diagnostic purposes - were 50% more likely to

subsequently develop cancer of the lymphatic nodes located under

the armpit than women whose tumors were removed outright (also

not something I'd always recommend, but that's another story).

For those in the back row (or those with their fingers in their ears,

like mammographers), I'll shout: That's TWICE AS LIKELY to

develop lymphatic cancer after disruption of the cancerous tumor.

Now, I ask my critics, in light of this startling (but not to me)

finding, is it really so unreasonable for me to maintain that extreme

compression of the breast might possibly cause cancerous growths

to release malignant cells into nearby tissues that might otherwise

have remained contained in a tumor until such time as detection

and treatment could occur?

Let me ask another question: Does this sound unreasonable to

YOU?

Always reasonable, and always " rupturing " the mainstream's

myths,

s II, MD

Re: URINE TEST MAY DETECT BREAST CANCER

> there is quite a bit of thought that the mammograms themselves can aide

> cancer to develope. Are they really so necessary all the time? I think it

is diet,

> exposure, age....life cycles, etc carole

>

>

>