More Heat Aids Cancer Therapies

[Guest guest]

When I purchased my infrared sauna, the salesman

claimed that cancer patients were benefiting from

infrared therapy . . . This makes sense of it. -

Rogene

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http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/EMIHC267/333/343/432355.html

Studies: More Heat Aids Cancer Therapies

September 26, 2005

(The Associated Press) -- The tumors looked like five

large mosquito bites dotting Alison ' chest.

The cancer that already had cost her breasts was back

again, this time in the wall of her chest, an

ominously hard-to-treat spot.

Her doctor tried an experiment, beaming microwaves

onto ' chest to heat it to about 109 degrees.

The hope: that the heat would help radiation treatment

attack the tumors -- and they disappeared.

Scientists have long thought that simple heat could

increase the effectiveness of some cancer therapies.

But just how much to cook the tumor, and which cancers

are susceptible, have stymied the field. Now, backed

by tantalizing new evidence, a growing number of

studies are enrolling patients in hopes of finally

settling whether it's time to turn up the heat.

" We need to keep pushing ahead on this, " says Dr.

Ellen of Duke University, who recently published

research that showed heat significantly helped

patients like and has a major study under way

to test its effects against cervical cancer as well.

Hyperthermia involves gradually raising the

temperature of cancer-riddled tissue to anywhere from

105 to 113 degrees -- not enough to burn, but like

there's a high fever in that body part. There are

different methods: beaming microwaves or ultrasound

onto tumors near the skin's surface, inserting probes

that emit microwaves or radio waves into the tumor

itself or the affected organ, or even using a giant

heating machine to raise the entire body temperature.

Here's the quandary: Some studies have found

hyperthermia could help certain patients with breast,

cervical, head and neck cancers or melanoma. But

others show no effect.

, a radiation oncologist, thinks the problem is

in consistently getting the tumor's temperature high

enough, for long enough.

" The body does not want to be heated. It fights the

heating process, " agrees Straube, a physicist

at Washington University in St. Louis, which, like

Duke, has a major research program on cancer

hyperthermia.

set out to determine a prescription-level dose

of heat, inserting temperature probes to prove the

degree. She gave more than 100 patients with

recurrent, incurable cancer -- mostly painful breast

cancer sores on the chest wall -- either radiation

alone or radiation plus a microwave-laden water bath

on the tumor site.

Among women who had previously undergone radiation,

only 23 percent had their tumors disappear with a

second round -- compared with 68 percent who underwent

heat plus radiation.

The study, reported in May's Journal of Clinical

Oncology, didn't show that hyperthermia helped

patients live longer; most also had cancer in parts of

the body not heated.

But last month, and researchers from Norway and

the Netherlands reported a study of 68 patients with

advanced cervical cancer that found adding heat to

standard radiation and chemotherapy yielded an 84

percent survival rate, better than expected. They now

are enrolling 400 cervical cancer patients in a Phase

III study to try to prove hyperthermia's effect.

Why would heat work? It's thought to kill some cancer

cells directly and help chemotherapy better penetrate

certain tumors by dilating blood vessels.

But mostly it's done to render the cancer more

vulnerable to radiation. Heat increases the amount of

oxygen inside cells. Oxygen-starved cells are more

resistant to radiation damage, and tumor cells contain

less oxygen than healthy tissue.

That's of particular interest for patients with

recurrent cancer, because they can tolerate only so

many rounds before radiation damages, even destroys,

healthy tissue or bone surrounding the cancer.

Much work must still be done to prove heat really

works, cautions Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American

Cancer Society.

The National Cancer Institute funded more than $19

million in hyperthermia research last year to explore

the outstanding questions; half a dozen clinical

trials involving a variety of heat treatments are

under way.

" If it breaks out again, we'll just do it again, " says

, the Raleigh, N.C., woman who had two

separate batches of chest-wall tumors zapped with heat

and radiation. While she has cancer elsewhere in her

body, a year later none of the heat-treated tumors has

returned. " I'm tickled pink. "

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights

reserved.