Oncology
Article Abstract:
Progress has been made in the prevention, detection, and treatment of many common cancers, and insights into the causes of cancer at the molecular level will lead to new treatments within the coming decade. Of the approximately 21,000 patients diagnosed with colon cancer and involvement of nearby lymph nodes each year, up to 60 percent develop recurrent cancer within five years after their first surgeries. Adding levamisole to fluorouracil (a traditional chemotherapeutic agent) led to a 32 percent improvement in five-year survival in one large research study. Similar results were reported in other studies. Levamisole is now available to physicians (pending approval by the Food and Drug Administration). A major obstacle to effective cancer treatment is the development of drug resistance by cancer cells. When tumor tissue from several multiple myeloma patients, who had not responded to several forms of chemotherapy, was evaluated, abnormally high levels of a protein associated with drug resistance was found. Addition of an agent (verapamil) that reverses drug resistance to the patients' chemotherapeutic regimen produced clinical remission in some cases. This approach is currently under investigation in several types of cancer. Research into the genetic bases of cancer has identified oncogenes (cancer-causing or cancer-promoting genes), which are normally dormant in cells, and suppressor oncogenes, which normally suppress abnormal growth. When a suppressor stops functioning, cells divide abnormally. The levels of one protein (p53) produced by a suppressor oncogene have been found to be abnormally low in some lung cancers, and the p53 protein itself may be abnormal in other cancer patients. Tumors often contain many abnormalities in tumor-suppressing oncogenes, indicating mutation of many genes prior to malignant transformation. In the coming decade oncology will incorporate such findings into its treatment armamentarium. (Consumer Summary produced by Reliance Medical Information, Inc.)
Publication Name: JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association
Subject: Health
ISSN: 0098-7484
Year: 1990
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New evidence may expand indications for chemotherapy in breast cancer
Article Abstract:
A study has found that mortality among women being treated for breast cancer by surgical tumor resection combined with chemotherapy is lower than the mortality of women treated with a combination of radiation therapy and mastectomy. The use of chemotherapy drug tamoxifen reduced the chance of death by 20 percent per year in breast cancer patients women over 50 years of age and by 25 percent in younger women. Chemotherapy treatment which includes a combination of drugs is more effective than the use of a single chemotherapeutic agent. Another study followed 97 candidates for modified radical mastectomy. Chemotherapy reduced the tumors sufficiently in 87 percent of the patients to allow a conservative resection. Chemotherapy should not be the only treatment choice for women with breast cancer, but there is good evidence for more widespread use of it.
Publication Name: JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association
Subject: Health
ISSN: 0098-7484
Year: 1989
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