"Currently we barrage the brain with radiation and chemo, and patients have poor quality of life," Dr. Rao said. "Using this molecule, we could dial down those therapies considerably, by 90 percent. That's exciting."

"MiR-584-5p is at very low levels or absent altogether in medulloblastoma. Increasing it to the amount found in healthy cells robs the cancer of mechanisms it uses to survive, studies show. "This can serve as a potent therapeutic for treating cancer," Dr. Rao said.

A genetic test developed by researchers at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine can help avoid costly diagnostic surgery that involves removing one or both lobes of the thyroid gland, by reliably distinguishing between benign and cancerous thyroid nodules using a very small sample of cells, according to the results of an international clinical trial published in the journal JAMA Oncology.

The performance of the test, called the ThyroSeq® Genomic Classifier, was assessed in a prospective double-blinded study conducted across 10 medical centers. The study involved 257 thyroid nodules with an ambiguous biopsy result evaluated by ThyroSeq and diagnostic surgery. The results showed that the test was highly sensitive, correctly identifying cancerous nodules as positive 94 percent of the time. The test also demonstrated a high specificity, correctly identifying benign nodules as negative 82 percent of the time. The researchers compared the performance of ThyroSeq with other molecular tests and showed that it can prevent the highest number of unnecessary diagnostic surgeries.

"Our study showed ThyroSeq can help avoid surgery in the vast majority of patients with benign nodules where the initial biopsy returns an ambiguous result," said Yuri Nikiforov, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology at Pitt's School of Medicine and director of the UPMC Molecular & Genomic Pathology Division, and the senior study author. "With such a high proportion of preventable surgeries, this test should practically resolve the decades-long struggle and inefficiency of medical care for patients with indeterminate cytology thyroid nodules. In an era of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, ThyroSeq can improve quality of life for patients by sparing them a lifetime of synthetic thyroid medications and specialist visits, while significantly reducing health care costs."

ThyroSeq was recently approved for Medicare coverage, making it accessible to more than 50 million Medicare patients nationwide.

Men and women may need to be treated differently - at least when it comes to some types of cancer. In an analysis to be presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich, data was pooled from four UK randomised controlled clinical trials (RCTs) of first line chemotherapy in oesophagogastric (OG) cancer, finding significant differences in a number of important side-effects experienced by male and female patients.
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Study author Dr. Michael Davidson, Royal Marsden Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London, said: "We have known for a long time in oncology that there are differences between males and females in the incidence and prognosis of many non gender-specific cancers. We are now also beginning to understand some of the complex cellular, molecular and metabolic differences between the two sexes which influence both cancer development and response to treatment. The clinical question we wanted to answer was whether sex influences the toxicity and efficacy of common chemotherapies administered in oesophageal and gastric cancer. It's the first time that gender-differentiated data has been collected on such a large scale for this tumour type."
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The trials selected for this pooled analysis were all evaluating first line chemotherapy regimens for patients with advanced OG cancer. "The four trials we included were large international trials conducted in the UK and Australasia with comparable patient populations and treatments being used," Davidson said. "This allowed us to collate and compare the data." In total 1654 patients were included: 80% were male and 20% were female. A greater proportion of gastric as opposed to junctional or oesophageal cancers were seen in female patients. "These findings are consistent with the incidence and distribution of OG cancers in Western populations," Davidson observed.

Analysis of one week's worth of tweets about breast cancer paints mixed picture of the network's use by individuals and institutions.

Twitter is a place where many cancer patients go to share and discuss their experiences of the disease. This is the main finding of a recent exploratory study, to be presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich, which analysed the contents of over 6,000 tweets and retweets about breast cancer.

Social media today have become an echo chamber in which every societal issue is reverberated many times over - including cancer. Study author Dr. Rodrigo Sanchez-Bayona of Clinica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, said: "Many of the patients we see in daily practice use social media to search for information about their disease, so, as care providers, we wanted to know what kind of content they find there. At the same time, the sheer volume of posts on Twitter represents a rich pool of data we can use to assess attitudes and discourses surrounding cancer."

For this analysis, all tweets posted with the hashtag #BreastCancer over a seven-day period were collected and categorised according to their content, aim, user information and whether they displayed a stigmatising attitude towards breast cancer. The tweets were also grouped into four subthemes: diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and prevention. "This study was part of a larger, multidisciplinary project to observe the presence of different diseases on social media. In 2014, we found that cancer was the most mentioned pathology on Twitter globally. We decided to look more closely at breast cancer first, because it is one of the three most common tumours worldwide and the primary cause of cancer deaths in women."

The data collected included 3,703 original tweets and 2,638 retweets. "When examining the original tweets, we found that only one in three had medical content," said Sanchez-Bayona. "However, 90% of this medical information was appropriate, which is likely owed to the fact that 40% of tweets came from institutions and public accounts." The categorisation of tweets by aim showed that the most frequent motive was patients sharing their experiences, followed closely by patient advocacy. The most common subtheme by far was prevention (44.5% of tweets).

A recent achievement in the field of protein research allows for better tailored pharmaceuticals with fewer side effects; the method was developed by two University of Copenhagen researchers.

Protein research is one of the hottest areas in medical research because proteins make it possible to develop far more effective pharmaceuticals for the treatment of diabetes, cancer and other illnesses.

However, while proteins have great potential, they also present great challenges for scientists. Proteins have incredibly complex chemical structures that make them difficult to modify. As a result, researchers have been looking for a tool to modify them more precisely, without increasing a drug's side-effects.

"We often run the risk of not being approved by health authorities because protein-based drugs lack precision and may have side-effects. Among other things, this is because of the serious limitations with the tools that have been used up until now," according to Professor Knud J. Jensen of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Chemistry.
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Together with his research colleague, Sanne Schoffelen, he has developed a new protein-modifying method that promises fewer side-effects and could be pivotal in furthering the development of protein-based pharmaceuticals. Their work has been published in the distinguished journal, Nature Communications.

The world’s first clinical trial (SURGUVANT) evaluating anti-inflammatory use at the time of surgery in colon cancer patients to improve their cancer outcome has been published in the scientific journal, BMC Cancer.

The research successfully tested an anti-inflammatory agent with anti-cancer properties known as ‘Taurolidine’ in the SURGUVANT trial which was funded by a grant from Geistlich Pharma AG, Wolhusen, Switzerland.  The research was undertaken by researchers at RCSI in Dublin in collaboration with the Cork University Hospital group, University College Cork, Mercy University Hospital and the Bon Secours Hospital, Cork led by Professor Paul Redmond, RCSI Council member and Chair of Surgery at Cork University Hospital and Mr Peter O’Leary, CUH Department of Surgery. 

The Surguvant trial examined a link between surgical inflammation and the recurrence of cancer. The trial randomised patients undergoing surgery for colon cancer to either a placebo or 2% Taurolidine solution. The trial reported that important components of the inflammatory response to surgery that have been shown to propagate tumour cell growth, can be attenuated successfully without compromising patient safety. 
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“We are delighted that this important clinical trial could be performed in Ireland. The Surguvant trial is the first of its kind to be performed worldwide showing that it is safe to use Taurolidine in this critical period of time for cancer patients where they are exposed to an inflammatory response necessary for wound healing but which can be potentially detrimental to their cancer outcome,” said Professor Redmond. “Now that we have proven the safety of this treatment strategy, it remains to be demonstrated if targeting the inflammatory response to surgery will lead to improved outcomes for cancer patients. We hope to do this in much larger future trials.” 

Redmond et al. RandomiSed clinical trial assessing Use of an anti-inflammatoRy aGent in attenUating peri-operatiVe inflAmmatioN in non-meTastatic colon cancer – the S.U.R.G.U.V.A.N.T. trial. BMC Cancer2018;18:794 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4641-x [Article]

Stephanie Linder and colleagues at Sleep Help are devoted to increasing sleep health awareness and wellness. They  have  been working on a useful resource all about how patients in cancer treatment and remission can deal with the sleep-disrupting side effects of chemotherapy, steroids, and other treatments.

It can be found here:

https://www.sleephelp.org/cancer-sleep/

Biological markers responsible for extreme exhaustion in patients with cancer have now been linked to fatigue in those with Parkinson's disease, according to new research from Rice University.
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"Inflammation and fatigue in early, untreated Parkinson's disease" will appear in an upcoming edition of Acta NeurologicaScandinavica. It is one of the first studies to link the biomarkers responsible for fatigue in patients with cancer and patients with Parkinson's.

The researchers examined blood samples from 47 patients with Parkinson's disease, half of whom experienced high levels of fatigue, which is characterized by feeling severely tired and unable to engage in usual activities and is disruptive to one's work and social life and daily routines.

Chris Fagundes, an assistant professor of psychology at Rice and one of the study's lead authors, said that although Parkinson's disease is not fatal, patients often complain that fatigue is one of the most common and disabling side effects and a contributor to reduced quality of life.

"The No. 1 complaint among Parkinson's disease sufferers is chronic fatigue," Fagundes said.

The researchers found that individuals with Parkinson's disease who suffered from fatigue had elevated levels of the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) inflammatory biomarkers. Interestingly, elevated levels of inflammatory markers such as these are also linked to fatigue in patients with cancer.
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This is the one of the first times these biomarkers has been linked to fatigue in patients with Parkinson's, Fagundes said. His previous research has focused on the link between specific biomarkers and cancer-related fatigue, and he said this study was a great opportunity to take work from one area and help a separate population.

Of 509,179 patients studied, 16% received preoperative oral care from a dentist. When a surgeon requested that a dentist provide preoperative oral care to a patient with cancer, the dentist checked the patient's oral condition, provided professional tooth cleaning, taught the patient self-cleaning methods for the teeth, and provided any treatment needed.

In the study, 15,724 patients (3.09%) developed postoperative pneumonia and 1734 (0.34%) died within 30 days of surgery. After adjustments, preoperative oral care by a dentist was linked with a decrease in postoperative pneumonia (3.28% versus 3.76%) and death within 30 days (0.30% versus 0.42%).
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"The findings could help improve strategies for the prevention of postoperative complications," the authors wrote.
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Ishimaru et al. Preoperative oral care and effect on postoperative complications after major cancer surgery. Br J Surg. 2018; doi:10.1002/bjs.10915 [Article]

A review of more than 200 studies reveals that olfactory receptors--proteins that bind to odors that aid the sense of smell--perform a wide range of mostly unknown functions outside the nose. The function of extra-nasal olfactory receptors has the potential to be used in the diagnosis and treatment of health conditions such as cancer. The article is published in the July issue of Physiological Reviews.

Olfactory, or smell, receptors were originally thought to be only in the sensory nerve cells (neurons) of nasal cavity tissues. However, more recent and extensive study suggests that the receptors "occur in nearly the entire human body, [and] they appear to be substantially more functionally important than previously suggested," researchers from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany wrote. In addition to the receptors playing a major role in the sense of smell, "several essential physiological and pathophysiological processes have been described as targeted by human [olfactory receptors], including path finding, cell growth, [cell death], migration and secretion."

The research team summarized the location and purpose of certain types of olfactory receptors, including those that may be beneficial to general health:

• Receptors present in heart muscle cells may be a metabolic regulator of heart function.
• Receptors activated in the immune system have been seen to promote the death of certain types of leukemia cells.
• Smell receptors in the liver reduce the spread of liver cancer cells.
• Receptors in the skin increase the regeneration of skin cells and help speed wound healing.