The Internet has become a powerful and important resource for daily life. When patients receive a medical diagnosis, particularly a difficult one like pancreatic cancer, the web can be an essential information tool, helping to enable patients to have meaningful discussions with health care providers. However, new research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) published in JAMA Surgery suggests that online information about pancreatic cancer is often written at a prohibitively high reading level and lacks accuracy concerning alternative therapies.

"We know from past research that people are strongly influenced by what they read online, and they believe that what they read on the internet will help them make better health care decisions," said senior author Tara Kent, MD, a pancreatic surgeon at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. "Dealing with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer is difficult enough without asking patients to negotiate PhD-level terms. The concern here is that available web information may, in fact, be adding to existing barriers to care. If patients don't understand what they're reading, how can they make the best decisions about treatment options?"

The degree to which patients are empowered by written educational materials depends on the text's readability level and the accuracy of the information provided. A patient's health literacy or ability to comprehend written health information can impact clinical outcomes. Reading materials are rarely written at the sixth to seventh-grade reading level recommended by literacy specialists and multiple national institutions.

A new study indicates that cancer may have negative impacts on both the physical and mental health of individuals as they age. Published in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study suggests that cancer increases the risk for certain health issues above and beyond normal ageing. This is likely due, in part, to decreased physical activity and stress associated with cancer diagnosis and treatment.

As the population of older adults grows, it is increasingly important for clinicians to understand the unique impact of cancer on the health of individuals as they age. To investigate, Corinne Leach, MS, PhD, MPH, of the American Cancer Society in Atlanta, and her colleagues analysed cancer registry data that were linked to Medicare surveys. The analysis included 921 Medicare beneficiaries with a breast, colorectal, lung, or prostate cancer diagnosis who completed initial surveys in 1998 and 2001 and follow-up surveys two years later. These patients were matched to 4605 controls without cancer.

Cancer groups demonstrated greater declines in activities of daily living and physical function compared with controls, with the greatest change for lung cancer patients. Having a cancer diagnosis increased risk for depression but did not increase the likelihood of developing arthritis, incontinence (except for prostate cancer), or vision/hearing problems. Having a cancer diagnosis also did not exacerbate the severity of arthritis or foot neuropathy.

"This prospective analysis used a propensity score matched control group to cancer cases that enabled us to tease apart the effects of cancer and ageing in a novel way," said Dr. Leach. "Decreased physical functioning among older cancer patients compared with older adults without cancer is an important finding for clinicians because it is also actionable. Clinicians need to prepare patients and families for this change in functioning levels and provide interventions that preserve physical function to limit the declines for older cancer patients."

Leach et al. "Is it my cancer or am I just getting older?: Impact of cancer on age-related health conditions of older cancer survivors." Cancer, 2016; DOI: 10.1002/cncr.29914 [Abstract]

A longitudinal Nordic study, comparing the results of hormone (antiandrogen) therapy with or without the addition of local radiotherapy, shows that a combination of treatments halves the risk of death from prostate cancer 15 years after diagnosis. This according to a follow-up study recently published in the journal European Urology.

"Before the turn of the century, it was tradition to castrate men with high-risk or aggressive local prostate cancer with no signs of spreading, as the disease at that point was thought to be incurable," says Anders Widmark, senior physician and professor at Umeå University, who led the study.

"When we published the first results of this study in the Lancet in 2009, we contributed to changing the attitude towards radiotherapy for older patients with advanced prostate cancer. In this follow-up study, we present even more evident results that clearly show how patients who previously were considered incurable, to a large extent can be cured and that these patients should therefore be offered radiotherapy as an additional treatment."
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In the study, which is also published in European Urology, researchers have compared a common Nordic pill-based hormone therapy (with so-called antiandrogen) and the same treatment method with the addition of local radiotherapy. The results of a long-term follow-up 15 years after diagnosis showed that treatments with the addition of radiotherapy halved the risk of patients dying from prostate cancer from 34 to 17 per cent.

MD Anderson study reveals 'sex-biased' gene signatures in review of 13 cancer types
It is well known that men and women differ in terms of cancer susceptibility, survival and mortality, but exactly why this occurs at a molecular level has been poorly understood.

A study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reviewed 13 cancer types and provided a molecular understanding of sex effects in diverse cancers. The research revealed two cancer-type groups associated with cancer incidence and mortality, suggesting a "pressing need" to develop sex-specific therapeutic strategies for some cancers.The research findings are published online issue of Cancer Cell.

Using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas, a team led by Han Liang, Ph.D., associate professor of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, found more than half of the genes studied that were related to clinical practice of cancer treatment showed sex-biased signatures in certain cancer types.

"Our study helps elucidate the molecular basis for sex disparities in cancer and lays a critical foundation for the future development of precision cancer medicine that is sex-specific," said Liang. "This is a crucial finding as currently, male and female patients with many cancer types often are treated in a similar way without explicitly considering their gender."