Researchers have found that smoking may increase the risk of dying early in premenopausal women with breast cancer.

In a prospective study of 848 women with breast cancer who were followed for a median of 6.7 years, premenopausal women who smoked for more than 21.5 years had a 3.1-times higher risk of dying from any cause as well as a 3.4-times higher risk of dying from breast cancer. These links were not apparent among post-menopausal women.

There was also some suggestion that the increased risks seen in premenopausal women were especially relevant to women whose cancers expressed both the estrogen receptor and the progesterone receptor.

"Overall, this work is monumental in advising patients about how their smoking might affect their outcome," said Dr. Yuko Minami, co-author of the Cancer Science study. "Hopefully this paper will serve to reduce the number of breast cancer patients who continue to smoke."

Kakugawa et al. Smoking and survival after breast cancer diagnosis in Japanese women: A prospective cohort study. Cancer Science. 2015;EPub. DOI: 10.1111/cas.12716 [Abstract]

Changes in the gut bacteria of colon cancer patients indicate that some virulent bacteria could be linked to the progression of the disease, according to research published in the open access journal Genome Medicine. The findings could eventually be used to identify a virulence signature in these cancers and help doctors predict how bacterial changes in patients' guts could affect their prognosis.

The human gut microbiome, the collection of microorganisms, their genomes and habitat that contributes to maintaining a healthy intestine, is thought to play an active role in colon cancer progression. Previous studies have shown that changes in the bacterial community occur in the gut microbiome of colon cancer patients, with tumors harboring increased bacterial diversity and an abundance of pathogenic bacteria compared to surrounding healthy tissue.

Although researchers have uncovered a variety of potentially pathogenic bacteria associated with colon cancer, little work has been done to determine if there is a single signature that might unify their findings.

Lead author Michael Burns from The University of Minnesota, USA, said: "It was surprising that the results were so clear. We were able to clearly identify the presence of two virulent strains of bacteria, including the discovery of a new potential culprit, Providencia."

"This has obvious implications for colon cancer patients and by analyzing the similarities among these pathogens, we have uncovered a single signature of colon cancer when analyzing the gut microbiome that might help researchers identify these cancers in the future."

Carnegie Mellon researchers show that Intralipid can also increase the effectiveness of cancer-fighting nanodrugs.

A single dose of an FDA-approved intravenous nutrition source may be able to significantly reduce the toxicity and increase the bioavailability of platinum-based cancer drugs, according to a study by Carnegie Mellon University biologists published in Scientific Reports.

Platinum-based drugs, including cisplatin, carboplatin and oxyplatin, have been used to treat cancer for more than 35 years. While they remain among the most prescribed and most potent chemotherapy drugs, they also cause serious side effects, including kidney damage.

Many of the side effects of these drugs occur when the drug settles in healthy tissue. To deliver these drugs in a more targeted way, researchers have created nanoscale delivery systems engineered to make the drug reach and accumulate at the tumor site. However, tests of these nanodrugs show that only between one and 10 percent of the drugs are delivered to the tumor site, with the majority of the remainder being diverted to the liver and spleen.

'The body's immune system, especially the liver and spleen, has been one of the biggest stumbling blocks in developing nanoscale chemotherapy drug delivery systems,' said Chien Ho, the alumni Professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon. 'When the drugs collect in those organs, they become less available to treat the cancer, and can also cause toxicity.'

In the past few years, Ho and his colleagues were developing cellular nanotags to help detect organ rejection, when Ho noticed that Intralipid, a fat emulsion that is FDA-approved for use as an intravenous nutrition source, reduced the amount of nanoparticles that were being cleared by the liver and spleen by about 50 percent. As a result, the nanoparticles remained in the blood stream for longer periods of time.

Cardiovascular disease still primary cause of death among women

Cancer has overtaken cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, as the UK's No 1 killer- but only among men, reveals research published online in the journal Heart. Cardiovascular disease is still the most common cause of death among women, and kills more young women than breast cancer, the figures show.

The researchers used the latest nationally available data (2012-13) for each of the four UK countries and the Cardiovascular Disease Statistics 2014 report compiled for the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to quantify the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, and find out how it's treated, how much it costs, and how many deaths it causes. Cardiovascular disease includes coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, circulatory system disease, and other vascular/arterial disease.

The researchers analysed entries to the Clinical Practice Research Datalink GOLD database, the world's largest repository of anonymised records for primary care, plus information from the family doctor (GP) quality improvement scheme known as QOF, and figures on episodes of inpatient hospital care. The analysis indicated that just short of 2.3 million people were living with some form of coronary heart disease in 2012. Around half a million were living with heart failure and a further 1.1 million were living with abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation).

England had the lowest prevalence of all cardiovascular conditions out of the four UK countries. But there were regional variations, with higher rates of cardiovascular disease in the North of England than in the South of the country. Scotland had the highest prevalence of coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease, while Wales had the highest prevalence of high blood pressure, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation.

For the first time since the middle of the 20th century, cancer overtook cardiovascular disease as the primary cause of death in 2012. The proportion of deaths attributable to cancer was 29% while cardiovascular disease accounted for 28%.

But this was only true of men; cardiovascular disease still killed more women than cancer.

DCIS is a cancer of the milk ducts and is the most common type of non-invasive breast cancer. Improvements in early detection have dramatically increased the number of cases of DCIS and approximately 60,000 women are diagnosed with DCIS each year, which accounts for 20 to 25 percent of new breast cancer cases in the United States. It is estimated that between 25 percent and 50 percent of DCIS cases may progress to invasive ductal carcinoma. This rate varies depending on whether a woman's DCIS is categorized as low-, intermediate- or high-grade, but the standard of care for all grades of DCIS is surgery.