Breast Cancer Patients Welcome Hot Flashes & Night Sweats

healthnews.com — Women have long dreaded the days and nights when hot flashes and night sweats—consequences of age and gender— disrupt their lives and cause much emotional and physical discomfort. But there are other women, those receiving treatment for breast cancer, who might learn to appreciate, in a necessary way, that those side effects are also signs of a successful treatment program. Anastrazole and tamoxifen were the two treatments recently given to women in a trial to assess the drugs’ side effects as compared to the recurrence, or lack thereof, of breast cancer in the patients. The results of the trial found that the women who reported vasomotor or joint symptoms as a result of the drugs, the former symptom being the one that produces hot flashes and other similar responses, had a greater decrease in the recurrence of breast cancer than those without any symptoms. read more...

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Tamoxifen Speeds Diagnosis of ER-Negative Breast Cancer

news.yahoo.com — A treatment that helps prevent one type of breast cancer in women with an evaluated risk of the disease also appears to help doctors make an earlier diagnosis of another form of breast cancer, a new study reports. Tamoxifen previously had been shown to reduce the risk of estrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancer in women at high risk of the disease, but not to affect the chance of developing ER-negative disease. However, the study by researchers at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston found that the treatment helped doctors diagnosis women who later developed estrogen receptor (ER) negative breast cancer an average of one year sooner than the same at-risk patients who instead took a placebo. read more...

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Hypnosis Cuts Hot Flashes for Breast Cancer Survivors

health.msn.com — reast cancer survivors who suffer from hot flashes can reduce these attacks significantly with hypnosis, a new study finds. Hot flashes are a problem for many women who survive breast cancer. Not only do they cause discomfort, but they interrupt sleep, cause anxiety and affect a woman's quality of life. "This is a very encouraging study of hypnosis as a treatment for hot flashes in breast cancer survivors," said Dr. Ted Gansler, director of Medical Content at the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the study. "This is an important topic because of the high prevalence of these symptoms in breast cancer survivors, and because few other treatment options are both safe and effective for this population," he added. read more...

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Breast Cancer Survivors Report High Quality of Life After Treatment

health.msn.com — Women who had a lumpectomy and radiation to combat breast cancer have an overall quality of life several years after treatment that's on par with most adult American women, a new report says. "Treatments for breast cancer may decrease quality of life temporarily, but this is evidence that survivors, on average, will return to a normal quality of life," lead researcher Dr. Gary Freedman, an attending physician in the department of radiation oncology at Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center, said in a news release issued by the center. read more...

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Joint Symptoms More Likely For Some Breast Cancer Patients

medicalnewstoday.com — An article published in The Lancet Oncology reports that postmenopausal women with breast cancer who are on endocrine treatment are likely to experience arthralgia and arthritis (joint symptoms) if they previously have used hormone replacement therapy (HRT), received a hormone-receptor positive tumor diagnosis, undergone chemotherapy, received treatment with anastrozole versus tamoxifen, or been obese. Dr Ivana Sestak and Dr Jack Cuzick (Cancer Research UK, London, UK) and colleagues discuss their results in a retrospective exploratory analysis of patients enrolled in the Arimidex [anastrozole] Tamoxifen Alone or in Combination trial (ATAC). read more...

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Clue Links Hip Bone Mineral Density to Breast Cancer

healthnews.com — Did you ever think the mineral density in your hipbone could be a clue in predicting breast cancer after menopause? A new study, which will appear in the September 1st edition of Cancer, shows that higher hipbone density could increase the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Having a higher mineral density in the hipbone may be a reflection of a lifetime of higher exposure to estrogen. Many forms of breast cancer, not all, are estrogen-sensitive. Of course, if the density of the minerals in the bone drops too low, it could bring on different health risks, such as fractures and osteoporosis. The American Cancer Society, publisher of Cancer, states the findings of this study do not change "the need to treat osteoporosis in order to reduce the risk of fractures." What it does show is that balancing hormone levels in women is important over a lifetime, for a variety of reasons. read more...

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2 Breast Cancer Screening Strategies Prove Effective

nlm.nih.gov — TUESDAY, July 29 (HealthDay News) -- The typical U.S. breast cancer screening strategy results in women being tested twice as often as a different approach use in Norway, but both are equally good at detecting disease, a new report says. A study in the July 29 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute finds that a traditional physician- and self-referral screening strategy held up well against the Norway approach, in which the government sends letters to all women in a specific age range inviting them to have a screening mammogram. The Norway program aims for women to be screened every two years, while the U.S.-based "opportunistic screening" strategies advise women to have annual screening mammograms. In comparing the strategies as applied to 45,050 women in Vermont and 194,430 women in Norway from 1997 to 2003, the researchers found that the age-adjusted screening detection rate of cancers was similar between the two populations (2.77 per 1,000 woman-years in Vermont versus 2.57 in Norway). However, more than three times as many women in Vermont were recalled for further examination than in Norway (9.8 percent versus 2.7 percent). read more...

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Raloxifene Cuts Risk of Certain Type of Breast Cancer

news.yahoo.com — WEDNESDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- A drug already approved to reduce the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women also seems to cut the risk for other women. A new analysis finds that those who took raloxifene (Evista) regularly over a number of years were less likely to develop invasive estrogen-receptor (ER) positive breast cancer, compared with women who did not take the drug. Raloxifene did not, however, cut the risk for noninvasive breast cancer or invasive ER-negative cancers. "This is a reaffirmation that the drug raloxifene is a very powerful SERM [selective estrogen receptor modulator] for reducing the risk of invasive breast cancer," said Dr. Jay Brooks, chief of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. The study, published in the June 10 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was funded by Eli Lilly and Co., which makes Evista. SERMs block the female hormone estrogen by binding to estrogen receptors; estrogen helps fuel the growth of some breast cancers. Raloxifene and other hormonal therapies have an "estrogenic tickle" effect, explained V. Craig Jordan, author of an accompanying editorial in the journal and vice president and research director for medical science at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Jordan did some of the early laboratory research on raloxifene. Raloxifene was originally developed to prevent and treat osteoporosis, and only later was found to help reduce the risk of invasive breast cancer in high-risk women. The new study expands on the original results of the RUTH (Raloxifene Use for the Heart) trial, originally designed to see if raloxifene, which has cholesterol-lowering properties, could reduce the risk of dying from coronary heart disease. read more...

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