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REPORTING ON CANCER RESEARCH Understanding study endpoints, statistics, and more.

MEMOS TO THE MEDIA

October 24, 2011

European Cohort Studies Explore Potential Causes of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Among known risk factors for hepatocellular cancer, smoking, obesity, and heavy alcohol consumption, along with chronic hepatitis B and C infection, contribute to a large share of the disease burden in Europe, according to a cohort study published online October 21.

October 18, 2011

Antineoplastic Agents Associated With Thyroid Dysfunction Antineoplastic agents such as immunotherapies and targeted therapies that specifically target signaling pathways in cancer cells are associated with thyroid dysfunction in 20%–50% of cancer patients taking them, which can adversely affect patients’ quality of life, according to a study.

October 12, 2011

Survival Disparities Between African-American and White Colo-rectal Cancer Patients African-American patients with resected stage II and stage III colon cancer experienced worse overall and recurrence-free survival compared to whites, but similar recurrence-free intervals, according to a study.

September 26, 2011

Company Stock Prices Before Public Announcements of Oncology Trial Results Prior knowledge of phase III clinical trials of new drugs and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory decisions may affect the price of a drug company’s stock according to a study.

September 19, 2011

Improving Cancer Communication to Patients Oncologists and their patients are increasingly challenged with making difficult decisions about screening, prevention and treatment. Unfortunately, most patients are neither armed with adequate knowledge nor the means of interpreting the information they do have in a qualitatively and quantitatively useful way.

August 31, 2011

Adjuvant Therapy May Not Be Necessary for Older Breast Cancer Patients Breast cancer patients over the age of 60 with early-stage, hormone-responsive small tumors who forego adjuvant endocrine, also called hormonal therapy, are not at an increased risk of mortality compared to women of the same age without breast cancer, according to a study.

August 29, 2011

Toxicity of Aromatase Inhibitors May Explain Lack of Overall Survival Improvement The toxicities associated with aromatase inhibitors (AIs) may explain the lack of overall survival improvement compared with tamoxifen, according to a study.

July 27, 2011

Children and Adolescent Mobile Phone Users at No Greater Risk of Brain Cancer Than Non-users Children and adolescents who use mobile phones are not at a statistically significant increased risk of brain cancer compared to their peers who do not use mobile phones, according to a study.

July 27, 2011

Computer-Aided Detection Does Not Improve Mammogram Accuracy Using computer-aided detection (CAD) software to help analyze and interpret mammograms does not improve accuracy, according to a study.

July 27, 2011

Breast Density Tied to Specific Types of Breast Cancer Women with breasts that appear dense on mammograms are at a higher risk of breast cancer and their tumors are more likely to have certain aggressive characteristics than women with less dense breasts, according to a study.

June 30, 2011

Breast Cancer Patients With Other Health Problems Have Worse Outcomes Older breast cancer patients with certain other health problems have higher mortality rates than patients without these problems according to a study.

June 24, 2011

New Breast Cancer Risk Model Quantifies the Impact of Risk Reduction How much can a woman lower her risk of breast cancer by losing weight, drinking less, or exercising more? A study describes a new model to estimate the impact of these lifestyle changes on absolute breast cancer risk, suggesting risk reductions that could translate into a substantial number of prevented cancers across an entire population.

June 21, 2011

Five Gene Locations Emerge as Strong Markers of Susceptibility for Melanoma More than a hundred studies have proposed gene alterations that may be associated with the risk of melanoma skin cancer. Now, the first comprehensive analysis of these studies has identified just five gene variants that are statistically significantly associated with melanoma at the genome-wide level and strongly backed by epidemiologic evidence.

June 16, 2011

Barrett’s Esophagus Carries Lower Risk of Malignancy than Previously Estimated Patients with Barrett’s esophagus may have a lower risk of esophageal cancer than previously reported, according to a large, long-term study.

June 10, 2011

Smoking Quitlines Work Regardless of How Smokers Recruited Proactive telephone counseling helps smokers quit regardless of how they are recruited to a telephone quitline.

May 19, 2011

DNA Repair System Affects Colon Cancer Recurrence and Survival Colorectal cancer patients with defects in mismatch repair--one of the body’s systems for repairing DNA damage—have lower recurrence rates and better survival rates than patients without such defects.

May 18, 2011

End-of-Life Care for Advanced Lung Cancer Differs Markedly Between U.S. and Ontario In the United States, older patients with advanced lung cancer make much less use of hospital and emergency room services at the end of life than their counterparts in Ontario but use far more chemotherapy.

May 11, 2011

Patient Reports of Relatives’ Cancer History Often Not Accurate Doctors often rely on a patient's knowledge of family medical history to estimate his or her risk of cancer. However, patient reports of family cancer history are not highly accurate.

May 3, 2011

Breast Cancers Found Between Mammograms More Likely to be Aggressive Breast cancers that are first detectable in the interval between screening mammograms are more likely to be aggressive, fast-growing tumors.

April 27, 2011

Use of Costly Breast Cancer Therapy Influenced Strongly by Reimbursement Policy and Practice Setting What Medicare would pay for and where a radiation oncologist practiced were two factors that strongly influenced the choice of intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) for treating breast cancer.

April 11, 2011

Cancer Burden Shifts for People With HIV/AIDS The number of cancers and the types of cancers among people living with AIDS in the U.S. have changed dramatically during the 15-year period from 1991–2005.

April 4, 2011

Tumors Resistant to Radiation Therapy May Be Controlled by the MET Oncogene Ionizing radiation treats many cancers effectively, but in some patients a few tumor cells become resistant to radiation and go on to cause relapse and metastasis. A growth factor-receptor protein called MET may be a key player in these cells’ resistance to radiation, and drugs targeting MET may help to prevent radiation-induced metastasis.

March 31, 2011

Annual Report to the Nation Shows Continuing Decline in Cancer Mortality Lung cancer death rates in women have fallen for the first time in four decades, according to an annual report on the status of cancer.

March 25, 2011

FDA Considers New Rules to Speed Up Confirmatory Trials of Cancer Drugs Granted Accelerated Approval Since 1992, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval to 47 new indications for 35 cancer drugs and in more than half the cases—26 indications—further trials have confirmed the benefits of the drugs. But the agency has concerns about the length of time some drugs have remained on the market without confirmation of their benefits.

March 23, 2011

Lung Cancer Study Finds Mentholated Cigarettes No More Harmful Than Regular Cigarettes Smokers of mentholated cigarettes are no more likely to develop lung cancer than other smokers.

March 23, 2011

CML Patients Taking Imatinib Have Similar Mortality Rates to People in General Population Patients taking imatinib (Gleevec) for CML, or chronic myelogenous leukemia, and in remission after two years of treatment, have a mortality rate similar to that of the general population.

March 11, 2011

DCIS Patients Who Get Invasive Breast Cancer Have Higher Mortality Women with ductal carcinoma in situ—DCIS—who later develop invasive breast cancer in the same breast are at higher risk of dying from breast cancer than those who do not develop invasive disease.

February 24, 2011

PSA Velocity Screening for Prostate Cancer May Lead to Unnecessary Biopsies Change in PSA – known as PSA velocity—is a poor predictor of prostate cancer, and may lead to many unnecessary biopsies.

February 24, 2011

PSA Screening Declines Following Publication of Large Trials, Guidelines PSA screening has declined in one large U.S. healthcare network since publication of two large screening trials and a set of guidelines.

February 11, 2011

Few Physicians Refer Patients to Cancer Clinical Trials A small proportion of adult cancer patients participate in clinical trials in part due to a low level of physician referrals.

February 8, 2011

Offspring of Male Cancer Survivors Have Slightly Higher Risk of Congenital Birth Abnormalities The incidence of major congenital birth abnormalities was slightly higher in the offspring of male cancer survivors compared with children of fathers with no history of cancer.

January 12, 2011

Cancer Care Costs in the United States: Projections 2010-2020 The estimated total cost of cancer care in the United States in 2020 is expected to be $158 billion assuming the most recent observed patterns of incidence, survival, and cost remain the same. This represents a 27% increase from 2010 due only to the projected aging and growth of the US population.

January 7, 2011

Using Quality of Life Measures in Breast Cancer Clinical Trials Quality of life measures tend to be most useful for clinical decision-making in trials in which quality of life is the primary outcome.

January 3, 2011

Risk of Breast Cancer Recurrence May Depend on Treating Surgeon Long-term health outcomes (disease-free survival) in patients with DCIS are associated with the treating surgeon, among other factors.