People living with incurable cancers urge more research

A man hesitated to buy light bulbs guaranteed for up to 10 years, thinking they'd outlast him. Another woman debated filling a prescription for a $13,000-a-month drug that keeps cancer from worsening for three months on average and carries six pages of warnings.

"There are so many of us living with cancers that can't be cured," he said. "We study the treatments but we don't study what it's like to be the person going through treatment."

Millions of people live with metastatic cancer - disease that has spread through the body and is considered incurable. They are surviving longer as treatments improve, often seeing cancer subside and flare again and again. Now many are pushing to be included more widely in research and to have it focus more on the patient's point of view.

"It's really about time that happened," said Dr. Patients should be asked what side effects and risks they'll accept, "not just treated as research subjects," she said.

Guidelines on how cancer survivors should be monitored later in life often assume the disease is in remission rather than still being treated, they wrote. Many patients now live for years with advanced cancer: Sixteen percent of people with widely spread lung cancer survive five years. Patients wonder if they should have genetic testing, how they'll deal with the cost of treatment and whether their doctors can keep up with the latest discoveries.

"We could also use some guidance even on seemingly irrelevant health decisions," such as whether it's worth it to be tested for other medical conditions or to take a cholesterol-lowering medicine "when you don't even know if you should take a chance on purchasing airline tickets for a summer vacation," the survivors wrote .

The man said hormone therapy and dozens of radiation treatments for his prostate cancer caused extreme fatigue. A marathoner, he said he "went from somebody who could run 50 miles, or 26 miles, to somebody who gets short of breath going up the stairs."

"I've got terrible sleep, hot flashes every 45 minutes," mood swings and depression, he said. Last summer, "I actually admitted myself to the hospital so I wouldn't kill myself."

A good psychiatrist, help from his family and a support group, and a new antidepressant have helped.

When she was 34, the woman was treated for Hodgkin lymphoma with radiation that led to breast and stomach cancers in later years. Two years ago, doctors found an unusual and inoperable soft tissue cancer called a sarcoma between her throat and windpipe. She said she has lived "in this constant fear of the other shoe dropping."

A jazz pianist and radio show host from Gary, Indiana, who spoke at the Atlanta conference as a patient advocate, talked about the uncertainty cancer patients live with. He had a cancerous kidney removed in 1996, but in 2007 learned the disease had spread to his lungs, liver and brain.

"They say if you go five years, you're kind of in the clear," but that's often not true, he said. He joined a study testing an experimental drug that helped him for five years until the company abandoned it.

"It wasn't working for enough people but it was saving my life," he said. His doctor persuaded the company to keep making the drug for him for another year, long enough for a new drug to come out that seems to be keeping his cancer in check.

Several studies are examining "what allows some people to live a very long time with incurable cancer," said a Dr. Around 750 women have given extensive details on their treatments and lifestyles, and tumor samples are being analyzed for genetic clues.

The survivors say they are focusing on living. She filled the prescription she'd been debating. He bought the long-lasting light bulbs.

"I figured, even if I can't enjoy them, the next person who lives in our house might," he said.

ps- it is very true that positive attitude matters a lot. Another important advise that I got from my oncologist friend is " don't pity yourself, nor anyone pity you for cancer". I think, this holds true not just for cancer but all diseases. I've seen that a lady who had stroke was able to overcome it and is moving around without any problem, at the same time, a man who had stroke, living on self pity and other's pity, has been worsening his condition. He never did the exercises that were necessary, always saying that I don't have hands and legs ! I'm also a cancer survivor with COPD, fibromyalgia and other issues. But I feel each day is a bonus, I do what I love doing and what makes me happy. I can never sit idle, feel waste of time, very rarely I watch TV, but will do my crochet at that time. Right now part of the team making prosthetic for breast cancer patients. I believe in mind over matter, if the mind wills, you can conquer a mountain too ! Good luck to all out there, especially cancer survivors, be happy, spread your smile, it will make you feel better, continue with your hobby or start a new one !

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Eating shortly before going to bed could increase risk of cancer

Midnight snacking or eating dinner too late could increase the risk of cancer, according to a study showing the damage of disrupting the body’s internal clock.

Spanish scientists have found that people who regularly ate their evening meal after 9pm, or less than two hours before going to sleep, had a 25 per cent raised risk of breast and prostate cancers.

The team, said it could be a result of late dinners that force the body’s metabolism to speed up, at a time when it should be winding down to go to sleep.

It follows several major studies which have looked at the harm to health of shift work, routine among nurses and manual workers, with these occupations at particularly high risk of prostate and breast cancers.

These types of cancers are closely linked to hormonal cues and are often treated with testosterone or estrogen-blocking therapies. Hormones are chemical messengers that can make us sleepy, hungry and stressed and are therefore tightly linked to the body’s circadian rhythms – the internal clock which is set by the day-night (diurnal) cycle.

A recent study suggested that employers were actually harming their staff by forcing those who might be natural night owls to come in early.

“Our study concludes that adherence to diurnal eating patterns is associated with a lower risk of cancer,” said a Dr.

“[These findings] highlight the importance of assessing circadian rhythms in studies on diet and cancer,” he added.

They surveyed 1,800 Spanish breast or prostate cancer patients, as well as more than 2,000 people unaffected by the disease, about their eating and sleeping patterns, and any steps they take to keep healthy.

It found cancer patients were more likely to be late night snackers even after taking into account other health habits and dietary or sleep patterns.

Currently international guidelines on the prevention of cancer don’t mention the potential impact of meal times on cancer, though the World Health Organisation does list shift working as a potential carcinogen.

Studies on the effects of meal disruption on animals have shown “profound effects on health” and the Barcelona group says if more studies replicate their findings there could be a cause for guidelines to be updated.

“Further research in humans is needed in order to understand the reasons behind these findings, but everything seems to indicate that the timing of sleep affects our capacity to metabolise food,” said the Dr. who led the research.

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Initial step to treat breast, prostate cancer

By using a smartly designed, customised E. coli vector, researchers have successfully produced a large quantity (15 mg/ml) of a biologically active protein (human tousled-like kinase-1b or TLK1b) in pure form. 

The reported yield for this protein using bacteria is only about 1 mg/litre. The protein is mainly involved in DNA damage response pathway in breast and prostate cancer cells.

The team found a handful of the 120 small molecules they had designed and synthesised were able to inhibit the protein. 

Though the protein is produced in excess in cancer cells, the inhibition, which was as high as 75%, prevents the protein from repairing the DNA damage leading to death of cancer cells.

DNA gets damaged when cells are exposed to radiotherapy, chemotherapy or other environmental factors.

The researchers were able to get high yield of the protein by inserting a recombinant DNA into E. coli. The recombinant DNA has a gene that expresses both TLK1b protein and the bacteriophage lambda phosphatase protein. 

The simultaneous expression of both the proteins is responsible for the high yield,” says one of the corresponding authors of a paper published .

In the absence of the bacteriophage lambda phosphatase gene, the TLK1b protein produced is not active as it remains insoluble. “The lambda phosphatase gene removes the phosphate so we were able to get the pure, active protein. Getting pure, active protein from bacteria has been a challenge so far,” says the other corresponding author.

Since the yield has been much more than expected, the researchers are testing the bioactivity and the 3D crystallographic structure of the protein. “There is limited information on this protein’s expression. So we intend studying the protein function and mechanism biochemically and structurally,” she says.

The team has already biochemically confirmed that the protein produced by the bacteria is active. The next task is to know the precise structure the protein takes inside the cells. “Knowing the crystal structure of the protein will help in identifying the mechanism of DNA repair. It will help us in knowing the amino acid sequence that is responsible for DNA repair,” he says.

Though a handful of small molecules were found to be effective in inhibiting the protein, the researchers are yet to study the mechanism of inhibition. “By knowing the crystal structure of the protein we can tell the sites where the small molecules get attached leading to inhibition. It will also help us design better small molecule inhibitors,” the Dr. says.

“We are working on two other proteins in the DNA repair pathway which when inhibited using small molecules will increase the chances of cancer cell death. The inhibitors should be used along with chemotherapy or radiotherapy for best results,” says  a co-author of the paper. 

“The work we are currently doing is preliminary in nature. Our long-term goal is to know which functional groups on the small molecules needs to be modified to make them more specific so that they target the TLK1b protein present only in the cancer cells,” says the first author of the paper.

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Blue light from smartphones increases risk of breast, prostate cancer

A new study, has suggested that the risk of breast and prostate cancer is increased by exposure to blue light emitted by outdoor LEDs, smartphones, and tablets at night.

The researchers found that high levels of outdoor blue light in dark surrounding increases the risk of developing the deadly cancers by 1.5-fold. Moreover, the study said that men, who are exposed to high levels of indoor artificial light, had 2.8-fold higher risk of developing prostate cancer, as per report.

The researchers looked at the data of over 4,000 adults in Spain before coming to this conclusion.
"There is evidence pointing to an association between exposure to artificial light at night, disruption of the circadian rhythm, and breast and prostate cancers. We sought to determine whether night exposure to light in cities can affect the development of these two types of cancer," said a researcher.

According to the team,the  blue light has a shorter wavelength and higher energy than other types of visible light. And, exposure to this light, reportedly, decreases the release of melatonin in the brain.
Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland that regulates sleep and wakefulness.

Professor of community medicine and health care said that there are plenty of applications available for download for people who want to reduce their exposure to blue light from phones and other devices. "They change the spectrum of intensity on the screen depending on time of day, and that's great. That's where we need to go in society in general," said the Dr.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                                                                                                                                                                                        PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/  

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