Early this month witnessed a major breakthrough in the treatment of prostate cancer when a team of medical professionals operated a British patient with a surgical robot.

Believe it or not, he is indeed the first individual to get his prostate removed by incurring a whopping £2 million on the gadget. The operation was successful and the 48-years old patient known by the name of Jeremy Lineham, was allowed to leave for home the following day.

The keyhole surgery was carried out in one of the reputed hospitals of Europe, London Guy’s Hospital and it is also know that an earlier version of the same robot has been used for some time. Following the success of the operation, Declan Murphy, the consultant urologist remarked, “Jeremy’s operation was a great success and we are impressed with the enhanced performance of the new robot”. The urologist further added that the range of motion and the dexterity of the robot are much more precise than that of human hand and that is the main reason that operation witnessed success in the very first instance.

The robot also enhances the view of the anatomy with its 3D high-definition and what’s even more impressive is that two doctors can simultaneously carry out operations with the dual consoles. This also facilitates the training process, which wasn’t’ so easy in previous times. The urologist further made a claim that they are planning to upgrade the robot in the coming months so that their patients can benefit from the best technology available.

The patient is exhilarated at the success of the operation and also overjoyed over the fact that he could return home within a span of less than 24 hours after such a major life-threatening operation.

According to a study published in British Journal of Cancer, a form of therapy helpful in treating prostate cancer is found to be able to cure men without the need of surgery and with fewer adverse effects. Under this experiment, 172 men suffering from prostate cancer were treated with HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) under general anesthesia in University College Hospital, London and Princess Grace Hospital, London. HIFU uses the sound waves for killing cancer cells.

The men who took part in the experiment were discharged from the hospital after 5 hours of the treatment on an average. Usually, prostate cancer is either treated through surgery or through radiotherapy, both of which are lengthy procedures. Surgery requires a patient to be admitted in the hospital while radiotherapy requires a patient to come to the hospital every day for about one month for treatment.

Out of the 172 men who were treated with HIFU, 159 were followed up for one year and it was found that 92% of them did not show any recurrence of the disease. Although this is not a comparative statement because people treated with traditional forms of prostate cancer treatment also have same percentage of recurrence among patients. Out of these 159 men who were followed up, less than 1% had incontinence, around 30-40% had impotence but no one had any kind of bowel problems.

If we follow patients who are treated with surgery or radiotherapy, we will find that 5-20% will have incontinence and 50% will have impotence. Radiotherapy may also cause some side effects like diarrhea, bleeding and pain in 5-20% of treated patients. A spokesperson from the division of surgical and interventional science of UCL said that this therapy of treating prostate cancer can be used extensively in future because it has fewer adverse effects. But yet, it is not known if it is more useful and effective than surgery and radiotherapy. Further studies are needed to be carried out, which will involve treatment of larger number of men and following up for a longer period. In this way, they will be able to compare the effectiveness of the treatment in the long run.

HIFU or High Intensity Focused Ultrasound makes use of high frequency waves of sound for heating up small tissues to 80-90 ºC temperature. This therapy can be used to treat the entire prostate or only the cancer affected areas. The chief clinician of Cancer Research UK also said that further studies are needed to be made to prove the effectiveness of HIFU therapy. If it is found that this method causes fewer side effects in the patients as compared to other methods of treatment, then that will be very good news. HIFU does not pass through air and solid bone so it can only treat a limited type of cancer including prostate cancer, primary and secondary liver cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer and pancreatic cancer.

prostate cancer

A new drug was discovered that proved to be very effective in stimulating the body’s own immune system to fight prostate cancer in cases when the tumor was wide spread beyond the possibility of surgical intervention and became resistant to hormonal treatment or chemotherapy. The new drug is MDX-010, an antibody which builds on the action of the hormone.

In an experimental treatment on two prostate cancer patients where the patient’s tumor have spread beyond the prostate gland, MDX-010 (also know as Ipilimumab drug) was administrated. The experimental therapy used MDX-010 as standardized hormone treatment together with radiation therapy. As a result, the patient’s specific prostate antigen shrank lower enough to be surgically removed. After a few weeks from the treatment the tumor could not be seen with Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

The real surprise came when urologist and surgeon, Dr Kwon and Dr Michael Blute decide to operate their patients. They were shocked to learn that the results were far beyond what they had expected. In a statement, Dr Michael Blute said that he had difficulty trying to locate the cancer because the tumors had shrunk so dramatically. He added that he had never he had never seen anything like this in his whole career. After one and a half year, both patients are cancer free and no longer need any therapy.

In order to find out the efficiency of the treatment, more studies had been conducted. It seems that the immune system can be influenced by blocking a complex set of interactions so that it can provoke a regression of the cancer cells, causing the tumor to shrink significantly, so that surgical intervention became possible. The immune system plays a role in detecting and eliminating altered cells by generating T-cells that destroy foreign objects. Some cancer cells can dial down the strength of the response of the immune system and allow tumor to grow. The mechanism of down regulation of the immune system involves the molecule CTLA-4, which appears on the surface of the T-cells as a normal regulatory mechanism that is supposed to protect the human body from immune system overreaction. MDX-010, also known as Ipilimumab, is a human antibody against human CTL-4, the molecule on T cells that suppresses the immune response.

More studies are made to investigate the potential of MDX-010 in regulating the immune system help suppress tumor growth in other types of cancer. Other research is made to determine the possibility of increasing the effect of the treatments when Ipilimumab is used in combination with other types of chemicals.

Great news to all those who had been working hard to find the cure for neuroblastoma, as scientist have uncovered the first link between the lethal disease and a kind of genetic disorder called as CNV or copy number variation. This genetic defect is qualified by some extra bits or missing DNA. This discovery came into picture when a group of scientists in Paris were involved in a study on neuroblastoma, the most dangerous paediatric disorder that affects the nervous system and that is responsible for 15% of cancer deaths in children. Researchers under the leadership of John Maris of the Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia have discovered that the genetic defect, Copy Number Variation or CNV on chromosome 1 is a serious contender in development of this disease that mainly affects infants.

The study also stated that this absence stretch of DNA normally occurs within a group of genes involved in the growth of our central nervous system. This absence stretch thus affects amount of genes (with missing DNA) that are produced within the normal cells and the cancerous cells. Speaking in a phone interview, Maris states that, this result was indeed a new area of study and they never suspected that this family of genes with missing DNA would play a vital role in neuroblatoma. It is also worth mentioning here that, in a research published last year, Maris and others isolated a gene called ALK which can by itself cause a rare hereditary disease. Even last month, the scientists have uncovered another gene known as BARD1 that raises the child’s susceptibility to some extent.

This new study that is published in Nature, a British journal, has proved significant not only because it adds another feather to the neuroblastoma’s puzzle hat but also it has opened a new path that shows even genetic material can become risky cancer agents. Though it has been widely suspected that Copy Number Variations could lead to tumors but the path to prove this has been really tough.

With the help of powerful computers, Maris compares the DNAs of health persons and those suffering from cancer to conduct a genome-wide association study. With this technique, hundreds of links between cancer and DNA were uncovers but none showed the relationship between the deadly disease and CNV. But this study reveals a strong hypothesis showing the effect of these CNVs on paediatric cancer said Maris speaking to a telephonic interview. He also added that these results will also prove vital to find the association of these CNVs with other types of cancers as well. This study makes it clear that there is no strict definition of what is hereditary when it comes to any disease including cancer.

The study also states that only few conditions like the Mendelian diseases are caused by the mutations in a single gene. Most other disorders are caused by a complex of chain of genes and also environmental conditions that are mostly difficult to trace out. Explaining this fact, Maris stated only 1 or 2 % of neuroblastoma runs in the families while the rest occur only by chance. This genome-wide association study is now proving that it is not the chance but the genetic susceptibility with the right inheriting risk factors from both mom and dad that is causing the disease.

According to researchers, it has been recently found that polyphenon E, a polyphenol that is present in green tea, plays a significant role in slowing down the development of prostate cancer. In fact, polyphenon E significantly reduces cancer progression’s bio-markers, which include Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF), Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) and Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). This has been well-supported by the latest edition of the Cancer Prevention Research. As a result of this new discovery, researchers concluded that polyphenon E is crucial for the treatment as well as prevention of prostate cancer and thus consuming green tea can be very beneficial for the purpose.

Some of the previous studies stated that green tea is related to reduce incidents of prostate cancer and the polyphenols present in it is being regarded as a useful cancer therapy source. But this fact is still inconclusive. In the year 2008, FDA said that because people usually consume green tea in very small quantities, the evidences about benefits of green tea are uncertain. After this statement from the FDA, researchers started conducting a single arm, open label phase II trial for determining the effect of active compounds present in green tea on the serum bio-markers of prostate cancer patients, if consumed in small quantities. The biomarkers involved are prostate specific antigen or PSA, hepatocyte growth factor or HGF and vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF.

During the experiment, 26 prostate cancer patients age between 41 to 68 years underwent radical prostatectomy. The patients were asked to take four capsules of Polyphenon E daily until the date of their surgery arrived. Researchers said that 4 capsules are almost equivalent to 12 cups green tea. As a result, researchers found significant decrease in the levels of serum for all the 3 biomarkers. It was noted that 10 out of 25 patients received more than 25% decrease in their HGF levels and 6 out of 25 patients received more than 25% reduction in their levels of VEGF.

Researcher explained that ECCG which is a major catechin in polyphenon E that present in green tea is able to rapidly block the production of HGF. EGCG is also responsible for blocking VEGF production that plays a crucial role in cancer associated fibro-blasts. It was also found that time on medicines, race and age did not significant effects on changes in the serum bio-markers.

It is stated in some studies that, if taken in high doses, EGCG may even adversely affect the functioning of the liver, but according to this study, all the markers of dysfunction of liver have significantly decreased, especially total protein, alkaline phosphatase, amylase, albumin and aspartate aminotransferase. This proved that the doses used in the study are safe said Dr. Cardelli.

Since the result was obtained with concentrated active ingredients, Dr Cardelli also raised the question whether this can be translated into drinking 12 cup of green daily. Although the data from the study support the role of green in prostate cancer treatment and prevention, the effects of long-term administration, different doses and mixing with other medicines still need to be seen.

Weight loss surgeries are intended to cut excess amount of weight from our body. But do you know that these surgeries may also reduce the risk of cancer in women. This surprising finding was released on Tuesday by a group of Swedish researchers who discovered that weight loss surgery may also help obese women to lower the risks of developing cancer.

The 10-year study published on Lancet Oncology reported that women who had undergone weight loss surgery are 42 percent less likely to come into contact with cancer. The study also revealed that men on the other hand did not benefit much from the surgery mainly because only a small number of men had undergone these surgeries and most of the cancers are result of female hormones like estrogen.

People have long known that obesity can increase the risk of cancer. A recent study released in the Journal of American Medical Association reported that people who were obese at young age have higher probability to develop pancreatic cancer. This group of people has twice the risk of getting aggressive pancreatic cancer that may lead to death.

In the study headed by Lars Sjostrom of Sahlgrenska University, Gothenburg, researchers compare 2010 obese patients who had undergone weight loss surgery with 2037 obese patients who tried standard diet and other exercise for weight loss treatment. The results were truly in favor of the weight loss surgery group as people in this category lost almost 19.9 kg or 43 pounds of weight over the study period of 10 years while the other group of people following diet and exercise gained 1.3 kg.

Weight loss surgeries were also reported to cut the risks of cancer by 1/3 with women enjoying the maximum benefit. The results showed that among the surveyed women, 79 had first time cancers in the weight loss surgery category compared to 130 among those who employed exercise and diet to reduce their weight.

When asked about the benefits for men, Dr. Andrew Renehan of University of Manchester, UK, said that only fewer men participated in the study and hence the result. He also said that women were the one who were more likely to get affected by cancer, mainly the post-menopausal breast and endometrial cancers. Renehan added that the effects of weight loss surgery would take longer time to show up in men who are prone mostly to colon and kidney cancers that take longer time to become evident.

Adding to the points of Renehan, Dr. Leena Khaitan also confirmed the fact that 80% of patients who undergo weight loss surgery are women and thus makes the difference in the benefits enjoyed by women with the surgery. She also praised the efforts of the researchers and added that study like this may be important to show people that weight loss surgery may be a way to prevent deadly diseases like cancer.

To a certain degree, men are more likely to develop and die from a form of cancer than women. Recent UK studies revealed that men have greater cancer risk than women. In fact, men are 60% more likely to develop and 70% more likely to die from cancers that affect both sexes (excluding breast cancer and other form of cancers that are gender specific).

There seems to be no biological explanation for this gap between sexes and it is as though that certain lifestyle changes could help prevent most of the cancers. Apparently women are far more careful when it comes to their health while men should be more aware of their own health and visit the doctors more frequently. Experts say, men reluctance to adopt a healthy lifestyle might be the reason why men have greater cancer risk.

Men are far less health conscious than women and this seems to fuel the gap between sexes when it comes to cancer mortality. Professor David Forman, researcher and member of the National Cancer Intelligence Network, said there’s no biological reason why this gender gap should exist and that men could avoid health issues by simply being more health conscious. The research conducted by the National Cancer Intelligence Network showed men are far less likely to make significant lifestyle changes and are less likely to visit a doctor when cancer symptoms arise.

Chairman of the Men Health’s forum, Professor Alan White, also noted men usually ignore factors such as obesity, smoking, drinking, and having a poor diet as contributors to cancer risks. Professor White said men have to look to their lifestyles more seriously and take more responsibility but new research is needed in order to better understand the serious gender gap that exists when it comes to cancer mortality.

Professor Mike Richards, government’s cancer expert, acknowledged the gravity of the situation and urged all men to seek help and visit their doctors when health issues arise. Sara Hiom, member of Cancer Research UK, said more than half of the cancers can be prevented by certain lifestyle changes but men are more reluctant than women when it comes to visiting the doctor. This delay in reporting health issues to a doctor might be one of the main reasons why men are more likely to die of cancer than women are.

According to a recent research carried out by some eminent researchers, doctors may shortly come up with a technique which can diagnoses prostate cancer by measuring chemical compounds rather than the conventional blood test.

In a recent telephonic interview, David Parker of Durham University concluded that the test can produce a fingerprint of citrate - a chemical that falls in the prostate gland with the gradual development of cancer. The designer of the chemical test further explained that, citrate formed in cell metabolism processes act as a biomarker for disease, citrate levels in prostate fluid fall as prostate cancer progresses. Thus it provides reliable method for screening and detecting prostate cancer.

Prostate cancer is known to be the second most common diseases that men all across the globe are affected with. It falls second only to lung cancer and devours as many as 254,000 men each year all over the world.

Almost all the cancer specialists advise a blood test to male-folks over 50 years of age. This blood test is called prostate-specific antigen test, and is popularly known as the PSA test. Doctors and specialists believe that early diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer is better than at a later stage, as it stands a better chance of controlling the spreading of the disease.

Most of the prostate tumors take time to grow and gradually cause harm. Studies revealed that many prostate cancer patients are even living with the harsh effects caused by aggressive hormone therapies and radiation treatment that may not have killed them.

During the study, David Parker along with his colleagues further concentrated their research on compound citrate, which is known to provide the prostate cells with the required energy.

The citrate level in the prostate varies considerably and depends on a zinc-sensitive enzyme. For men who are diagnosed with cancer, there is a considerable reduction in the levels of zinc that in turn brings about a reduction in the levels of citrate. Again, Leslie Costello from University of Maryland remarked that the technique aids in analyzing the effects of cancer at a very early stage of diagnosis. According to the findings of the researchers in the journal called Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, the new technique needs only a microlitre of fluid and this can be extracted with the help of a needle.

This technique will take some more time to be put into practice as the researchers are still going on with their regular studies and experiments. However, they hold a firm belief that this technique will definitely prove to be of immense benefit in the near future.

Selenium, a trace mineral, forms an essential component of our heart muscle and immune system. It can be found in animal protein, fish, vegetables and Brazilian nuts. It holds fort steadfastly against cancer, thyroid malfunction, infertility and arthritis. A chunk of this is attributable to its anti-oxidant properties. In fact, researchers also suggest that selenium possesses properties that metamorphose cancer genes.

Selenium occurs in the soil in natural form and thus it is easily absorbed by crops and altered into bioavailable variety for human use; barring the East Coast, US boasts of selenium-rich soil. Selenium is most useful to human body in its L-selenomethionine avatar. In contrariety, Selenite is not as easily absorbed by the body.

A 2003 study undertaken in France probed into the size of thyroid gland as compared to the consumption of selenium. Selenium level was found to be inversely proportional to the size of thyroid. A larger thyroid obviously brings home the threat of goiter. The research also concluded that selenium may reduce the risk of both goiter and other thyroid related diseases.

High selenium level in bloodstream, can also palliate the replication of HIV virus and the study came out with a startling revelation that those with low levels selenium were twenty times more likely to pass away with AIDS.

Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) conducted a study that suggested a decrease by 50 percent in number of cancer deaths with the help of selenium supplement. The statistics included cancers of the lungs, prostate and colon.

A double blind, placebo-controlled cancer prevention trial, pertaining to random data was published in 1997. The study was undertaken in the University of Arizona. Over 1300 patients with basal cell cancer were provided with 200 mcg of selenium a day between the years 1983 to 1991. It was found that cancer mortality diminished significantly. Selenium group brought fourth a reduction of 28 deaths as compared to control group. Also incidences of cancer were significantly reduced – 77 in selenium group compare to 117 in the control group. There was not a single case of toxicity reported. This brought the researchers to a conclusion that supplementation of selenium could be an effective aid against various forms of cancer including lung, prostate and colon cancer, with skin cancer being an exception.

After a successful research on cancer treatment, a group of doctors and scientists from Vancouver is set to receive international recognition. Their breakthrough discovery paves a positive procedure for the medical community to diagnose and treat cancer.

More than 40 scientists and doctors composed the research team from BC Cancer Agency and Vancouver Coastal Health Institute. The team who collaborated discovered that granulose cell tumours are brought about by genes sharing a single mutation. The said genetic mutation commonly causes ovarian cancer, which is recorded to be rare and untreatable.

The researcher compared the successful breakthrough as similar to finding a needle in a haystack considering the complexities of cancer cells, which are composed of almost three billion genetic codes.

However, result from the breakthrough published in the New England Journal of Medicine promises more application to ovarian cancer cases. As the research team utilizes state-of-the-art technology that led to the discovery of the ovarian cancer’s DNA having a single mutation, this can also be applied to identify other cancer’s genetic sequences.

According to Dr. David Huntsman, a genetic pathologist at the BC Cancer Agency, Vancouver General Hospital and the University of B.C, the team can now decode cancer sequences completely. He said that this achievement was something almost impossible two years ago.

With the discovery, doctors are now able to diagnose individual “recipe” for their cancer patients. Huntsman posits to the idea since the opportunity for the medical community to identify genetic sequences of certain cancers effectively established the route to personalized treatment for individual patient. He further stated that people should recognize that cancer patients have different reactions not only to their diseases but also their response and adaptation to treatments.