Breath test for cancer gets underway in the UK

Photo credit: Owlstone Medical

CANCER DIGEST – Feb. 16, 2019 – Researchers in the United Kingdom have launched a clinical trial that will test a breath analyzer to see if it might be useful in detecting cancer.

Led by Rebecca Fitzgerald, a researcher at the MRC Cancer Center at Cambridge University designed the study that aims to make a simple breath test that can identify patients with an early cancer.

Could TV watching boost your risk of colorectal cancer?

Image via Wikimedia used under Creative Commons 

CANCER DIGEST – Feb. 10, 2019 – Colorectal cancer is on the rise in people under 50 years old and researchers have found a possible link. People who spend more than two hours a day watching TV have been found to have a 70 percent increase in the risk of colorectal cancer.

Older women who often eat fried food have higher risk of dying

Image by [CC BY-SA 3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

CANCER DIGEST – Jan. 26, 2019 – Put down that bucket of fried chicken! A new study of postmenopausal women has found that regularly eating fried food is linked with a higher risk of death from any cause, and heart-related death in particular.

The study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) this week used a questionnaire to assess the diets of 106,966 women aged 50-79.

Antibodies may better control viral complication of marrow transplants

Y-shaped antibodies shown controlling the virus. Image
courtesy of  Dr. Mariapia Degli-Esposti, Lions Eye
Institute, Perth, Western Australia

CANCER DIGEST – Jan. 19, 2019 – A virus that has complicated bone marrow transplantation from its earliest days may be better controlled with specific antibodies say researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and University of Queensland, Australia. 

Study shows new leukemia drug is better than standard therapy

Malignant white blood cells
crowd out normal cells in CLL
– image courtesy American
Society of Hematology

In a study of patients with the most common form of leukemia, researchers have found that a newly approved drug is both more effective and easier to take than conventional therapy. 

The study led by Scott Smith, MD, PhD of Loyola Medicine and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, the researchers enrolled 547 patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) at 219 cancer centers in the U.S. and Canada. All participants were over the age of 65 and randomly assigned one of three treatments. The standard treatment of bendamustine plus rituximab, ibrutinib (Imbruvica®) alone, or ibrutinib plus rituximab.