Posted on 04/09/2010 3:08:19 PM PDT by neverdem
Researchers may have found an easy way to detect lung cancer in its early or even pre-cancerous stages, as well as a way to reverse the start of the deadly disease with a readily available, over-the-counter drug.
"It's incredibly, incredibly exciting," said Dr. Patrick Nana-Sinkam, a lung cancer expert with the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not involved with the new study. "This definitely has potential."
The minimally invasive procedure involves using a small brush to collect a smattering of cells from the windpipe (a bronchoscopy), explained study co-author Andrea Bild, an assistant professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
Maybe one day, screening could be done using an even simpler nasal or sputum test, the researchers said.
Currently, there is no good way to detect lung cancer -- the number one cancer killer -- in its early stages when it's most treatable. By the time most lung cancers are diagnosed -- which usually involves an invasive examination of the lungs -- patients already have advanced malignancies. Only 15% of patients are still alive at five years, said Nana-Sinkam.
Cigarette smoking is responsible for 90% of all lung cancer cases in the United States.
Still, only 10 to 20% of smokers actually develop lung cancer, begging the question: Why do some smokers succumb to the disease and others don't.
Now genomics may have provided an answer.
Working on the theory that cigarettes harm not only the lungs but a "field of injury" extending to other areas of the respiratory tract, the study authors surmised that evidence of existing or soon-to-develop lung cancer might be available further up in the airway.
The researchers used so-called microarray genetic analysis to measure gene expression levels in the epithelial cells -- those cells lining the respiratory tract -- that they had captured with the bronchoscopy.
"We were looking at the activity of genes in the cells that we obtained from the windpipe or airways of smokers at risk for lung cancer," said study senior author Dr. Avrum Spira, a critical care physician at Boston Medical Center and associate professor of medicine, pathology and bioinformatics at Boston University School of Medicine.
It turned out that gene activity in the PI3K pathway was "off the chart" in smokers with lung cancer versus those without the disease.
"Obviously that's very exciting," Spira said. "We have identified a marker for an early risk of developing lung cancer."
And when treated with the compound myo-inositol, the gene pathway activity declined along with improvement in the troublesome lesions, the researcher noted.
"This drug inhibits the pathway that's activated in smokers. The drug is a natural compound. You can get it in health-food stores," Spira said.
"We're now in the midst of a large study to look at whether or not activity of this pathway can be used to pick those who could benefit from this as a treatment as opposed to just prevention," said Spira, who is a co-founder of Allegro Diagnostics Inc., a company that plans to market this biomarker.
The researchers also need to explore whether or not the PI3K pathway is active in non-smokers, as well as what other pathways might also trigger lung cancer.
The study findings were published in the April 7 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Praise G-d! He still has a mission for you.
“This project will be led by a team of principal investigators, including David Schwartz, MD, at National Jewish Health, Mark Geraci, MD, at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Medicine; Naftali Kaminski, MD, and Frank Sciurba, MD, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; John Quackenbush, PhD, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; and Avrum Spira, MD, at Boston University School of Medicine.”
Source: National Jewish Health
Another gift from the Jewish People to the People of the world—how much did we lose when hitler murdered 6 MM Jews? They are truly the Light of the World.
Many types of cancers from other organs can migrate to the lungs.
Sorry. Evil stuff.
Copied from somewhere...more sources would be good to find out about:
Major sources of inositol include beans, citrus fruit, nuts, rice, veal, pork, and wheat germ.
Good observation.
The article is interesting to me because my mother is undergoing chemo for a lymphoma cancer in here lungs. She has never smoked. She appears to be responding well to the chemo, but we had a very difficult time identifying the cancer cell. The needle biopsies revealed nothing.
We finally got desperate and took her to Scott & White in Temple TX. Made 4 trips there. One the 3rd trip they went a step past a needle biopsy and found the lymphoma.
If this can be detected early with a test and treated with an over the counter med, this will be a major step forward.
TF
I gotta simple test for lung cancer. Check the patient’s pockets for cigarettes!
Interesting, thought you might think so too.
According to WHO/CDC studies it is 8%.
Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer (According to WHO/CDC Data)*Would you believe that the real number is < 10% (see Appendix A)? Yes, a US white male (USWM) cigarette smoker has an 8% lifetime chance of dying from lung cancer but the USWM nonsmoker also has a 1% chance of dying from lung cancer (see Appendix A). In fact, the data used is biased in the way that it was collected and the actual risk for a smoker is probably less.
I have an aunt who is approx. 80 years old who once smoked many years ago, developed lung cancer in her later years and has had a full recovery following treatment.........She is one amazing woman......
But to answer your question, why do people who have never smoked develope lung cancer or emphysema anyway?
Some people get fat, some people don't, some people are allergic to latex, most people aren't.
I'm thinking that the medical and scientific community are now getting too big for their britches..........
The largest cohort of cancer victims in the world are chinese women who cook oily foods over stoves in their homes. Inadequate ventilation.
It sounds to me like 10-20% of smokers will develop lung cancer. They represent 90% of the lung cancer cases. 10% of lung cancer cases are non-smokers. Better? It was a really weird way of saying it.
Yup. Ovarian cancer is one of them. :(
Inhaling an irritant of some kind, over a lengthy period of years, increases the chance of precancerous cell mutation, which increases the chance of cancer. Some precancerous lesions form in the absence of any carcinogen. This would be either random chance, or an unknown or less obvious carcinogen. An older population as a whole increases the apparent frequency of cancers. Live long enough and individual odds of having some form of cancer are more than even.
I hate to sound even remotely like some of these leftist environmentalists, but something has changed. Cancers in pet dogs have gone through the roof in the past decade or so. Excessive vaccinations and/or chemical exposure (lawn chemicals and internal or external flea and tick treatments, primarily) are being blamed there.
Many cancer treatments in humans originate with canine veterinary medicine. The two, human and canine, respond similarly to treatment and are prone to many of the same cancers. So, it’s reasonable to theorize that the cause(s) might be similar as well.
i have known many good young dogs who have died in the past year. I am rethinking heartowrm and flea treatments
Think long and hard about dropping the heartworm treatment. That’ll kill a dog, too. If you’re in a heartworm endemic area and your dog spends any large amount of time outdoors, a mosquito carrying the parasite will eventually bite your dog, and then heartworm will develop. The treatment for a dog with heartworm isn’t pretty, and many do not survive it. If you’re not in an endemic area, it’s something to consider, but only if you’re not.
Fleas and ticks can be controlled in other ways. Diatomaceous earth (not the swimming pool kind but the kind that is safe for human and animal contact) kills fleas indoors and out. Nematodes deliberately introduced into the exterior yard areas that the dog frequents will eat the flea larvae in the ground, breaking the reproduction cycle. Any number of herbal preparations can be used to repel fleas and ticks from the dog as well. It’s more work and it’s more expensive, but if you’ve had a beloved dog go through cancer, and I have, it’s something you’re willing to do, to remove a potential source of the disease.
All the vaccinations are problematic, according to a number of credible sources. I only vaccinate mine as required by law, and once they’re older, I’ve been known to get a titer test to see if a particular vaccination can be bypassed for another year. It really throws their immune system for a loop, and an older dog doesn’t take it nearly as well.
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