Best of Breast: news for week ending 5 September 2014

The latest medical developments in the world of breast cancer and cancer, from Google Alerts, for the week ending 5 September 2014.

Last week’s Best of Breast (w/e 29 August 2014) covered the controversy over whether cancer is curable or not.  Now, I know there are many people who are in long-term remission, but remission is not a cure.  The current thinking is that cancer is a chronic disease, it may go into latent mode, but it may re-surface years later.

This week seems to be the week of the metastasis – scientists are discovering more ways in which cancer cells cannily inveigle themselves into other parts of the body.  It’s nothing new … there have been similar discoveries every week, every month, every year.  The problem seems to be putting this research into practice and finding ways of blocking the proteins or enzymes or rogue signalling-pathways that cause cancer to metastasise.

Invadopodia … how cancer cells metastasise.

1.  Stopping cancer from forming tentacles stops metastasis

Best of Breast: news for week ending 29 August 2014

The latest news from the world of Breast Cancer and Cancer, aggregated from Google Alerts, for the week ending 29 August 2014.

Last week’s Best of Breast (week ending 22 August 2014) highlighted the issue of screening, or over-screening of breast cancer, and the dangers of high levels of cumulative radiotherapy as a result of Pet-CTs.  According to an article this week, European hospitals are using a variety of scanning methods, including breast MRIs.  That’s news to me.  About a month back, when I asked my surgeon for an MRI instead of a Pet-CT [as I’d had 4 in the past year] he expressed ignorance of this method of screening for breast cancer.  Back to the drawing board … [Update 24 Sept 2014 – miracle of miracles – in a recent consultation, I asked if a Pet-CT should be done at this stage, and was told … let’s see about an MRI!!???  So if you’re reading this, print off the chart about radiation levels and unless you need a Pet CT for staging, please ask for an MRI instead]

Funny how no-one ever asks for the Cure for Cancer …

This week’s can of worms is the debate on whether or not cancer is curable or not.  A scientist who has done research into a primitive life form claims that cancer has been around since the dawn of time, and because of that, it is designed by evolution to survive, rather like the cellular version of a cockroach.

Another scientist echoes this view, and believes that we should stop trying to cure cancer, instead treating it as a chronic disease, or better still, trying to prevent it, or even try to slow down its onset using drugs like aspirin.

[Update 24 September.  Please check out these links on aspirin which were kindly sent to me by a reader:

Aspirin pharmacokinetics – sepia.unil.ch/pharmacology/index.php?id=83

Editorial on dietary salicylate – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1770049/pdf/jcp05600649.pdf

Useful “reverse guide” of food high in Salicylate – salicylatesensitivity.com/about/food-guide/]

Best of Breast: news for week ending 22 August 2014

Updated 16 September 2014

The weekly summary of medical news developments for Breast Cancer and Cancer for the week ending 21 August 2014.

This post focuses on screening.  Call it coincidence, but there were three articles on different ways to screen for breast cancer, this week.  The first is a trial into using dogs to sniff out breast cancer. I’ve covered dogs being used to sniff out cancer in previous posts, but this time, scientists are finally testing this on breast cancer.  Perhaps one day the gold standard in screening could be a golden labrador!

Dr Claire Guest and Daisy Photo: Janine Warwick

Item number 2 is a study that shows that MRIs are more accurate than ultrasound and mammogram in detecting recurrent tumours.  I wonder how MRIs compare to Pet-CTs in terms of radiation exposure.  There is no ionizing radiation in an MRI.  The dose for a typical PET-CT scan is 25 mSv for a 70-kg person.  The dose for a mammogram is 0.4 to 0.7 mSv.  The PET-CT gives 625 times more radiation.  CT scans alone produce 7 mSV, 10 to 15 times the dose of a mammogram.

From http://xkcd.com/radiation/. With thanks to Steve for this chart.

Best of Breast: news for week ending 15 August 2014

A summary of medical developments in Breast Cancer and Cancer for the week ending 15 August 2014.

In Best of Breast w/e 8 August 2014 it was wasp venom that was being used to fight cancer, now it’s the turn of the bee.  OK, it’s not the most earth-shaking medical development, but it makes a change from the usual chemotherapy drugs.trials.  And speaking of which, Item 3 examines the fact that different chemotherapy regimes have different side effects, and raises the question that we should reconsider what choices are made in selecting treatments.

Item 2A is about a purported cure using salt injected directly into tumours.  Please note that this is not what it seems to be: an easy cure for cancer.  The refutation is in Item 2B, and highlights the need not to jump the gun or fall prey to so-called breakthroughs.  And this salt cure has nothing to do with Dr. Simoncini’s controversial work on bicarbonate of soda and tumours.

How do you milk a bee? Answer: Very carefully! Today, the most widely is used the method of so-called “milking” the bees during the spring-summer season. In this case, the bees are annoyed by weak electric current pulses and sting a glass, from which the dried venom is then scraped. photo credit: keepingbee.org

1.  Bee, snake and scorpion venom could be used to fight cancer

Best of Breast: news for week ending 8 August 2014

News development for Breast Cancer and Cancer, aggregated from Google Alerts, for the week ending 8 August 2014.

This week leads with an article on wasp venom.  Using venom is nothing new – I’ve heard of blue scorpion venom being used as a cancer treatment.  Apparently the main source of the blue scorpion venom is Cuba.  It’s not a cheap product (we’re talking hundreds of pounds for a month’s supply).  But the reason for the expense is it’s not easy to harvest the venom [and if I were a scorpion, I would make it very very hard if someone came after my venom!].  The harvesting of the venom is not pretty – it involves using an electric probe to get it to sting and release its venom.  It’s reached mainstream use too – Prof Nesslehut of dendritic cell vaccine fame uses blue scorpion venom.

This post could also be called the radiotherapy edition with some controversy surrounding the use of brachytherapy [i.e. radiotherapy that is administered intra-operatively, rather than post-surgery].

The material on flaxseed lignans and breast cancer is not new, and I apologise for including it.  The internet is full of information on flaxseed and cancer, in fact most cancer nutritionists recommend taking flaxseed.  As pointed out by one reader, JustOnePix, the lead author (Thomson LU) of the research article had written as early as 1995 on flaxseed:  www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Thompson%20LU[Author]&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=24869971 and also a trial in 2005:  www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15897583.  Thank you for bringing this to my attention – it is much appreciated as I want my readers to have accurate information.

Moooo … buzz. How scorpion venom is obtained: Each scorpion is milked once a month for two years,” explains Valdés, who says the average lifespan of R. junceus is ten years. “Then it’s released back into the wild to repopulate the species. Photo : Ferrán Pestaña

1.  Wasp Venom Targets Breast Cancer in New Therapy

Fulda conference #8: New approaches in biological tumour therapy (Dr Florian Schilling)

The Christmas Market at Fulda

Updated March 2016 – For more information on GcMAF, please join the GcMAF and GcMAF Cancer forums on Facebook – they are closed groups, so you have to wait for your membership to be confirmed.  They contain up-to-date information on sources of GcMAF, and also feedback and contributions  by people who are using GcMAF.

Florian Schilling presented another talk at the conference:  Leaky-Gut:  Dietary regimen with MAP and GcMAF

Florian Schilling studied pre-clinical medicine at the Ludwig-Maximillian-Universitat Munchen (LMU), and then trained as an alternative practitioner, with his own clinic since 2006, specialising in integrated and complementary tumour therapy, CFS/ME, general regulatory medicine and detoxification.  He has been a lecturer at the Paracelsus College in Munich since 2007, and lectures both in Germany and internationally.

info.schilling@googlemail.com, http://www.nhz-buchloe.de/

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Like Dr Ionnescu, Dr Schilling also emphasised the importance of not using glutathione if there is a tumour.