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 6 June 2014

The weekly aggregation from Google Alerts, for articles on Breast Cancer and Cancer, for the week ending 6 June 2014.

Just some of the goodies at the American Society for Clinical Oncology conference 2014

It was a bit like Christmas morning unwrapping the presents that was the American Society for Clinical Oncology’s conference that was held 2 weeks’ ago.  It’s made for an extra-long Best of Breast (which is also a week late – sorry!).

There was fantastic new research into treatment-resistant breast cancer, HER-2 positive breast cancer and TNBC; however, what stands out is the first step to developing an immunotherapy approach to breast cancer by combining cryoablation and Ipilimumab (an immune stimulant that is already being used in melanomas).  Cryoablation breaks the tumour down and Ipilimumab allows the immune system to recognise the cancer cells.

The irony is that cryoablation is something I looked into shortly after my diagnosis, but I was told by my surgeon that it wouldn’t guarantee clean margins.  Well … what surgeons also don’t tell you is that clean margins will not guarantee the cancer won’t come back.  I’ve seen people who’ve had mastectomies who’ve had with recurrences (even with radiotherapy and chemotherapy to mop up) in the scar tissue.  So clean margins my foot.  There are no guarantees with surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.  The medical establishment is conservative and playing a numbers game and it’s us patients who are being kept in the dark.

I think one of the drawbacks of doing Best of Breast is that I read about all these wonderful new developments and all I can think is:  why didn’t they come up with this 2 years’ ago, or why didn’t I do this 2 years ago?  Why are my clinicians stuck in the dark ages?  And I think of all my friends who’ve passed on, and I hope that a cure comes soon for all of us with cancer.

To cheer myself up, the lead article is about the blind mole rat.  I’d posted previously about the naked mole rat which is cancer-resistant, now there’s the blind mole rat (not related!) which has the same superhuman anti-cancer properties.  Scientists have decoded its genes and discovered the secret of how it never gets cancer.  The next step is to work out how to turn us all into blind mole rats … .

See how they run … (The furry-but-blind blind mole rat (Spalax) is a close cousin to the common house mouse.) Image credit: bbc

1.  Cancer-resistant blind mole rat gets genome sequence