Starting a low-fat diet in mid-life does not, by itself, decrease a woman’s risk of heart disease or stroke or dramatically reduce her risk of breast or colorectal cancer, according to three studies published today of almost 50,000 healthy, post-menopausal women. But don’t break out the ice cream just yet. Once you get into the nitty gritty of the study, the investigators stress, the findings still support the general idea that you need to pay attention to how much fat — and particularly what kinds of fat — you eat.
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By GINA KOLATA
Published: February 7, 2006

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet keeps women from getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet had no effect.

The $415 million federal study involved nearly 49,000 women aged 50 to 79 who were followed for eight years. In the end, those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, and heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

Those who ate the higher-fat diets also had no more diabetes, no higher blood glucose or insulin levels, no higher blood pressure. And the different diets did not make much difference in anyone’s weight. By the end of the study, women in the two groups weighed about the same. But women in the low-fat group had slightly lower levels of low density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL, which increases heart disease risk.

The results should put an end to more than two decades of speculating that a low-fat diet is protective, said Dr. Michael Thun, who directs epidemiological research for the American Cancer Society. The new study, he said, “was the Rolls Royce of studies that would answer this question.”

Considering the time, effort, and money it takes to do such a study, Dr. Thun and others added, it is unlikely that anything like it will ever be attempted again. “We usually have only one shot at a very large-scale trial on a particular issue,” Dr. Thun said.
Study Finds Low-Fat Diet Won’t Stop Cancer or Heart Disease - New York Times

Food firm favors antiobiotic-free poultry,
cage-free eggs, rBST-free milk

Food-service innovator Bon Appetit Management Company has made commitments to purchase cage-free eggs and antibiotic-free turkey and significant amounts of local and regional foods for its 190 cafes in 26 states. Cage-free eggs will be phased in to the sites in the next 12 months, with the eventual goal of having all eggs from uncaged birds.

Bon Appetit, which serves 55 million meals a year, made its move on antibiotic-free turkey meat based on its existing policy for chicken, with the goal of reducing antibiotic use in poultry. All of its cafes served 100 percent locally grown foods from within 150 miles of the serving point on an Eat Local Challenge day last fall.

To secure rBST-free milk in the upper Midwest, the company revived a plant in Bismark, North Dakota, that had been closed for two years. Great Plains Dairy Partners, LLC, took over the dairy and revived its Deja Moo brand, thanks to Bon Appetit’s contract to buy its milk for its regional school and corporate food service accounts.
Bon Appétit Management Co. Pledges to Sell Only Cage-Free Eggs in its Nearly 200 Dining Facilities

This news tip from the news page of Rodale’s The New Farm

In its February 2006 issue, Consumer Reports magazine outlines the best bargains in organic food. It says new studies show that by eating organic food, “you can greatly reduce your exposure to chemicals found in conventionally produced foods.” The coverage considers the “dirty dozen” crops where USDA figures show the highest levels of pesticide residue as clearly worth the average 50 percent premium.

The magazine says benefits in meat and dairy are clear, but premiums are higher, while buying organic seafood and health care products are not recommended because organic standards are vague. Shoppers are given a list of ways to cut costs, including “go local” and in season at farmers’ markets, join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm operation and use internet guides for price comparisons.
Full story at Consumer Reports:
When it pays to buy organic

Thalidomide is making a subsidized comeback in Australia to treat multiple myeloma. In the USA thalidomide is already available to treat prostate cancer. It has not been too effective on its own. Giving it in combination with other chemotherapy may increase side effects. But a team of oncologists has found that giving a blood-thinner to prevent clots from thalidomide plus taxane chemotherapy “could provide a therapeutic and survival advantage for patients….”
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LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The dog hopped on three legs, pain from bone cancer so bad that he wouldn’t let his afflicted fourth paw touch the floor. His owner was bracing for euthanasia when scientists offered a novel experiment: They injected a fiery sap from a Moroccan plant into Scooter’s spinal column - and the dog frolicked on all fours again for several months.

The chemical destroyed nerve cells that sensed pain from Scooter’s cancer, not helping the tumor but apparently making him no longer really feel it.

The dramatic effect in dogs has researchers from the National Institutes of Health preparing to test the chemical in people whose pain from advanced cancer is unrelieved by even the strongest narcotics.

The first human study could begin by next year, at the NIH’s Bethesda, Md., hospital. A second study in pain-ridden dogs is slated for this summer at the University of Pennsylvania.
Full story available from these sources:
Plant could hold secret for new pain medication Seattle Times

Sap from `hot’ plant treats pain, Good results on dogs with cancer
Researchers eye future use on humans Toronto Star, Jan. 17,

Follow up to the Oslo fabrication. Dr. Sudbø is not in hiding, but he is “on sick leave” and cannot be reached. His wife and his twin brother, who are both scientists, worked with him on the The Lancet study, according to the Guardian, but were unaware of his fraud.

No way of knowing as yet if any statements about the effect of NSAIDs on oral cancer in his article are true. It’s plain though that Dr. Sudbø assembled no genuine evidence for anything that he claimed in this study. He created a simulated reality, a database of pretend patients.
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Monday January 16 2006

by Patricia Campbell

The National Stroke Association (NSA) has begun a programme of education and screening for prostate cancer, ahead of its implementation, for the first time in Antigua & Barbuda, of a non-surgical treatment for prostate cancer called brachytherapy.

The programme is part of the NSA’s long-term plan to become a full service medical clinic, offering a variety of innovative treatments to Antigua & Barbuda and neighbouring islands.

A team from a Canada-based corporation called Brachy4u Inc. was on island last week to make preliminary arrangements for the introduction of the NSA’s brachytherapy programme. Part of these preparations involved meeting with government officials, including Minister of Health John Maginley.
Source:Antigua Sun

Last April PSA Rising ran a brief report of a Norwegian study that claimed that “Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) prevent some cancers but . . . the advantage from NSAID protection against oral cancer was wiped out by double the rate of heart attack or stroke.”

This weekend it was evident that this study of the effects of ibuprofen and naproxen on oral cancer was fabricated from A to Z.

Norwegian hospital officials stated last week that the study was faked. Today, according to Reuters, the hospital in Oslo said: “A Norwegian cancer expert made up fictitious patients for an article about treatment of oral cancer published in a leading medical journal. . . .”

“The material was fabricated,” said Trine Lind, spokeswoman of the Norwegian Radium Hospital where Jon Sudbo has worked as a doctor and a researcher. “We are shocked. This is the worst thing that could happen in a research institution like ours.”

The hospital spokeswoman said Sudbo, 44, “invented patients and case histories for a study of oral cancer that was published in the British medical journal the Lancet in October 2005.”

The Lancet is Britain’s leading medical journal.

ANNE MARTE BLINDHEIM in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported Friday Frykter norsk lege har jukset før that “250 of his sample of 908 people in the study all shared the same birthday,” Reuters said.

Stein Vaaler [photographed below], strategy director for the Oslo cancer center, said: “A colleague raised questions about the article when it was published,” and (according to reports by Canadian CTV and Associated Press ( Cancer researcher admits to fabricating data) “when the researcher was confronted this week about the data, he acknowledged the fabrication, Vaaler said.”

Norwegian media are calling the situation “a personal tragedy.”

“All of it was fabricated,” Vaaler said. “It was not manipulation of real data — it was just complete fabrication.”
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by Teresa Moua-Her

A new study just released by Yale University shows that the Prostate Antigen blood test or PSA is not effective in saving lives.

The study examined a thousand men at various hospitals in New England but many doctors are saying it does work.

One local man says the PSA test saved his life despite what the study claims.
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Russian scientist Anna Prokhorchuck working with UK and US scientists has found that mice lacking a protein called Kaiso show resistance to intestinal cancer. Kaiso, which this study showed is upregulated in intestinal tumors in mice and is expressed in human colon cancers, seems to play “an essential role in mammalian synapse-specific transcription.” they say in a study published this month in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Mice bred to lack the Kaiso protein were healthy and fertile, with no detectable abnormalities of development or gene expression. “However, when crossed with mice bred to develop intestinal tumors, Kaiso-null mice showed a delayed onset of intestinal tumorigenesis,” the researchers say. “Our data suggest that Kaiso plays a role in intestinal cancer and may therefore represent a potential target for therapeutic intervention.”
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BBC NEWS | Health : Prostate cancer action plan urged

The [UK] government has been urged to draw up an action plan to improve prostate cancer services across the NHS.

Patients with the disease, which kills 10,000 men in England annually, are a low priority and treated unfairly, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said.

MPs also said that while there had been improvements, many patients in England with suspected cancer were still waiting too long to see a specialist……

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: “Prostate cancer… is regarded as a lower priority than other common cancer when it comes to the provision of specialist care.

“The inequitable treatment of this group of NHS patients is entirely unacceptable.”
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Chennai is the new name for Madras, a city on the east coast of southern India. Situated on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, this capital of the state of Tamil Nadu is India’s fourth largest metropolitan city and one of the 35 largest metropolitan areas in the world. Today’s news from Chennai includes this about early detection for prostate cancer, a prostate cancer conference with Australian input, and a push towards brachytherapy:

Apollo chief for prostate cancer checkup

Chennai, Jan 7: People above the age of 40 years should undergo check up for prostate cancer, which is on the increase in the country, Apollo Hospitals Group chairman Dr Pratap C Reddy said here today.

“I firmly believe that those in the age group between 40 and 50 years be checked periodically depending on the results of the first check up while for those above this age, I suggest an annual check up. It can be controlled and even cured if diagnosed in the early stages,” he said.
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2 Adverse Cancer Studies - New York Times
In one report, researchers analyzed 26 randomized studies involving more than 73,000 patients and concluded that statins like Lipitor and Zocor had no effect on the risk of developing or dying from any form of cancer. Those findings appear Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The other study, in the current Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that cholesterol-lowering drugs, including statins, were of no benefit in preventing colorectal cancer.

When local treatments for prostate cancer have failed, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) rises in the absence of symptoms, there is little consensus as to the best management strategy.

Calcitriol has been shown to prolong the doubling time of PSA in this context, but near-toxic doses are required.

We investigated the effect of the nutrient vitamin D (cholecalciferol), a biochemical precursor of calcitriol, on PSA levels and the rate of rise of PSA in these patients.

Fifteen patients were given 2,000 IU (50 microg) of cholecalciferol daily and monitored prospectively every 2-3 months.

In 9 patients, PSA levels decreased or remained unchanged after the commencement of cholecalciferol. This was sustained for as long as 21 months.
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January 1, 2006 — A trio of innovations may enable physicians to plan prostate cancer patients’ treatment in real time and to implant cancer-killing radioactive “seeds” more accurately and efficiently, according to University of Wisconsin physicists.

Directional radiation system for brachytherapy under development in Wisconsin

ASCO - Reuters News - Professional
Low serum testosterone levels associated with worse prostate cancer outcome

Reuters reports that “Low serum testosterone levels are associated with a greater likelihood of positive surgical margins in radical retropubic prostatectomy for prostate cancer, according to a report, subtitled “Hypogonadism Represents Bad Prognosis in Prostate Cancer,” in the December issue of The Journal of Urology….

“We have to study more and more to understand the real meaning between low testosterone and prostate cancer,” Dr. Carlos Teodosio Da Rosa from Santa Casa Hospital, Porto Alegre, Brazil told Reuters Health.

Dr. Da Rosa and colleagues investigated the association between serum total testosterone levels and prognostic factors in 64 patients with localized prostate cancer who underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy.

Nearly 40% of men with low testosterone had positive margins in their surgical specimens, the authors report, compared with 14.6% of patients with normal testosterone.

Mean serum testosterone levels were significantly lower in men with positive margins (284.7 ng/dL) than in men with negative margins (385.7 ng/dL), the report indicates.

In contrast, Gleason scores, pathological stage, capsular perforation, and seminal vesicle involvement did not differ in men with normal or low testosterone.

“Since low testosterone may predict positive surgical margins, it is reasonable to suppose that it would represent a different prognosis in patients who undergo radical retropubic prostatectomy,” the investigators conclude. “As a consequence, these patients are more prone to present with prostate cancer recurrence and to require adjuvant treatment.”

In a recent letter to Cancer Investigation, David Steinberg, a hematologist at Lahey Clinic, Burlington, Mass, wrote:

“A $1,000 lottery ticket for a Porsche Boxster automobile was offered to the investigator who accrued the most patients to a Southwest Oncology Group prostate cancer protocol.”

“This was done” Dr. Steinberg says,” with the admirable intention of increasing patient accrual and improving the outlook for men with high risk prostate cancer.”

From the point of view of the patients pulled in as “bodies” for this trial, a skeptic might say, the intention was not necessarily admirable. How is a doctor going to give a patient a fair and unbiased evaluation of whether a trial is good for that indivual to enter when a Porsche beckons - And the patient doesn’t know about this? At the very least, the doctors should have been obliged to disclose their chance of winning the Porsche among other information required for the patient’s informed consent.

The Boxster is the fastest selling Porsche in history with a base price of $42,000, nicely loaded for $9,000 more.

Kudos to Dr. Steinberg for protesting this sleaze.
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Vitamin E succinate suppresses prostate tumor growth by inducing apoptosis.
Department of Interdisciplinary Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL. Int J Cancer. 2005 Dec 27; [Epub ahead of print]

Vitamin E (VE) has been under intensive study as a chemopreventive agent for various types of cancers. Preclinical studies suggest that vitamin E succinate (VES) is the most effective antitumor analogue of VE, yet there are scarce studies of VES in prostate cancer. In this study, we investigated the effects of VES on a panel of prostate cancer cells, and a xenograft model of prostate cancer. Our results indicate that VES significantly inhibited proliferation and induced apoptosis of prostate cancer cell lines in a dose and time dependent manner. The results of microarray analysis followed by real-time RT-PCR and inhibitor analyses indicated that the VES-induced apoptosis is mediated by caspase-4 in prostate tumor cells. In our animal model of prostate cancer in SCID mouse, daily injection of VES significantly suppressed tumor growth as well as lung metastases. These results suggest a potential therapeutic utility of VES for patients with prostate cancer.

A study from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Alberta, Canada and in Ankara, Turkey has found that for women whose diet is already high in folic acid, adding a folic acid supplement weakens the immune system. The women’s natural killer cells function fell below that of women deficient in folate who were not taking any supplement.
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