Discussing Breast Cancer

It’s making news headlines — The FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee just approved the drug by biotech powerhouse Genentech for use in conjunction with chemotherapy to treat metastatic breast cancer.

Research has shown that use of the drug in combination with paclitaxel (Taxol) chemotherapy resulted in a 52 percent reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared to those treated with paclitaxel alone — a doubling in progression-free survival.

From the Genentech press release: “There is no cure for metastatic breast cancer so it is important to control the disease as early and for as long as possible,” said Kathy Miller, M.D., Associate Professor of Medical Oncology, Indiana University School of Medicine and lead investigator on the E2100 trial. “Now with Avastin plus paclitaxel, we can increase the time a woman’s cancer is kept under control, and offer a biologic option to women who previously were limited to chemotherapies alone.”

Without boring you with the specifics of how it works, I’ll share this: Avastin works by cutting off the blood supply to the tumors. That’s one way to kill those suckers — at long last.

Meanwhile, the toxic side effects of high blood pressure and well, death, were considered by some to be too problematic and perhaps should have deterred the FDA and inhibited their decision. But let me ask you this … if you have metastatic disease, aren’t you willing to take a risk to improve your chances of survival? Aren’t you facing death head on and deserving of anything that might help you void that apparently imminent collision? Isn’t this approval going to bring us one step closer to a cure for these people that need one the most?

Imagine you have a headache … but you couldn’t take Tylenol because it was never approved since you’d be at risk of contracting a headache if you take it. That’s hypothetical and I have no idea if headaches are a side effects of Tylenol — but I hope you get my point. The fact that metastatic patients are at risk of losing their lives every day seems to outweigh every other risk of fatality, I think.

Bravo to the FDA. Bravo to Genentech — this is right along with your mission to develop drugs to address significant unmet medical needs and you know patients with metastatic breast cancer have unmet needs!

More importantly, bravo to all of you out there with metastatic disease that might benefit from this new treatment option. Bring it on!

Wow.

According to research conducted in Northern Israel … “exposure to light at night is the most powerful factor in breast cancer besides genetic defects, according to a new University of Haifa study.” Too much light at night interferes with the production of melatonin — and an arm of the World Health Organization recently decided to classify shift work as a probable carcinogen.

Let me clarify … we’re not talking small household night lights here, we’re talking about living on brightly lit city streets or factory night-shift lighting. My suggestion: if you are exposed to serious lighting at nighttime you need to investigate this study further. Start by reading the Washington Post article about the findings here.

If you’ve found this blog, it’s also quite likely that you took to the Internet quite quickly after learning that you had breast cancer, searching for information on the disease, its treatment and its repercussions.

My doctors warned me specifically to be careful when doing Internet research — and they had good reason to do so. According to a new study, one in twenty breast cancer web pages contain inaccurate information … and web sites devoted to complementary or alternative medicine were fifteen times more likely to have false information.

(From a recent press release: “The study is published in the March 15, 2008 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, and suggests that patients consult clinicians before taking action on breast cancer information gathered on the Web.”)

I hope it goes without saying that you guys should be careful. The best place to turn for information is your physician’s office. Make your decisions based on the information provided to you by your medical professionals.

Your best bet? Find a National Cancer Institute Designed Cancer Center near you — visit that organization’s website first and foremost. Trust the American Cancer Society — they’re the most reliable source you’ll find online.

And trust me … to lead you in the right direction.

Survivors often find themselves in the midst of depression. They’re facing their own mortality, for one. They’re tired, sick, sore … it’s tough to pick yourself up mentally when you don’t feel good physically. It’s been said that hormone fluctuations affect our mood - chemotherapy and hormone therapy reek havoc on your natural hormone levels. And it’s wintertime (here in the Northern Hemisphere at least) … and these cold, dreary days are for the birds.

You’re not alone. Up to one-third of women diagnosed with breast cancer face mood disorders of some type.

Here’s what I need to tell you: it’s important to get help. If not for yourself, for your children: Research indicates that children of depressed breast cancer patients are more likely to be concerned or anxious about their mother’s cancer and its implication for their families.

My recommendation:

(1) Talk openly about your disease with your children — the positive spin you’ll likely want to put on it for their sakes will benefit your own psyche as well.

(2) Talk openly about your disease with whoever you have around you — it’s therapeutic to share those negative emotions. Purge them, get them out, so you can put all the energy you can muster up towards your treatment. Got nobody? Comment here or on an online support site like breastcancer.org.

(3) Talk openly with a medical professional. They can prescribe medication to help manage your mental distress. This is not the time to be too proud, or too vain. Get help. Nobody should go into battle without a fully loaded arsenal. If you already take something, tell them it’s not working. They need to know.

Don’t deal with depression alone.

The news headline that just made its way across my desk read: No Link Found Between Personality Traits And Cancer Risk. I thought, are you kidding me? Someone really thought our personalities had something to do with it?

Well, apparently in 1996, Eveline Bleiker, Ph.D., of The Netherlands Cancer Institute (and colleagues) found a weak association between the development of breast cancer and “antiemotionality” — a lack of emotional behavior or trust in one’s own feelings.

They key word there was weak — there was a weak link. But now that study has been debunked. “The researchers did not find any personality trait or personality profile that was associated with increased breast cancer risk.” Of course they didn’t. Come on people.

It’s amazing to me that they put money and effort into that one.

Alright, I’ll try to be objective. Maybe it would be prudent to discover if there was indeed an association between a certain personality trait and breast cancer incidence. But really, what would they do with that information? Say to women, ‘hey, you seem a little unemotional, you better watch out, you might get breast cancer?’ Right … that would happen. (Dripping with sarcasm, of course.) Or maybe, ‘change — your life depends upon it.’ Please. There are so many other things that could have been researched with that money!

I think we really need to remember something — news headlines are just that … headlines. You have to read the whole story to understand what they are talking about.

And, this whole story is pretty clear: your personality had nothing to do with the fact that you got breast cancer.

breast cancer, cancer, health, wellness, health and wellness, personality

I’m continuing my research into the research findings I reported earlier. Here’s more information for you:

90% of breast cancers in women with BRCA1 mutations are not estrogen receptive or progesterone receptive and they test negative for an over expression in the HER2 gene — this is called a ‘triple negative’ in breast cancer speak. Triple negative breast cancer sounds worse than it is — there’s good news and bad news associated with this diagnosis.

The bad news is that HER2 negative breast cancer is thought to be particularly aggressive and ER/PR positive cancers feed on the naturally occurring hormones in your body. While there are drugs available to women who are HER2 positive (Herceptin) and ER/PR positive (Tamoxifen and Aromatase Inhibitors), there’s nothing yet for the women who is triple negative.

However, triple negative breast cancers do really well with chemotherapy. Really well.

Anyway, all this says to me … it is so important for researchers to keep up their efforts. It matters to the triple negative woman. It matters to all women.

Researchers have known for years that women with BRCA1 gene mutations were at high risk for breast cancer. What they haven’t known is how or why that is the case.

But now, researchers have observed that mutations in the BRCA1 breast cancer seem to be linked with the loss of a protein that impedes cell growth. A collaborative team at Columbia with Sweden’s Lund University have found that a mutated BRCA1 gene can leave cells “incapable of repairing routine DNA damage. When such damage occurs in a protein called PTEN, which regulates the growth of cells, cell growth is unchecked and tumors form.”

Their job now is to take this a step further … how can they pharmacologically or biologically increase that protein and/or repair that DNA damage to prevent those tumors from growing?

I find this particular research study so inspiring — but there are other research studies (like this one) also getting us closer to a cure. Thank you, thank you, for all your hard work!

Living in the city can increase your risk of developing breast cancer. YIKES! I’m so glad I live in the freakin’ suburbs! Now’s the time to buy a house in the country!

Seriously folks … researchers in the UK have discovered that women living (and working) in urban areas are significantly more susceptible to the disease than those living in countryside. The study shows that urban women have denser breasts (and previous research suggested women with denser breasts were four times more likely to develop cancer).

Here’s the BBC/News story, but if you don’t want to go to that page and you’re wondering what can you do with this information then here’s this:

The jury is still out on why the denser breasts on urbanites correlates to breast cancer incidence but they are considering a link between breast cancer incidence and:

• the stressful lives urbanites live
• the level of air pollution in urban environments, and/or
• the body size/weight of city women (city women are thinner, but perhaps too thin; breast density is inversely related to weight).

Like I said, from what I can tell, the jury is still out.

But Dr. Nicholas Perry at the London Breast Institute, lead researcher on the study, had this to say: “Women who live in urban areas are known to have lower attendance for breast-screening programs than women in outlying areas.” If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times — mammography can save your life!

So if you live in the city, do you really need to search the listings for a suburban home? Not necessarily. (Although I do believe the suburban life of a soccer mom is highly underrated.) But you do need to be more diligent about your BSE and mammography screenings.

cancer, breast cancer, mammography, London, breast density

Not long after I posted that last post on giving thanks this Thanksgiving I came across this Washington Post article on the health benefits of giving thanks.

Seems feelings of gratitude increase well-being and decrease materialism (and this time of year we all could use a decrease of our materialism, don’t you think?).

Anyway, I don’t want to paraphrase the piece, that’s not my thing. The best thing to do is check it out for yourself. But, if you don’t want to click the above link, here’s the final word: “Be grateful for what you’ve got and appreciative of what you see around you.”

cancer, breast cancer, gratitude, thanksgiving

I read about this new wb 2.0 site called Ask500People … once on the site, you register, type up a question you want asked and then wait for the results — results that come in from random people around the world.

Today I asked … “Do you think we’ll find a cure for cancer within the next fifty years?” After fielding a few questions about what kind of cancer (I specified breast cancer but it at that) — the question was asked and the results were resounding!

73% of the people said yes! That’s hope in action. I love it. Most of the people participating were from the United States. But the question did draw worldwide participation.

I chose to use 50 years because I’m 40 now, so that timeframe would be ‘in my lifetime’ assuming I live to a ripe old 90 years of age (there’s that hope again). For some of you … well, let’s just say you have a whole lot more life ahead of you than I do, so that number might be limiting. Forgive me.

I have a marketing research background so I’m intrigued by this method. Maybe next time I’ll ask a more controversial question. Like the should we have the mandatory cervical cancer vaccine for young girls. But this time … well, everyone wants a breast cancer cure and I do believe people think we are close.

Anyway, that’s it. I just wanted to share the results. (Remember, this is not scientific folks, so please don’t take this as much more than fun and interesting.)

What do you think … honestly, do you think we’ll find a cure?

cancer, breast cancer, cure, cervical cancer, vaccine, health, wellness, research

I’m passing on an excerpt from an MSNBC news story:

“The death rate from breast cancer continues to drop steadily–by approximately 2% annually, according to the American Cancer Society.”

Wait … don’t get all excited … read on … the decline is in part because women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy and fewer women got mammograms and therefore were not diagnosed.

ARRRGGHHHH!

Fewer women getting mammograms!!!!!

ARRRGGHHHH!!

I’m not sure what to make of this.

News is hitting the Internet about a safe (few side effects) and effective therapeutic vaccine (called Neuvenge) targeting her2/neu-positive breast cancer.

Therapeutic vaccines stimulate an immune response to existing disease — it’s not like this is going to prevent the damn disease from developing. But it seems to me this is a step in the right direction and the pharmaceutical company (Seattle-based Dendreon) should be given carte blanche to proceed with trials. Do you agree?

Here’s an interesting statistic for you that has nothing to do with hormone replacement therapy:

“A woman born in the U.S. today still has a 12.7 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime, according to the National Cancer Institute.”

Here’s another one:

“And women now in their 60s are nearly three times more likely to get breast cancer than women in their 40s, the institute said.”

Both of these were in the article I just read — the National Cancer Institute is a credible information source.

This is interesting … HRT and breast cancer are in the news again today.

The Seattle Times reported yesterday that “Researchers from Seattle and three other locations across the country say that their study of breast-cancer rates among more than 200,000 women — all of whom received regular mammograms — showed cancer rates fell significantly after U.S. women began abandoning menopausal hormone therapy about seven years ago.”

You know … I took birth control pills for years. Though there is no proof that my doing so had any causal effect on my body (my diagnoses), I can’t help but wonder if messing with my own body’s hormonal system didn’t have dire consequences.

What do you think? HRT and birth control pills working against us? Just hype and misplaced concern? Let me know.

Good Morning America host Robin Roberts announced today that she had breast cancer.

Robin found a lump while doing a self-breast exam. Her lumpectomy is Friday; pathology will be forthcoming though her doctors believe the cancer is in the early stages. After that, she’ll know the full treatment protocol.

What I love about Robin is that she already wrote about her experience on the ABC blog.

Check it out.

Women are really amazing human beings. Give ‘em adversity and they give you innate strength. I’m already proud to call Robin my sister in the fight. I hope she learns that I’m on her side in her particular battle.