Helping Fight or Cause Lung Cancer

Cancer : Helping Fight or Cause Lung Cancer

Since Beta Carotene breaks down into Vitamin A in the body, it has basically the same antioxidant qualities of Vitamin A and may affect the chances of getting lung cancer. For a long time it was thought that mega doses of Beta Carotene would help prevent cancer and even fight cancer because it's an antioxidant.
It is shown that low to moderate doses of Beta Carotene reduce the risk of cancer in people. Recently, scientists carried out studies to test the theory that regular higher doses of Beta Carotene and Vitamin A can be even more effective. The studies were the Alpha-Tocopheral, Beta Carotene Cancer Prevention Trial and the Beta Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial (CARET) and the Physician's Health Study.

The Cancer Prevention Trial invited male smokers between the ages of fifty and sixty nine to take part in a study to determine if certain vitamin supplements would prevent lung and other types of cancer. They were given a pill with either 50mg of a form of Vitamin E, 20mg of Beta Carotene or a placebo daily for five to eight years.

CARET studied if the combination of Beta Carotene and Vitamin A supplements would actually prevent lung and other cancers in both genders between the ages of fifty to sixty nine who were smokers or former smokers and men between the ages of forty five and sixty nine who had been exposed to asbestos.

The Physician's Health Study tested whether Beta Carotene supplements and low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of cancer and heart disease in American male doctors, only 11 percent of the participants smoked.

Each of these trials showed that Beta Carotene wasn't helping many of its smoking participants and was in fact hurting some of them. The CARET interim results showed that there were twenty eight percent more lung cancers in the group taking Beta Carotene and Vitamin A. While there were seventeen percent more deaths for the Beta Carotene takers. These results were so similar to the Cancer Prevention Trial final results from 1994 that they told the participants to stop taking the supplements twenty one months before the trial was scheduled to end. The Cancer Prevention Trial showed eighteen percent more lung cancer and eight percent more deaths. While the Physician's Health Study showed that there were no significant benefits or problems associated with taking Beta Carotene.

Ultimately these trials showed that while Vitamin A and Beta Carotene are antioxidants in moderate amounts and even helped to lower the risk of cancers in nonsmokers in the case of smokers it gives a higher risk of lung cancer. There are several possible theories for why it does this but the leading thought is that it acts as a pro oxidant in cells exposed to the tar created over time by smokers, and exacerbating the oxidative damage that's already been done and causing changes in the cell which lead to abnormal cell growth.
Author Vincent Platania represents the Stanley Home Products. Stanley Home Products has been in business since 1936, and offers high quality home and personal care products to keep your home and your body clean. Visit http://www.stanleybeautycare.com/

New Method To Test For Lung Cancer Developed

Cancer : New Method To Test For Lung Cancer Developed
ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2008) — Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine have developed a new 'clinicogenomic model' to accurately test for lung cancer. The model combines a specific gene expression for lung cancer as well as clinical risk factors. These findings currently appear on-line in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and the world, with more than one million deaths worldwide annually. Eighty-five to 90 percent of subjects with lung cancer in the United States are current or former smokers with 10 to 20 percent of heavy smokers developing this disease.

A previous study by the same researchers reported a gene expression biomarker capable of distinguishing cytologically normal large airway epithelial cells from smokers with and without lung cancer. However, the biomarker has limited sensitivity depending on the stage and the location of the cancer.

Studying current and former smokers undergoing bronchoscopies for suspicion of lung cancer, the researchers compared the likelihood of the subjects having lung cancer using the biomarker, the clinical risk factors and a combination of the two -- clinicogenomic model. They found patients using the clinicogenomic model had increased sensitivity, specificity, positive value and negative predictive value of their cancer compared to the other methods.

"Our data suggests that the clinicogenomic model might serve to identify patients who would benefit from further invasive testing, thereby expediting the diagnosis and treatment for their malignancy," said senior author Avrum Spira, MD, an assistant professor of medicine and pathology at Boston University School of Medicine.

According to the researchers, it is hoped this prediction model will expedite more invasive testing and appropriate therapies for smokers with lung cancer as well as reduce invasive diagnostic procedures for individuals without lung cancer.

Funding for this study was provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute grants.

Spira is a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician at Boston Medical Center and is one of the founders of Allegro Diagnostics Inc., a molecular diagnostics company that plans to market the gene expression biomarker.

Adapted from materials provided by Boston University.

What You Need To Know About Lung Cancer.

Cancer : What You Need To Know About Lung Cancer.
by : Michael Sanford

Cancer is a disease in which certain body cells don’t function right, divide very fast and produce too much tissue that forms a tumor. A leading cause of cancer deaths in both men and women is probably lung cancer. This is the number one cause of cancer deaths surpassing breast cancer as the leading cause of deaths in women. Cancers that begin in the lungs are divided into two major types, the non-small cell lung cancer and small cell lung cancer depending on how the cells look under a microscope.

Cigarette smoking is known to be a cause of lung cancer. The risk of developing the disease increases with the number of cigarettes smoked particularly if the person starts to smoke at a young age. The person’s risk of developing lung cancer may be reduced slightly if you smoke filtered and low tar cigarettes, but it is still far greater than that of a non-smoker. Lung cancer has always been more common in men, particularly those over the age of 40, as more men used to smoke than women. Considerably, there are a growing number of women having lung cancer since women have started smoking. About 90% of all lung cancer deaths among women are from smoking. The risk of lung cancer goes down quite quickly if the person stops smoking and after about fifteen years, the person’s chances of developing the disease are similar to that of a non-smoker. Passive smoking or the breathing in other people’s cigarette smoke, slightly increases the risk for lung disease and lung cancer, although the risk is still much less that if you smoke yourself.

Usually, the symptoms of lung cancer do not appear until the disease is in an advanced stage. Some are diagnosed early because they are found as a result of tests for other medical conditions. Screening examinations are done to detect a disease in people without symptoms of the disease. And since lung cancer usually spreads beyond the lungs before causing any symptoms, an effective screening program to detect the cancer early could save many lives. So far there is not screening test that has been shown to prevent the ill person from dying of the cancer. It has been concluded that the tests could not find many lung cancers early enough to improve a person’s chances for a cure. Because of this, lung cancer screening is not a routine practice for the general public or even for people at increased risk like smokers.

Symptoms of lung cancer could be continuing cough or change in a long-standing cough; a chest infection that does not get better; increasing breathlessness; coughing up blood-stained phlegm; a dull ache or a sharp pain when coughing or taking a deep breath; and loss of appetite and loss of weight. If you think you are having any of these above stated symptoms, then it is important to have your condition checked by your doctor even if you know that any of these symptoms may be caused by illness other than cancer.

Treatment for lung cancer could be through surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy which may be used separately or together depending on what your physician requires you to undergo with. Basically, the doctor will plan your treatment, taking into account your general health condition, the type of lung cancer you have and the size of the tumor as well as its stage. There are differences in the treatment for different people depending on their needs. You should not be afraid to ask your doctor and it often helps making a lot of queries about the disease and your condition from your doctor.

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For more information about lung cancer please goto http://www.cancer-resource-center.com/