Nuclear Oncology

Archive for 2012

A specific treatment for breast cancer
Genetic mutations can help experts to know the exact treatment in patients with breast cancer have revealed as U.S. researchers.

Experts from the National Cancer Institute of the U.S., found that patients with two versions of SOD2 got worse results than others when receiving chemotherapy with the drug cyclophosphamide.

“In the future, these tests could be used to guide treatment of patients with change of SOD2, to ensure they receive a therapy that is more effective than cyclophosphamide-based therapies,” said Dr. Stefan Ambs in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

For the study, the researchers studied 588 patients with breast cancer in the U.S. and Norway. Some received chemotherapy and others do not. Of the patients who received chemotherapy, those who had variations of SOD2 were divided into two groups.

Women with a variation of SOD2 had a higher risk of death than others. And those with a second mutation had the highest risk of death in the study. The authors then divided the groups according to specific chemotherapy drugs, doxorubicin, 5-fluorouracil or cyclophosphamide.

Doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide kill cells by generating charged particles called reactive oxygen species. The team found that mutations in the SOD2 showed who react in the best way specifically to cyclophosphamide. Women with a different variation of SOD2 who received the medicine as part of chemotherapy regimen were more likely to die.

The study will achieve better evaluation of cancer patients to see which drugs work best against their tumors.

The risk of self-tanning in children
Children under 18 should not expose your body to this radiation, warn experts. Adolescents may trigger future skin cancer, ocular melanoma, wrinkles and sagging skin.

In this group of young people is believed to sunbathe a bit in these cabins, mitigate the damage to the skin from sun exposure. However, several studies have shown that such ideas are wrong. “Not only protect but enhance the chances of burning. They are a risk factor for developing melanoma, especially when used before age 20. These cabins should be banned in adolescence,” says Eduardo Nagore Enguídanos, head Valencian Institute of Clinical Oncology.

For his part, Ramon Grimalt, Dermatology Unit of Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, explains: “The skin is sensitive and has an immature immune system, especially in children under six years. In addition, given that skin ‘not forgotten’ and that the effect of radiation is cumulative, the sooner the exposures occur before the line may be exceeded cap ”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that children under 18 are not tanning sessions with ultraviolet A (UVA), because it is a practice that carries a serious risk of cancer in 2005.

No elector, according Grimalt, in the Spanish legal framework, “there is no explicit prohibition in this direction. Like WHO, we move only in the context of the recommendations.”

Once again, the association between self-tanning lamps and melanoma was confirmed two years later, in 2007, by an international team of researchers reviewed all the work developed so far. They concluded that of 19 studies reviewed, individuals who used this type of indoor tanning were 15% more likely to develop melanoma.

Report these and other recommendations is the first thing you should do the person responsible for the tanning, the gym or the salon where these sessions take place.

Health Ministry sources explain that the establishments in which these are being done “are regulated by regional standards and, therefore, each Autonomous Community is responsible for authorizing or not functioning as well as appropriate controls.”