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Leukemia
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Definition of Leukemia
Leukemia is a slowly progressing cancer that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Leukemias are the result of an abnormal development of leukocytes (white blood cells) and their precursors. Leukemia cells look different than normal cells and do not function properly.
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Targeted Cancer Therapies Continue to Impress
SATURDAY, June 2 (HealthDay News) -- Small scientific steps are making headway against various cancers, many of which are historically difficult to treat.
Two much-watched drugs of the past year, Sprycel and Avastin, are again showing good results in new trials, according to research presented Saturday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, in Chicago.
"Molecular targeted therapies that were developed a few years ago are being expanded dramatically in scope," said Dr. Robert F. Ozols, senior vice president of the medical science division at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and chairman of ASCO's communications committee.
"These are incremental advances, but they're important," added Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society. "I don't see anything in the plenary session or any other special session that stands out as a major breakthrough. We've come to a time when these advances are becoming routine, an
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Umbilical Cord Beats Marrow for Leukemia Transplants
FRIDAY, June 8 (HealthDay News) -- Transplanted blood cells from umbilical cords appear to give better results than the bone marrow transplants that have been standard for leukemia patients, a new study finds.
"From my point of view, it now demonstrates that cord blood can be considered a first-line therapy and not an afterthought," said lead researcher Dr. John E. Wagner, director of the bone marrow transplant program at the University of Minnesota.
His team published its findings in the June 9 issue of The Lancet.
One way to treat various leukemias is to wipe out the old blood cell system and replace it with a new one via transplant. This study of 785 children under 16 who got such transplants found essentially equal five-year survival rates for the 503 patients who underwent transplantation with umbilical cord blood and the 282 who got bone marrow transplants.
That held true even when the transplanted blood cord cells did not match the immunological system of the recipie
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http://www.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=605554
FRIDAY, June 15 (HealthDay News) -- Defects in bone marrow can lead to abnormal blood cells that cause precancerous blood diseases in mice, two new studies find.
Blood cells are produced in the bone marrow. It was previously thought that red blood cells themselves were the source of these precancerous diseases, which can sometimes progress to leukemia.
In humans, these precancerous conditions can be difficult to treat, because not much is known about what causes the blood cells to become abnormal, explained researcher Louise Purton, who is affiliated with the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Australia, as well as Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Boston.
Purton said her team found "that the bone marrow microenvironment can make the blood cells become abnormal, like a type of pre-leukemic disease."
The second study was conducted by a team led by Stuart Orkin, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children's Hospital Boston and
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Study Tests Blood Stem Cells to Boost Immune System
WEDNESDAY, June 20 (HealthDay News) -- A new method of increasing blood stem cells could one day promote quicker recovery of immune system function in patients who've undergone chemotherapy or bone marrow transplant for leukemia and other cancers, researchers say.
Blood stem cells have the capability to develop into assorted types of blood cells.
In experiments with zebrafish, the researchers at Children's Hospital Boston demonstrated that a stable analog of prostaglandin can enhance production of blood stem cells, both during embryonic development and after the blood-forming system has been damaged.
The finding about dmPGE2 -- a long-acting derivative of prostaglandin E2 -- marks the first time that stem cell production has been induced by a small molecule drug, said study senior author Dr. Leonard Zon of the hospital's Stem Cell Program and Division of Hematology/Oncology.
Hospital researchers now plan to conduct a clinical trial of dmPGE2, which was originally tested 20
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Health Highlights: July 8, 2007
In the aftermath of a series of scandals involving corruption in its drug industry, China's version of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced it is suspending the sale of a drug used to treat acute leukemia and rheumatoid arthritis.
The Associated Press reports that China's State Food and Drug Administration announced Saturday on its Web site that it had suspended the sale of methotrexate made by Hualian Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd of Shanghai.
In the past few months, the United States, which imports thousands of Chinese-made products, has announced suspensions of a number of items, ranging from toothpaste to fish.
And, reports the A.P., China has started to respond in the most stringent way possible by cracking down on safety issues and corruption in its many exporting enterprises. A former department head at the State Food and Drug Administration has sentenced to death after having been found guilty of taking bribes, the wire service reports.
Additionally, during
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Health Highlights: July 9, 2007
U.S. researchers are about to begin a study to examine whether omega-3 fatty acids can help prevent a disease that causes eye damage in premature babies.
The condition, retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), affects about 16,000 infants in the United States each year and blinds hundreds, the Associated Press reported.
This study will investigate whether adding omega-3 fatty acids to premature babies' intravenous feedings can decrease the risk of ROP-related eye damage. The research is being led by Dr. Lois Smith, an ophthalmologist at Children's Hospital Boston.
Normally, mothers pass omega-3s onto their unborn children during the third trimester, a period of rapid eye development. But premature babies miss out on most or all of that omega-3 transfer, the AP reported.
In a study published last month in the journal Nature Medicine, Smith and her colleagues reported that a diet high in omega-3s reduced retinal disease by half among mice that had their retinas damaged in a way that
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Health Highlights: July 16, 2007
The doctor who ran a controversial British study that associated a common childhood vaccine with autism is under investigation for possible ethical misconduct, the Associated Press reported Monday.
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being investigated by Britain's General Medical Council for allegedly failing to disclose his ties to autism litigators and for failing to secure the necessary ethical approval for the study, the AP said. Wakefield denies any impropriety.
Wakefield's study, published in 1998 in The Lancet medical journal, linked the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism, a little understood neurologic disorder. Widespread dissemination of the study's results led many parents to refuse to vaccinate their children with the MMR vaccine.
Ten of the study's 13 authors have since renounced the study's findings, and the medical journal has conceded that publishing the study was a mistake. The Lancet said Wakefield's ties to people involved in litigation against
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Rates of Rare Lymphoma Increasing
THURSDAY, July 19 (HealthDay News) -- The incidence of a rare cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma has increased threefold over the past 30 years in the United States, a new study found.
Moreover, rates of the cancer vary by race, sex and geographic area, according to the report by researchers at the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University.
"Over 30 years, the incidence more than tripled," said lead author Vincent D. Criscione.
The reasons for this dramatic increase in the rates of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma aren't known, Criscione said. "One reason might be the increase in the efficiency of detection," he said. "The incidence was correlated with socioeconomic factors. Those with more education and higher income were more likely to have the condition."
In cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, cells of the lymph system called T lymphocytes become cancerous, affecting the skin. The term covers several types of lymphoma.
In the study, resea
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Gene Holds Key to Blood Stem Cells
THURSDAY, July 26 (HealthDay News) -- A gene named Sox17 appears to regulate the development of blood-forming stem cells in fetal mice, new research shows.
In fact, fetal mice who could not produce their own blood cells did just that after they were given cells that contained Sox17, say researchers at the University of Michigan.
Reporting in the July 26 issue of Cell, the researchers said their results point to an important difference between adult and fetal stem cells, since Sox17 does not assist in regrowing blood cells in adult mice.
"Identification of Sox17 could also facilitate efforts to form blood-forming stem cells from human embryonic stem cells, a goal that could enhance bone marrow transplantation," lead author Injune Kim said in a prepared statement.
The finding may one day have implications for the treatment of childhood leukemia, where blood-making cells are disrupted.
"One of the next questions in our crosshairs is whether Sox17 gets inappropriately activa
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Agent Orange May Boost Vietnam Vets' Hypertension Risk
FRIDAY, July 27 (HealthDay News) -- Exposure to the defoliant herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War may be raising blood pressure levels for the aging veterans of that conflict.
That's the biggest change in the latest of a series of reports from the U.S. Institute of Medicine on the long-term health effects of Agent Orange. The report was released Friday.
The IOM's Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides last issued its updated findings in 2005; this report is based on data collected up to 2006. The reports are compiled at the request of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
"In two new studies, Vietnam veterans with the highest exposure to herbicides exhibited distinct increases in the prevalence of hypertension; the prevalence of heart disease was also increased," the report found, although the IOM committee stopped short of suggesting that wartime exposure to Agent Orange is currently raising veterans' risk of ischemic
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Clinical Trials Update: July 31, 2007
This study will compare the effectiveness of two investigational medications in people with COPD. The trial will last 35 days and require three clinic visits and at least one telephone call. Candidates must be at least 45 and have used the Spiriva HandiHaler.
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Healthy Lifestyle Key To Cancer Prevention
THURSDAY, August 16 (HealthDay News) -- While the number of deaths from cancer have been declining, many malignancies could be prevented by exercising, eating right, maintaining a healthy weight and not smoking, a new federal report finds.
The President's Cancer Panel issues a report every year that focuses on one aspect of what is happening in the United States in terms of cancer.
This year's effort "centers on lifestyle changes, and two issues that are actually quite different," said panel member Margaret L. Kripke, executive vice president and chief academic officer at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston.
One issue is nutrition, exercise and the fight against obesity, and the other is the battle to cut tobacco use, Kripke said.
"We tried to think of what would have the biggest impact on reducing cancer mortality," she said. "If you consider that 15 to 20 percent of cancer deaths are related to obesity and another 30 percent of cancer deaths a
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Use Two Drugs at Once to Beat Leukemia: Study
THURSDAY, Aug. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Simultaneous treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients with a combination of the drugs Gleevec (imatinib) and Sprycel (dasatinib) may decrease the chance of cancer's return or at least increase the length of time before relapse, U.S. researchers report.
Both drugs target a protein called BCR-ABL, which is known to cause CML.
Normally, CML patients are first treated with Gleevec. If the cancer develops resistance to Gleevec and returns, it's treated with Sprycel. But it's now known that BCR-ABL can also develop resistance to Sprycel.
Based on their study of 12 CML patients, a team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, recommend that rather than sequential treatment with Gleevec and Sprycel, CML patients should be treated with both drugs when they're first diagnosed in order to prevent, or delay, the emergence of drug-resistant forms of BCR-ABL.
The study was published online Aug. 16 in advance of publicatio
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Genetics Hold Promise, Challenges for Cancer Care
SUNDAY, Sept. 16 (HealthDay News) -- Someday in the future, people may routinely have doctors scan their personal genomes, looking for this or that aberrant gene to help prevent, spot or treat a cancer.
"We are in the midst of both an evolution and a revolution in cancer care," said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society.
While gene-specific treatments such as the leukemia "wonder drug" Gleevec are already on the scene, "we still have an incredibly long way to go in terms of how we understand the basic genetics of cancer," he said.
"Right now, we are working still at a very crude level -- the future will be much more dynamic," Lichtenfeld said.
The "genetics generation" has much to be proud of, however. The mapping of the human genome in the late 1990s, the advent of high-output methods to comb through thousands of genes, and a deepening knowledge of the complexities of DNA and RNA are bringing new discoveries each week
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