Battling Cancer

He can be any man.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men after lung cancer, affecting one in six men in the U.S.

He is rarely under the age of 40, usually over 50 and in fact two-thirds of all cases are diagnosed in men over 65.

60 to 61% of the time he is an African American male.

He is twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer if he has/had a father or brother with the disease. There is also an inherited gene for prostate cancer, affecting 5 to 10 % of all diagnosed cases. While research into genetic testing is promising, it is not yet available.

For more information on who is prostate cancer see the Prostate Cancer Foundation site.

The Prostate Cancer Research Foundation of Canada offers a risk assessment quiz on their website.

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Thanks to Lesly Maranan, for passing this along!

From the desk of Dan Ollendorf, MPH, ARM, Chief Review Officer, Institute for Clinical & Economic Review

I am writing concerning the efforts of a new initiative known as the Institute for Clinical & Economic Review (ICER), a new initiative of Harvard Medical School, that seeks to provide an impartial review of new or emerging healthcare technologies that involves ALL relevant stakeholders (including patients). We are currently evaluating permanent brachytherapy and proton beam therapy for prostate cancer, and would like to include patients who have undergone each of these treatments in our discussion.

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Here’s a look at some of the latest news in prostate cancer:

The New York Times published an in-depth article about prostate cancer and theFrom “No Answers For Men With Prostate Cancer,”

Last year, 218,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer, but nobody can tell them what type of treatment is most likely to save their life.

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Sad news for music lovers — Dan Fogelberg, the famed singer and songwriter who penned classics such as “Leader of the Band,” lost his battle with prostate cancer today.  He was 56.

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Welcome to the weekend!  Grab a hot cup of coffee, and read the newest research developments in cancer this month in your pajamas:

Actually, make that a steaming mug of the herbal stuff:  Gloria over at Cancer Commentary (and of course, Battling Arthritis)  has more information on how to enroll in a green tea prostate cancer prevention study going on right now at Moffit Cancer Center.

Check out her post at “Moffit is Looking for Green Tea Study Participants.”

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Earlier this week, I talked about Randall Dale Chipkar’s awkwardly entitled book, “Are Motorcycles Killing Us With Cancers of the Prostate, Colon, Kidney, Bone, Etc?” which claims to link motorcycle use to cancer.

At the time that I wrote that post, Chipkar’s promotional website (found here) didn’t seem to have much up other than a press release and a checkout cart to buy the book. However, I found that Chipkar’s been shilling a protective motorcycle shield for those who buy into the EMF theory:

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Hi everyone!  I’m back in Texas, and it’s suprisingly cold and rainy here.  We actually turned our heater on rather than the A/C for the first time, and the shock to our temperature control set the smoke alarm off.  Annoying, yes, but it’s nice to know that it’s not just my burnt pumpkin pies that are putting the smoke detecter to work :-) 

Anyway, back to business.  While scouring the internet for the latest developments in cancer as I so faithfully do, I came across an interesting story on an online magazine devoted to London Bikers covering an upcoming book that attempts to draw a link between motorcycles and cancer.  

The claims come from a new book by Randall Dale Chipkar entitled, Motorcycle Cancer:  Are Motorcycles Killing Us With Cancers of the Prostate, Colon, Kidney, Bone, Etc?  According to the book’s promotional website, extremely low frequency electromagnetic field radiation is the silent culprit for a host of different cancers.  

While I generally avoid travelling on anything that doesn’t have a protective steel cage around it, my husband’s family is deeply embedded in motorcycle culture.  Harleys, dirt bikes, rides, and races — they’ve done it all, so I have a vested interest.  But clunky headline aside, I just don’t buy what Chipkar’s selling.  While it makes for a good spook tactic (a silent monster — between my legs!), there is not one single study to date that links motorcycle electromagnetic radiation and cancer on PubMed, the single largest repository for peer-reviewed medical studies and scientific journal articles.  There is, however, one 2004 Taiwanese study that correlates motorcycle exhaust to hormonal effects in breast cancer cell lines and female rats  (Take home message to all who ride:  try not to breathe the fumes.) More →

According to reports at last week’s Annual Meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology, it seems like there might be good news for prostate cancer patients who want to help boost the effects of their cancer treatments.

Researchers at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University have found that light exercise in the form of walking can help stave off bone loss in men with prostate cancer. More →

By Helen Hecker R.N.

Prostate cancer is normally a slow growth cancer that can take years before it becomes deadly. Many men, especially those later in life have made the decision with their doctors to simply watch and wait. Men at higher risk for prostate cancer include African-American men older than 60, farmers, tire plant workers, painters, and men exposed to cadmium; the lowest number of cases occurs in Japanese men and those who do not eat meat who reach the age of 80.

The main job of the prostate gland is to make seminal fluid, the milky substance that transports sperm. In most men, prostate cancer grows very slowly; most men will never even know they have the condition. Prostate cancer is the third most common cause of death from cancer in men of all ages and is the most common cause of death from cancer in men over 75 years old.

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By Donald Saunders

Prostate cancer normally develops within the peripheral area of the prostate gland and this initially small area of cancerous tissue cannot be felt on a digital rectal examination (DRE) but is often picked up through a PSA test or an ultrasound examination. At this point prostate cancer is described as being in Stage I or is described as a T1 cancer.

As the cancerous region grows within the prostate it will create abnormalities which can now be felt during a DRE and, at this point, the disease is said to have progressed to Stage II or become a T2 cancer.

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