Cancer, Cancer Treatment

The combination of estrogen plus progestin, which women stopped taking in droves following the news that it may increase their risk of breast cancer, may decrease their risk of colorectal cancer, according to a report published in the January issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“Compared to women who had never taken these hormones, the use of estrogen plus progestin was associated with a reduced risk of colorectal cancer,” said Jill R. Johnson, M.P.H., a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A promising drug for treatment of colorectal cancer may not be effective in 40 percent of patients with the cancer, new research shows.

Analysis of a recent study shows when given the drug cetuximab (Erbitux), metastatic colorectal cancer patients with tumors showing the “normal” type of a gene called K-ras survived longer whereas those with a mutated form of the gene did not. More specifically, patients with normal K-ras tumors who received cetuximab showed an almost two-fold improvement in overall survival and progression-free survival compared to similar patients who received supportive care alone. Those with mutated K-ras tumors who received the drug showed no significant improvement compared to similar patients who received supportive care alone.

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A new online tool for calculating colorectal cancer risk in men and women age 50 or older was launched today, based on a new risk-assessment model developed by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

This new tool may assist health care providers and their patients in making informed choices about when and how to screen for colorectal cancer and can be used in designing colorectal cancer screening and prevention trials. An article describing the new risk-assessment model and a second article describing its validation appear online December 29, 2008, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The risk assessment tool is available on the NCI Web site at www.cancer.gov/colorectalcancerrisk, and people using this tool should work with their health care providers to interpret the results.

(Ivanhoe Newswire) — A promising drug for treatment of colorectal cancer may not be effective in 40 percent of patients with the cancer, new research shows.

Analysis of a recent study shows when given the drug cetuximab (Erbitux), metastatic colorectal cancer patients with tumors showing the “normal” type of a gene called K-ras survived longer whereas those with a mutated form of the gene did not. More specifically, patients with normal K-ras tumors who received cetuximab showed an almost two-fold improvement in overall survival and progression-free survival compared to similar patients who received supportive care alone. Those with mutated K-ras tumors who received the drug showed no significant improvement compared to similar patients who received supportive care alone.

Read the rest of this entry »