Aromatase Inhibitor and just walking away.

marijen

Sorry Kira, not following....?

kira1234

Marijen every breast cancer can be different. I have a friend who has had breast cancer 4 times. Her first 2 times were dcis third time stage 1 er/pr+ her- her last time er/pr+ her+.

marijen

I know that but I don't know which post caused you to point this out? Well aware that we can have 1,2,3 kinds all at the same time. It sucks!

Here's some relief (stolen)... isn't that sweet? How much you want to bet my opthamologist doesn't know anything about estrogen and vision problems?

marijen

Prevalence of estrogen receptor mutations in patients with metastatic breast cancer Published: Friday 12 August 2016 email

A new study published online by JAMA Oncology examines the prevalence and significance of estrogen receptor mutations in patients with metastatic breast cancer.

The activation of the estrogen receptor (ER) is a feature of most breast cancers in which ER expression is detected. An aromatase inhibitor (AI) for estrogen deprivation therapy is an effective therapy for those tumors and reduces disease illness and death. Outcomes for patients with ER-positive metastatic breast cancer who are treated with AIs vary considerably, with relapse for some patients within months and after many years for others.

Sarat Chandarlapaty, M.D., Ph.D., of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and coauthors conducted a secondary analysis of cell-free DNA from 541 patients enrolled in a clinical trial to determine the prevalence of mutations and whether they were associated with worse outcomes.

The authors report 29 percent of patients had a mutation in the estrogen receptor and mutation was associated with shorter overall survival, according to the report.

"Mutations in the estrogen receptor are common in patients with metastatic breast cancer who were previously treated with an aromatase inhibitor and are associated with worse outcomes," the authors conclude.

Article: Prevalence of ESR1 Mutations in Cell-Free DNA and Outcomes in Metastatic Breast Cancer, Sarat Chandarlapaty, David Chen, Wei He, Patricia Sung, Aliaksandra Samoila, Daoqi You, Trusha Bhatt, Parul Patel, Maurizio Voi, Michael Gnant, Gabriel Hortobagyi, José Baselga, Mary Ellen Moynahan, JAMA Oncology, doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.1279, published online 11 August 2016.

kira1234

love the picture. As for your ophthalmologist he/she might surprise you. This is years ago but my mother's ophthalmologist told her she needed to see her doctor asap because he saw something in her eyes. Well turned out to be breast cancer.

muska

Marijen, I think estrogen contributes to SOME cancers growing faster than they would have been growing without it. I also think this is not black and white,i.e.there probably are many different transitional stages when it can go either way depending on multiple factors and estrogen is one of the most important but not the only factor.

marijen

Well said muska. I have nothing to add. Many say it's a crapshoot.

marijen

kira, I knew someone who died of eye cancer, but it never occurred to me it might be breast cancer in the eyes... Who knows maybe the optometrist didn't want to frighten me which he would have. Even now it never occurred to me. Thanks for the heads up.

kira1234

Marijen she didn't have cancer in her eyes he saw something that concerned him. She had glaucoma. She never had cancer in her eyes

marijen

Oh! Well we already know there is a connection between glaucoma and bc.

kira1234

Really I didn't know that. What is the connection?

marijen

Ok, well inadvertently..... because of AI for BC.

17 hours ago marijen wrote:

• By: Dr. Mache Seibel
• August 28, 2012

• About Dr. Mache

There is a lot of controversy about whether or not to take estrogen. You already know that women with low estrogen in or near menopause deal with hot flashes, poor sleep, lower libido, and other commonly associated symptoms of the menopause transition.

Now a new review article in the journal Menopause shows that low estrogen levels is a major contributor to poor vision in women as they age. Here's a short summary and what it means to you.

These factors caused the investigators to do this study.

• The optic nerve, the large nerve in the back of your eye that sends vision to your brain, shrinks with age – about 0.2 percent / year. Low estrogen contributes.

• The pressure inside the eye – called the intraocular pressure – also increases with age. That leads to the condition glaucoma, the second leading cause of blindness in the United States and the leading cause of blindness worldwide.

• Giving estrogen to menopausal animals helps prevent glaucoma.

• Women are much more likely than men to have glaucoma and cases of glaucoma are rising rapidly.

• Women in menopause have higher intraocular pressure.

• Menopause before age 45 increases the rate of glaucoma 2.6 times. Six percent of women enter menopause before age 45. That's 9.42 million women in the US.

How does this affect you? Do you have any of the following:

• Menopause before age 45

• Cancer with treatment that blocks estrogen

• Surgery to remove your ovaries before age 45

If you have any of the above situations or conditions, be sure and have your eyes checked at least annually. Have them checked for vision and intraocular pressure. It's one of the things you need to consider with your physician when deciding whether or not to use estrogen.

kira1234

Thanks for clearing that up. Glaucoma runs in my family. 3 relatives have gone blind from it including my mother and my grandmother

marijen

You're welcome. 70charger has a tale to tel over at radiation recovery and I'm worried because we haven't heard from her. It was just a coincidence, I found out last week I have PVD and Viteous clouding (no glaucoma).

kira1234

I can tell you if the Arimidex is causing the eye problems I'd want to know if it could cause blindness. I'd definitely be looking into it.

marijen

For you or for me? I'm on Letrozole but same thing right? Yes I am worried about eventual blindness. I don't have flashes or floaters but I have clouding and haziness like when I needed cataract surgery. Mostly Sew said she woke up one morning and there were billions of floaters. And there are people that just wake up blind. That's why it's necessary to stay on top of it. It has me worried and stressed.

kira1234

For me definitely. I know what both my grandmother and mom went through. Gran lived with us for years when I was growing up. I loved her dearly. Mom went blind much later in life. What both missed was reading. We love reading as a family.

marijen

Well now they have audio books. It's about independence for me. No more driving, shopping, cleaning. I just don't think I'd be good at it. Could still walk but there's tripping and falling. There would be hearing and smell, touch taste. More worried for you than for me. After my cataract surgery I thought I was good to go. Then I find out cataract implants can cloud. There are two topics about vision and AI. Bummer

marijen

Maybe in time we won't need AI...

New research may have found a way to stop cancer cells (shown here) from creeping to other locations.

Metastasis is the main cause of death in cancer, and current treatments against it are ineffective. But new research may have found a way to slow down, and perhaps even halt, the spread of cancer cells.

Metastasis is the process by which cancer spreads throughout the body. During this process, cancer cells may either invade nearby healthy tissue, penetrate the walls of lymph nodes, or enter the surrounding blood vessels.

But new research may have found a way to control metastasis by inhibiting the migration of cancer cells. Stopping the cells from migrating is key in stopping metastasis.

What enables cancer cells to migrate is a set of protrusions that help them to move. The team of researchers - led by Mostafa El-Sayed, Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech's School in Atlanta, GA - managed to successfully cut off these protrusions using a special technique.

The findings were published in the journal PNAS.

Breaking cancer cells' 'legs'

The long, thin protrusions that help cancer cells to move are called filopodia. They are an extension of a set of "broad, sheet-like" fibers called lamellipodia, which can be found around the edges of the cell.

The suffix "-podia" (or "-podium," singular) comes from the Greek language and means "something footlike."

Essentially, lamellipodia and filopodia are tiny "legs" that help healthy cells to move within the tissue. But in cancerous cells, lamellipodia and filopodia are produced in excess.

The researchers used so-called nanorods, made of gold nanoparticles, to obstruct these tiny legs.

With the help of nanotechnology, scientists are able to reduce the size of certain materials to a nanoscale - with "nano" meaning the billionth part of a meter - at which point these materials start to show new chemical and physical properties.

Prof. El-Sayed and colleagues introduced the nanorods locally. The nanorods were covered with a coating of molecules, called RGD peptides, that made them attach to a specific kind of protein called integrin.

"The targeted nanorods tied up the integrin and blocked its functions, so it could not keep guiding the cytoskeleton to overproduce lamellipodia and filopodia," explains co-author Yan Tang, a postdoctoral assistant in computational biology.

A cytoskeleton is the support structure of a cell, responsible for giving it a shape. It also has additional functions, with one of them being to form the filopodia protrusions.

Method could kill cancer cells

The experiments revealed that simply binding the nanorods to the integrin delayed the migration of the cancer cells.

Importantly, this method avoided healthy cells, which could make this therapy drastically less damaging for patients who undergo toxic chemotherapy treatment.

"There are certain, specific integrins that are overproduced in cancerous cells," explains Moustafa Ali, one of the study's first authors. "And you don't find them so much in healthy cells."

In the second stage of the experiment, Prof. El-Sayed and team heated the gold nanoparticles with a laser of near-infrared light. This effectively stopped the migration of the malignant cells.

"The light was not absorbed by the cells, but the gold nanorods absorbed it, and as a result, they heated up and partially melted cancer cells they are connected with, mangling lamellipodia and filopodia."
Moustafa Ali

In this experiment, not all cancer cells were killed, as this would have prevented the researchers from examining whether or not they successfully stopped them from migrating. However, the researchers say that the method could be adjusted to kill the malignant cells.

Prof. El-Sayed and his colleagues have previously conducted similar experiments in mice, in which they applied the same method. The former research found no toxicity from the gold for up to 15 months after the treatment.

The researchers hope to soon be able to treat "head, neck, breast, and skin cancers with direct, local nanorod injections combined with the low-power near-infrared laser."

The laser could reach the gold nanorods at 4 to 5 centimeters deep inside the tissue, and deeper tumors could be treated with deeper nanorods injections, the authors say.

kira1234

I wasn't aware cataract implants could cloud. My husband had cataract surgery a few years ago because of an eye injury.

As for me who knows with my history I can only do the best I can. Until mom no one had ever had cancer in our family. Mom was triple negative. Plus she was 78 when diagnosed.

Brutersmom

chef127

I asked that same question of my cancer team and they were not aware of any. For me weight loss has become my only option to try an prevent a recurrence. There was no life for me or aromatase inhibitors. My list of side effects is long and I tried to stay on for as long as I could. It effected my hearing, my vision, I could not sleep, two hours is not enough and then try to work an 8 hour day. I could not stand to be touched, even my bra hurt, clothes hurt against my legs. I tried to exercise and was just to tired. There were days that my insides felt like they were shaking and I started getting anxiety attacks. I was depressed and I just wanted to die. I could no longer see to read or sew which is my outlet for stress. The eye Dr. could not find an adjustment to correct the issue. He described my vision as that of a 100 year old. When I switched to Femara from Arimidex I had such horrible back pain I walked bent over. We won't talk about my behavior and how I treated people and even my little dogs on these drugs. All of these side effects went away when I stopped the drug. Not immediately but by the end of the first month. It took a while to work through the way I behaved on the drug especially the way I treated my little dogs. They did not deserve to be treated the way I did but I just couldn't stand to be touched and they are lap dogs and just could not understand.

If I could minimize the side effects I would stay on Als but I cannot live the way I was living. I was about 35 lbs over weight when I started the cancer journey but this last year I added another 10 pounds. Most of this was the result of being to tired to cook or exercise so I ate what was easy and sat around. My surgeon is the head of the oncology department and he said that most people would rather do nothing or take a pill. He also added that the Aromatase inhibitor was not a grantee and neither was doing everything right. My though was better to do something then nothing and I can't control my bodies response to the drugs I can control my food intake and exercise and try to reduce fat which in turn should reduce how much hormone my body dumps into my system.

Kira1234 That was an interesting article. I have been pushing my self to walk on the tread mill 4-5 times a week for 30 minutes at about 2.5 mile an hour.

marijen

Brutersmom I think you are doing the right thing and you've got an honest dr

Optimist52

I've noticed that my eyes are looking bloodshot and at times are quite sore. I've worn contact lenses since I was 18 but find I can no longer wear them or at least only for a few hours because of the dryness of my eyes. I probably should see an ophthalmologist soon. Yet another one of these infuriating AI side effects!

marijen

Here's a start Optimist

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC32058...

dtad

hi everyone...to start I don't think you will ever see a study that follows those of us who forgo anti hormone therapy and do natural things such as weight loss and exercise to reduce recurrence rates. Who would pay for it? Certainly not a pharmaceutical company! My issue is that IMO weight loss and exercise are key to reducing recurrence rates and anti hormone therapy many times makes both difficult. I'm certainly not against it in general, just for me. Good luck to all.

bareclaws

dtad, you nailed it. Big Pharma isn't going to run studies into the efficacy of weight loss and exercise. And they are the ones who fund studies on drugs, so that's what gets touted. Reading about the AI side effects of vision loss (I'm already extremely myopic) and bone loss, the more I'm seriously considering foregoing this recommendation in my treatment.

kira1234

bareclaws why are you being recommended the AL? It looks like you're estrogen negative

wabals

dtad You are so right. Who would pay for that ?

I am disturbed that my MO told me via her nurse that it is "hlghly unlikely" that my continued elevation in LFTsand pos. ANA and antismooth muscle antibody are due to arimidex.

marijen

wabals ANA is an autoimmune test. Shouldn't have anything to do with liver enzymes except if you have autoimmune hepatitis Ask for a liver ultrasound. Do you have mets?

wabals

marijen

I know what ANA is. I may have autoimmune hepatitis and my hepatologist thinks arimidex may be the cause.

I am stage 1 triple pos and am in the ATEMPT trial at Johns Hopkins. Was randomized to tdm1 arm. Enzymes were slightly elevated during 1 year of treatment. Thought they would return to pre chemo levels after but did not.

I had an ultrasound which showed only mild fatty infiltration. I amm normalBMI with awesome lipid profile. Am off arimidex for 3 mos. A week after stopping, my joints were back to normal