This is miserable news....

Breast Symptoms at Mammogram May Raise Future Cancer Risk

Latest Cancer News

WEDNESDAY, March 21, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Women with breast symptoms at a regular cancer screening are more likely to develop breast cancer before their next screening, a new study finds.

The study included women who took part in the Finnish National Breast Cancer Screening Program between 1992 and 2012. It invites women between ages 50 and 69 for mammograms every two years.

Those women who reported breast symptoms such as lumps, nipple retraction or nipple discharge at their regular screening visit were more likely to be recalled than those without symptoms -- 15 percent vs. 3 percent.

Compared to women with no symptoms, those with a lump had more than triple the risk for a breast cancer diagnosis before their next scheduled screening. Those with nipple discharge had twice the odds, and those with nipple retraction were 1.5 times more likely to get a cancer diagnosis, the study found.

The study was scheduled for presentation Wednesday at the European Breast Cancer Conference, in Barcelona, Spain. Research presented at medical meetings is usually viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The findings indicate that "women with breast symptoms should undergo further assessment irrespective of mammography findings," study author Deependra Singh said in a conference news release. Singh is a researcher at the Finnish Cancer Registry in Helsinki.

He noted that because mammography can miss up to 40 percent of breast tumors, women with symptoms, especially a lump, should be examined more often.

"There is room for improvement in the capability of mammography to detect cancer and our research shows this is particularly the case for women who have breast symptoms," Singh said.

"Our findings can be extrapolated to other countries that have national mammography screening programs, and we encourage these programs to collect and analyze information on symptoms," he said.

-- Robert Preidt

March 27, 2018

Metformin Use Linked to Reduced Risk of Statin-Associated Muscle Pain

https://www.empr.com/news/statin-muscle-symptoms-p...

Interesting. I have read that a high percentage of metaplastic patients are node negative when mets are found in organs. I wonder if different types have different pathways

Science News

from research organizations

Breast cancer's spread routes mapped

Date:

February 27, 2018

Source:

Karolinska Institutet

Summary:

Breast cancer spreads to other organs in the body according to certain specific patterns. This has been shown by a team of researchers who have mapped breast cancer's spread routes in patients by studying the cancer cells' DNA.

Breast cancer spreads to other organs in the body according to certain specific patterns. This has been shown by a team of researchers from Karolinska Institutet and KTH in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland who have mapped breast cancer's spread routes in patients by studying the cancer cells' DNA. The study is published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women. In Sweden, almost two thousand patients die of the disease every year. The fatalities are almost exclusively a consequence of tumours in the breast spreading to other organs, such as the skeleton, the brain and the liver.

Metastases in the axillary lymph nodes in the armpits are an important risk factor for breast cancer to spread to other organs. What was not known before is if these metastases are responsible for spreading cancer further to other organs or what routes the cancer cells take.

In the new study, the researchers have looked at the DNA in cancer tissue from 20 patients with breast tumours and metastases in both their axillary lymph nodes and other organs. By means of a technique called next-generation sequencing they were able to map the relationship between the cancer cells in the breast and those in metastases in other organs. This enabled them to show the cancer's spread routes.

The study showed that tumour cells are spread from the breast tumour to the axillary lymph nodes and to other organs such as the skeleton and the brain. Metastases then often spread from the first organ to other organs in the next stage.

"Our most important finding, however, was that the metastases in the axillary lymph nodes do not seem to spread further to other organs, so even if these metastases can show how aggressive the cancer is, it is not they that cause the spread," says Johan Hartman, Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Oncology-Pathology and one of the researchers who led the study.

They also found that in certain cases it is a matter of an early explosion of cancer cells from the breast tumour that simultaneously gives rise to metastases in several different organs. The researchers were also able to show that different regions of the breast tumours caused metastases in specific organs in the body.

Together the team's findings can help doctors make clinical decisions on when, where and how many tissue samples should be taken to understand how serious the disease is and adapt the treatment in the best possible way.

"The findings also confirm earlier research that shows cancer treatments needs to be adapted to the individual. We hope this will lead to better treatment of metastatic cancer in the future," Johan Hartman says.

The study was led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in collaboration with researchers from KTH/SciLifeLab and the University of Helsinki. The research was funded through grants from, among others, the Märit and Hans Rausing Fund, the Swedish Cancer Society, and the Cancer Research Funds of Radiumhemmet.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Karolinska Institutet. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

A recent Stanford cancer study that cured 97 percent of mice from tumors has now moved on to soliciting human volunteers for a new cutting-edge medical trial.

The trial is part of a gathering wave of research into immunotherapy, a type of treatment that fights cancer by using the body's immune system to attack tumors.

"Getting the immune system to fight cancer is one of the most recent developments in cancer," Dr. Ronald Levy, a Stanford oncology professor who is leading the study, told SFGATE. "People need to know that this is in its early days and we are still looking for safety and looking to make this as good as it can be."

The treatment is not a true vaccine that creates lasting immunity, but it does feature a vaccine-like injection carrying two immune stimulators that activate the immune system's T cells to eliminate tumors throughout the body.

Amelia01...not s stupid question at all. Means that diverse cells within a positive ER tumour. The opposite would be same tumour cells within ER positive tumour. One could have well differentiated cells mixed with moderate to well differentiated cells....whereas another could have ALL well differentiated cells etc.

That makes two of us wrenn!

So bluepearl, I am guessing well differentiated means Grade 3?

You are right wrenn, I had it backwards. This from bco.org

Grade is a "score" that tells you how different the cancer cells' appearance and growth patterns are from those of normal, healthy breast cells. Your pathology report will rate the cancer on a scale from 1 to 3:

• Grade 1 or low grade (sometimes also called well differentiated): Grade 1 cancer cells look a little bit different from normal cells, and they grow in slow, well-organized patterns. Not that many cells are dividing to make new cancer cells.
• Grade 2 or intermediate/moderate grade (moderately differentiated): Grade 2 cancer cells do not look like normal cells and are growing and dividing a little faster than normal.
• Grade 3 or high grade (poorly differentiated): Grade 3 cells look very different from normal cells. They grow quickly in disorganized, irregular patterns, with many dividing to make new cancer cells.

Having a low-grade cancer is an encouraging sign. But keep in mind that higher-grade cancers may be more vulnerable than low-grade cancers to treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which work by targeting fast-dividing cells.

Be careful not to confuse grade with stage, which is usually expressed as a number from 0 to 4 (often using Roman numerals I, II, III, IV). Stage is based on the size of the cancer and how far it has (or hasn't) spread beyond its original location within the breast.

Thank you. Enjoying the thread.

It seems that they may have figured out a way to attack cancer that has become resistant to hormone therapy. something to watch.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-01-potential-t...

>Z<

Oncology/Hematology > Breast Cancer

Worse Survival in Breast Ca Patients with Low Muscle Mass

CT scans reveal increased risk of death in one-third of nonmetastatic patients

https://www.medpagetoday.com/hematologyoncology/br...

All about enlarged Axillary Lymph Nodes

https://doctorslounge.com/oncology/diagnosis/lymph...

I'm taking this article into my MO next time I see him! I couldn't get the full article, but I would think he can. I have a question on whether the patients ever had mets anywhere else prior to only having it in the liver (oligometastiases).