Tumor Marker tests

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Recap
Recap Member Posts: 120
edited April 2018 in Waiting for Test Results

https://www.oncolink.org/cancer-treatment/procedures-diagnostic-tests/blood-tests-tumor-diagnostic-tests/patient-guide-to-tumor-markers

Interesting list on the link above-I did not realize just how many lab tests there are for cancer.

I have had CA125 done yearly (ok yearly, with one negligent on my part 5yr gap) since my sister had ovarian ca, but on my last visit the gyn did not seem to want to order it-maybe it was because I also had a newly imaged breast lump/4b. I think she changed her mind again when my pap smear results resulted in HPV+, and cervical and uterine biopsies.

I was reading another poster's comment here about CA27.29 and decided to google it is how I came up with the above link.

I know insurance companies control everything, but if a test is 80% reliable I would want the test done-especially the one mentioned for colon cancer. 3yrs is a long time between colonoscopies-a blood test once a year would be reassuring.

We patients are capable of understanding there are no guarantees in healthcare or life-would you rather the false-positives in life be ignored because 20% of them turn out negative?

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  • Egads007
    Egads007 Member Posts: 1,603
    edited April 2018

    Hi Recap,

    Interesting article, thanks for posting! Like you I would be interested in the one for colon cancer. I suffered with ulcerative colitis shortly after chemo and rads. The first colonoscopy showed pan ulcerative colitis (whole bowl effected), but the one spot that was the worst just happened to be where my rads skimmed the bowl. It causes me pain right in that spot during a flare. Lifestyle changes now have me in full remission for the last year so the gasto doc has put me on a five year return colonoscopy schedule. WAAAAAYYY to long in my opinion. I think I’ll have a word with my PCP about marker testing at my next appointment. It’s definitely worth enduring false-positives....I’d like to be sure considering the 5 year schedule the gasttro doc has me on. Great info, thanks again!

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  • Recap
    Recap Member Posts: 120
    edited April 2018

    I wonder if the false positives could be the result of what we ate? For example, I know chickens develop cancer. If we ate chicken that had cancer (yes it is very possible) would the CHICKEN'S tumor marker cause our blood test to be false-positive? (I have always been a dark meat lover when it comes to chicken turkey duck-but I have avoided breast meat for many years now figuring leg thigh meat is far less likely to have issues.)

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  • Egads007
    Egads007 Member Posts: 1,603
    edited April 2018

    The chart in the link showed that certain foods do have an effect on some of the tests....bananas was one of them. You’re wise to avoid the breast meatin chicken etc. Meat producers use not just antibiotics but hormones that increase breast size for more profit. The difference in chicken breast size has quadrupled since the 1950s. Gee, I wonder why lol! Unfortunately the chemical cocktail they feed all animals effect every portion of the meat. This is why I stick to organically, responsibly raised, hormone free meats. I also buy grass fed beef and dairy products. It’s expensive but cheap where my health is concerned I figure. I suppose the same as you...what we put in our bodies has an impact on testing.

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  • gb2115
    gb2115 Member Posts: 1,894
    edited April 2018

    If you ate a chicken with cancer you would digest the cells. The cells would be broken down and destroyed by gastric juice. So no, I don't think it would make cancer markers go up. For the same reason nursing moms who are diagnosed haven't passed their cancer onto their nursing baby.

    I would not avoid eating chicken because of that fear. And I worry about a <<<whole>>> lot of things. :-)

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  • Egads007
    Egads007 Member Posts: 1,603
    edited April 2018

    Just to play the devil's advocate here, I found the following very interesting article regarding cancer as "contagious" :

    https://www.inverse.com/article/14260-does-eating-cancer-tumors-give-you-cancer-probably-not-but-put-the-burger-down

    "catching cancer" by ingestion as actually been found in marsupials, and the odds in humans is low, but not impossible IMHO. Cancer seems to be an evil ingenious operator, constantly looking to circumnavigate the human immune system. I think in most cases however it's the chemical cocktail food producers use that lead to malignant diagnosis.

    Another thought to ponder is if gastric juices destroy cancer cells, why are malignancies (some, not all) in the stomach not wiped out by it?

    This all makes for an interesting debate! :)

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  • Recap
    Recap Member Posts: 120
    edited April 2018

    Egads-you must have been a whiz in debate club-I enjoyed that article. A former coworker in her misspent youth once worked in a chicken processing plant-she always said 'You don't want to know.'

    As for gastric juices, my first thought was minimally digested food that makes it all the way out intact. Second thought is overeating probably overwhelms gastric juices. Third thought is the use of Tums. Rolaids, Prilosec etc may not be so good for us. Ingestion of pickling spices, pineapple, preservatives, other oddities? Then of course there is the amount of fluid intake with our food, the type of fluid, and it's effect on gastric juices-I am a Diet Coke fiend and have always believed I take in more calories from the same food than someone else because of it's overwhelming ability to break down food very quickly. (Want your silverware to shine? Marinate it in Diet Coke.)

    So the government protects us lol. Meat is dead, cells are dead. Even if fresh-frozen? Don't they say cellular death occurs later than our concept of death? E-coli is everywhere-not all of us become ill enough for it to turn into a national news story-who's to say a cancer cell or two doesn't hitch a ride on in as well. Maybe the cell barrier is at it's weakest when food reaches the colon-gastric juices might explain less cancers in stomach than in colon. The marsupial saliva mention (part of gastric juices) in that article was most interesting because of the whole debate back when AIDS was first being explained to us-could saliva or could it not contain HIV. HPV?

    Maybe the cell barrier is at its weakest in our mouth/throat/esophagus? Having a heart attack? Chew an aspirin because the thinning effect will enter the bloodstream faster than swallowing and digesting in the stomach. That under the tongue pill for angina?

    The lab worker accidentally injected with colon cancer cells developing a hand tumor? Chilling!

    We are what we eat, until something makes us begin to wonder...I think that is how many scientific breakthroughs occur. Food for thought (couldn't resist.)

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  • Egads007
    Egads007 Member Posts: 1,603
    edited April 2018

    Recap...I would have been thrown off the debate team lol!!

    Here’s the thing for me in one word...extremophiles. Extremophiles are living organisms that exist geochemically or physically in extreme environments. Some examples are the bacteria found alive and doing well in an arsenic lake in California or the vast colonies of bacteria living high off the driest soil in the Sonoran Desert, as well as in salt flats. H. Pylori which is the bacteria discovered to be the cause of ulcers thrive like kings in gastric juices.

    Like all living things evolution is a fact of life. We morphed into Homo sapiens from a chain of simpler creatures, even the flu bug morphs from year to year in order to adapt and survive whatever physical adversity is thrown our way. Why would cancer be any different? I simply can’t believe that a mixture of acids in the stomach can destroy ingested cancer each and every time! I’m sure the combination of gastric juices and our immune system clear out most invaders, most of the time. It still wouldnt get me to buy a package of chicken marked down 90% in price if it was labelled ‘some cancer cells may be present’. Cancer, along with a host of many other diseases, are devious survivors, and as studies show, morphing. The Tasmanian devils foretells that fact.

    Your points regarding cell weakness is another very good point. I’m left to wonder about my diagnosis after several bouts with mastitis on the very spot my lump sprang up. I don’t think it was coincidence.

    I suppose, like the forming of the solar system that cancer probably has a number of variables. When certain things align it sets up a home base for things to happen...good and bad.

    Food for thought, lol, indeed.

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  • Juli24
    Juli24 Member Posts: 90
    edited April 2018

    My oncologist runs most of the tumor marker blood tests ever 3 months on average as well as the LDH ( I think that’s the one that also shows inflammation). I made the decision that I was not going to take any of the hormone blockers. Just had too many horrible side effects plus the tables didn’t show a huge swing in the survival rates taking them. Because of that decision his protocol is to test more often to catch anything early. That being said, those numbers swing sometimes going above the top advisable margin usually due to inflammation or some unknown factor. For that reason, we don’t panic if the numbers are high in one set of tests. He says wait until that becomes a pattern. So far his reasoning has been correct and the numbers go down again. The few times they didn’t he did scans. Interesting how different doctors have different methods of follow up. My insurance hasn’t questioned any of the bills luckily since I am surethey are astromical.

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  • Bosombuddy101
    Bosombuddy101 Member Posts: 182
    edited April 2018

    Interesting topic! I recently came across the following video and apparently as many as 37% of human breast cancer cases can be attributable to exposure to the bovine leukemia virus. Yes, I did drink a LOT of milk prior to my diagnosis.

    https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-role-of-bovin...

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  • Recap
    Recap Member Posts: 120
    edited April 2018

    Most interesting. Personally I can take or leave milk so I don't drink it that much. Apparently many European countries made efforts to eradicate this virus in their herds, but the US did not. I never thought about this before but it talks about precautions that are not taken with most animals, that are taken with humans such as re-use of needles, re-use of exam gloves, etc (thus spreading the virus thru herds.)

    Wiki had this to say: A case-control study published in 2015 suggests that exposure to BLV is associated with breast cancer.A later study of Australian women detected retrotranscribed BLV DNA in breast tissue of 40/50(80%) of women with breast cancer versus 19/46(41%) of women with no history of breast cancer, indicating an age-adjusted odds ratio and confidence interval of 4.72(1.71-13.05). These results corroborate the findings of the previous study of US women with an even higher odds ratio for the Australian population.Most recently a case-control study of Texas women established an association between BLV presence in breast tissue and breast cancer status with an odd ratio of 5.1.

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  • Bosombuddy101
    Bosombuddy101 Member Posts: 182
    edited April 2018

    Recap,

    It's horrific, isn't it? Apparently BLV can also be transmitted by eating rare or under cooked beef. The earlier discussion about the potential for cancer cells to be transmitted made me wonder. Years ago, the scientific community said, "No way can the bovine leukemia virus be transmitted to humans..." and now look!

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  • Recap
    Recap Member Posts: 120
    edited April 2018

    I don't drink milk but have had a life-long love affair with steak, rare. Who knew! There is a beef crisis in America-you can definitely see the effects in the grocery stores now-too much demand for supply is giving us poorer quality beef. (Don't tell Texas, lol.)

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  • Egads007
    Egads007 Member Posts: 1,603
    edited April 2018

    To all - it all comes down to the crappy chemical and hormone laden corn fed diets cattle (and other animals) are fed. If you take an ill bovine and put it on a strictly grass fed diet (non gmo grass/natural) the results are miraculous...within 7 lousy days the disease is GONE in most cases. Cattle was meant to eat grass...not gmo corn! It's cheap and makes them fat, the hormone makes them huge....and is conveniently passed along to you on your dinner plate, along with whatever disease the crappy diet caused the animal. If you can get access to, and can afford, grass fed organically raised beef, eat rare to your hearts content. Grass fed produced dairy as well. Check out a documentary titled 'Food Inc', might even be on YouTube, it will change the way you eat! I'm ashamed to say that the largest numbers of BLV meat came out of my homeland. Uggg

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