Category Archives: Cancer _ Oncology

Blacks and Hispanics at Higher Risk for Precancerous Colorectal Polyps

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Colonoscopy may be preferable to sigmoidoscopy for these populations

Newswise — New York, NY (May 3, 2012) — Blacks and Hispanics have a significantly higher risk of developing precancerous colorectal polyps compared with whites, according to a study by researchers at NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. The findings appeared in the online edition of Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

“Our data suggest that we need to redouble our efforts to increase colon cancer screening in areas with large numbers of racial and ethnic minorities,” said lead author Benjamin Lebwohl, MD, MS, assistant professor of clinical medicine and epidemiology at NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The study also found that blacks and Hispanics have a higher risk of developing polyps in the upper portion of the colon, compared with whites. “These lesions would have been missed had these patients undergone sigmoidoscopy, which examines only the lower half of the colon,” said Dr. Lebwohl. “Therefore, colonoscopy, which examines the entire colon, may be preferable to sigmoidoscopy as a screening test for blacks and Hispanics.”

Colorectal cancer caused an estimated 51,370 deaths in 2010 – the last year for which data are available. This type of cancer is largely preventable if caught early, in the form of precancerous polyps, or adenomas. Such polyps are effectively treated with removal during colonoscopy.

The researchers looked at rates of advanced adenomas — polyps 10 mm or larger that exhibited aggressive features under microscopic examination. “These are the kinds of polyps that we are most concerned may eventually develop into cancer,” said Fay Kastrinos, MD, MPH, assistant professor of clinical medicine at NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center and senior author of the study. “We found that blacks and Hispanics were roughly twice as likely to have advanced adenomas, compared with whites, after adjusting for factors such as age and family history.”

Previous studies had shown that colorectal cancer incidence and mortality are higher in blacks than in whites, and that blacks are typically younger at the time of diagnosis than are whites. Little was known about the risk of adenomas among Hispanics.

In the current study, the first to compare adenomas in white, blacks, and Hispanics, the investigators analyzed data from 5,075 men and women age 50 or older who underwent first-time colonoscopy at NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center from 2006 to 2010. The study population was 70 percent white, 18 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent black, with a mean age of 62. None of the subjects had signs or symptoms of colon cancer at the time of screening. At least one adenoma was detected in 19 percent of whites, 22 percent of Hispanics, and 26 percent of blacks, the researchers reported.

The findings run counter to existing statistics showing that Hispanics have a lower rate of colon cancer compared with whites. “Surprisingly, we found that Hispanics have a slightly higher rate of precancerous polyps,” said Dr. Lebwohl. “This adds to other recent evidence that the rate of colorectal cancer among Hispanics may be increasing with acculturation.”

Doctors generally advise patients to get an initial screening test at age 50, when overall rates of colon cancer begin to increase.

The research paper is titled, “Risk of colorectal adenomas and advanced neoplasia in Hispanic, black and white patients undergoing screening colonoscopy.” The other co-authors are Kristina Capiak and Alfred. I. Neugut, at NewYork – Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.

This research was supported by the National Center for Research Resources (KL2 RR024157, BL) and the National Cancer Institute (K07 CA151769-01, FK).

Source: Newswise

Study Reveals High Rate of Anal Cancer in HIV-Positive Women

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Newswise — NEW YORK CITY (April 12, 2012) – Anal cancer is on the rise among HIV-positive women, according to a Montefiore Medical Center study entitled, “High Prevalence of High Grade Anal Intraepithelial Neoplasia in HIV-Infected Women Screened for Anal Cancer,” to be published in the Journal of Aids on May 1.

“Anal cancer was widely associated with HIV-infected men who have sex with men,” said Mark H. Einstein, MD, MS, Director of Clinical Research, Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Montefiore Medical Center and Professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “But now, this study reveals anal precancerous disease in a high proportion of women with HIV.”

Out of 715 asymptomatic HIV-infected women studied, 10.5% exhibited some form of anal disease and approximately one third of them were found to be true pre-cancerous disease. The researchers determined that this is likely due to the fact that HIV promotes human papillomavirus (HPV) persistence and consequently, which is known to cause nearly all anal cancers. HIV-infected individuals are also at increased risk for the development of many other HPV-associated neoplasms.

The incidence of anal carcinoma (AC) has been increasing despite the implementation of antiretroviral therapy (ART), which has not been shown to consistently alter the course of HPV–associated anogenital disease.

The women studied were Montefiore patients in the Bronx, which has one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the United States. Data indicates that 1.8% of the Bronx population is known to be HIV infected, representing 3% of the total number of HIV patients in the entire country. Montefiore is the largest provider of medical services for people with HIV in the Bronx and has adopted routine screening for AC with annual anal cytology in all HIV-infected patients.

As a result of these findings, Dr. Einstein and his colleagues recommend that all HIV+ women who have any abnormal anal cytology be referred for high resolution anoscopy, particularly those with poorly controlled HIV who are significantly at even higher risk for harboring a high-grade AIN than women who are well controlled. Also, all HIV infected men and women should be considered for anal cancer screening. Given the lower high-grade anal disease prevalence in women with well-controlled HIV, other strategies to improve disease ascertainment, such as inclusion of HPV testing might be found to be useful for AC screening. This risk stratification might prove to be different for women than it is for men, where prevalence rates seem to be considerably higher. Given the high rate of high-grade anal precancerous lesions in screened HIV-infected women and an aging population of HIV-infected patients, measures to increase routine AC screening should be strongly considered. Depending on the size of the pre-cancerous legion, it can be removed long before it becomes cancer, thus being able to save lives.

Chemotherapy Proves Life-Saving for Some Leukemia Patients Who Fail Induction Therapy

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Newswise — (MEMPHIS, Tenn. – April 11, 2012) An international study found that bone marrow transplants are not the best option for some young patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who fail to attain clinical remission after the initial weeks of intense chemotherapy known as induction therapy.

The largest study ever of such pediatric ALL patients identified a subset of young children who achieved 10-year survival rates of 72 percent after additional chemotherapy rather than bone marrow transplantation. The patients are among the estimated 85 percent of children with ALL whose cancer begins in white blood cells destined to become B cells.

The results appear in the April 12 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. The study involved researchers from 14 research groups in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

“Induction failure is a rare event, affecting just 2 to 3 percent of all pediatric ALL patients. But these children are at very high risk for a bad outcome and were always considered candidates for bone marrow transplantation,” said Ching-Hon Pui, M.D., chair of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Department of Oncology. “These results tell us that induction failure should no longer be considered an automatic indication for a transplant.” Pui is the study’s corresponding author.

Improvements in both chemotherapy and transplantation prompted investigators to revisit the question of optimal care for these patients. But no single institution or nation had enough patients to answer it. “This study shows the importance of international collaboration to advance the treatment outcome for these patients,” said first author Martin Schrappe, M.D., University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel, Germany.

Investigators evaluated the outcomes of 44,017 ALL patients age 17 and younger whose cancer was discovered during a 15-year period ending in December 2000. Each was treated on a clinical trial at one of the centers participating in this international collaborative analysis. St. Jude patients were part of the study. Researchers tracked 1,041 patients whose cancer did not go into remission following four to six weeks of induction therapy.

Historically, the prognosis has been grim for patients who fail induction therapy. While overall long-term survival for childhood ALL patients climbed to 80 percent during the 15 years covered in this study, it was just 32 percent for patients who did not enter remission after the first intense weeks of treatment. The definition of induction failure differed slightly among the clinical trials included in this analysis.

The study found long-term survival rates of 72 percent among some young patients with B-lineage ALL treated with additional chemotherapy following induction therapy failure. The patients were ages 1 through 5 when their cancer was found and many had more than 50 chromosomes in their leukemia cells, rather than the normal number of 46 chromosomes. Together they accounted for about 25 percent of patients whose disease did not go into remission following induction therapy.

The children who benefited from additional chemotherapy also had no other markers of high risk, including high white blood cell counts or chromosomal rearrangements involving the MLL gene.

The study found transplants remain the best hope for many other young ALL patients who fail induction therapy. The patients included those whose cancer originated in white blood cells known as T cells. T cell ALL accounts for 12 to 15 percent of childhood ALL, but about 38 percent of patients in this study. The transplants involve killing the patient’s own diseased bone marrow and replacing it with blood-producing stem cells from a genetically matched donor. The procedure leaves patients at risk for a variety of immediate and chronic health problems.

Patients with a chromosomal rearrangement known as the Philadelphia chromosome were not included in the analysis because new drugs have led to a dramatic improvement in their outcome. About 13 percent of ALL induction treatment failures involved patients with the genetic alteration.

The other authors are Stephen Hunger, University of Colorado School of Medicine; Vaskar Saha, University of Manchester, U.K.; Paul Gaynon, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles; Andre Baruchel, Hospital Robert Debre, Paris; Valentino Conter, University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy; Jacques Otten, Brussels University Hospital, Belgium; Akira Ohara, Toho University, Tokyo; Anne Birgitta Versluys, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands; Gabriele Escherich, University Medical Center Eppendorf, Germany; Mats Heyman, Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital, Sweden; Lewis Silverman, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Keizo Horibe, Nagoya Medical Center, Japan; Georg Mann, St. Anna Children’s Hospital, Vienna; Bruce Camitta, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Jochen Harbott, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany; Hansjorg Riehm and Martin Zimmermann, both of Medical School Hannover, Hannover, Germany; Sue Richards, University of Oxford, England; and Meenakshi Devidas, University of Florida, Gainesville.

In the U.S., the work was supported in part by National Cancer Institute grants to the Children’s Cancer Group, Pediatric Oncology Group and ALSAC.

Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy Reduces Risk of Side Effects in Breast Cancer Patients

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Newswise — Breast cancer patients treated with intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) instead of standard whole breast irradiation (WBI) have a lower incidence of acute or chronic toxicities, according to a study in Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Researchers are constantly conducting studies to determine the most effective breast cancer treatment that also reduces the incidence of potential side effects, including skin inflammation, swelling and infection.

Researchers in this study sought to compare standard WBI to WBI with IMRT (using both a typical treatment time and an accelerated treatment time) in terms of toxicity levels for patients. In a retrospective review, over 300 patients treated with one of the forms of radiation therapy were looked at and it was determined that radiation therapy using IMRT, regardless of the length of treatment, is associated with greatly reduced toxicities compared with the older, more standard radiation therapy technique.

A side analysis determined that larger breasted women had higher toxicity levels than smaller breasted women, however they still had reduced toxicities with IMRT over standard radiation, even though these levels were higher than smaller breasted women. This included IMRT with a shorter treatment time; previous trials usually exclude larger breasted women from receiving radiation using an accelerated treatment schedule.

“Our data support the increasing role of IMRT in delivering not only whole breast irradiation but also whole breast irradiation using an accelerated treatment time,” Frank Vicini, MD, a radiation oncologist with Michigan Healthcare Professionals/21st Century Oncology in Farmington Hills, Mich., said. “This is great news for breast cancer patients who, if eligible, can not only receive their radiation treatment in a shorter amount of time but also reduce their risk of many side effects.”

Report: New More-Sensitive Blood Test Catches Recurring Breast Cancer a Year Earlier

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Newswise — SAN DIEGO, March 28, 2012 Research was presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society — A new blood test is twice as sensitive and can detect breast cancer recurrence a full year earlier than current blood tests, according to a scientist who reported here today at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The report was among more than 11,000 presentations on new developments in science scheduled this week at the meeting, held by the world’s largest scientific society.

Daniel Raftery, Ph.D., who reported on the test, pointed out that breast cancer survivors — 2.5 million in the U.S. alone — face about a 1-in-5 chance that the cancer will come back, or recur, within 10 years of treatment. Research shows that early detection of these recurrences and treatment can save lives. However, currently available blood tests are not very sensitive. Perhaps the best known test for a biological “marker” protein, or “biomarker,” called CA 27.29, misses many cases of recurrence and detects them late — often after symptoms, such as difficulty breathing or bone pain, surface.

“We have identified a group of nine biomarkers that signal recurrence of breast cancer,” Raftery said. “Our markers detect twice as many recurrences as the CA marker does at the same specificity. They also detect cancer recurrence earlier, about 11-12 months sooner than existing tests. They accomplish this with blood samples, rather than biopsies, with less discomfort to patients.”

To find these markers, Raftery’s team at Purdue University and Matrix-Bio, Inc., a company he founded, analyzed many hundreds of “metabolites” in the blood of breast cancer survivors. Metabolites are small molecules, biological byproducts formed as the body’s cells go about the business of life. Some are released into the bloodstream and urine. The rapidly emerging scientific field called “metabolite profiling” seeks to understand how these metabolites relate to health and disease. Groups of metabolites already have been linked to a range of diseases. Many of Raftery’s biomarkers were known to be involved in cancer. But no one knew that this group of metabolites could serve as biomarkers for breast cancer recurrence, he said.

The markers are detected with an instrument called a mass spectrometer, which is common in clinical laboratories. Raftery explained that these markers would be used in combination with results from CA 27.29 blood tests.

“We take both of those results together and roll them into the profile so that the score we generate is a combination of the CA value and our nine metabolites,” he said. “If the score indicates that the cancer probably has returned, the patient would then likely undergo imaging tests to locate the tumor.”

Raftery hopes that the new test will become available later this year. In the meantime, the researchers are conducting another clinical study with the test. He also said that, in the future, the test might be useful in the early detection of breast cancer, not just recurrences.

The scientists acknowledged partial funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Report: US Cancer Death Rates Continue to Fall

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Newswise — BOSTON—A report from the nation’s leading cancer organizations shows rates of death in the United States from all cancers for men and women continued to decline between 2004 and 2008. The findings come from the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer.

The report also finds that the overall rate of new cancer diagnoses for men and women combined decreased an average of less than one percent per year from 1998 through 2006, with rates leveling off from 2006 through 2008. Edward J. Benz, Jr., MD, president of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, called the news encouraging, but is disappointed that the overall rate of cancer deaths is not falling nearly enough.

“The rate of cancer diagnoses and deaths across all racial and minority groups are slowly decreasing,” said Benz. “But there are still gaps that must be addressed.”

The report is co-authored by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Cancer Society. It will be posted on the web site of the journal CANCER on March 28, 2012.

Among children ages 19 years or younger, the report shows cancer incidence rates increased 0.6 percent per year from 2004 through 2008, while death rates decreased 1.3 percent per year during the same period.

The authors also highlighted cancers associated with excess weight and lack of sufficient physical activity.

“This report emphasizes that the growing obesity problem and decreased overall physical activity in our society compared to decades ago have a real impact on multiple diseases, including cancer,” said Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt, MD, MPH, a colorectal cancer expert at Dana-Farber and author of several studies investigating the impact of exercise on survival rates for colorectal cancer patients. “While we currently see declines in incidence of many cancers, if obesity continues at the current rates, I believe these improvements in incidences will reverse and increase over time.”

Benz added that the good news is that some of the cancer risks the report highlighted can be reduced by changes in lifestyle.

“Many of the things that are still a problem in these statistics are modifiable,” said Benz. “If you watch your diet, exercise, and manage your weight, you can not only prevent your risk of getting many lethal forms of cancer, you will also increase your chances of doing well, if you should get almost any form of cancer.”

Dietary Cadmium May Be Linked with Breast Cancer Risk

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Newswise — PHILADELPHIA — Dietary cadmium, a toxic metal widely dispersed in the environment and found in many farm fertilizers, may lead to an increased risk of breast cancer, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Cadmium occurs at low concentrations naturally, but scientists are concerned because contamination of farmland mainly due to atmospheric deposition and use of fertilizers leads to higher uptake in plants.

“Because of a high accumulation in agricultural crops, the main sources of dietary cadmium are bread and other cereals, potatoes, root crops and vegetables,” said Agneta Åkesson, Ph.D., associate professor at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. “In general, these foods are also considered healthy.”

For the current study, Åkesson and colleagues observed 55,987 women for more than 12 years. They estimated the dietary cadmium exposure using a food frequency questionnaire. During the follow-up period, researchers observed 2,112 incidences of breast cancer including 1,626 estrogen receptor-positive and 290 estrogen receptor-negative cases.

Cadmium consumption was divided into three groups with the highest levels of exposure compared with the lowest. Overall, a higher exposure to cadmium via diet was linked with a 21 percent increase in breast cancer. Among lean and normal weight women, the increased risk was 27 percent.

Both estrogen receptor-positive and negative tumors had the same risk increase at roughly 23 percent. Åkesson said that women who consumed higher amounts of whole grain and vegetables had a lower risk of breast cancer compared to women exposed to dietary cadmium through other foods.

“It’s possible that this healthy diet to some extent can counteract the negative effect of cadmium, but our findings need to be confirmed with further studies,” said Åkesson. “It is, however, important that the exposure to cadmium from all food is low.”

Researchers reveal ways to make personalized cancer therapies more cost effective

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AURORA, Colo. — As scientists continue making breakthroughs in personalized cancer treatment, delivering those therapies in the most cost effective manner has become increasingly important. Now researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have identified new ways of doing just that, allowing more patients to benefit from this revolution in cancer care.

In a paper published in the British Journal of Cancer, health economist Adam Atherly, PhD, of the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and medical oncologist D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, argue the cost of profiling patients’ tumors for specific molecular abnormalities must be considered. This kind of molecular profiling is increasingly being used to determine who would benefit most from a variety of cancer drugs. In addition, many new drugs are now being restricted to cancer patients with specific molecular sub-types of the disease. Many of these initial breakthroughs have happened in lung cancer, but dividing one disease into many different sub-diseases at the molecular level is expected to extend across most of cancer medicine in the next few years.

“In recent years, we have championed the practice of performing very sophisticated molecular tests on the tumors of every lung cancer patient we see. We then use this information to direct patients to the most appropriate targeted therapy for their cancer,” said Camidge, CU Cancer Center investigator and director of the thoracic oncology clinical program at University of Colorado Hospital (UCH).

Camidge continues, “The testing has certainly led to major breakthroughs in the treatment of lung cancer. But if we are going to roll these developments out across the U.S. and around the world, we have to understand what this progress costs and how to make it affordable.”

Many insurers already consider the cost of a drug and the benefit derived from its use when determining coverage. In their paper, Atherly and Camidge reveal that the cost of testing tumors for an increasing array of specific genetic abnormalities must now also be considered.

“If you screen every patient with a molecular test to detect something that only occurs in one percent of them – in reality, treating each positive patient should also include the upfront costs of screening the other 99 negative patients,” said Atherly, professor of health systems management and policy for the Colorado School of Public Health. “If a test costs $1,000, this means from society’s perspective you have to add $100,000 to the costs of treating each of the one in 100 patients that are positive. And this is before you have even started to consider the cost of the drug itself. When you consider these factors, some organizations may not view a new drug as cost effective even if it works amazingly well for the small percentage who are proven positive by the test.”

Using recent breakthroughs by the University of Colorado’s lung cancer program to model their data, Atherly and Camidge argue pricing of the molecular profiling tests and policies on who and how to screen for abnormalities should be carefully considered or treatment of many different cancers may be delayed. They suggest two key ways molecular profiling can be made more cost effective. First, clinicians could recommend testing only some patients based on finding certain key clinical factors that increase the chances of a patient having a specific molecular abnormality in their tumor. The downside is that some positive patients may be missed if they don’t fit a classical stereotype. Second, either the cost of the profiling test for each individual molecular abnormality has to be reduced for every patient screened, or tests must be merged so doctors can look for multiple different abnormalities at the same time at a lower combined price.

“We believe the only way to beat cancer is moving away from the one-size-fits-all model,” said Camidge. “To do this we must treat every person as an individual. But if we don’t think now about the costs of this approach and how to address them, these breakthroughs will never achieve their true potential.”

Study: Cancer of the Appendix is Different than Colon Cancer

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WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – March 7, 2012 – Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have demonstrated that cancer of the appendix is different than colon cancer, a distinction that could lead to more effective treatments for both diseases.

The study by Edward A. Levine, M.D., professor of surgery and chief of the surgical oncology service at Wake Forest Baptist, is the result of gene analysis of cases covering a 10-year period. It appears in the early online edition of the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Cancer of the appendix, which is part of the colon, affects approximately 2,500 people in the United States annually and has the propensity to spread throughout the peritoneal cavity, the space within the abdomen that contains the intestines, stomach and liver.

“Our treatment program, which was the catalyst for this research, is one of the largest worldwide and consists of aggressive surgery coupled with heated chemotherapy placed directly into the abdominal cavity at the time of surgery,” Levine said. “Given the uncertainty of predicting outcomes in patients with disseminated appendiceal cancer, we sought to use the tools of gene expression profiling to better understand these rare malignancies at a molecular level in order to better predict oncologic outcomes. We’ve looked at the genes that make these cancers tick, and we actually started to pick them apart for the first time.”

For the study, the researchers examined tumor samples from Wake Forest Baptist’s tissue bank for patterns of expression of different genes.

“By looking at these genetic signatures, we found that the genes active in cancer of the colon and those active in cancer of the appendix are very different,” Levine said. “For years, however, cancer of the appendix, which is part of the colon, has been treated with the same chemotherapy treatment used for colon cancer. This study shows that we need a fresh approach to how we treat appendix cancer.”

This research, which was done in collaboration with Duke University, was supported, in part, by a grant from Golfers Against Cancer. Co-authors include Perry Shen, M.D., and John Stewart, M.D., both of Wake Forest Baptist, and David Hsu, M.D., and Trey Blazer, M.D., both of Duke University.

Study: Moderate red wine drinking may help cut women’s breast cancer risk

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LOS ANGELES – Drinking red wine in moderation may reduce one of the risk factors for breast cancer, providing a natural weapon to combat a major cause of death among U.S. women, new research from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center shows.

The study, published online in the Journal of Women’s Health, challenges the widely-held belief that all types of alcohol consumption heighten the risk of developing breast cancer. Doctors long have determined that alcohol increases the body’s estrogen levels, fostering the growth of cancer cells.

But the Cedars-Sinai study found that chemicals in the skins and seeds of red grapes slightly lowered estrogen levels while elevating testosterone among premenopausal women who drank eight ounces of red wine nightly for about a month.

White wine lacked the same effect.

Researchers called their findings encouraging, saying women who occasionally drink alcohol might want to reassess their choices.

“If you were to have a glass of wine with dinner, you may want to consider a glass of red,” said Chrisandra Shufelt, MD, assistant director of the Women’s Heart Center at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and one of the study’s co-authors. “Switching may shift your risk.”

Shufelt noted that breast cancer is the leading type of women’s cancer in the U.S., accounting for more than 230,000 new cases last year, or 30 percent of all female cancer diagnoses. An estimated 39,000 women died from the disease in 2011, according to the American Cancer Society.

In the Cedars-Sinai study, 36 women were randomized to drink either Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay daily for almost a month, then switched to the other type of wine. Blood was collected twice each month to measure hormone levels.

Researchers sought to determine whether red wine mimics the effects of aromatase inhibitors, which play a key role in managing estrogen levels. Aromatase inhibitors are currently used to treat breast cancer.

Investigators said the change in hormone patterns suggested that red wine may stem the growth of cancer cells, as has been shown in test tube studies.

Co-author Glenn D. Braunstein, MD, said the results do not mean that white wine increases the risk of breast cancer but that grapes used in those varieties may lack the same protective elements found in reds.

“There are chemicals in red grape skin and red grape seeds that are not found in white grapes that may decrease breast cancer risk,” said Braunstein, vice president for Clinical Innovation and the James R. Klinenberg, MD, Chair in Medicine.

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The study will be published in the April print edition of the Journal of Women’s Health, but Braunstein noted that large-scale studies still are needed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of red wine to see if it specifically alters breast cancer risk. He cautioned that recent epidemiological data indicated that even moderate amounts of alcohol intake may generally increase the risk of breast cancer in women. Until larger studies are done, he said, he would not recommend that a non-drinker begin to drink red wine.

The research team also included C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, director of the Women’s Heart Center, director of the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center and the Women’s Guild Chair in Women’s Health, as well as researchers from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Hartford Hospital in Connecticut.

Source: Eurekalert