Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, JAMA, Surgical Research / 08.01.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mehra Golshan, MD, MBA Dr. Abdul Mohsen & Sultana Al-Tuwaijri Distinguished Chair Surgical OncologyDirector of Breast Surgical Oncology Fellowship Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer that often requires chemotherapy. In this study we provided neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without a PARP inhibitor and showed that many women who were originally ineligible for breast conservation (lumpectomy) became eligible after treatment. If lumpectomy was tried it was usually successful.  Many more women in the US compared to Europe and Asia chose mastectomy when lumpectomy was an option even when genetics is negative. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Weight Research / 19.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lauren Teras, PHD Scientific Director, Epidemiology Research American Cancer Society MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Excess body weight is a known cause of postmenopausal breast cancer, but an important question is: can you reverse it? Believe it or not, this not something we knew for certain. We had hoped it was true, but the scientific evidence was not there. This research question is, of course, particularly important for the more than two-thirds of U.S. women who are overweight or obese, and therefore at higher risk for breast cancer. To try to answer this question, we used a very large pooled study of 180,000 women aged ≥50 years from 10 different prospective studies.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Mammograms / 19.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nancy R. Kressin, PhD VA Medical Center, Jamaica Plain Campus Boston, MA   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: State-level legislation requires informing women about breast density (BD) with mammogram results, to increase awareness of BD’s tendency to mask cancers on mammography, its association with increased breast cancer risk, and to encourage women to discuss personal risk and supplemental screening with physicians. The Food and Drug Administration is currently developing dense breast notification (DBN) language for use nationwide; information about effects of state DBNs could be informative for FDA’s language. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Exercise - Fitness / 16.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tiffany Won-Shau Chen MD Internal Medicine Residency Mount Sinai Beth Israel MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The research I presented on details a randomized, prospective study done to evaluate whether it would be feasible and effective to implement a yoga program for breast cancer patients receiving chemotherapy that could reduce patients' chemotherapy-related symptoms and improve their quality of life. 50 patients were recruited, half of whom underwent a 12-week long yoga program with weekly courses, while the other half did not participate in the program. Surveys were completed at baseline, 6 weeks, and 12 weeks assessing patients' functional wellbeing, sleep quality, and anxiety/depression levels. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Genetic Research / 15.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Julia Blanter, MD MS Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai First author of the study MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The Oncotype DX Breast Cancer Assay was developed to genetically profile patients with early stage, hormone positive breast cancer and predict their 10-year risk of distant recurrence. A high-risk recurrence score is associated with a benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy whereas a low risk recurrence score is associated with little to no benefit. BRCA mutated tumors have been associated with higher risk recurrence scores as compared to BRCA negative breast cancer patients. However, there have been minimal studies relating discordance to BRCA mutations. Discordance refers to a poorly differentiated or high-grade tumor with a low risk recurrence score. Prior studies demonstrated 7-19% discordance, or difference between recurrence score and tumor grade in breast cancer patients regardless of BRCA mutation status. It has been concluded that patients who exhibit discordance may benefit from additional therapy in conjunction with endocrine therapy. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research / 10.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jian Jin, Ph.D. Mount Sinai Endowed Professor in Therapeutics Discovery Professor, Department of Pharmacological Sciences Professor, Department of Oncological Sciences Director, Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery Co-leader, Cancer Clinical Investigation Program, Tisch Cancer Institute Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a subtype of breast cancer that lacks estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), represents 12-20% of all breast cancers. TNBC has poor prognosis, high recurrence, a low survival rate, and has higher incidence in African-American and Hispanic women. Currently, there are no effective therapies for treating a substantial portion of TNBC patients. Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2) is the main enzymatic subunit of the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) which catalyzes trimethylation of histone H3 lysine 27 (H3K27me3) to promote transcriptional silencing. EZH2 is overexpressed in multiple types of cancer including triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) and high expression levels correlate with poor prognosis. Several EZH2 inhibitors which inhibit the enzymatic activity of EZH2 have shown promise in treating sarcoma and follicular lymphoma in clinics. However, current EZH2 inhibitors are ineffective at blocking proliferation of TNBC cells even though they effectively inhibit the enzymatic activity of EZH2. While the proteolysis targeting chimera (PROTAC) technology for selective degradation of the target protein has been rapidly gaining momentum in the drug discovery field, the hydrophobic tagging approach for selective protein degradation has received considerately less attention from the scientific community.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Mammograms / 06.12.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sarah Moorman, MD Department of Radiology Michigan Medicine   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Professional societies and government agencies have variable recommendations regarding how often women should get a screening mammogram. Breast cancer screening may be recommended annually or biennially. These differing recommendations lead to confusion for both referring physicians and patients. The goal of our study was to better understand differences between annual and biennial screening. We reviewed clinical outcomes of women undergoing annual or biennial mammographic screening to determine if there is an advantage to annual screening. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA, Mammograms / 15.11.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Elham Kharazmi, MD, PhD Co-Leader, Risk Adapted Prevention (RAD) Group Division of Preventive Oncology National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) Germany MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer death in American women, exceeded only by lung cancer. Available evidence suggests that implementation of a screening program can decrease breast cancer mortality. Reductions in breast cancer mortality in Europe over the past two decades have been associated at least in part with the implementation of screening programs. Screening enables the detection of tumors at an early stage, when more treatment options are feasible and most effective. However, screening is associated with substantial risks, such as over-diagnosis, false-positive results, and physical and psychological harms, particularly when large numbers of women with low risk are frequently screened. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA, USPSTF / 12.09.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Carol Mangione, M.D., M.S.P.H., F.A.C.P. Division Chief of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research Professor of Medicine Barbara A. Levey, MD, and Gerald S. Levey, MD, endowed chair in Medicine David Geffen School of Medicine University of California Los Angeles Professor of public health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We all want to find better ways to help prevent breast cancer, a disease that impacts the lives of too many women in the United States each year. Fortunately, the Task Force found there are steps that women at increased risk can take to reduce their chances of developing breast cancer. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Genetic Research, JAMA, Ovarian Cancer, USPSTF / 28.08.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Carol Mangione, M.D., M.S.P.H., F.A.C.P. Division Chief of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research Professor of Medicine Barbara A. Levey, MD, and Gerald S. Levey, MD, endowed chair in Medicine David Geffen School of Medicine University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Professor of public health at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Every year, too many American women are faced with the challenge of dealing with a cancer diagnosis related to potentially harmful mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.  However, the Task Force found that there are several steps women can take to determine if they’re potentially at increased risk for BRCA gene mutations – and if genetic counseling and BRCA testing are needed. It is important to note that while some women can benefit from risk assessment, counseling, and testing, these services are not for everyone. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Genetic Research / 19.08.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Tengteng Wang, PhD, MSPH, MBBS Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Epidemiology Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Channing Division of Network Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Chronic inflammation is a key player in the development of multiple cancer types, including breast cancer. Aspirin is one of the major non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) which clearly has anti-inflammatory properties. Given this, substantial evidence from laboratory and population studies suggests that taking aspirin may reduce the risk of developing breast cancer. However, the association of aspirin use with death outcomes following breast cancer diagnosis remains inconclusive and inconsistent across studies. Therefore, we choose to focus on mortality outcomes in this paper and we hypothesized that the inconsistent results for aspirin in relation to mortality could be due to differences in the association by patients’ biological profiles, specifically DNA methylation profiles here.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA, UCLA / 12.08.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Joann G. Elmore, MD, MPH Professor of Medicine, Director of the UCLA National Clinician Scholars Program David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
  • A pathologist makes the diagnosis of breast cancer versus non-cancer after reviewing the biopsy specimen. Breast biopsies are performed on millions of women each year and It is critical to get a correct diagnosis so that we can guide patients to the most effective treatments.
  • Our prior work (Elmore et al. 2015 JAMA) found significant levels of disagreement among pathologists when they interpreted the same breast biopsy specimen. We also found that pathologists would disagree with their own interpretations of breast biopsies when they where shown the same biopsy specimen a year later.
  • In this study, 240 breast biopsy images were fed into a computer, training it to recognize patterns associated with several types of breast lesions, ranging from benign (noncancerous) to invasive breast cancer. We compared the computer readings to independent diagnoses made by 87 practicing U.S. pathologists and found that while our artificial intelligence program came close to performing as well as human doctors in differentiating cancer from non-cancer, the AI program outperformed doctors when differentiating ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) from atypia, which is considered the greatest diagnostic challenge.
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Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, NIH / 08.08.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Co-First author: Jamie J. Lo, MPH PhD student, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health National University of Singapore, Singapore Co-First author & Co-Senior author: Yong-Moon (“Mark”) Park, MD, PhD Postdoctoral fellow, Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health Senior author: Dale P. Sandler, PhD Chief, Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: We were interested, generally, in the association between meat consumption and breast cancer risk. Epidemiological studies of red meat consumption and risk of breast cancer are still inconsistent, although red meat has been identified as a probable carcinogen. In addition, there is not much evidence on the association between poultry consumption and breast cancer risk. We studied around 42,000 women ages 35-74 from across the US who are enrolled in the Sister Study cohort. Women provided self-reported information on meat consumption at baseline and were followed for 7.6 years on average. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Genetic Research, Novartis / 03.06.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Fabrice André, MD, PhD Research director and head of INSERM Unit U981 Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France Global SOLAR-1 Principal Investigator. MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? How does Piqray®  differ from other treatments for this type of advanced breast cancer? 
  • The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Piqray® (alpelisib, formerly BYL719) in combination with fulvestrant for the treatment of postmenopausal women, and men, with hormone receptor positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 negative (HR+/HER2-), PIK3CA-mutated, advanced or metastatic breast cancer, as detected by an FDA-approved test after disease progression following an endocrine-based regimen.
  • Piqray is the first and only combination treatment with fulvestrant specifically for postmenopausal women, and men, with HR+/HER2- advanced or metastatic breast cancer with a PIK3CA mutation following progression on or after an endocrine-based regimen, bringing a biomarker-driven therapy option to this population for the first time.
  • Advanced breast cancer is incurable, and patients with all types need more treatment options. With this approval, physicians can now use an FDA-approved test to determine if their patients’ HR+/HER2- advanced breast cancer has a PIK3CA mutation and may be eligible for treatment with Piqray plus fulvestrant combination therapy. 
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ASCO, Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Chemotherapy, Radiation Therapy / 03.06.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Manjeet Chadha, MD, MHA, FACR, FASTRO Prof. Radiation Oncology Director of the Department of Radiation Oncology Mount Sinai Downtown  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Largely, the goal of cancer care among the elderly is to de-escalate therapy searching for a modality that is both an effective treatment and also associated with minimal toxicity. Approximately, 30% of new breast cancers diagnosed annually are among women older than 70 years of age. Age-adjusted trends note a relatively higher incidence of stage I breast cancer in women between the ages of 70-74 years. For this group of patients, it is imperative that we take a closer look at the evidence-base for our current practice standards, and evaluate opportunities to improve cancer care delivery in the elderly. Randomized trials have helped arrive at an acceptance of adjuvant endocrine monotherapy in older patients with ER positive, node negative breast cancer. However, in the older patients high rates of non-compliance to tamoxifen secondary to poor tolerance is widely recognized. Emerging data also detail the side effect profile of aromatase inhibitors. Most commonly observed symptoms of arthralgia, reduced bone mineral density, and increased risk of fractures throughout the duration of treatment are important considerations for an older population. At least a quarter of patients on aromatase inhibitors discontinue therapy specifically due to skeletal events and musculoskeletal symptoms. Overall, the side effects of ET contribute to a high rate of non-compliance and negative impact on patients’ quality of life. (more…)
AACR, Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, Surgical Research / 08.04.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sharon S. Lum, MD, FACS, Professor Department of Surgery-Division of Surgical Oncology Medical Director of the Breast Health Center Loma Linda University Health Loma Linda University School of Medicine  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?   Response: Anecdotally, we observed that many patients with advanced HER2+ breast cancer have had tremendous responses to the new targeted therapies and the oncologists were referring them back to surgeons for consideration of local regional therapy. While traditionally surgeons have avoided operating on metastatic breast cancer patients due to the patient’s likelihood of dying from their metastatic disease, these HER2+ patients seemed to be doing so well that surgery might make sense. In our surgical oncology clinic, we seemed to be operating more on these patients. Since these patients seemed to be living longer, they might survive long enough for their primary tumor to become a problem for them. However, we did not have any data to support doing surgery in these cases. Prior studies have demonstrated mixed results regarding the survival benefit from surgery for stage IV breast cancer patients, but these were completed prior to routine use of anti-HER targeted therapies, so we wanted to further examine the role of surgery in HER2+ stage IV breast cancer patients. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Exercise - Fitness, Heart Disease, JAMA, UCLA / 29.03.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Christina M. Dieli-Conwright, PhD, MPH, FACSM, CSCS Assistant Professor of Research Director, Integrative Center for Oncology Research in Exercise Division of Biokinesiology & Physical Therapy, Ostrow School of Dentistry Department of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90033  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: This study was designed to assess the effects of an aerobic and resistance exercise on metabolic dysregulation in sedentary, obese breast cancer survivors, however we further examined the effects on cardiovascular disease risk measured by the Framingham Risk Score, reported here. Our findings indicated that exercise, indeed, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in this population.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Chemotherapy, NEJM / 27.03.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rita Mehta, MD, HS Clinical Professor, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center University of California School of Medicine, Irvine  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Most patients with HR-positive breast cancer become resistant to hormonal therapies like aromatase inhibitor-anastrozole over time, and downregulating estrogen receptor was identified as a mechanism for overcoming or delaying resistance to hormonal therapy in advanced HR-positive breast cancer. The prospective, randomized phase III S0226 trial, first reported by us in NEJM 2012, showed that the selective estrogen receptor degrader fulvestrant in combination with anastrozole significantly improved progression-free survival in 707 women with HR-positive metastatic breast cancer in first-line setting. Treatment with the selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) fulvestrant achieved a clinically significant and meaningful improvement in overall survival in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-positive advanced breast cancer in first-line therapy, according to the final analysis of overall survival results from the S0226 study reported by us (Mehta et al. NEJM 2019)
  • Results showed that median overall survival improved by 7.8 months with anastrozole plus fulvestrant (median overall survival = 49.8 months) compared to anastrozole (median overall survival = 42.0 months).
  • The improvement was even greater in patients with endocrine naive disease, with an absolute improvement in median overall survival of 11.9 months.
  • No new safety signals were observed with longer follow-up. 
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Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Chemotherapy, NEJM / 24.02.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Aditya Bardia, MBBS, MPH Director, Precision Medicine, Center for Breast Cancer, Attending Physician Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center Harvard Medical School Boston, MA 02114 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Metastatic triple negative breast cancer is associated with aggressive tumor biology, and tends to affect younger patients and African Amerians. The response rate with standard chemotherapy regimens in patients with pre-treated metastatic TNBC ranges from 10-15%, and median progression-free survival ranges from 3-4 months. The median survival of metastatic TNBC is around 12 months and has not changed in the past 20 years. Thus, treatment of metastatic triple negative breast cancer represents an unmet clinical need.   (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, JAMA, Leukemia / 21.01.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: medicalresearch.comDr. Marie Joelle Jabagi, PharmD, MPH University of Paris Sud, Paris-Saclay University, Paris Health Product Epidemiology Department French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety Saint-Denis, France MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Secondary hematologic malignant neoplasms that develop months or years after the diagnosis of breast cancer may be a consequence of genetic predisposition, environmental factors, previous cancer treatments or a combination of all those factors. These secondary malignant neoplasms are increasingly becoming a concern given that the population of breast cancer survivors is growing substantially. However, their frequency in real life has been poorly investigated to date. The aims of our research were to estimate the frequency of various types of hematologic malignant neoplasm following a diagnosis of primary breast cancer among women aged 20 to 85 years in France during the past decade, and to compare it to the corresponding frequency in women of the French general population. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, NIH, OBGYNE / 27.12.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dale P. Sandler, Ph.D. Chief, Epidemiology Branch National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences NIH MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Not having children is a well-established risk factor for breast cancer, but most of this evidence comes from studies of postmenopausal women since breast cancer before menopause is relatively uncommon. There is growing evidence that some risk factors differ for premenopausal and postmenopausal breast cancer – for example obesity which increases risk for breast cancer after menopause but appears to be protective before menopause. There was some evidence that breast cancer risk increased shortly after pregnancy. It was thought that this risk lasted for 5 to ten years. Studies were unable to fully characterize the duration of this increase in risk or evaluate factors such as breast feeding, age at birth, or family history of breast cancer that could modify the relationship between recent pregnancy and breast cancer risk. Breast cancer before menopause or age 55 is relatively rare, and few individual studies are large enough to answer these questions. To answer these questions, we formed the Breast Cancer Collaborative Group, a pooling project involving 20 prospective cohort studies. We included 890,000 women from 15 of these long-term studies across three continents, including over 18,000 incident breast cancer cases.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA, Weight Research / 06.12.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Neil M. Iyengar, MD Breast Medicine Service Department of Medicine Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Evelyn H. Lauder Breast And Imaging Center New York, NY  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Obesity is one of the leading modifiable risk factors for the development of hormone receptor positive breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Traditionally, physicians use a person's body mass index (weight in kilograms divided by height in squared meters, kg/m2) to estimate body fat levels. A BMI of 30 or greater is considered to be obese, and this level of BMI increases the risk of at least 13 different cancers. However, BMI is a crude measure of body fat and can be inaccurate. For example, some normal weight individuals (BMI less than 25) have obesity-related problems like diabetes and high blood pressure. Before our study, it was unknown whether high body fat levels in normal weight women contributes to obesity-related cancers such as breast cancer. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Mammograms / 03.12.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Stamatia Destounis MD, FACR, FSBI, FAIUM Elizabeth Wende Breast Care Clinical Professor University of Rochester Imaging Sciences Rochester, NY 14620  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response:  The current breast cancer screening recommendations in the United States are unclear regarding when to stop screening. Several societies with published recommendations conflict in regard to when to discontinue screeningmammography. There is little evidence studying the benefit of annual mammography in the population of women 75 and older. Due to this, we felt that it was a very important and timely topic to investigate, with the goal of providing further guidance on why screening mammography may be beneficial in this older population. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Nature / 10.11.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: "Mammogram" by slgckgc is licensed under CC BY 2.0Prof. Cathrin Brisken MD, PhD ISREC, School of Life Sciences Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Estrogen receptor signaling has been well characterized in various in vitro models, like breast cancer cell lines.  Understanding estrogen receptor action in complex in vivo context is much more challenging. We obtained elegant mouse models in which either all estrogen receptor function or specifically either the hormone dependent (AF-2) or the hormone independent (AF-1) function were ablated. Using the mammary glands from these mice we performed tissue recombination studies to discern the role of the different aspects of estrogen receptor signaling in the mouse mammary epithelium and its different cell populations. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer Research, JNCI / 09.11.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Angela Mariotto PhD Chief of the Data Analytics Branch Surveillance Research Program (SRP) Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences National Cancer Institute (NCI MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Progressing to metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is one of the major concerns for women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. Before our study there were no reliable numbers on risk of metastatic breast cancer recurrence after a (non-metastatic) breast cancer diagnosis, as registries do not routinely collect this data. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Genetic Research / 10.10.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: "JFK Plaza/ Breast Cancer Awareness" by nakashi is licensed under CC BY 2.0Univ.- Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schreiner Section Biosimulation and Bioinformatics Center for Medical Statistics, Informatics, and Intelligent Systems Medical University of Vienna General Hospital WIEN / AUSTRIA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The choice of correct individualized therapy for breast cancer depends on correct diagnosis: receptors for estrogen, progesterone and HER2 are determined routinely. However 5-10% of these routine diagnostics are inaccurate and may entail suboptimal therapy. We have paved the way for additional diagnostics from gene expression data so as to increase precision of diagnostics. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cancer Research, Red Meat / 05.10.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: "bacon&eggs" by ilaria is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Maryam Farvid, Ph.D., Research Scientist   Department of Nutrition Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Boston, MA 02115 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Prior prospective studies on red and processed meat consumption with risk of breast cancer have produced inconsistent results. Current meta-analysis of 15 prospective studies shows that women who eat a high amount of processed meat each day may have a higher risk of breast cancer than those who don't eat or have a low intake in their diet.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Race/Ethnic Diversity, Social Issues / 30.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sage J. Kim, PhD Division of Health Policy and Administration, School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Our study examined the rates at which women who received patient navigation in a randomized clinical trial reported barriers to obtaining a screening mammogram. The trial, called the Patient Navigation in Medically Underserved Areas (PNMUA) study, randomly assigned patients to one of two groups: one received a patient navigation support intervention and the other served as a control. Of the 3,754 women who received the patient navigation intervention, only 14 percent identified one or more barriers to care, which led to additional interactions with navigators who helped overcome barriers. Black women, women living in poverty, and women who reported high levels of distrust of the health care system were the least likely to report barriers. Women who reported barriers were more likely to have additional contact with navigators and obtain a subsequent screening mammogram. The extra support could help with early diagnosis and better survival and mortality outcomes. (more…)
Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Surgical Research / 17.09.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Emily Albright, MD Surgical Oncology Missouri University Health Care MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Traditional medicine had a paternalistic approach but more recent changes have transitioned into shared decision making and a patient centered approach. However, current research has not addressed the mode of communicating bad news to patients. This study was designed to look at trends in modes of communication of a breast cancer diagnosis. This study identified a trend for patients to receive a diagnosis of breast cancer over the telephone in more recent years. Also noted was that of those receiving the diagnosis in person 40% were alone. (more…)