Cancer Cure: sci

'Christmas miracle' for girl battling cancer

Instead of tinsel and carols, she gets plastic tubing and the steady beep of medical equipment.

Nurses, doctors and the sterile surroundings of a hospital are hardly conducive to the colourful Christmas morning a child fantasizes about.

For Diamond Marshall, none of that matters.

For the six-year-old cancer patient and her family, their Christmas dream has already come true.

"Call it a Christmas miracle — it is a miracle," said Lyall Marshall, Diamond's father.

The news, for a girl battling a rare type of adrenal cancer, couldn't be better.

"It's the one we've been waiting for a long time," said Lyall.

"We believe that Diamond is cancer-free as of yesterday."

The stunning news comes after Diamond underwent surgery this week to remove numerous tumours, and biopsies showed all to be cancer free.

It caps an emotional year for the young girl, who made international headlines this past July when she was chosen to hand flowers to the Duchess of Cambridge at Calgary International Airport.

As Duchess Kate bent down to greet her, Diamond couldn't contain her joy, flinging her arms around the future queen of England, the impromptu hug captured by the world's press.

"She told me she liked the flowers a lot," Diamond told QMI Agency after the Royal encounter, which included chatting with Prince William.

The brief meeting, made possible after Diamond wrote a letter asking to greet Kate, left the princess-loving girl on Cloud 9.

Apparently the tiny flower girl left a big impression on the Royal Couple too.

A call from QMI Agency conveying the amazing news to St. James's Palace in London, England, brought an unexpected and near-instant reply from Will and Kate.

"I passed the news to Their Royal Highnesses, who asked me to convey how pleased they are to hear the news and their best wishes to Diamond and her family at this happy time," wrote a palace spokesman, officially speaking on the duke and duchess' behalf.

"They hope for a joyful 2012 for Diamond and her family."

A cancer-free future would certainly be a joy for Diamond, who lost her mom, Memory Marshall, to the disease four years ago, when Memory was just 32.

But first, with the support of her dad and step-mom Danielle, Diamond faces a bone-marrow transplant and gruelling high-dose chemotherapy sessions early in the new year.

"Cancer is a tricky thing and we're celebrating right now, but she's still got a long road to recovery for this surgery and then she has a transplant in January," said Lyall.

"The big one is that bone-marrow transplant."

Having found no visible evidence of cancer, doctors still want to ensure there is no disease hiding in the body — thus the need for chemo to flush her entire system.

Keeping the disease in remission is going to be a tough slog for the little girl, though Diamond does have something special to look forward to when the hospital visits are over.

Her dad says Dreams Take Flight has stepped forward to ensure Diamond's dream of meeting Sleeping Beauty's Princess Aurora in Disneyland comes true.

"They let her know she could meeting Princess Aurora, the princess she really wants to meet," said Lyall.

"That really put a smile on her face."

It'll be tougher to smile on Christmas Day, laying in a hospital bed, but Lyall says the family plans to make the best of it.

"Our motto is Christmas comes on time once a year, and as long as we're all together it doesn't matter where we are -- at home or in the hospital, or even Hawaii," said Lyall.

"It's alright by us, we're going to have a hoot no matter what."

Source: Toronot Sun

How to beat cancer?

While your doctor who made the cancer diagnosis may have a plan for you, it is not the only plan that is needed. You need other therapies too, to beat cancer. The more knowledge you have about your condition and other supporting therapies available, the more successful you will be in your journey of treating cancer.

Nourish your body

Cancer lowers appetite while increasing nutrient and calorie requirement. You need to strengthen your immune system with protein rich food like curd, paneer, milk, sprouts, eggs and fish.

Boost your immune system Detoxify your body. Eat well and take a professionally well designed detoxification program. Some nutritional supplements like colostrum, mitake mushrooms and shitake mushrooms have demonstrated an ability to boost the immune system.

Nature is full of cancer fighting ingredients in tomatoes, garlic and vegetables like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and onions, berries like strawberry and cherries, as well as green tea Herbs , vitamins and minerals. The basic herb all cancer patients should be using is garlic. Season your food with garlic.

Eat it raw in the morning, cook it in a tomato puree or use it as a sandwich spread. Other herbs like ginger, yashtimadhu, echinacea, ginseng, astragalus help fortify your immunity. Healthy fats like flax seeds, fish oils supplements, minerals like selenium, magnesium, chromium and zinc helps lower cancer risk.

Antioxidants like vitamin C, E and A and probiotic like yogurt helps in fighting cancer. Make sure you eat more fiber and pass stools everyday.

Belly breathing

Do some yoga and start breathing properly. Suck in air to the bottom of lungs and watch your stomach protruding out. Breathe full to expand your chest. Then push your stomach in to exhale all the air out of your lungs as you breathe out. Repeat this cycle for 10 minutes everyday. .

Exercise

Exercise oxygenates tissues and helps in starving the cancer cells. It also balances blood sugar levels, thereby restricting the amount of sugar available to the cancer cells to grow.

Mind-body connection

Fill your mind with good thoughts and laughter. Feed it with feelings of love and forgiveness, and provide your body with the best diet and supplements.

Dr. Anjali Mukerjee, Nutritionist and Founder, Director - Health Total

Source: Hindustan Times

Doctors have begun analysing the tumours of 9,000 patients as part of a major drive to create a DNA database which could revolutionise the way cancer is treated.

One of the major obstacles in the fight against cancer is the fact the disease varies from patient to patient, even if it is located in the same part of the body.

Treatments for a particular type of cancer might be extremely likely to work in some patients but stand little chance of helping others because of the genetic make-up of their tumour.

This means some patients can be exposed to unnecessary courses of therapy which are expensive, have dangerous side effects and are unlikely to make them better.

Currently a patient might be tested for a single gene if studies have shown it responds best to certain drugs, but there is no system for testing a broader panel of genes and sharing that information quickly between labs.

Now over the next two years, dedicated centres across the country will collect tumour samples from thousands of patients diagnosed at the early stage of a wide range of cancers and test each for a handful of key genes.

Source: The Telegraph

Must-know facts about prostate cancer

Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system.

While most prostate cancers are slow growing, there are some that are aggressive and spread rapidly - causing a significant shortening of life expectancy in men affected by them. Owing to high prostate cancer numbers in India, this is considered one of the most common cancers in the country. Today we bring you some must-know facts about prostate cancer in a bid to create awareness about its early detection and control.

Causes behind prostate cancer
While the cause behind prostate cancer is unknown, the risk factors for prostate cancer include advancing age, genetics, hormonal influences, exposure to toxins, chemicals, and industrial products. The chances of developing prostate cancer increase with age. Cases of prostate cancer below the age of 40 are extremely rare; most cases observed are in men above the age of 80.

Signs and symptoms
In the early stages, prostate cancer often causes no symptoms for many years. These cancers frequently are first detected by an abnormality on a blood test. In more advanced cases, the cancer may enlarge and press on the urethra, as a result, diminishing the flow of urine and making it more difficult.

Prostate cancer diagnosis
An abnormality in one or both of the prostate cancer screening tests may lead to early detection. These screening tests are a Digital Rectal Examination and a blood test called the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). The only test that can fully confirm the diagnosis of prostate cancer is a biopsy, the removal of small pieces of the prostate for microscopic examination.

Treatment options
The treatment options for prostate cancer usually include surgery, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, or combinations of some of these treatments. A cure for metastatic prostate cancer is, unfortunately, unattainable at the present time. The surgical treatment for prostate cancer is commonly referred to as a radical prostatectomy, which is the removal of the entire prostate gland.

Alternative medicine
Non-traditional treatments are herbs, dietary supplements, and acupuncture. The composition of herbal treatments is not standardized therefore the results vary, if at all there are any. Also, the way herbal treatments work and their long-term side effects usually are not known. Currently, there is no evidence to prove that these medications have any therapeutic benefit in prostate cancers that have become resistant to conventional treatments.

Prevention
No specific measures are known to prevent the development of prostate cancer. Preventing progression of the cancer can be done by getting an early diagnoses and then attempting to cure the disease through medication and surgery, if necessary. Early diagnoses can be made by screening men for prostate cancer with PSA and digital rectal examination. The purpose of the screening is to detect early, tiny, or even microscopic cancers that are confined to the prostate gland.

Source: Times Of India

Skin Cancer Gene Discovered

A gene that helps protect the body from squamous cell cancer (SCC) - a common type of skin cancer has been identified by scientists.

It is an extraordinary breakthrough that could make available new cancer treatments and prevention to the public in five years, according to the team led by Professor Stephen Jane and Dr Charbel Darido of Monash University's Department of Medicine at the Alfred Hospital.

The Cancer Council estimates that two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70 with SCC being one of the most common forms.

Up until now, its genetic basis has not been well understood, with surgical treatments the only option.

Professor Jane said the team discovered that a gene with an important role in skin development in the foetus is missing in adult SCC tumour cells.

Although the researchers initially focused on skin cancer, they found that the protective gene is also lost in SCC that arises in other tissues, including head and neck cancers that are often associated with a very poor outcome for the patient.

"Virtually every SCC tumour we looked at had almost undetectable levels of this particular gene, so its absence is a very profound driver of these cancers," Professor Jane stated.

The Monash researchers showed that loss of this particular gene knocks out the signal to stop skin cells from growing. Without this stop signal, the cells keep increasing in number and eventually forms a cancer.

Identifying this driver of cancer in skin and other organs provides a clear direction for developing strategies for both prevention and treatment in the relatively near future.

"Our research indicates that drugs already in clinical trials for other cancers may actually be effective in treating SCC - they just need to be applied to skin or head and neck cancers," Professor Jane indicated.

The breakthrough discovery has been published in the leading international cancer journal, Cancer Cell.

Source:MedIndia

Birth control pill tied to cancer in men?

Oral contraceptive pills widely used by women around the world may be fuelling prostate cancer in men, prompting scientists to call for a major research to ascertain the possible link.

Researchers at the Toronto University, Canada, have found a significant link between the use of contraceptive pills and the number of new cases of, and deaths from, prostate cancer.

They believe that oestrogen by-products excreted in the urine of pill-users may have contaminated the food chain and drinking water. The hormone is known to feed the growth of certain cancers, the BBC reported.

The latest investigation, published in 'BMJ Open' , looked at data from 2007 for individual nations and continents around the world to see if there was any link.

The researchers found a significant association between contraceptive pill use in the population as a whole with both the number of new cases of, and deaths from, prostate cancer.

This link was irrespective of the nation's wealth, suggesting it might not be down to better disease detection in more affluent countries that also tend to have higher rates of oral contraceptive use. And it was found to be the strongest in Europe. The researchers , however, found that there was no link between prostate cancer and other forms of contraception, like the coil, suggesting it is not something that is sexually transmitted or associated with intercourse itself.

David Margel and Neil Fleshner from the University of Toronto feared that contamination of the food chain with hormones originating from the pill are the likely culprit.

They stress that their work merely suggests a link and is not proof. "It must be considered hypothesis generating and thought-provoking ," they said.

The scientists said more research is needed and recommend close monitoring of environmental levels of oral contraceptive by-products or endocrine disruptive compounds (EDCs).

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