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& Other Female Cancers
Breast cancer still impacts many families today even though it is preventable through good self-examination by women themselves, and annual mammograms for women over the age of 40. Being aware of one's family health history is important, too, to identify those at greater risk for developing the disease. Encourage the women in your life to take care of themselves as well as they take care of others.
This page is dedicated to Jadwiga Goclowski, PhD, RN, for raising my awareness of the importance in taking care of ourselves before we can take care of others, and for her tireless efforts and outstanding contributions in the fields of Quality Assurance and Maternal & Child Health.
The purpose of this page is to provide an organized approach to finding basic information about the most common preventable health problems that plague women. It is my hope that you will find what you need fast and easy. This is by no means exhaustive, but I have picked those sites that I consider to be reliable. If you have any suggestions about what else I can include, please do not hesitate to E-mail me your suggestions. SALUD!
This dietary supplement could increase cancer risk 11/2022
Nicotinamide riboside (NR) is a form of vitamin B3. Previous research has linked dietary supplements like NR to benefits related to cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurological health.
In the new study, however, the researchers discovered high levels of NR could not only increase someone’s risk of developing triple-negative breast cancer, but also could cause the cancer to metastasize or spread to the brain.
Graphic source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2818283
Note: Not all medical experts agree with the USPSTF assessment regarding the frequency of mammograms. The American College of Radiology recommends annual mammograms starting at age 40 for average risk women. More frequently and earlier for women of higher risk.
How Fast Does Breast Cancer Grow? Studies show that even though breast cancer happens more often now than it did in the past, it doesn’t grow any faster than it did decades ago. On average, breast cancers double in size every 180 days, or about every 6 months. Still, the rate of growth for any specific cancer will depend on many factors. Every person and every cancer is different. Doctors refer to breast cancers that are more likely to grow quickly as more aggressive than those that tend to grow slower.
How Fast Does Breast Cancer Start, Grow, and Spread? Many breast cancers do not spread to lymph nodes until the tumor is at least 2 cm to 3 cm in diameter. Some types may spread very early, even when a tumor is less than 1 cm in size.
Most studies have found the average doubling time to be between 50 days and 200 days. This means it's possible that breast cancers diagnosed now began at least five years earlier, but again, this assumes the growth rate is constant. It is not.
The risk of breast cancer increases with age, and the median age of diagnosis is 62. Here are some statistics on the risk of breast cancer diagnosis by age:
Age 30: 0.49% (1 in 204)
Age 40: 1.55% (1 in 65)
Age 50: 2.40% (1 in 42)
Age 60: 3.54% (1 in 28)
Age 70: 4.09% (1 in 24)
Genetic Counseling/Testing and High Risk Screening
A new imaging test takes advantage of the fact that progesterone receptor levels in estrogen receptor-positive tumors go up in response to estrogen if the estrogen receptor is active. Credit: National Cancer Institute
Hidden in the lungs of some breast cancer survivors are tumour cells that can remain dormant for decades — until they one day trigger a relapse. Now, experiments in mice show that these rogue cells can be roused from their slumber by common respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19 or the flu.
The results are “really quite dramatic”, says James DeGregori, a cancer biologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, and an author of the study. “Respiratory-virus infections didn’t just awaken the cells,” he says: they also caused them to proliferate, or multiply, “to enormous numbers”.
Researchers have spotted dormant cancer cells, detached from the initial tumour, hiding in tissues such as bone marrow in people in remission from breast, prostate and skin cancer, among others. These cells are a precursor to metastasis — which is the spread of cancer to distant organs — and pose a problem, even in survivors of these cancers. For instance, in about one-quarter of breast cancer survivors, such cells can trigger a relapse and metastasize.
Within days of infection, dormant cancer cells in the lungs of the mice kicked into high gear, proliferated and formed metastatic lesions. But it wasn’t the pathogens directly that caused this to happen, the researchers learnt: it was a key immune molecule called interleukin-6 (IL-6), which helps to rev up the body’s response to foreign threats.
The researchers observed that, although IL-6 was essential to awakening the cancer cells, another key immune player called a helper T cell shielded the cancer cells from other immune-system defences. “Seeing that these cancer cells were perverting the immune system to protect them as opposed to eliminate them was really quite shocking,” DeGregori says.
The results add to the growing body of work that has linked chronic inflammation caused by pathogens to seemingly unrelated health conditions. For instance, infection with the common Epstein–Barr virus raises the risk of developing multiple sclerosis. But this is the first study to demonstrate a link between the acute inflammation caused by pathogens and cancer, says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
Until scientists have more answers, cancer survivors are recommended to take extra precautions to avoid respiratory infections, and to consider vaccination against pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and flu virus, DeGregori says.
The allergy drug, cromolyn, supercharges antigen-presenting mast cells (apMCs), thereby ramping up the T-cell response against triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).
Obesity's Impact on Uterine Cancer Risk Greater in Younger Age Groups. Overall risk and risk of endometrioid subtype 20- to 30-fold greater in women younger than 35
