On the pulse...for people affected by breast cancer

Cancerkin’s news update….

New Staff

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Asini Wijewardane as Project Manager on our East London project and Habeeb Ahmed as Office Manager and Researcher. Asini joined us as an intern in September 2009 and she was offered (and accepted) this permanent role at the start of January. Habeeb also joined as an intern and subsequently applied for the above advertised position. He was successful in the interview process and was offered the post, which he accepted and started this week. Congratulations and welcome to both!

New Intern

We are also delighted to welcome Laura Newton who joined us this week, initially on a three month programme, to work on Events Planning. She will be concentrating initially on the Hyde Park Walk, taking place this year on Sunday 13th June.

In the news…

Unseen damage of alcohol abuse

Research published to coincide with a new TV campaign on the unseen dangers of alcohol abuse reveal that many people do not fully understand the long term damage they may be doing to their bodies by drinking more than the recommended amount. 86% of people surveyed were aware of the link with liver disease, but only 7% were aware of the strong links with breast cancer. Alcohol is converted into a toxic chemical in the body which damages DNA and stops cells repairing the damage, which can cause cancer. Sara Hiom of Cancer Research UK said: “Alcohol can …increase levels of oestrogen and unusually high levels of oestrogen can increase the risk of breast cancer”. Read more here: Cancer Research UK

Herceptin

A study reported in The Lancet (Feb 2010) by Dr Luca Gianni and others of the National Cancer Institute in Milan confirmed previous findings that the use of Herceptin alongside chemotherapy for patients with HER2 positive locally advanced or inflammatory breast cancer improves long term survival. In the study, her team compared one year’s treatment with Herceptin in 117 women, compared with one year’s treatment without the drug in 118 women. After 3 years, there was no recurrence of breast cancer in 71% of the women treated with Herceptin as against 56% of the women who did not receive it. Herceptin has been available on the NHS since 2006, following a high profile campaign.

Tamoxifen

The Daily Mail reported that scientists at Queens University, Belfast have identified a gene which predicts how women will respond to tamoxifen, a drug regularly used to treat women with hormone sensitive breast cancer. However, it is estimated that only around two-thirds of women put on the drug will benefit from it, so with further research, these scientists have said that this “…should allow us to identify which patients are unlikely to respond to or eventually relapse on tamoxifen therapy, which means they could be treated more aggressively with chemotherapy. In the next three years we should have a clearer indication of whether our research can benefit the patient.” Read more there: Breast cancer gene

The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

The Mail reports that when a (now ex) friend of Jenni Murray, journalist and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, told her that pessimistic thinking had probably caused her breast cancer and that she must be positive and heal herself, she was absolutely furious. She said: “To be told that feeling miserable about a health problem…will make the condition worse seems nothing short of cruel”
There have been other reports in the press recently on a similar theme:
Two US university psychology professors argued that while a positive patient is more likely to attend appointments and look after themselves physically, it is very stressful to have to pretend to be upbeat all the time.
An American cancer nurse, Cynthia Ruttenberg referred to an “additional burden to an already devastated patient” when they have to live up to what has been called “the tyranny of positive thinking”.
Barbara Ehrenriech’s book “Smile or Die – How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World”, talks more broadly about this issue and how it can negatively impact on not only our health, but also the workplace and the economy. When the author, who only started looking at this whole issue after a diagnosis of breast cancer herself, started investigating the experience of other sufferers, she discovered that the principal view was that only with a positive attitude will your immune system be able to beat the cancer. As she points out, that is just not true.
Jenni Murray concludes her own article by saying that while she has “no qualms about thinking positively…[but] to follow a philosophy that tries to persuade you that the way you think is what can make you better is a cheat and a lie.”
Read more on these stories here: Jenni Murray and Barbara Ehrenreich

Dogs and the power of smell

Dogs have been trained to sniff out people trapped in avalanches, illegal drugs and counterfeit or stolen money, so why not cancer? Dogs have an incredibly powerful sense of smell, many million times more sensitive than us. They can not only recognise a smell, but also its change over a period of time. An article in the Times reports that researchers have started training dogs to recognise the chemical smells produced by cancer tissues. In their first trial, dogs could detect which patients had cancer using breath and urine samples. Dog owners have reported anecdotally for many years now of their pet dogs detecting unknown cancers.
Read more here: The humble dog: man's best-equipped friend - Times Online



Nicky Waldman (n.waldman@cancerkin.org.uk) 3rd February 2010