No link between cell phones and brain cancer

Good news for hand phone users as their is no direct correlation between cell phone and brain tumours, at least in this study.

Study: No link between cell phones and brain cancer

LOS ANGELES: A latest study by Nordic researchers, found that there is no apparent link between cell phones and brain cancer, China's Xinhua news agency reported, citing the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Researchers at the Institute of Cancer Epidemiology at the Danish Cancer Society in Copenhagen based their conclusion on a 30-year examination of the incidents of brain tumors in Scandinavia.

For the study, the researchers collected data on 60,000 people diagnosed with glioma and meningioma (types of brain tumours) in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden between 1974 and 2003, Xinhua said.

The researchers found that the incidence of brain tumors over this 30-year period were stable, starting before cell phones became popular.

In addition, there was no change in the incidence of brain tumors between 1998 and 2003, a period of rapid increase in cell phone usage, the researchers noted.

"If mobile phones were to cause brain tumors, we would expect to see a sudden rise in the number of brain tumors at some point in time, and we don't see it," said lead researcher Isabelle Deltour.

However, Deltour leaves the door open to the possibility that widespread cell phone use has not been around long enough to see an increase in brain tumors.

"Either it means that mobile phones don't cause brain tumors or it means that we don't see it yet or we don't see it because the increase is too small to be observed in this population, or it is a risk that is limited to a small subgroup of the population," she said.

Despite new findings, doubts linger about whether cell phones cause brain cancer.

Commenting on that study, Dr. Deepa Subramaniam, director of the Brain Tumor Center at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, D.C., said: "We cannot make any definitive conclusions about this.

“But this study, in addition to all the previous studies, continues to leave lingering doubt as to the potential for increased risk. So, one more time, after all these years, we don't have a clearcut answer." Deltour said her team would continue to look at the rates of brain tumors in the study group. - Bernama

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/12/4/nation/20091204160648&sec=nation

A new hope for cancer patients

New Zealand scientists find anti-cancer drug

WELLINGTON: Two New Zealand scientists have discovered a new class of anti-cancer medicines that kill tumors without the side effects of traditional therapies, China's Xinhua news agency said citing a local media report Saturday.

Medicinal chemist Jeffrey Smaill and cancer biologist Adam Patterson, from Auckland University, said their "prodrugs" inactive compounds triggered by the body's own metabolic processes have already shown dramatic results in the lab.

Their discovery, announced at an international cancer drug conference in Boston this week, is being heralded as a major breakthrough in fighting hard-to-treat cancers, like those of the lungs, brain, pancreas and stomach, according to The Dominion Post newspaper.

Smaill, who has spent 10 years synthesising the compounds, said they worked by targeting the proteins in tumors that tell cells to multiply.

"The main problem with previous drugs developed to target these proteins was they also affected normal, healthy tissue in the skin and gut, causing serious side effects such as severe diarrhea, rashes, nausea and vomiting, which limited the dose a patient could tolerate," he said.

The surface of a healthy gut is renewed every 48 hours, about the same rate as a tumor.

For half a century, scientists have known that two-thirds of tumors have patches containing low levels of oxygen, called hypoxic tumor cells, which are harder to treat with radiation and more likely to spread.

Dr Patterson said the prodrugs actually use this feature against the tumor, by zeroing in on hypoxic cells before they activate.

"If we can target and kill these cells we should be able to dramatically improve the outcome for cancer patients," he said.

Unlike other drugs that only stay in the tumor for a few hours, the prodrug sticks to the tumor for over 72 hours.

"It's very common for tumors to start regrowing after you stop administering this type of cancer drug. But after we stopped doses of this prodrug, the tumors still hadn't regrown 30 days later," he said. - Bernama

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/28/nation/20091128174739&sec=nation