Monday, May 14, 2018

Palliative Care Just as Important as Treating Ovarian Cancer

Palliative care is NOT the same as hospice care, and its focus is on symptom management of a serious disease. It is provided at any stage of disease and is provided while curative treatment is being sought.

This article from CureToday explains why seeking palliative care for symptom management  of the physical and emotional consequences of treatment to enhance one's quality of life is just as important as seeking chemotherapy.

To read more about the impact on palliative care while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer, follow this link.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Your New Normal

How often have you heard your oncologist say to you that you will have a "new normal" after chemo?

For those of us who are NEDs ("no evidence of disease") and for those of us who are in recurrence, one thing we all have in common is that our life before cancer is radically different to life after cancer.

What is your new normal looking like?

In this article from CureToday, Bonnie Annis, a breast cancer survivor, explains why her new normal isn't quite so new anymore. You can read about her experiences but we'd love to hear about yours. You can tell us about this on the comment section below.


Friday, May 4, 2018

Another Reason to Use Curcumin (Tumeric)?

Curcumin is a component of tumeric and there  have been previous studies showing anti-cancer properties of this naturally occurring substance.

Before I go into the results, please note that this study was conducted on cell cultures. This means that research has not progressed to human clinical studies.

Researchers in this study show how curcumin aids in inhibiting certain pathways to cancer cell growth. Using 20 µm of curcumin inhibited a protein that triggers a key signaling factor. This signaling factor enables the cancer cell to grow and to undergo certain transitions that enable it to metastasize.

The study authors used curcumin as a single agent and in conjunction with doxorubicin (DOX). DOX is used to treat recurrent ovarian cancer. Interestingly, when used in combination, DOX actually enhanced the effectiveness of curcumin in inhibiting specific proteins and pathways implicated in ovarian cancer cell growth and metastasis.

To read this article, follow this link.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcomed!

Experimental Ovarian Cancer Screening Test

Many thanks to Betsy for sending me this article published recently on the National Cancer Institute web page.

The article describes a new screening tool being studied to detect endometrial and ovarian cancer in its early stages.

Called PapSEEK, this liquid biopsy is actually a PAP test that checks for cancer related DNA changes. Preliminary investigations showed that it detected 33% of ovarian cancers (of which 34% were detected in early stages) and ~81% of endometrial cancers (of which 78% were detected in early stages).

These results were first published in the journal Science: Translational Medicine and was reported on the National Cancer Institute web site. Follow this link to read NCI's article.

One-in-Forty Spring Symposium: May 23, 2018

Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, MA is hosting a Oneinforty symposium on the increased risk that Ashkenazi Jews have of  inheriting the BRCA mutation that can cause not only breast cancer but ovarian cancer (along with prostate cancer too). The event will be held May 23, 2018.

For more information about this event, follow this link.


Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Long-term Survivorship After Cancer Treatment: Lost in Transition

At long last, the National Academies Press (NAP) has published their findings on the unique stressors associated with long-term survivorship.

This publication is available as a free download and you can access it by following this link.

Here's the official description of the book:

The 2006 Institute of Medicine (IOM) consensus study report From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition made recommendations to improve the quality of care that cancer survivors receive, in recognition that cancer survivors are at risk for significant physical, psychosocial, and financial repercussions from cancer and its treatment. Since then, efforts to recognize and address the unique needs of cancer survivors have increased, including an emphasis on improving the evidence base for cancer survivorship care and identifying best practices in the delivery of high-quality cancer survivorship care.
To examine progress in cancer survivorship care since the Lost in Transition report, the National Cancer Policy Forum of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop in July 2017, in Washington, DC. Workshop participants highlighted potential opportunities to improve the planning, management, and delivery of cancer survivorship care. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.