Depressed patients with advanced cancer die sooner than those who are not depressed.  The more serious the depression, the more likely they are to die prematurely.

Researchers in the United Kingdom screened cancer patients for depression using tests that were originally designed to diagnose depression in women after childbirth.  They looked at feelings of worthlessness and sadness and thoughts of suicide, as well as measuring pain and cancer symptoms.  They found a little less than one-third (29 percent) of advanced cancer patients were depressed.  Six months later half of those identified patients who were still alive remained depressed. Read the rest of this entry »

The number of cancer tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream can provide information about prognosis and survival for people with metastatic colorectal cancer.  Measuring circulating tumor cells before beginning a treatment and then during treatment can help doctors decide if the therapy is working or whether cancer is getting worse.

Tumor cells can be found in the blood of cancer patients, but are very rare in healthy people.  Using a technique that identifies and magnetically separates circulating tumor cells, researchers were able to measure the number of circulating cells in a standard amount of blood. They measured circulating tumor cells before treatment began and again several times during treatment. Read the rest of this entry »

Another study has found better survival after a diagnosis of colorectal cancer in younger women. Among over two thousand colon and rectal cancer patients In Australia, women under the age of 50 had about half the risk of dying from colorectal cancer than men under 50. Better survival held true despite where the cancer was found, its stage or grade, and whether emergency surgery was necessary to treat it.

However, women over 50 had about 40 percent poorer survival than men over 50.  Again, stage, site, or grade at the time of diagnosis didn’t matter. Read the rest of this entry »

XELOX, as second-line therapy, was found to be as effective as the more commonly used FOLFOX treatment for patients whose cancer had already gotten worse on treatment with Camptosar® (irinotecan).

XELOX combines an oral drug Xeloda® (capecitabine) with Eloxatin® (oxaliplatin).  FOLFOX uses an infusional schedule of 5FU and leucovorin.

Researchers randomly compared XELOX to FOLFOX4 to treat 627 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.  Patients had already received initial therapy with Camptosar and either had their cancer progress or were unable to tolerate the treatments.  Although outcomes were similar for the two regimens, side effects differed.

Read the rest of this entry »

People with a family history of colon or rectal cancer may have a smaller risk of having the cancer return or of dying from the disease according to a new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers followed nearly 1,100 patients with stage III colon cancer who were being treated with chemotherapy, 195 of whom had at least one close family member who also had been diagnosed with colorectal cancer.  Fifty-seven of them had a cancer recurrence or died (29 percent).  Among the 892 patients with no family history, 343 died or had cancer return (38 percent.)

Patients with one family member with colorectal cancer had about a 25 percent reduced risk of recurrence or death than those with no family history.  When there were two or more affected close relatives, risk of dying or having cancer return was cut in half.

The scientists tested tumors for microsatellite instability (MSI) and for proteins associated with mismatch repair genes, two molecular factors that are associated with better survival.  However, family history was independent of MSI and mismatch repair.

Close family members were first-degree relatives — parents, siblings, or children.

Jennifer A. Chan, MD, MPH and her colleagues wrote,

Among patients with stage III colon cancer receiving adjuvant chemotherapy, a family history of colorectal cancer is associated with a significant reduction in cancer recurrence and death

Watch a video report about the research.

SOURCE: Chan et al,, Journal of the American Medical Association, Volume 299, Number 21, June 4, 2008.