Even after successful treatment for colon cancer, the very obese are about one-third more likely to have their cancer recur and to die prematurely from cancer than those of normal weight, researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of Pittsburgh report in the Nov. 15, 2006, issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Obese patients are more likely to have a recurrence of colon cancer than their normal-weight counterparts and face an increased risk of dying from the disease.

While it’s not clear that losing weight would improve their prognosis, Dr. James J. Dignam of the University of Chicago and colleagues note, healthy lifestyle changes would probably have other beneficial effects for obese colon cancer patients.

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More stress can lead to the growth and spread of cancer and controlling stress might help to control it, reveals a new study.

A remarkable research finding suggests that Stress hormone Norepinephrin can stimulate cancer tumor cells to produce compounds that can break down of the tissue around the tumor cells and allow the cells to more easily move into the bloodstream. Thereon, they can travel to another location in the body to form additional tumors, this process being termed as metastasis.

The research also suggests the same hormone can also stimulate the tumor cells to release another compound that can aid in the growth of new blood vessels that feed cancer cells, hastening the growth and spread of the disease. The work was reported in the latest issue of the journal Cancer Research. .

“This opens up an entirely new way of looking at stress and cancer that’s different from current interpretations,” explained Ronald Glaser, a professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics, and director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University.

Glaser and Eric Yang, a research scientist in the same institute, focused on the role of these three compounds. Two of them, both matrix metalloproteinases — MMP-2 and MMP-9 — play a role in breaking down the scaffolding that cells attach to in order to maintain their shape. The third compound, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), is important in the growth of new blood vessels into tumor cells.

Earlier work by researcher Anil Sood at the University of Texas had shown that the same stress hormones can stimulate ovarian tumor cells to produce these three compounds.

The key to that discovery was that the two stress hormones – epinephrine and norepinephrine – would bind to places on the surface of ovarian cancer cells, called adrenergic receptors, and stimulate the release OF MMP-2, MMP-9 and VEGF which might then foster cancer growth.

“This suggests a new approach to possibly fight some cancers – the prescribing of beta-blocker-type drugs that would block these receptors and perhaps slow the progression of the disease,” Glaser said.

“Using this approach may not cure this cancer but perhaps we could slow down its growth, making the tumor more sensitive to anti-cancer therapy, and therefore extending the patient’s lifespan and improve their quality of life.”