Researchers Seeking More Minority Women for "Sister Study" on Breast Cancer Risk

Researchers of a large breast cancer study of sisters are encouraging more minority women to enroll to ensure a diverse study sample and far-reaching results. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) plans to enroll 50,000 women in its Sister Study by the end of 2007. The study's purpose is to study breast cancer risk factors in sisters of women diagnosed with breast cancer. As of August 7, 2007, 39,176 women had enrolled in the study, 12% of whom represent minorities.

"During 2007, our last recruitment year, we are urgently requesting each of you or your organization to help us get 5 to 50 women to enroll in the study," the Sister Study website stated.

The largest study of its kind to study breast cancer risk factors, the Sister Study will follow participants for 10 years. Women who develop breast cancer will be compared with those who do not. At the onset of the study, participants will be asked to complete several questionnaires and provide a sample of their blood, urine, toenails, and household dust.

Currently, the Sister Study has enrolled:
2,531 African American sisters
463 American Indian sisters
335 Asian sisters
1,300 Latina sisters
5,329 senior sisters aged 65-74

By studying women who have similar genes and often share similar environments, researchers hope to gain insight into the causes of breast cancer. Women who meet the following requirements may be eligible to enroll in the Sister Study:
Be between 35 and 74 years of age
Live in the United States
Have no personal history of breast cancer Have a sister (living or deceased) who has had breast cancer

According to the Sister Study website, "through a range of questionnaires and samples from the participants, the 10-year study will take a detailed look at how women's genes, and things women come in contact with at home, at work, and in the community may influence breast cancer risk."

Women who enroll in the Sister Study will be mailed a study kit that contains study information, questionnaires, and material to use when collecting urine, toenail, and household dust samples. In addition, women will be required to participate in a visit by a female health professional during which time a blood test and other various tests will be administered. Paper questionnaires and a telephone interview are also required.

Additional Resources and References
Imaginis.com provides additional information about the Sister Study at http://www.imaginis.com/breasthealth/sister_study.asp
To volunteer or learn more about the Sister Study, please visit http://www.sisterstudy.org/ or call 1.877.4SISTER (1.877.474.7837). Deaf/Hard of Hearing call 1.866.TTY.4SIS (1.866.889.4747)

New Breast Scan Doesn't Squeeze

Surely, every woman who has ever had her breasts squeezed between two plastic plates during a mammography has thought, "There's got to be a better way."

There just might be.

An ongoing study being conducted by physicians at the University of Rochester and the Elizabeth Wende Breast Clinic is showing promise for a new technology called Cone Beam Breast Computed Tomography.


So far, the technique has produced breast images that are just as good as — and in some cases, better than —those taken with mammography with a similar X-ray dose but without the need for any uncomfortable squeezing.

And while it may not initially replace mammography altogether, it could add another layer of confidence to diagnosing suspicious abnormalities in the breast.

"We think at least 15 percent of cancers can't be diagnosed because they are hiding," said physician Avice O'Connell, director of women's imaging at the University of Rochester's Medical Center, co-author in the study.

That may be part of the reason why breast cancer remains the biggest cancer killer of women, after lung cancer, with 270,000 cases diagnosed and 40,000 deaths annually in the United States alone.

Finding diseased tissue is a challenge because each woman's breast differs in tissue composition. For example, cancer is somewhat easier to spot in breasts with lots of fatty tissue and more difficult to spot in breasts that have less fat and more of the fibrous glandular tissue that produces milk.

If a woman has a mammogram and the clinician spots something suspicious, the patient may be asked to undergo an ultrasound and then a biopsy.

In at least 75 to 80 percent of the cases, the suspicious masses turn out to be nothing to worry about, said Daniel Kopans, professor of radiology and director of breast imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Kopans is not associated with the study.

On the other side of the coin, even the best mammographers under the best conditions will miss 15 percent of tumors, said O'Connell.

"It's like trying to find a snowman in a snowstorm," she said. "You can't see it until you come up close to it."

Cone Beam CT has the potential to significantly improve diagnosis.

by: Tracy Staedter, Discovery News

Anorexia and breasts

Anorexia, bulimia, or severe dieting will cause the fat to disappear from breasts, and that is why breasts of an anorexic girl will look very small, or shrunken.

When such a girl is recovering and gaining weight again, fat gets deposited back to the breasts. However, it won't always be the same amount of fat as was there before.

The milk ducts and glands shouldn't be affected - if they had already developed! But if anorexia hits while the breasts are growing ducts and glands, then that development will stop since the starved body will stop producing hormones that drive that growth.

With anorexia, it is hard to say how things will go afterwards. Most girls become fertile again and resume menstruation, or continue their pubertal development if it wasn't finished, but some girls never gain their menstruation and fertility back even after recovery.

The following letters show how after anorexia, breasts won't necessarily be the same size as before:Hi. I stared my period when I was 9 years old. Sadly, during 8th grade, I was anorexic and lost my breast fat. I am not anorexic anymore and am healthy so my breasts grew back. I am worried that I won't grow big as they are supposed to grow. Right now, the size of my breasts are the same size when I was in 7th grade...
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I am an 18 year old female I just turned 18 about 4 mnths ago and I got my period when I was 14 , but then when I was about 16 years old I was anorexic for about a year, then I lost all the breat tissue I had and now I'm back to being healthy but I'm a 32 B , Is there anyway my breasts will still grow? My mom and every woman in my family had a 36B or bigger breasts, yet somehow I don't think mine will grow or they are taking long, or do you think my anorexia a while back had an effect on their growth?
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hello! I'm 15 years old, and i'm really worried about my breasts. I started my period at age 9 and by that time my breasts were developing and also pubic hair. However pple teased me because i was overweight and i got depression and i felt very bad about myself. So by the time i got to middle school i decided to stop eating. At the time i was about 13 almost 14. I wouldn't eat much for a time then i stopped and only drank water. I was afraid to eat and I became anorexic.I would read the food labels and keep note of how many calories i consumed. I quit that after i began to feel numb and nearly had a heart attack and had to go to the hospital twice. Now i'm eating better and i feel better. Except, i don't know if not eating well for half a year could have affected my breasts and i'm worried that they won't grow anymore. I'm a 32A . When i had anorexia, my period did stop. But now that i started to eat again, it's back again.It's been about 8 months now that i have gotten my period. Will my breast continue to grow, or am I done? please help me i would really like to know.
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When I was 14 I became anorexic. The anorexia stopped when I was 17. I noticed that my breast size went from a 34C to a 32A. I'm now 19 and am now at the high end of normal weight. However, I have a problem which is that the weight has gone to my bum, and not back to my breasts. Why are my breasts not growing back? and what can I do in order to help them get back the way they were. I don't want to put on any more weight as i'm at the high end of my normal weight range; any more and i'll become obesse.
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Mostly this difference compared to earlier breast size would be because the breasts now have less fat. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell if the breasts will gain their previous size, or not, and if the duct and gland development was completed. However, if and when these girls get pregnant, the breast development during pregnancy will quite likely be normal.

If you have a story to tell about this, or have more information on how breasts are affected by eating disorders, please click here - scroll down to fill the form.

Racial Disparities In Breast Cancer Survival Persist

Racial differences in breast cancer survival increase according to stage of disease, a new study finds. Published in the September 15, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, a retrospective analysis of survival data demonstrates that within each stage, African American women had larger tumors and were more likely to have disease that had spread to nearby lymph nodes. After controlling for those clinical factors the racial disparities in survival persisted. The investigators say their finding that disparities in survival increased with more advanced disease was surprising and suggested that non-clinical factors contributed to survival differences.

Epidemiology studies have long showed significant racial/ethnic differences in breast cancer survival among U.S. women. African American women have poorer five-year survival rates, and more advanced disease at the time of diagnosis than white women. Whether these disparities are due to a difference between races in tumor biology or to socioeconomic factors that impact healthcare access and/or the physician-patient relationship continues to be unclear.

One key piece of evidence is that, stage for stage, African American women have worse clinical outcomes than white women. However, staging disease is complex, taking into account tumor size and regional or distant disease spread. Also, there can be significant differences in survival within each stage. For example, survival at the same stage can vary by 40 percent depending on the number of lymph nodes with disease.

Dr. Alfred Neugut from Columbia University Medical Center, Russell McBride from Mailman School of Public Health and their colleagues hypothesized that racial differences in survival within stage could be attributed to differences in tumor size and the number of lymph nodes with disease between the two race groups.

Analysis of clinical and demographic characteristics from 256,174 women with breast cancer (21,861 African American and 234,313 white) diagnosed from 1988-2003 showed that African American women were more likely than white women to be diagnosed with tumors greater than 2.0-cm and to have at least one lymph node with disease. However, racial differences in lymph node involvement were apparent only in tumors smaller than 3.0 cm.

After adjusting for tumor size and lymph node status as well as other known factors, such as age, African American women were still more likely to die from their disease. The mortality rate among African American women was calculated to be up to 56 percent higher than whites.

This study confirms 'statistically significant differences within stage between black and white women in tumor size and nodal involvement.' However, the authors conclude, "these differences are not clinically important with respect to survival over and above the standard AJCC stage categories."

The study also found that as stage of disease at diagnosis increases, so too does the gap in mortality between African American and white women. The authors postulate that 'the factors that prevent black women from receiving the same quality of care as white women may be exacerbated by the more complex treatment regimens used for more advanced breast cancer.'

By Article: "Within-Stage Racial Differences in Tumor Size and Number of Positive Lymph Nodes in Women With Breast Cancer," Russell McBride, Dawn Hershman, Wei-Yann Tsai, Judith S. Jacobson, Victor Grann, Alfred I. Neugut, CANCER; Published Online: August 13, 2007

Breast Cancer Prevention Practices Vary Across Canada

Breast cancer preventive practices for Canadian women carrying the cancer gene vary across the country, says University of Toronto research, and many women are not taking advantage of the options available.

The study, published in the journal Open Medicine, followed the experiences of Canadian women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation a genetic mutation that predisposes them to a 87 per cent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. Women carrying the gene have several options for cancer prevention including prophylactic surgery, chemoprevention and screening; however, researchers observed significant differences across Canada in the uptake of these preventions, with women in Quebec the least likely to use preventive measures.

"We were very surprised by the discrepancy in preventative measures taken across the country," says Professor Kelly Metcalfe, Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, lead author of the study. "The benefit of genetic testing is that we can identify women at high risk of developing breast cancer and hopefully reduce that risk. Ultimately though, women have to elect to undertake one of the options."

In the study, 672 Canadian women were identified as carrying the genetic mutation. Followup questionnaires were completed after a mean of four years. Out of the 342 women without breast cancer after four years, 157 (46 per cent) had not undertaken any cancer prevention option such as a mastectomy, oophorectomy or tamoxifen or raloxifene drugs used in chemoprevention. Broken down geographically, 39 per cent of women with the genetic mutation in Ontario did not take preventive measures; 34 per cent in Western Canada and 62 per cent in Quebec.

"The numbers show a huge discrepancy, with women in Quebec being the least likely to elect for a preventive option," Metcalfe says. "This will have significant implications in terms of the numbers of cancers we see developing in this high-risk group. We still need to do more research to explain why these differences exist."

University of Toronto

Scientists Create Breast Tumor Stem Cells

U.S. scientists say they've succeeded in growing breast cancer stem cells from normal tissue.

Since it is suspected that these types of cells give rise to cancer's spread, isolating them could prove invaluable in the fight against the disease, experts say.

"There has not been any publication to my knowledge that has demonstrated a way to isolate these cells from human patients and expand them, meaning grow them in Petri dishes," noted study lead author Dr. Tan Ince, an "independent signaling investigator" at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an instructor at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.

The findings, published Aug. 13 in the journal Cancer Cell, should help provide a common platform from which scientists can study these so-called tumor stem cells.

Making sure that tumor stem cells are similar between labs is crucial to advancing cancer research, Ince explained.

"Confirmation of results of one scientist by other independent scientists is critical for scientific progress, so it's important for different labs to have the choice to use similar or identical cell stocks," he said. "If two labs have different results, it is not possible to know whether this is a real difference or simply because different labs are using different cell stocks," he said.

However, "Until now, most labs that study human tumor stem cells had to use their own stock of cells, because it has been difficult to grow them in the Petri dish," Ince said. "We think this is what we accomplished and hope that this will allow different labs to compare their results much more easily with each other in the future."

Ince conducted the research while a member of the Weinberg Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead Institute. Dr. Robert A. Weinberg, who discovered the first human oncogene in 1982, was senior author of this paper.

Recent research has suggested that not all cells in a tumor are created equal and that only some are capable of causing trouble.

"Tumor stem cells are cells that can initiate a whole tumor," Ince explained. "Experimentally, people have found that the vast majority, 99 percent, of the cells in the tumor cannot initiate a tumor in the next mouse. Only about one in a million does."

"You can imagine that if one of these dead-end tumor cells went to the lung or brain, they may not be consequential, whereas tumor stem cells are very aggressive and would be establishing a metastasis," he continued.

However, the work is cutting-edge right now, and not all scientists agree that tumor stem cells are at the root of most cancers.

Ince started out with the goal of making a mouse tumor that more closely resembled human tumors than those currently available.

"You want a mouse model that behaves like a human disease from the perspective of what genes are important to target and what drugs will be beneficial," Ince said.

To that end, Ince turned his lab into a sort of a kitchen and tried to improve the liquid media in which tissue is grown. The existing liquid media, he felt, was missing a number of vitamins, hormones and growth factors.

The final concoction contained 75 to 80 different ingredients.

"This took me close to two-and-a-half years. I had nothing to talk about all that time. People wondered what I was doing," Ince said.

But it paid off. He applied genes that had been used for years to transform normal tissue into tumor cells, and the tissue grew.

"The tumors looked much closer to what a human tumor looks like under a microscope," Ince said.

Then the Boston researcher noticed that the tumors he had grown in mice were growing in four to five smaller lumps, instead of one large lump, as is typical.

"That kind of pattern has been associated with metastasis in human patients, so that made me suspect that the tumors that I made with this new sort of cell might, in fact, have the potential to metastasize to distant organs," Ince said.

That's significant, because most tumor models used in the lab do not metastasize. In real life, however, it's these metastases that kill the vast majority of cancer patients.

Ince started injecting fewer and fewer cells into the mice and watching them for longer and longer.

"I still saw tumors when I went down to as few as 10 cells," he said. "Then I watched for 10 to 12 weeks, and I saw small metastases of several cells, micrometastases, in about 75 to 80 percent of the mice."

Ince realized that he had inadvertently created tumor-initiating cells.

The study also sheds light on how cancer cells evolve, the researchers said. Conventional wisdom has it that a normal cell undergoes a number of genetic mutations to eventually become cancerous. Now it appears that some normal cells are more susceptible to becoming cancerous in the first place.

Ince's culture medium, more than two years in the making, seems to favor the cells with high susceptibility.

In particular, this study may have implications for drug testing down the road.

"Until now, most of the drug testing had been done on standard tumor cell lines that only have very few tumor stem cells in them," Ince explained. "So, even if a drug killed 99 percent of tumor cells in a Petri dish, that would not have been a guarantee that this drug actually had killed any of the tumor stem cells."

But the new cells "will be much more useful to screen for new drugs that will specifically kill tumor stem cells [because a higher percentage are stem cells]," the investigator said. "The only thing in our way to test this hypothesis is a lack of funding that is particularly severe at this time, due to recent [U.S. National Institutes of Health] budget decreases."

SOURCES: Tan Ince, M.D., Ph.D., independent investigator, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and instructor, Harvard Medical School, Boston; Aug. 13, 2007, Cancer Cell

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

What is Paget's disease of the nipple?

Paget’s disease of the nipple, also called Paget’s disease of the breast, is an uncommon type of cancer that forms in or around the nipple (1, 2, 3). More than 95 percent of people with Paget’s disease of the nipple also have underlying breast cancer; however, Paget’s disease of the nipple accounts for less than 5 percent of all breast cancers (1). For instance, of the 211,240 new cases of breast cancer projected to be diagnosed in 2005, fewer than 11,000 will also involve Paget’s disease of the nipple (4).

Most patients diagnosed with Paget’s disease of the nipple are over age 50, but rare cases have been diagnosed in patients in their 20s (1). The average age at diagnosis is 62 for women and 69 for men. The disease is rare among both women and men.

Paget’s disease of the nipple was named after Sir James Paget, a scientist who noted an association between changes in the appearance of the nipple and underlying breast cancer (1, 5). There are several other unrelated diseases named after Paget, including Paget’s disease of the bone and Paget’s disease of the vulva; this fact sheet discusses only Paget’s disease of the nipple.

The Back Massage

After Noah Chubb and Avery Dodwell interupt, Jenna and Rachel give Taylor "Bud" Weiser a back massage. It all goes downhill from there. Starring Matt Gilberti. Filmed by Ethan A. Shotts at the EIU Talent Show

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Celebrity Breast Sizes - Does Their Cup Truly Runneth Over?

Jennifer Lopez breast size: Modest B cup

Angelina Jolie breast size : C cup : Hate to break it to you, but these are probably real. Yes, she is genetic perfection in the form of a waif thin body and large breasts, I'm afraid.

Britney Spears breast size : Modest C cup (when she's not pregnant or is on the slimmer side)

Christina Aguilera breast size : Pre Breast Implants : A cup Post Breast Implants : Large C cup

Catherine Bell breast size : Large D cup : Not definitive that she has implants, but I suspect she was a fairly busty woman who also had implants, which is why this large breast size looks so natural on her, and yet she doesn't have a whole lot of sagging for such a large size.

Jessica Simpson breast size : Small D cup : Jessica Simpson is another celebrity that has been puzzled over as to whether she has implants. Some "experts" say yes, and some say she's natural. I just want to know how she lost all that weight and didn't lose a bit of breast size. Hmmm...

Jessica Alba breast size : Small B cup : Although Jessica Alba is one of those celebs that has worn many a push up bras and I suspect has also worn gel inserts to change cup size so drastically between films, you can tell she has a natural breast size of about a small B cup. She also has very little body fat, which accounts for her perfectly natural smaller size.

While many of us may not be happy with the appearance of our breasts, it is good to know that they do come in all sizes and shapes, and we can actually improve their appearance - whether it be increasing their size, enhancing the shape and contour of the breast, or adding to the perkiness, firmness and perfect beauty of the female form, if we are not happy with our current breast size and appearance. There are lots of ways to do this. Massage, exercise, supplementation and just an all around good diet are a few of the ways.

Breast Surgery for People with Breast Cancer

However before any operation takes place the surgeon will talk to you and discuss with you the most appropriate type of surgery for your particular case of breast cancer.

It should also be remembered that no surgery will take place prior to you consenting to it.

Where breast surgery is concerned the type of surgery that will be performed depends on the size of the cancer in your breast, whether it has spread to any other parts of your body and also personal preference.

However, if your cancer has already been diagnosed then your surgeon will talk to you about the type of surgery that you will need. Although there may be times when the surgeon can not make a decision on what type of surgery he carries out as they do not have a definite diagnosis on the type of cancer that you have. Therefore they may need to carry out a small operation to remove some of the lump in order to examine under a microscope before taking the rest out.

The types of breast surgery that you may have are as follows:

1. Mastectomy - Removal of the whole breast.
2. Lumpectomy or Wide Local Excision - Where only the lump is removed from the breast.*
3. Segmentectomy - This where just part of the breast is removed.*

*These second two options are also known as conservative surgery.

In some cases a patient who has had breast surgery for cancer may need to under go radiotherapy afterwards and this is particular true for those who have either a lumpectomy or Segmentectomy surgery. This lowers the risk of that patient having their cancer returning as it will hopefully kill off the rest of cancer cells if any left after the surgery has taken place. Whilst in other cases patients who have had a mastectomy may find that they are having radiotherapy to the lymph nodes above the collar bone to make sure that all cancerous cells have been removed. Normally the surgeon will discuss what kind of treatment you will have with the radiotherapist once the results from the surgery are back. Unfortunately not radiotherapy treatment can be planned until after the operation has been carried out.

There are many reasons as to why a surgeon will recommend a particular kind of breast surgery, but they will try their utmost to follow a patient’s wishes. In some cases some women would like to keep their breast at all costs, whilst others may prefer to have a mastectomy (because they feel that once the breast is gone the cancer will be gone also) or it is because the do not wish to have radiotherapy. In fact a great deal of research has been carried out and has proved that there is no difference in the outcome whether a patient has a mastectomy or conservative surgery with radiotherapy instead. In fact it has been found that both forms of treatment work equally well in treating breast cancer.

Breast Cancer And Aspirin

A new study suggests that aspirin may lower the risk of breast cancer.

Only one out of five women with breast cancer--versus one out of four without the disease--reported having taken aspirin at least once a week for six months or more. That translates into a 20 percent lower risk for the aspirin takers. Women who took aspirin at least seven times a week had a 30 percent lower risk. (The researchers didn't ask how much aspirin the women took each time.)

Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) had a weaker impact on risk, but the study had few ibuprofen takers. However, a study last fall found a 20 percent lower risk of breast cancer among women who took ibuprofen at least twice a week for five to nine years, and a 50 percent lower risk in those who took it for ten years. It also found a 20 percent lower risk in women who took 100 mg or more of aspirin at least twice a week for five to ten years. Regular use of acetaminophen (Tylenol) or low-dose aspirin (less than 100 mg) had no impact on breast cancer risk.

What to do: Talk to your doctor about whether to take aspirin or ibuprofen regularly. Both drugs can cause gastrointestinal bleeding and peptic ulcer disease.

J. Amer. Med. Assoc. 291: 2433, 2488, 2004 and Cancer Research 63: 6096, 2003.
Nutrition Action Healthletter

Fibrocystic Breast Pain

Painful Breasts? You might have fibrocystic breast pain.

One third of all women will be diagnosed with fibrocystic breasts at some point in their lives. Fibrocystic breasts is a benign condition which should not be confused with breast cancer. Here are some tips to relieve painful breasts. You can reduce fibrocystic breast pain naturally.

First:

1. Eliminate all forms of caffeine containing foods from your diet. This includes foods such as coffee and tea, chocolate, and soda that contains caffeine, like Coke. See Caffeine 2 for a list of caffeine content to popular beverages.

2. Decrease sources of estrogen from your diet such as commercially raised meats . These animals are often feed estrogen, especially chicken. Most poultry contain excessive amounts of hormones that are used to help them grow. Also, avoid prescription sources of estrogen such as birth control pills and hormone replacement therapy.

3. Vitamin E, in doses ranging from 200 IU to 400 IU per day, may reduce symptoms associated with fibrocystic breast changes. Other vitamin suggestions include a B complex, and magnesium. There is now some concern that too much Vitamin E may become dangerous, so do not exceed the 400 IUs per day or consult your health care provider for their opinion.

4. Some people benefit from reducing their daily amount of sugar intake.


ALSO:

1. See your gynecologist if these tips don't reduce your symptoms, or if you have any questions or concerns about fibrocystic breasts.

2. If you use natural progesterone, once you have achieved relief of symptoms gradually taper your dose until you find your lowest effective dose.

3. Wearing a good support bra during painful times is helpful for many women. Visit a local department store with a bra-fitting specialist for a proper fit. Going bra-less will only make the pain worse.

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