A drug being developed by Pfizer and Onyx and already in clinical trials against a range of cancers has shown in laboratory tests “a remarkable ability” to halt growth of a deadly type of brain tumor, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.

Researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the University of California said the experimental drug, called PD-0332991, may become a new treatment option for glioblastoma, the commonest and deadliest form of brain cancer.

Clinical trials to test the drug in patients with recurrent brain cancer are under development, they said in a study published in the journal Cancer Research.

“We don’t know how well this agent will perform in patients with glioblastoma but in the mice we studied we saw very impressive, durable effect,” said David James, a professor of neurological surgery at UCSF, who worked on the study.

“What is especially encouraging about this agent is that we found it can easily pass through the blood-brain barrier and access glioblastoma, and that there is already a simple test available for screening glioblastoma patients in advance to see whether or not they should be responsive to this therapy.”

Data from a recently-published study by The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, suggests about 90 percent of glioblastoma patients would be suitable candidates for the drug, he said.

PD-0332991, which Pfizer is developing under license from Onyx, is being tested in human trials for other cancers such as multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma. It is a pill designed to shut down activity of molecules called cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (cdk4 and cdk6) that drive cell division.

“In normal cells these kinases are kept under exquisite control by a gene known as p16,” said Todd Waldman of Lombardi, who worked on the study with James.

“But in glioblastoma and other cancers, p16 is frequently deleted, and these two kinases are uncontrollably activated, which drives the cell to divide and form cancer.”

But the drug does not work if the cancer is missing a protein known as retinoblastoma (Rb). A test for Rb is already being used to screen patients for use of PD-0332991 in the ongoing clinical trials.

In their study James’s team implanted three different kinds of human glioblastoma directly into the brains of mice and then treated them with PD-0332991. They found the drug was able to get to the tumors and halt the cancer’s growth as long as the mice stayed on the drug.

Because PD-0332991 itself does not kill cancer cells — just halts their growth — the researchers then combined the drug with radiation and found the combination worked better than PD-0332991 alone. They also successfully tested the drug in mice in which glioblastoma had come back after treatment with temozolomide, a chemotherapy used in many cancer patients.

Technorati Tags: brain cancer, brain cancer drug, experimental drug, new treatment option for glioblastoma, PD-0332991, Pfizer

Type 2 diabetics newly diagnosed with cancer have an increased risk of dying in the month following their cancer surgery, compared to people who are battling cancer alone.

This was particularly true for diabetics with colorectal or esophageal cancers, Johns Hopkins researchers found.

“Diabetes care should be part of cancer care,” said Hsin-Chieh “Jessica” Yeh, co-author of a study appearing in the April issue of Diabetes Care. “All the attention was on the cancer treatment and cancer care, and sometimes we overlook or forget about diabetes. This study suggests that diabetes is important for mortality, so it should be taken care of on top of the cancer care.”

But Dr. Martin S. Karpeh Jr., chairman of surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center and director of surgical oncology at Continuum Cancer Centers of New York, both in New York City, pointed out that elevated blood sugar levels — the prime characteristic of diabetes — is dangerous for people undergoing any type of surgery.

“The findings are completely consistent with other postoperative studies that have been published in recent years. We’ve known that an elevated blood sugar and diabetes increase the risk of mortality and complications from surgery,” he said. “They focused their analysis on cancer, but the same was found in non-cancer so I think the link is more with diabetes and surgery, regardless of what the reason for the surgery is.”

The bottom line for people with type 2 diabetes?

“Maintaining good health going into surgery is extremely important,” Karpeh said. “We need to emphasize the importance of good overall health. If you are a diabetic, maintaining a good blood sugar will help lower your risks of a bad outcome following any major surgery.”

People with diabetes have a higher risk of several other health conditions, including cancer, particularly of the breast, colorectal, endometrium, liver and pancreas.

Meanwhile, certain lifestyle factors, such as being overweight and sedentary, are risk factors for both type 2 diabetes and cancer.

These authors did a meta-analysis of 15 previous trials that had looked at cancer in diabetic patients.

Individuals who had been diagnosed with diabetes before their cancer surgery had a 50 percent higher chance of dying in the month after their operation compared with non-diabetic patients. This was after accounting for other factors.

There were no studies in the mix that looked at breast or endometrial cancer, so it could not be determined if there might be a link between these two as well.

It was unclear why this might be the case, but the authors had some hypotheses.

“Diabetes increases the risk of infection from surgery. High blood sugar and diabetes [increase] infections, period, with or without cancer,” said Yeh, who is an assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Also, she said, diabetes is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and surgery increases the risk of blood clots, making diabetics doubly at risk for heart problems during surgery.

“What we would like to do now is set up research to test if better diabetes management can reduce the risk of mortality in cancer patients undergoing surgery,” said Yeh.

Technorati Tags: cancer care, Diabetes Care, Type 2 diabetics

While obesity puts people at risk for a whole host of chronic illnesses, including heart disease, there’s a least one situation in which extra pounds appear to provide a health advantage.

Oddly, once someone has already had a heart attack, obesity seems to confer protection against further heart problems, a new study suggests.

The results show that among 1,231 heart failure patients (those who have already had a heart attack), underweight, normal weight and overweight (but not obese) individuals had a 76 percent increase in risk of sudden cardiac death compared with obese patients.

Sudden cardiac death, which kills up to 330,000 Americans each year, occurs when the heart suddenly stops beating. This is different from a heart attack, which happens when blood flow to the heart is interrupted.

The findings, presented March 16 at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session, add to a growing body of research on this phenomenon, known as the “obesity paradox.” Several studies have come to the same puzzling conclusion: Obese patients with heart disease seem to do better and live longer than skinnier patients.

The results even surprised the researchers. “When we started this study we were hoping the data would disprove the obesity paradox,” said study author Bonnie Choy, a second-year medical student at the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry.

And the findings held true even when they broke the data down and examined underweight, normal weight and overweight people in separate categories instead of lumping them all in one group, Choy said.

“We still the saw an inverse relationship between BMI and sudden cardiac death.” BMI, or body mass index, is a ratio of weight to height, and is considered an indicator of how much body fat a person has. The researchers defined obese as someone with a BMI of 30 or greater.

No one knows why obesity seems to bring benefits in this case, though several ideas have been tossed around. For instance, it’s possible that obese individuals have a genetic advantage when it comes to surviving heart failure, the University of Rochester researchers suggest.

“Obese patients are hard on their bodies; many don’t eat right, don’t exercise, and many smoke,” said study researcher Eric Hansen, a second-year medical student at the University. “If their bodies are surviving this bad treatment then perhaps they are better equipped, from a genetic standpoint, to live with heart failure.”

On the flip side, thinner people with heart disease might be genetically prone to developing heart problems, since their heart condition arose despite their weight.

In addition, other factors, like scarring from a previous heart attack, may cause more problems over the short term than obesity causes over the long term.

The students conducted the study with Dr. Ilan Goldenberg, a professor of cardiology.

Technorati Tags: heart disease, heart problems, Heart Problems protection, obesity

Scientists have found evidence that older men with higher levels of selenium are less likely to suffer from dysglycemia, or improper blood-sugar metabolism.

Tasnime Akbaraly, from the University of Montpellier in France, and colleagues studied 1,162 French adults for nine years, checking their levels of selenium and monitoring whether they developed blood-sugar problems.

According to their report, published online in the journal Nutrition & Metabolism, elderly men whose selenium concentrations were in the top one-third had a significantly lower risk.

“The reason we observed a protective effect of selenium in men but not in women is not completely clear, but might be attributed to women being healthier at baseline, having better antioxidant status in general and possible differences in how men and women process selenium,” Akbaraly said in a news release from the journal’s publisher.

Technorati Tags: blood-sugar, Diabetes, selenium

Asthma may affect more than your ability to breathe, it may also make you more prone to developing psychological problems, new research suggests.

People with asthma are more than twice as likely to have depression or anxiety as people who don’t have the chronic airway disease, according to a report in the March issue of the journal Chest.

To make matters worse, the study authors found that when rates of serious psychological distress went up, health-related quality-of-life scores went down.

“The prevalence of serious psychological distress was 2.5 times higher among adults with asthma, and as serious psychological distress increased, health-related quality went down. So, asthma makes quality of life worse and serious psychological distress makes quality of life worse, and together they synergistically make quality of life even worse,” said study senior author Dr. David Callahan, a medical epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service in Atlanta.

Study author Emeka Oraka said these findings may apply to other chronic diseases, such as diabetes, and that serious psychological distress may make it harder for people to manage these diseases properly.

“Any kind of mental distress impedes your ability to manage the disease well, whether it’s asthma, diabetes or something else,” said Oraka, who’s an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education fellow at the CDC.

Oraka noted that the findings should raise a red flag for clinicians. “Serious psychological distress is a powerful predictor of quality of life, and even more so in the presence of chronic illness,” he said. “Don’t disregard the importance of mental health in the quality of life of patients with chronic illness.”

For the study, the researchers reviewed data from 186,738 adults who had participated in the U.S. National Health Interview Survey between 2001 and 2007. From this database, they discovered that the rate of asthma was 7 percent.

Among all of the study participants, the average prevalence of serious psychological distress was 3 percent, but in people with asthma, the rate of serious psychological distress was 7.5 percent, the researchers found.

Adults with asthma who had other chronic conditions, a history of smoking or alcohol use, and those with a lower socioeconomic background had a greater risk of having serious psychological distress, according to the study.

Oraka said that the study wasn’t able to tease out whether asthma is a cause of serious psychological distress or whether asthma medications may make serious psychological distress more likely, or whether people with serious psychological distress may be more likely to have asthma or to report having asthma.

“This study found an association, but no causation,” Oraka said.

Dr. Jennifer Appleyard, chief of allergy and immunology at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit, said it was troubling to see that “the prevalence of anxiety or mental distress is higher in asthmatics than normal, and this is something we need to look for and try to prevent and address it.”

She said the subject definitely warrants further study, and that she would like to see a study that assesses asthma more objectively. In the current study, asthma was identified by the study participants, who were asked if a doctor had ever told them they had asthma, and if they still had asthma.

But, “even if you have mild asthma, it’s definitely an anxiety-provoking diagnosis,” Appleyard added.

“As with any chronic disease, asthma needs to be managed carefully by the patients, and serious psychological distress can get in the way of people managing their own asthma,” explained Callahan. “Clinicians need to ask about psychological symptoms in people with asthma, and they need to treat both psychological distress and asthma.”

Technorati Tags: Asthma, asthma and depression, mental distress, psychological distress