Cancer patients

E-cigarettes won’t help cancer patients kick the butt’

E-cigarettes may do more harm than good to cancer patients as researchers have found that those using e-cigarettes (in addition to traditional cigarettes) are equally or less likely to quit smoking traditional cigarettes than non-users. Cancer patients using e-cigarettes are more nicotine-dependent, the findings showed.

E-cigarettes won't help cancer patients kick the butt'

“Consistent with recent observations of increased e-cigarette use in the general population, our findings illustrate that e-cigarette use among tobacco-dependent cancer patients has increased within the past two years,” said co-researcher Jamie Ostroff from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the US.

To examine available clinical data about e-cigarette use and cessation among cancer patients, the researchers studied 1,074 cancer patients who smoked and were enrolled between 2012 and 2013 in a tobacco treatment programme within a comprehensive cancer centre in the US. The researchers observed a three-fold increase in e-cigarette use from 2012 to 2013.

At enrolment stage, e-cigarette users were more nicotine dependent than non-users, had more prior quit attempts, and were more likely to be diagnosed with lung or head and neck cancers. At follow-up stage, e-cigarette users were just as likely as non-users to be smoking. Seven day abstinence rates were 44.4 percent versus 43.1 percent for e-cigarette users and non-users, respectively.

The study appeared online in the journal Cancer

Source: business standard

Chemotherapy likely to get less painful

Chemotherapy likely to get less painful

Saint Louis University professor of pharmacological and physiological sciences Daniela Salvemini found a molecular pathway by which a painful chemotherapy side effect happens and a drug that may be able to stop it.

“The chemotherapy drug paclitaxel is widely used to treat many forms of cancer, including breast, ovarian and lung cancers,” said Salvemini.

“Though it is highly effective, the medication, like many other chemotherapy drugs, is frequently accompanied by a debilitating side effect called chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, or CIPN,” she added.

In addition to causing suffering to patients, CIPN is often a limiting factor when it comes to treatment. Salvemini and her colleagues studied paclitaxel, which is also known as Taxol, and discovered that the pain pathway is dependent on activation of S1PR1 in the central nervous system.

This engages a series of damaging neuro-inflammatory processes leading to pain. By inhibiting this molecule, they found that they could block and reverse paclitaxel-induced neuropathic pain without interfering with the drug’s anti-cancer effects. The study appeared in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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