Cancer

5.6 million young people under age 17 could die early

Over one in five high school students use tobacco products, and unless rates drop significantly, 5.6 million young people under age 17 will die early from a smoking-related illness, according to a recent report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Among young people who use tobacco products, over 90% are using nicotine vectors like cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, and pipes. The vast majority of smokers try their first cigarette by the time they turn 18. The findings were published Thursday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

The CDC analyzed its National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) and report that in 2013, 22.9% of high school students and 6.5% of middle schoolers said they had used tobacco in the last 30 days. Those rates are slightly down from 2012, where 23.3% of high school students and 6.7% of middle schoolers said they’d used some form of tobacco in the last month. Unfortunately, the new numbers still show that close to 50% of all high schoolers and almost 18% of all middle schoolers have used a tobacco product at least once.

What about e-cigarettes? They’re still less popular than the traditional products: 4.5% of high schoolers and 1.1% of middle schoolers said they used them in the last month. How great of a problem e-cigarettes are for public health is still debated, but the products do contain nicotine, so therefore considered unsafe for kids.

One item of particular concern to the FDA are cigars, because they are taxed at a lower rate and often made to look like cigarettes, even having fruity flavors. Some are not regulated by the FDA in the way cigarettes are, which experts cite as a major concern.

Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans every year, and for each death, there are about 32 people living with a smoking-related illness. It costs the U.S. economy billions in medical costs and loss in productivity. One strategy to make smoking less appealing to young people (besides the long list of terrifying health risks, like lung cancer) is by hiking up the price of tobacco, and launching more youth-targeted social campaigns, the CDC says.

Smokers can get free help quitting by calling 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

Screening tumors could lead to smarter decisions about which cancer treatments will work best for individual patients

Once you’ve been diagnosed with cancer, you’re sent for a dizzying array of tests — but most of them are focused on you, as the living host of the tumors, and not on the malignant growths themselves.

That may soon change, as researchers report in the journal Science. Some cancer centers already take biopsies of tumors and run them through genetic tests, to get a better sense of what’s driving the cancer. That information can be helpful in deciding which of the growing number of targeted anti-cancer drugs will work best to stop those growths.

MORE: Promising New Cancer Treatment Uses Immune Cells

But the down side of these powerful drugs is that tumors become resistant to them relatively quickly, often within a year or two. So to find better ways of stopping such resistance from developing, Jeffrey Engelman and his co-senior author Cyril Benes from Massachusetts General Hospital took tumor testing one step further. They actually allowed some of those tumor cells — from lung cancers — to grow in a lab dish. That made it possible to throw various anti-cancer drugs at them to see how the cancer cells responded — providing a valuable window into how the tumors inside the body might react.

They found, not surprisingly, that hitting tumors with combinations of targeted drugs could effectively shut down the cancer cells’ ability to resist the treatment. When they transplanted the human tumors into mice, those given the combination of drugs saw their growths shrink, and the drugs remained active nearly twice as long as the single drug in suppressing tumor growth. The findings could help doctors to tailor cancer treatments specifically to individual patients and help them to avoid drug resistance and ultimately improve their chances of surviving their cancer.

MORE: Here’s How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk

“It’s a substantial step,” says Engelman of the results. “Because before we just had the genetic information but we wouldn’t have the cells alive so that we could test what types of therapies might work.”

He and Benes stress that they haven’t used their screening method yet to guide any patient treatment decisions, but hope that will happen soon. They’re encouraged by the fact that their method identified several mutations that might be driving cancer that hadn’t been known before, thus opening up the number of drugs that target these abnormalities that patients could take.

“Sometimes there are genetic mutations in genes that we can’t target [with a drug]. Sometimes there is ambiguity in genetics — we know the mutations but we don’t know what they mean, or there are multiple mutations together and we don’t know how to treat them. And sometimes we don’t know what mutations are driving the cancer,” says Engelman. But by testing the actual tumor cells against well known drugs or drug combinations, researchers wouldn’t have to know the answers to all of these questions. Instead they could cut straight to the arguable most important outcome — finding the best drugs for treating a particular patient’s cancer. Ultimately, the researchers see such drug screening as going hand in hand with genetic screening – the gene tests would identify the known mutations, and that would inform which drugs to test tumor cells against.

Before that happens, Engleman and Benes admit that more refinements need to be made in their process. Now, it takes two to six months to grow the tumor cells properly in order to be screened by the drugs. That time needs to be shrunk to a weeks or even days if doctors and patients can take advantage of the information. But they’re confident that will happen. “We know ways to cut this shorter,” says Engelman. “What’s exciting is that this technology make you think you have a real shot at getting there. And we’re going to take that shot.”

He died of kidney complications due to cancer, his manager said

Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson of the Sugarhill Gang died early Tuesday from kidney complications due to cancer, his manager said. He was 57.

“[Sugarhill Gang's Wonder Mike and Master Gee] had been in contact with him in the past year,” manager David Mallie told FOX411. “They had some great times and created history.”

“So sad to hear of our brother’s passing. Rest in peace Big Bank,” the two remaining members of the group said.

Sugarhill Gang is best known for its 1979 hit “Rapper’s Delight.” Other members of the rap community posted remembrances of Big Bank Hank on social media:

[FOX]

While being treated for thyroid cancer, I was literally radioactive, and worried about how I might affect others

I walked through a hospital door marked “Nuclear Medicine Department” knowing that when I left, I’d be radioactive.

It took just a few minutes for the doctor to administer 100 millicuries of radioactive iodine, or I-131. He wore a surgical mask, gloves, and a heavy lead apron. He removed the pill, with tongs, from a cylindrical canister and dropped it into a paper cup. Then he backed out of the room. “As soon you’re ready,” he said from the hall, “make your way out of the hospital.”

I took a deep breath. Get on with it, I thought. This pill was the last step of my treatment for thyroid cancer. Taking it would ensure the cancer was all gone, and that was all I wanted.

But first the pill would make me dangerous to others. For at least 24 hours, I’d emit radiation. For several days, my sweat, saliva, and urine would be radioactive. For 10 days, I was supposed to avoid contact with other people.

These days, quarantine is all over the news: Several states have instituted mandatory quarantines for healthcare workers and anyone else exposed to Ebola, and Americans overwhelmingly support these measures. Like many people, I’ve been following the story of Kaci Hickox, the Maine nurse put under mandatory quarantine after returning from Sierra Leone. She has resisted the order, saying that she doesn’t pose a threat to public health and the quarantine violates her civil rights.

But as I prepared to swallow that pill, quarantine was exactly what I wanted. In the summer of 2008, I spent so many hours in waiting and exam rooms wishing I was somewhere else. That morning, though, I wanted to stay at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California. I wanted to stay in a lead-lined room until it was safe for me to be around other people.

Instead, I ingested radioactive iodine, then walked out the door marked “Nuclear Medicine Department” and immediately collided with a man in the hall.

I got my diagnosis two months earlier, on May 30, 2008. It was my 32^nd birthday.

“If you have to get cancer, this is the one to get,” said the endocrinologist who called with the news.

I had papillary thyroid cancer, which has a survival rate of 97 percent over five years—in large part because of radioactive iodine (I-131). Unlike chemotherapy, which attacks healthy and cancerous cells alike, I-131 is targeted. Since thyroid cells alone absorb and retain iodine, the radioactive iodine pill essentially acts like a “heat-seeking missile”: It finds and destroys thyroid cells.

In July, a surgeon removed my thyroid, the butterfly-shaped gland that produces hormones that help regulate metabolism, heart rate, and body temperature, among other things.

Five weeks later, I met with a doctor to prep for my I-131 treatment. His weary, clipped manner suggested he was tired of dealing with anxious patients. He gave me a handout with instructions like: “Stay seven feet away from other people for 5 to 11 days.”

On the verge of going radioactive, I wanted to be told exactly what to do. There were only two things about which the doctor was absolutely clear: I was to have no contact with children and pregnant women. And I could not get a ride home from the hospital.

If I had taken that same dose of I-131 in Europe, I probably would have been quarantined in a hospital for a few days. But the U.S. did away with required hospital quarantines for radioactive iodine in 1997—in fact, it’s rarely an option. Many hospitals have eliminated their radiation isolation rooms.

I went home, but before I got out of the car, I wiped down the steering wheel, gear shift, and door handle with disinfectant wipes. Then I headed into the guest bedroom of the house I shared with my boyfriend at the time.

Time dragged in those 10 days. Lacking the concentration to read, I watched the first season of Lost on DVD. I was totally confused, but riveted, by the plot: plane crash survivors marooned on an island where nothing is what it seems.

Every time I prowled into the kitchen for food, I wore surgical latex gloves. I always hurried back to bed to eat on paper plates with plastic utensils.

I wiped down the sink and flushed the toilet twice after every use. At the end of the week, I tossed out the sheets and towels I’d used. I filled a trash bag with radioactive waste, which I put in the garbage bin with some concern. I hoped I wasn’t endangering sanitation workers or causing radioactive alarms to go off at the dump.

I emerged from the room after 10 days, and burst into tears when I got my first big hug. I had stayed isolated for the longest time recommended by my doctor. Still, I worried about having trace amounts of radiation inside my body for another month or so.

I had been given a paper card to carry in my wallet listing the dose and date of my treatment in case I traveled by plane and needed to explain why I was setting off the radiation alarm. I visited friends in Seattle one month after taking the pill and held my breath as I walked through security.

I don’t think Kaci Hickox, the nurse in Maine, was being cavalier when she went out for a bike ride. She hasn’t shown any symptoms of Ebola, which is the only time a person is contagious, and her work in Sierra Leone demonstrates her selfless concern—at the risk of her own health—for others.

Thinking about Hickox on her bike, I’m also thinking about the 60,000 people diagnosed with thyroid cancer in the U.S. last year. Many of them, like me, will need to swallow that strange pill, and then wonder how to leave the hospital and where to go.

Becca MacLaren is history and engagement editor at Zócalo Public Square.

Why chronic shift work may age your brain almost 7 years

Hourly shift work has been linked to all kinds of ills, from obesity to heart attack, and now a new study shows it might also have serious implications for your brain.

The study in Occupational & Environmental Medicine looked at more than 3,000 people living in France, about half of whom had experience working shifts. Those who had done so, either in the past or present, had lower scores on tests of memory, processing speed and overall brain power than those who worked normal office hours, the study finds.

These effects persisted even after researchers controlled for effects of sleep deprivation and they got even stronger after people had worked nights for 10 or more years. Those long-term shift workers had worse memory than those who had always worked days, plus cognitive deficits so steep that the study authors equated them to 6.5 years of age-related decline.

There is a bit of good news, though. After stopping shift work for five years, cognitive abilities returned to levels of people who had never worked shifts.

So why does shift work appear to be so bad for the brain? The authors stress that the study is observational, so it can’t determine that shift work causes brain decline. But they do have a favorite theory: “If it’s not sleep,” says Dr. Philip Tucker, study co-author and senior lecturer in the psychology department at Swansea University in the U.K., “the strongest candidate would be destruction of circadian rhythms.”

Working the night shift challenges the body’s natural circadian clock, which is linked to all sorts of health problems. Though the study didn’t look at the brain structures of the participants, a small study in 2001 found that flight attendants who were chronically jet lagged actually had smaller temporal lobes.

Shift workers, who sleep during the day, may also have a vitamin D deficiency, the study authors say, or may be more prone to metabolic disorder—but the disruption of circadian rhythms is still the main contender.“You could argue,” says Tucker, “that if you start messing about with those clocks, there’s going to be all sorts of effects.”

Read next: The 12 Worst Habits for Your Mental Health

A screening combo may be worth it for women with dense breasts

More hospitals are offering women the latest technology in mammography: machines that can recreate breast tissue in 3D to help doctors better detect the earliest cancers. But it’s still not clear whether these screens, which cost more than digital mammograms, are worth the money.

In a study published in the journal Radiology, researchers led by Dr. Christoph Lee at the University of Washington found that for women with dense breasts, who often need repeat mammograms, adding on 3D screening—called tomosynthesis—to a traditional digital mammogram actually costs less in the long run.

MORE: High-Tech 3D Mammograms Probably Saved This Woman’s Life

Women with dense breasts are at moderate to high risk of developing breast cancer because of the volume of breast cells in their tissue, and Lee’s team created a model for these patients to compare the cost effectiveness of digital mammography every other year to digital mammography with 3D screening every other year. Using data from the National Cancer Institute’s Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, the researchers calculated breast cancer rates and deaths using both screening methods, and found that for every 2,000 women with dense tissue who were screened, the 3D and digital test avoided one additional death from breast cancer compared to the digital mammography alone.

Just as importantly, says Lee, the model predicted that the two screening methods together averted 810 false positive readings. Fewer false positives means that women won’t get as many repeat scans and will be less likely to have biopsies and other procedures to learn more about any suspicious growths.

“The savings represented by 810 fewer false positives are a huge savings in anxiety, diagnostic workup and resource utilization in the health care system,” says Lee. “The decrease in false positives is what is driving cost effectiveness and showing that the benefits of adding tomosynthesis outweigh the added costs of the technology.”

The findings support a study published earlier this year that showed for the first time that 3D mammography detected more cancers, while reducing the false positive rate in a broader group of women even without dense breast tissue.