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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with multiple myeloma who could not tolerate high dose chemotherapy lived longer and better by adding the drug Velcade to standard treatment, a new study found.

The finding could make multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood's plasma cells, a chronic rather than a lethal disease. And it would be particularly valuable to older patients and those with medical conditions that preclude them from receiving high doses of the standard drug therapies melphalan and prednisone, or a transplant, experts said.

"The addition of bortezomib (Velcade) resulted in significant prolongation in time to disease progression with a reduction of 52 percent in risk of progression," said lead researcher Dr. Jesus F. San Miguel, of the Hospital Universitario de Salamanca in Spain. "There was also a significant prolongation of survival, with a 40 percent reduction in the risk of death.

The two-year survival rate among patients taking Velcade with melphalan and prednisone was 82 percent, compared with 69 percent among patients not receiving Velcade, San Miguel said.

The findings are published in the Aug. 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

San Miguel's team randomly assigned 682 patients with newly diagnosed myeloma to nine six-week cycles of treatment with melphalan and prednisone, or treatment with the two drugs plus Velcade. They found that the time to disease progression among patients receiving Velcade was 24 months, compared with 16.6 months among those getting melphalan and prednisone alone.

Also, 71 percent of the patients receiving Velcade had a partial response to treatment, compared to 35 percent of those receiving melphalan and prednisone alone. And complete responses to treatment were seen among 30 percent of those receiving Velcade, compared to 4 percent for those given Alkeran and prednisone alone.

Responses to treatment continued for 19.9 months among those given Velcade, compared to 13.1 months for those not given the drug.

"The benefit of Velcade was not only observed in good-risk patients, but also in high-risk patients," San Miguel said. "We now have a new standard of care for newly diagnosed patients."

Dr. Bart Kamen, chief medical officer of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, thinks this new drug combination could be a real benefit for myeloma patients who aren't eligible for high-dose chemotherapy or a transplant.

"We are in a new era in the treatment of myeloma," Kamen said. "We have a new paradigm of relatively easy drugs compared to the usual chemotherapy, which is adding to quality of life and longevity in myeloma. That's a big deal."

Kamen believes this new treatment and others being developed may make myeloma a chronic condition that can be controlled. "The future, with repetitive doses of lower doses of medicine to control the myeloma, is clearly surfacing," he said.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society, agreed that this new treatment is a viable option for patients who are ineligible for standard myeloma treatment.

"It's an exciting time in the treatment of myeloma, and this treatment represents a significant additional option for patients with myeloma who are not candidates for transplant, those who are over 65 or may have other significant illnesses that prevent them from being considered for transplant," Lichtenfeld said.

Until recently, myeloma was a disease with a very limited life expectancy, Lichtenfeld said. "Now, with all the new treatments we have, be it the bone marrow transplant or whether it be the use of the newer drugs, the outlook for myeloma patients has improved considerably," he said.

These treatments don't mean the disease can be cured, Lichtenfeld said. "But we are clearly in a situation where we have made substantial progress," he said.

More information

To learn more about multiple myeloma, visit the American Cancer Society  .

MONDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Nanotechnology may offer doctors a noninvasive way to detect early stages of cancer and also help monitor treatment, a new report says.

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine recently demonstrated the new approach using "smart" targeted carbon nanotubes to zero in on cancer cells in living mice, followed by laser scans of the animals in which the nanotubes absorbed the laser energy and released ultrasound waves to highlight the locations of the tumor cells.

"This imaging modality allows us to see things we've never been able to see before," study author Adam de la Zerda, a doctoral student in Stanford electrical engineering, said in a news release issued by the university.

The findings were expected to be published online Aug. 17 in Nature Nanotechnology.

The technology takes advantage of the "photoacoustic effect," a physical phenomenon in which light hits an object and is converted into sound. Shining light on an object heats it up, de la Zerda said.

"Think of a black car parked in the sun," he said. The car warms up, and the metal expands. Later, the cooling, shrinking metal makes little "tink" sounds.

"We shine light on a nanotube and listen to the ultrasound waves coming out of it," de la Zerda said.

The technique is faster and costs less than an MRI scan and requires no ionizing radiation like a PET-CT scan, the researchers said. Its ability to look 2 inches deep into the body would make it helpful for looking at tissues in the breast or prostate gland.

The method is sensitive enough to detect minute, early tumors that normally can't be seen, the researchers said. Also, the scanners could also be adapted to endoscopes, enabling views of internal organs.

Coatings on the nanotubes could also be altered so doctors could receive diagnostic information about a tumor, de la Zerda said. For instance, molecules put on nanotubes could tell a doctor which anti-cancer drugs would work on a breast tumor.

"We will be able to ask a tumor: Are you responding to chemotherapy or not?" de la Zerda said. "This should give us early information long before the tumor shrinks or grows."

A companion study in mice, published in Nature Nanotechnology in April, found the carbon nanotubes appear to be safe to inject, although further testing is needed before testing can begin in humans.

More information

The National Cancer Institute has more about nanotechnology uses in cancer treatment.

MONDAY, Aug. 4 (HealthDay News) -- As many as 61 percent of cancer patients use complementary therapies such as prayer, relaxation, meditation and massage, researchers from the American Cancer Society report.

This new study echoes findings of other, smaller studies that also found that many cancer patients use complementary treatments. The kinds of methods used were influenced by sex, race, age, education, type of cancer and how far the disease has spread.

"Many complementary methods are extremely popular among cancer survivors, who are spending a lot of their time, money and attention on them," said study co-author Dr. Ted Gansler, the society's director of medical content. "For this reason, it is important to determine which are helpful, not only for shrinking tumors and extending survival, but also for relieving symptoms and improving quality of life."

For the study, published in the Sept. 1 issue of Cancer, Gansler's team collected data on 4,139 cancer survivors who participated in the American Cancer Society's Study of Cancer Survivors-I. The people were interviewed 10 to 24 months after diagnosis.

The use of some complementary methods by cancer survivors is very common, the study found. For example, 61.4 percent used prayer; 44.3 percent used relaxation techniques; 42.4 percent used faith/spiritual healing; 40.1 percent used nutritional supplements such as vitamins; 15 percent used meditation; 11.3 percent used religious counseling; 11.2 percent used massage; and 9.7 percent participated in support groups.

But other complementary methods aren't as common, the researchers found. Only 0.4 percent of survey participants used hypnosis; 1 percent used biofeedback therapy; and 1.2 percent used acupressure or acupuncture.

All types of complementary methods were more popular among women, Gansler said. Fifty-nine percent of women and 43 percent of men turned to methods such as aromatherapy, art therapy, support groups, hypnosis, imagery/visualization, meditation and relaxation.

And methods such as tai chi and yoga were used by 10.1 percent of women, compared with 1.9 percent of men. Massage was used by 16.6 percent of women, but only 3.9 percent of men, the study found.

"In general, younger, more educated and more affluent cancer survivors were more likely to use complementary methods," Gansler said. "People with more advanced cancer were more likely to be complementary-method users."

And, complementary methods are much more popular among breast and ovarian cancer survivors, Gansler said.

"This is not only because ovarian cancer is obviously limited to women and breast cancer is extremely rare among men. For example, all types of complementary methods were used more often by breast and ovarian cancer survivors than by uterine cancer survivors -- also women, of course," he said.

It's not clear why complementary methods are used more often by women with breast and ovarian cancer, Gansler added.

It's also not clear just how much benefit complementary therapies might confer, he said. "Scientific studies of complementary methods have become much more common during the past few years, but there is still a lot of uncertainty about the effectiveness of many complementary methods," he added.

"As more studies are done to evaluate effectiveness, we will want to know whether men are missing opportunities to use some effective complementary methods that are far more popular in women, or whether women use ineffective complementary methods more than men. Or whether some complementary methods are more effective for women than they are for men," Gansler said.

Alternative medicine expert Dr. Harold Burstein, an instructor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, "This study, like many before it, confirms that cancer patients actively pursue a variety of alternative and complementary therapies, usually in conjunction with standard approaches to cancer treatment."

The motivations for such practices are worth exploring, Burstein said. "It is not known, but it is not thought that these have an impact on cancer-related outcomes, though many patients report deriving comfort, solace or symptom relief with such practices," he said.

More information

For more on complementary medicine, visit the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

FRIDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) -- The new vaccine vitespen didn't increase recurrence-free survival among kidney cancer patients who'd had surgery, say U.S. researchers.

Surgery is standard treatment for kidney cancer, but many patients are at risk of cancer recurrence because there is no effective adjuvant treatment, according to background information in the study by Dr. Christopher Wood, of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues.

For this study, 818 kidney cancer patients who'd had surgery were divided into two groups. One group (409) received vitespen once a week for four weeks, then every two weeks until vaccine depletion. The other 409 patients were kept under observation.

The final analysis of 361 patients in the vitespen group and 367 patients in the observation group found no significant difference in recurrence-free survival. But an analysis of a subgroup of patients with early-stage kidney cancer showed a 15.2 percent rate of recurrence among those who received vitespen and a 27 percent rate of recurrence among patients kept under observation.

While this wasn't a statistically significant difference, the researchers said the improvement in recurrence-free survival among patients with early-stage cancer who received the vaccine warrants further investigation.

The study was published online this week in The Lancet.

In an accompanying comment, Dr. James Yang, of U.S. National Cancer Institute, noted that the manufacturers of vitespen have focused on one possible positive outcome of this study, rather than the overall negative results.

"Such practices are akin to shooting the arrow first and being permitted to draw the target afterwards," he wrote.

The field of cancer immunotherapy is weakened when some researchers and vaccine companies are reluctant to accept the results of randomized clinical trials, Yang said.

"Commercially driven efforts that spin or obfuscate the conclusions of such a trial should be vigorously resisted because such efforts severely erode its value," he concluded.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more about kidney cancer  .