THURSDAY, Aug. 14 (HealthDay News) -- Common moisturizing creams helped skin cancers spread and tumors grow in mice exposed to UV radiation, researchers at Rutgers University reported Thursday.

"These creams we tested have tumorigenic [tumor-causing capability] activities," said lead researcher Allan H. Conney, from the university's Susan Lehman Cullman Laboratory for Cancer Research.

But, he added, "I need to emphasize that what we have done is only in mice. We don't know what the implications are for humans. But it does raise a red flag that this is something that should be considered."

The report is published in the Aug. 14 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.

For the study, Conney's team exposed hairless mice to an extended period of UV radiation, which induced non-melanoma skin cancer. After stopping UV treatment, they applied four different common brands of skin moisturizers to the animals' skin five days a week for 17 weeks.

The researchers found that mice treated with skin moisturizers showed an increased rate of tumor formation. In addition, there were more tumors on the animals treated with moisturizers than on the mice that were only given UV radiation.

The moisturizers used were Dermabase, made by Patrick Laboratories in Minneapolis; Dermovan, made by Galderma Laboratory Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas; Eucerin Original Moisturizing Cream, made by Beiersdorf of Hamburg Germany; and Vanicream, made by Pharmaceutical Specialties Inc., in Rochester, Minn.

Conney's group identified several ingredients in the moisturizers that appear to enhance tumor growth.

"We took out a couple of ingredients and made a cream that turned out to be non-tumorigenic," Conney said. The resulting lotion did not increase cancer growth in mice exposed to UV radiation, the researchers found.

"We really don't know what ingredients in these creams are doing that," Conney said. "There is a need to have the various companies test their creams to see whether or not there is a problem."

Conney thinks that companies can modify their products to remove this effect. "I am sure there are creams on the market that do not have tumorigenic activities and some of them may have anti-tumorigenic activity," he said.

Dr. Robin Ashinoff, a clinical associate professor of dermatology at New York University School of Medicine in New York City, thinks the findings are interesting but she said they may not apply to humans.

Drugs that have been implicated in growth in animals in the past do not always have similar effects in humans, Ashinoff said.

"Certainly, the issue here is to protect yourself from that degree of continuous UVB-induced priming for skin cancer by practicing good sun protection and sunscreen use in the first place," she added.

"These moisturizing creams might act as an irritant or a promoter of skin cancer in mice skin, but extensive study is needed before we advise people that their commonly used moisturizers can cause skin cancer," Ashinoff said.

More information

For more information on skin cancer, visit the American Cancer Society   .

TUESDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- The latest update from a European study that has followed men with prostate cancer for more than a decade leaves the debate about the advantages of aggressive treatment versus "watchful waiting" undecided.

The advantage in survival seen for men who underwent surgery to remove the prostate disappeared after 10 years. While deaths attributed to cancer continued to be lower among those having surgery, the overall death rate for both groups was the same, according to the researchers with the Scandinavian Prostate Cancer Group.

The meaning of the study for men now being diagnosed with prostate cancer is uncertain, because the study began before the use of testing for prostate-specific antigen, today's primary method of diagnosis, the researchers added.

"In settings with a large proportion of PSA-detected tumors, the relative reduction in risk of death following radical prostatectomy [removal of the gland] might be somewhat larger or similar to that in our study, but the absolute reduction would be smaller," they wrote.

The findings were published online Aug. 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Yu-Ning Wong, an oncologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said it's "unclear how these results apply to the patients we are taking care of today. They show how many questions remain unanswered."

Wong led a study that found an apparent benefit in survival for men who had aggressive surgical treatment of early prostate cancer. But it wasn't a randomized, controlled trial -- the gold standard for medical research.

"Basically, I don't think we know the right answer about what to do," she said.

Prostate cancer is diagnosed in about one of every six American men. There's currently no way to distinguish between a cancer that will grow so slowly that it poses little danger to life from one that can grow aggressively enough to be fatal. A common medical saying is that "more men die with their prostate cancer than of it."

Uncertainty about prostate cancer treatment has led to a new federal recommendation that men over 75 should not have PSA tests because the risks of treatment outweigh the benefits.

A final answer about whether surgery and other aggressive treatment is preferable to merely watching the course of the disease will not come for years, Wong said. A controlled trial is under way in Europe, and one is planned for the United States, she said.

Meanwhile, the decision about treatment versus watchful waiting must be made for each individual, Wong said.

"I have discussions with a patient about his other medical conditions, his age, his willingness to receive treatment that may have long-term side effects, weighed against the risk that he may develop an aggressive cancer," she said.

Stephen Zeliadt, a research scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said the new study "does provide evidence that intervention in the form of surgery does have a curative effect for some men. The question is, which men?"

Another question is whether the study results apply to "a screening population" of men who have PSA tests, Zeliadt said. "With screening, you catch a lot of different types of cancer, and also at different ages. There is no information in the study on the age of detection."

So, Zeliadt added, this study doesn't help solve the prostate cancer riddle. "It probably makes it even more confusing," he said.

Dr. Peter T. Scardino, chairman of the department of surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said the study did offer an important finding: "The big benefit of treating potentially lethal prostate cancer comes early, in the first five to 10 years."

The study also "showed lots of benefits of surgery but did not find any benefit from surgery for men over the age of 65," he noted.

More information

To learn more about prostate cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

TUESDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- The risk of relapse can linger for some breast cancer survivors even after completing five years of what doctors call systemic therapy, a new study found.

But, as gloomy as that news sounds, there is a relative bright spot: the risk may not be as dire as many women fear.

"I would like to think these numbers are smaller than women think they are," the study's lead author, Dr. Abenaa Brewster, a medical oncologist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said.

Most women, she added, "remain terrified they are going to relapse. I think the message for women is, the risk may not be as large as they think."

Brewster's team evaluated 2,838 breast cancer patients whose disease ranged from stage I to III. All had been treated with some form of adjuvant systemic therapy between 1985 and 2001 and had remained disease-free for five years, which is traditionally considered a landmark in cancer survival.

The women had a variety of treatments -- surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy or endocrine therapy. Endocrine therapy involves tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors and a combination of the drugs and is usually given for five years.

About 10 years after the diagnosis, 89 percent of the women remained recurrence-free. And about 80 percent remained recurrence-free 15 years after the diagnosis.

In all, 216 patients developed a recurrence, Brewster said. She found that the risk or recurrence varied by stage and tumor type. Those women with stage I disease had a 7 percent chance of relapse; stage II, 11 percent; and stage III, 13 percent.

Besides the stage of cancer at diagnosis, hormone receptor status affected risk, the study found. "Women who had ER-positive cancer were more likely to have late recurrences than those with ER-negative," Brewster said. This finding held true for premenopausal and postmenopausal women. While 34 ER-negative women had a relapse, 149 ER-positive did.

"Estrogen receptor status is a tumor marker we look at," Brewster said. "We know that those who have ER-positive tumors [have] cancers that are responsive to the effects of estrogen."

While women in the study were taking a variety of hormone therapies, none took five years of aromatase inhibitors, which are now the standard of care for postmenopausal women but weren't when the study began in 1985, Brewster said.

The study findings were published online Aug. 12 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, said the study findings leave some unanswered questions, such as the best course of action at the five-year mark. But it offers some interesting information, he added.

"The major message is that even though women may have gone through five years of hormonal therapy, they are still at risk of relapse," he said. Another important finding, he added, is that those women with ER-positive tumors seem to be at higher risk than those with ER-negative tumors.

"Basically the jury is out on the potential value of additional treatment strategies once the five years is completed," Lichtenfeld said. "Based on this study, we need to be open to question whether other treatment programs may be appropriate in some of these women after the five-year period is completed."

More information

To learn more about hormone therapy for breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society  .

WEDNESDAY, July 30 (HealthDay News) -- New clues about how cancer spreads from one area of the body to another have been discovered by a University of North Carolina School of Medicine researcher.

Cells called fibrocytes -- which travel around the body and rush to the site of an injury to aid in healing -- may create "premetastatic niches" through which cancer cells can invade healthy organs, said Dr. Hendrik van Deventer, an assistant professor of medicine and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

He worked with mice that lacked CCR5, a cell receptor that helps control migration of cells through the body. The mice were injected with all types of cells from normal mice in an attempt to make them form metastases of melanoma skin cancer.

Fibrocytes were the only kind of cells that had the desired effect. When the mice were injected with just 60,000 fibrocytes, the rate of metastases nearly doubled.

"That's a big effect for a relatively small number of cells," van Deventer said in a UNC news release.

He also found that injections of fibrocytes induced MMP9, an enzyme known to promote cancer.

The findings were published in the July issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

"This study shows it's possible for fibrocytes to form the premetastatic niche. But it stops short of proving they positively are the cells," van Deventer said.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about metastatic cancer.