Does baby powder increase ovarian cancer risk?
A jury in St. Louis has come to a consensus against Johnson & Johnson on the issue of baby powder being associated with ovarian cancer. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the company was started by a woman who suggested she used the product for decades and it contributed to her ovarian cancer diagnosis. There are currently 1,700 state and federal lawsuits alleging that the company failed to warn the public about the risk of ovarian cancer associated with the use of talc powder.
Spokesperson for the company Carol Goodrich expressed, “We deeply sympathize with the women and families impacted by ovarian cancer.” Continue reading…
Screening postmenopausal women with an annual blood test for ovarian cancer could reduce deaths caused by ovarian cancer by 20 percent, according to new findings. There is currently no reliable screening method for ovarian cancer, and unfortunately it is often not diagnosed until it is in its later stages. Nearly 60 percent of ovarian cancer patients diet within five years of diagnosis.
Using newly developed software to analyze blood, the researchers believe that routine blood-work screening can help reduce deaths associated with ovarian cancer. Continue reading…
A new study has found that regular exercise may be able to better prevent ovarian cancer, while lack of exercise is associated with a higher risk of ovarian cancer and death by ovarian cancer.
Senior author Kirsten Moysich said, “Women may be overwhelmed with mixed messages about physical activity or exercise recommendations and opt to be inactive because they feel that they cannot meet the recommended amount of physical activity. Our findings suggest that any amount of regular, weekly recreational physical activity may reduce the risk for and improve survival from ovarian cancer, while a lack of regular exercise throughout adulthood is associated with an increased risk of developing and dying from ovarian cancer.” Continue reading…
Rheumatoid arthritis drug may help treat ovarian cancer. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder and many autoimmune disorders share links with certain forms of cancer. Because of these shared links cancer treatment drugs can sometimes benefit certain autoimmune disorders and vice versa. Such is the case with a drug known as auranofin.
Auranofin is commonly used in the treatment in rheumatoid arthritis, but a new study suggests it may aid in the treatment of ovarian cancer.
Some patients with ovarian cancer have a mutation in the BRCA1 gene. In the study, the researchers found that those patients responded well to the rheumatoid arthritis drug. Continue reading…
A team of UCLA researchers said they have figured out why ovarian cancer comes back after treatment with the chemotherapy drug carboplatin.
The researchers discovered that some of the tumor cells that don’t produce the protein CA125, have a strong ability to repair their DNA and resist programmed cell death. This allows the cells to dodge the effects of the drug and live long enough to engineer a relapse of the original tumor.
According to Deanna Janzen, the study’s lead author and a senior scientist in the G.O. Discovery Lab at UCLA, the ability of these cells to resist carboplatin therapy, along with their regenerative ability, is what makes them so dangerous.
Over the course of the study, the scientists were able to circumvent this problem and eliminate the deadly population of cells responsible for repopulating the tumor by pairing the chemotherapy with an experimental drug. The drug, birinapant, makes the CA125-negative cells more sensitive to the chemotherapy by restoring programmed cell death. Continue reading…