Month: January 2013
Mother’s Diagnosis Reminds of Danger of Environmental Exposure to Asbestos
A mother of three children said her terminal cancer was caused by exposure to asbestos on the playground when she was a child. Asbestos causes cancer in humans including lung cancer and mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lungs.
Penny Garner, 45, who lives in Manchester, England, was diagnosed with lung cancer caused by asbestos 18 months ago after suffering chest pains and initially being misdiagnosed with a pulled chest muscle and then pneumonia. According to the Manchester Evening News, Garner’s doctors eventually identified the cancer and asked her when she had worked with asbestos.
She recalled in a newspaper article spending playtimes while a primary school student in the 1970s watching builders demolish the historic Seedley baths next to the school, after asbestos was discovered in them. Garner said it was terrifying that she could develop a serious disease from playing in the school yard.
Garner said while her condition is stable at present, she has been told that her illness is terminal and is living in limbo between the tests she has to have every two months. The former seamstress said she tried to carry on a normal routine as much as possible for her children, but is very difficult.
Penny Garner’s tragic story underscores the fact that people may develop mesothelioma and lung cancer as a result of exposure to asbestos fibers in the surrounding environment. And while most people diagnosed with asbestos disease are older workers and veterans, young people also may develop the disease.
Workplace exposure to asbestos is more common than environmental exposure. But families of asbestos workers and people exposed to asbestos in the environment are susceptible to mesothelioma and asbestos disease.
According to the National Cancer Institute, while it’s clear that health risks from asbestos exposure increase with longer duration of exposure, researchers have found asbestos-related diseases in individuals with only brief exposure to asbestos. Asbestos disease has a long latency period of 20 years to 40 years before cancer symptoms appear.
Get to know more about mesothelioma and how you can deal with it.
Patient Has Lived Disease Free Since Diagnosis of Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma
Doctors in Japan describe the unusual case of a long-term mesothelioma survivor who was treated with chemotherapy and hyperthermia.
In the Dec. 28 online issue of the Journal of Medical Case Reports, doctors at Gunma University School of Medicine in Japan detail the case of a 61-year-old man who has lived disease free for seven years after being diagnosed with malignant pleural mesothelioma. Pleural mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity caused by exposure to asbestos. The cancer typically has a high mortality rate.
The man was experiencing chest pain and had a history of exposure to asbestos for approximately five years. A CT scan showed a thickening of the pleural lining of his chest. It also revealed tumors had invaded the wall of patient’s chest. Doctors diagnosed the patient with stage 3 malignant pleural mesothelioma based on blood test results and an examination.
The patient was eligible for surgery, but refused to undergo surgery or receive radiation treatment. So doctors administered systemic chemotherapy with hyperthermia, which the medical center used as treatment for patients with inoperable lung cancer. The chemotherapy drugs consisted of cisplatin and irinotecan, an antitumor drug that interferes with how cancer cells multiply.
Hyperthermia is a type of cancer treatment in which body tissue is exposed to high temperatures of up to 113 degrees. According to the National Cancer Institute, high temperatures can damage and kill cancer cells, causing tumors to shrink, usually with minimal injury to normal tissues. Hyperthermia also may enhance the effectiveness of some anti-cancer drugs. It’s usually used in conjunction with other cancer treatments. The patient underwent hyperthermia treatment immediately after receiving the irinotecan drugs.
A month after the first cycle of mesothelioma treatment, the patient had a follow-up CT scan which showed that the thickening of the pleural lining had disappeared. He still has some fluid in his chest cavity, which is common for mesothelioma patients. The patient underwent three sessions of hyperthermia and a single course of chemotherapy. Another CT scan six years after the end of treatment revealed no evidence of a return of the cancer.
Patients diagnosed with mesothelioma typically have a poor prognosis because of the cancer’s resistance to conventional treatments. Many survive less than two years. As a result, medical researchers continue seeking more effective treatments for mesothelioma to extend the lives of patients and improve their quality of life.
The authors of the case report conclude that hyperthermia and chemotherapy may be a new and safe therapeutic option for treatment of pleural mesothelioma. They say that additional clinical studies of the combination of chemotherapy and hyperthermia are needed to further assess the effectiveness of the therapy.
Family Shares Approach to Fundraising for Mesothelioma Research
Many people wonder what they can do to help with mesothelioma research. The answer is simple… DONATE or FUNDRAISE! The next question is often, “How?” That answer is also simple: Do what you can.
I have done several fundraisers over the past few months. Some have been more lucrative than others, but all are worthwhile. For instance, I am an independent consultant for a direct selling company. I have done two open houses and donated half of my commission to the charity of my choice, the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation. That was a simple fundraiser, as I set it up as I would any open house for a customer of mine. I invited family and friends and was able to send a nice donation both times.
Another fundraiser that we’ve done took a lot more time and planning. My hometown hosts a community festival every year. We spoke with the people in charge, and did a raffle table at the event where we raffle off gift baskets, gift certificates, Broadway show tickets, and even a tree stand. We started several months in advance, asking family members, friends and businesses if they would be interested in donating an item or items to our cause. People were very receptive and happy to help out, and we ended up with 31 different baskets!
We sold tickets all day at the festival and were overwhelmed with how generous people were. They purchased tons of tickets and even made extra donations to help with mesothelioma research. Everyone knew Dad’s story just from living in the town (Dad knows everyone) or by seeing the story in the newspaper or on TV on the local news. The hard work was definitely worth it.
We are currently starting to work on our next event and plan to continue our efforts. If you are interested in doing a fundraiser, I would be happy to talk with you. I am by no means an expert, but I’ve had a little experience this past year that I would be glad to share. The Meso Foundation is an amazing organization, and I am so happy to be affiliated with them and to be able to help them by fundraising and making donations. No donation is too small, as is no prayer!
Best of luck to you. Please know how grateful all those impacted by mesothelioma are for you and your efforts! God bless you!
Experimental Therapy Targets Mesothelioma Cancer Cells to Commit Suicide
A frontier in treatment of mesothelioma and other cancers is the use of a type of gene therapy that induces cancer cells to self-destruct.
In a recent article in the Journal of Genetic Syndromes and Gene Therapy, Dr. Marek Malecki of the University of Wisconsin and Phoenix Biomolecular Engineering Foundation reports that cancer suicide gene therapy while not without risks remains one of the most promising experimental therapies for treating many types of cancer. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity caused by exposure to asbestos.
The success of the gene therapy hinges on delivering the suicide genes to the cancer cells. That is accomplished by identifying unique or overabundant proteins that serve as flags of the invading army of malignant cancer cells, giving away their location. Researchers have identified a number of biomarkers that may serve as chemical signals of malignant mesothelioma cells.
The identification of biomarkers allows doctors to deliver therapeutic drugs with more precision, avoiding collateral damage to healthy cells. Chemotherapy drugs by comparison affect all cells and have side effects including nausea and toxicity. Surgery to remove operable mesothelioma tumors inevitably removes healthy tissue as well as cancerous tissue and affects a patient’s quality of life.
That is why targeted therapies such as suicide gene therapy hold promise. To induce cancer cells to self-destruct, doctors inject a genetically modified virus into the tumor to deliver the suicide genes which prompts them to produce a special enzyme. The patient then receives another drug that transforms the enzyme into a toxic compound that prompts the rapidly dividing cancer cells to commit suicide.
Researchers have observed promising results of suicide gene therapy in initial clinical trials involving mesothelioma and other types of cancer. While the treatment has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, it holds the potential to eliminate cancer cells without harming healthy cells, minimizing side effects suffered by patients.
New Report: Incidence Of Mesothelioma More Than Doubled in Ireland Since 1990s
A new report on cancer trends by Ireland’s National Cancer Registry says the incidence of mesothelioma among men in Ireland has doubled since the 1990s and will continue soaring during the next decade. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the thin lining of the lungs and abdominal cavity.
Despite large year-to-year variations in the number of cases of pleural mesothelioma diagnosed on the Emerald Isle, the report says the incidence of pleural mesothelioma among men has more than doubled since 1994 from an average of 13 cases per year in 1994-96 to 36 cases in 2009. The researchers project the number of cases will increase to 68 cases of mesothelioma per year in men by 2020.
Most people encountered asbestos on the job. Approximately 97 percent of men and 82 percent of women diagnosed with mesothelioma inhaled asbestos fibers in a workplace.
Pleural mesothelioma develops in the lining of the chest cavity and is by far the most common form of the disease. Ninety four percent of the cases of mesothelioma in men and 75 percent of the cases in women in Ireland were malignant pleural mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma is largely linked to chronic exposure to asbestos in male-dominated jobs. Of the mesothelioma patients in Ireland whose occupations were documented, half were construction workers, electricians, carpenters, metal workers and woodworkers. More than five times as many men as women were diagnosed with mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is more prevalent among construction workers and workers in occupations exposed to asbestos in the United States as well.
While asbestos was used heavily in the United States starting during 1940s, asbestos was mostly used in Ireland from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ireland began phasing out the use of asbestos in the 1990s and its use was generally banned under European Union regulations in 2000. Because of the long latency period of 20 to 40 years between asbestos exposure and appearance of mesothelioma, researchers in Ireland project the incidence of mesothelioma will peak in 2020.
The majority of pleural mesothelioma patients were between 60 to 80 years of age when diagnosed. Chemotherapy has become an increasingly common form of treatment for mesothelioma. Almost 60 percent of male and female patients with mesothelioma received chemotherapy from 2005 to 2010.
Yet, pleural mesothelioma has a poor prognosis. More than 70 percent of mesothelioma patients enrolled in the cancer registray since 1994 died within one year of diagnosis.
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