Health Spectator

Just when vitamin D was beginning to look like the cure-all where cancer is concerned—many studies have proclaimed it instrumental in preventing or slowing cancers of the skin, colon, breast, and prostate, to name a few—a new study announced by the U.S. National Cancer Institute says increased vitamin D consumption does not correlate with reduced cancer mortality. The one exception, according to the study’s authors, may be cancer of the colon.

The study did not involve new research. Rather, it analyzed data for 16,818 subjects who participated in the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which inducted participants between 1988 and 1994 and followed them through 2000. Participants were given blood tests to establish a baseline at the beginning of their enrollment; it was from these blood tests that the level of vitamin D (as 25-hydroxyvitamin D) was tested against decreased cancer mortality and found to be lacking. In the case of colorectal cancer, however, the study found a 72 percent reduced risk of death when vitamin D levels were sufficiently high.

The study, authored by D. Michal Freedman, Ph.D., of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues, was published in this month’s Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The authors believe it is the first study to test vitamin D blood levels—as opposed to supplement consumption—against cancer mortality.

China is once again in the news over food contamination, this time regarding contaminated fish exported to the U.S. for human consumption. USA Today is reporting that “in the past 13 months, at least two dozen shipments of catfish, eel and tilapia from Meihua [China] were rejected for entry into the USA by the Food and Drug Administration,” based on FDA records.

The irony is that some of the shipments were rejected because they were contaminated with an antifungal that protects fish but is not allowed by the FDA because it increases cancer rates in lab animals. Others were rejected because of “suspected” contamination or for other contaminants.

Perhaps medical treatments putting cancer into remission are just artificially producing a middle stage of cancer before a more serious metastatic stage begins. That would appear to be one of the implications of a research report appearing in May’s issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

A research team led by Dr. Carlos Arteaga at Vanderbilt University tried suppressing Transforming Growth Factor(TGF)-beta in mice using antibodies. Suppressing TGF-beta stopped the spread of cancer tumors that would otherwise be spread as a result of treatment with radiation or doxorubicin, a chemotherapy agent. Either of these therapies causes TGF-beta to be produced in mice.

What’s more, tests on mice bred for the inability to produce TGF-beta showed similar results: despite the introduction of turmors followed by treatment with radiation and doxorubicin, their tumors did not spread. This research has led Arteaga and his colleagues to speculate that primary cancer tumors use TGF-beta as a signal to cancer cells at other sites in the body.

“We wondered if TGF-beta induced by anti-cancer therapies can serve as a survival signal for tumor cells, thus allowing them to withstand therapy and later recur,” Arteaga said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Arteaga’s team is testing drugs that interfere with TGF-beta to see if they improve survival.

“It probably isn’t just TGF-beta that is having this effect,” the researcher said. Many other compounds, including some immune system signaling chemicals, are also associated with tumor spread and growth.

“TGF-beta may be just the tip of the iceberg,” says Arteaga.

Cancer experts have wondered if the so-called primary tumor—the first and biggest tumor—might somehow suppress the growth of other tumors, and [if] removing or destroying the first tumor might allow other, undetectable, tumors to grow. –newmediaexplorer.org

This was not supposed to be the debut of Health Spectator. We had thought we’d make our entre with a well-researched update on antioxidants or perhaps an introductory lesson on the complexities of the immune system. Once our piece was researched and written, it might have taken another month or so for the design ideas to be finalized (we think a good first impression is important) had we stuck to the original plan.

But about a week after the news of Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer relapse, we realized this was something we couldn’t let pass. Although we have never med the Edwards personally, we did come surprising close, and while this is not intended to be a “personal” weblog in the sense that you need not expect to read about our lives in it routinely, since our rush to print is provoked entirely by a personal reaction, perhaps it would be prudent to explain.

We lived in Raleigh, North Carolina for about ten years, and were fortunate to have as a next-door neighbor for several of those years Betsy (Elizabeth) Brennan. Betsy was the widow of a prominent local developer and was herself immersed in the local arts, acting as an art agent and hosting occasional art shows in her home. She also was involved to some degree in local politics.

One day Betsy invited us to a dinner party she was planning for a local man she knew who was going to run for the Senate. I wasn’t paying close attention and assumed she was talking about the state senate, but since I was recently unemployed, I really wasn’t in the mood for socializing at a dinner party anyway and declined, despite Betsy’s repeated pleas. The guest of honor also happened to be our backyard neighbor, whom we had never met. Their daughter attended high school with my wife’s son. The night of the dinner party, my wife and I occasionally listened to the subdued merriment from our back porch, but we just didn’t feel up to joining in.

You guessed it. Our neighbor was John Edwards, who ran successfully for the U.S. Senate, achieved national prominence as a presidential candidate having started as an unknown, then nearly became the 47th vice president of the United States.

Shortly after his election, Senator Edwards and his family moved to another section of town, having stayed in the neighborhood until their daughter graduated from the local high school, I believe, and we never met.

I’m sure you all have similar stories of nearly meeting people who soon became nationally prominent, but that is not really the point of this story.

A few years later, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a matter of fact, we received the diagnosis the morning of September 11, 2001, around 8 am. We had stopped to pay for parking in the lot of the University of North Carolina cancer center, and as the guard raised the gate to let us exit, President Bush came on the radio to announce that the first jet had struck the World Trade Center. My wife and I rushed to downtown Chapel Hill for breakfast and arrived in time to see the second jet strike, then watched in horror as the towers collapsed.

It was the kind of morning you don’t soon forget.

[to be continued]