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AAD 2016 – Skin diseases associated with organochlorine exposures

Andrew T. Patterson, MD sits down with Dermatology Times Editorial Advisor, Elain Siegfried, MD to discuss his 2016 AAD poster, “Skin diseases associated with Agent Orange and other organochlorine exposures.”
Modern medicine – Dermatology Times

Exploring The Major Health Risks That Are Associated With Tobacco

Did you know that each year in the United States more than 480,000 people die do to a tobacco related illness? When you factor all this up it means that 1 out of every 5 deaths in the United States is due to tobacco. In fact, cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, HIV, guns, car accidents, and illegal drugs. People that smoke die at a younger age than people that don’t smoke. Smoking can shorten your life anywhere from 11 to 12 years. Most people think that smoking only causes cancer, which later leads to your death, but there is much more to it than that.

Smoking not only causes cancer, but it can damage every organ in the body. It can damage your lungs, heart, skin, eyes, blood vessels, and bones. The sad fact is that most people know these facts and they still just continue to use tobacco. Below, you will learn some more unnerving facts about the dangers of using tobacco and how it can affect your life.

How Does Smoking Affect Cancer Risk?

Cancer is a major disease throughout the United States that consumes a lot of lives. What you probably don’t know is that tobacco accounts for around 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States. 80% of lung cancer deaths are the result of smoking. Research and studies show that lung cancer is one of the hardest forms of cancers to treat and is without a doubt the most deadly. Smoking not only puts you at risk of lung cancer, but it could also cause mouth, kidney, liver, bladder, stomach, and pancreas cancer.

How Does Smoking Affect Your Bones?

Recent studies were conducted and concluded that smoking can greatly decrease a smoker’s bone density. Smoking along with alcohol consumption can put your body at a risk of osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a condition in which the bones become extremely weak and more likely to fracture. The study showed that major bone loss has been discovered in men and women who smoke heavily. The study also showed that individuals who did manage to quite smoking reduced their risk for lower bone mass, but it takes several years of non-tobacco use to lower a former smoker’s risk.

Effects To The Lungs And Breathing

It really should be no big secret that smoking can have adverse effects on the lungs and breathing. After all, you are inhaling a cloud of tobacco over and over again. Every puff of a cigarette that you take can scar and damage your lungs. Long-term smoking can cause COPD, which causes wheezing, shortness of breath, tight chest, and other symptoms. Emphysema is also another well-known disease that can be associated with smoking. This is a condition in which the walls between the air sacs in your lungs loose their ability to stretch. This makes it very difficult to breath.

Alternatives To Smoking

Over the years there have been tons of products developed to help individuals quit smoking. One of the most popular and most effective products has been the e juice, which is a safer alternative to smoking. However, users need to know that long-term use of these alternative products can also lead to severe side effects. While the long-term side effects of e-cigarettes are not entirely clear, it is believed that they could lead to cancer. Also, some of these products contain nicotine. Therefore, they’ll share the same potential side effects as traditional cigarettes.

This includes blurred vision, headache, dizziness and even nervousness. Nicotine gum and e-cigarettes should not be used for the long term.

talkhealth Blog

High Levels Of Hormones During Pregnancy Associated With Higher Risk For HR-Negative Breast Cancer

AppId is over the quota AppId is over the quota Main Category: Breast Cancer
Also Included In: Pregnancy / Obstetrics;??Eczema / Psoriasis
Article Date: 20 Oct 2012 – 0:00 PST
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High Levels Of Hormones During Pregnancy Associated With Higher Risk For HR-Negative Breast Cancer
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Increased concentrations of the pregnancy hormones estradiol and progesterone were associated with an increased risk for hormone receptor-negative breast cancer diagnosed before age 50, according to the results of a nested case-control study presented at the 11th Annual AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.

Annekatrin Lukanova, M.D., Ph.D., http://www.eczemablog.net/associate professor at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany, and colleagues examined the effects of hormonal exposure during early pregnancy and its possible association with risk for maternal breast cancer.


“Pregnancy influences maternal risk for breast cancer, but the association is complex and the biological mechanisms underlying the associations are unknown,” Lukanova said. “Understanding the mechanisms underlying the protective effect of childbearing on cancer risk can form the basis for primary prevention of breast cancer.”


Lukanova and colleagues used the Northern Sweden Maternity cohort to conduct a nested case-control study of 417 controls and 223 women who had donated blood samples during their first trimester of pregnancy and were later diagnosed with breast cancer. About three quarters of the breast cancer cases were hormone receptor (HR)-positive.


The researchers examined two groups of hormones: The first group included estradiol, estrone and progesterone, the concentrations of which increase substantially with pregnancy progression. The second group included testosterone and insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1). During early pregnancy, concentrations of testosterone and IGF-1 are largely similar to prepregnancy concentrations.


“We found that circulating concentrations of IGF-1 and testosterone are directly associated with risk for HR-positive breast cancer, in line with studies in nonpregnant women,” Lukanova said.


Results indicated a heightened risk for HR-negative breast cancer diagnosed before 50 years of age with increased levels of estradiol and progesterone.


Lukanova noted that this study was small, that the hormones were measured during the first trimester of pregnancy only, and that further and larger studies will be necessary to characterize the association of pregnancy hormones with risk for hormone-defined maternal breast cancer.


Abstract:


B75 Pregnancy hormones and maternal risk of hormone receptor-defined breast cancer. Annekatrin Lukanova1, Egle Tolockiene2, Helena Schock1, Kjell Grankvist2, Hans Ake Lakso2, Helja Marja Surcel3, Goran Wadell2, Anne Zelenuich-Jacquotte4, Paolo Toniolo4, Eva Lundin2. 1German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany, 2University of Umea, Umea, Sweden, 3National Institute for Health and Welfare, Oulu, Finland, 4New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY.


Introduction: Hormonal exposure during pregnancy is believed to be associated with subsequent maternal risk of breast cancer, but so far limited epidemiological data are available.


Study design: A case-control study (223 cases and 417 controls) was nested within the Northern Sweden Maternity Cohort to explore the associations between pregnancy concentrations of sex steroid hormones and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) with maternal risk of breast cancer by hormone receptor (HR) expression of the tumors. The study included women who had donated a blood sample during the first trimester of their first full-term pregnancy. Most cases had HR-positive disease: 171 (77%) estrogen receptor-positive (ER+), 157 (70%) progesterone receptor-positive (PR+) and 152 (68%) ER+/PR+ tumors. Estradiol, estrone, progesterone and testosterone were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) were measured by immunoassays. For each hormone, the difference (residual) between the actual assay value for each subject and the estimated mean determined for the day of gestation when the sample was drawn was computed by local linear regression. Conditional logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).


Results: For HR-positive tumors, a significant direct association was observed with circulating concentrations of testosterone (e.g. OR for ER+ in the top versus bottom tertile of 1.8 (1.1-3.0), p<0.02) and IGF-I (e.g. OR for ER+ in the top versus bottom tertile of 2.0 (1.2-3.3), p<0.01). For HR-negative disease, risk estimates for a doubling of estrogens, progesterone and SHBG concentrations were above unity, but did not reach statistical significance with the exception of progesterone for PR-negative tumors (OR 2.0 (1.0-3.9), p<0.04). In analyses limited to ER-negative tumors diagnosed up to age 50 (n=38), these associations were stronger, but only of borderline significance. For PR-negative tumors diagnosed up to age 50 (n=49), the associations were significant for estradiol (OR 1.8 (1.0-3.1), p<0.04), progesterone (OR 2.6 (1.1-6.1), p<0.03) and SHBG (OR 1.8 (1.0-3.0), p<0.04). Adjustments for maternal height, weight, smoking, hypertension during pregnancy, child's sex, weight and length had negligible effect on risk estimates. Associations were similar by combined ER/PR tumor status or when limited to cases diagnosed ?10 years after blood donation.


Conclusions: In this nested case-control study hormone concentrations during early pregnancy were associated with risk of maternal breast cancer but the associations differed by hormone receptor expression of the tumors. For hormones with placental contribution to circulating concentrations (estrogens and progesterone), there were indications for positive associations with risk of maternal HR-negative breast cancer. For hormones, with similar concentrations during early pregnancy and in the non-pregnant state (testosterone and IGF-I), direct associations with HR-positive breast cancer were observed, in line with most available epidemiological data in non-pregnant women. Larger studies are necessary to characterize the association of pregnancy hormones with risk of hormone-defined maternal breast cancer.

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click ‘references’ tab above for source.
Visit our breast cancer section for the latest news on this subject. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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American Association for Cancer Research. “High Levels Of Hormones During Pregnancy Associated With Higher Risk For HR-Negative Breast Cancer.” Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 20 Oct. 2012. Web.
7 Apr. 2013. APA

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‘High Levels Of Hormones During Pregnancy Associated With Higher Risk For HR-Negative Breast Cancer

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