Here is another use for breastmilk – testing for breast cancer. And if you are nursing or are planning to in the coming year, you might just consider volunteering for this research program.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are looking volunteers who:

• are breastfeeding or pumping breastmilk
• who have had a breast biopsy previously or who are scheduled to have one soon
• willing to donate breastmilk and answer a questionnaire

The purpose of the study funded by Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, is to investigate whether mythelated genes, which are indicators of pre-cancerous changes in breast tissue can be detected in cells found in breastmilk. The methylation process in breast cells can proceed towards cancer development. Thus, detecting methylation amounts to early detection of breast cancer.

Currently, the most commonly used screening method for breast cancer is mammography. However, the method presents some limitation, including discomfort, invasiveness, and radiation exposure.

Testing using breastmilk has the advantage of being non-invasive. In addition, unlike biopsy, breast milk gives a representative sample of cells from all the glands in the breast rather than just an isolated area of the breast.

For those of you who are interested in cancer prevention advocacy, then this is a good chance for you to show your support. More information can be found in the research program’s site www.breastmilkresearch.org.

Joanna Rudnick is young, beautiful and has a promising career in filmmaking – and a ticking time bomb inside her. She was 27 years old when she received the bad news: she tested positive for a mutation in the BRCA gene, a mutation that highly predisposes her to breast and ovarian cancer, just like many women in her family.

In high risk cases like this, prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy is recommended to pre-empt the disease, which is basically the removal of breasts and ovaries before cancer strikes. But Rudnick turned the camera on herself to answer the question “How much do you sacrifice to survive?” In her directorial debut In the Family “she takes us on a journey through the unpredictable world of predictive genetic testing.”

According to research studies, prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy substantially reduces the risk for getting breast and ovarian cancer although there is no 100% guarantee. But the preventive surgery comes with a high price, as Rudnick knows.

Is she going to give up her dreams of having her own children in order to survive?

Is she risking her life by holding on to her fertility?

Rudnick also looked into the business side of things – at the company that owns the patents to the BRCA genes. Yes, they are patented, believe it or not. For every BRCA test performed in the US, the company gets money. European researchers have been fighting against this control but unfortunately lost the battle in court last December 2008.

Finally, Rudnick also talked to other women facing the same dilemma as she.

Earlier this year, the report of the first BRCA-mutation free baby in the UK triggered mixed reactions and heated discussion. Looking at what Rudnick and others are going through now, I can imagine how grateful that baby girl would be to her parents someday.

What would you do if you wanted a baby, but all your husband’s female relatives had suffered from breast cancer, the kind that doctors knew was caused by a faulty gene?

A controversial egg selection technique selection has resulted in the first baby girl born in the UK this week that doctors know is free from breast cancer genes. Women with either of the genes, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, are seven times more likely to get breast cancer – that means that 60% of women who have either BRCA1 or BRCA2 will get breast cancer in their lifetimes.

The faulty genes cause around 10% of breast cancer cases, and are carried from generation to generation, which is why the parents of the baby girl chose to have doctors screen and select an embryo that was free from both genes.

Doctors in London used in-vitro fertilization techniques to fertilize 11 of the mother’s eggs with the fathers sperm, and then let the eggs develop for several days. When the embryos were several days old, one cell was removed from each and tested for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Six of the eggs tested positive. Two of the five remaining eggs were implanted, resulting in a single pregnancy and a healthy baby girl.

The fertility doctors haven’t released what happened to the six embryos that tested positive for the breast cancer genes, but it’s likely they will be destroyed or used for research.

Genetic screening is only legal in the United Kingdom to screen for genetic diseases. It’s been used for diseases like Huntingdon’s Disease and Cystic Fibrosis, conditions for which if a baby has the gene, it will certainly get the disease.

Having the breast cancer gene doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman will get breast cancer, and if she does, it has the potential to be cured. And not having the breast cancer gene doesn’t mean that a woman will never get breast cancer, since the other 90% of non-genetic breast cancer cases don’t have a known cause.

It’s less of an ethical dilemma to select embryos to avoid a fatal genetic disease that all carriers of the gene will die from. But is it ethical to select embryos to avoid the breast cancer gene?

Below is list of freebies and samples that I thought Babies Online Blog Readers might enjoy. Have a look and feel free to add to the list by sharing your comments on any other freebies that you may be aware of.

• Free CD – Find out how to “Beat the Odds” of heart Disease (60 sec Survey required)
• Free Jockey Underwear – Redeemable at Macy’s (Expires June 6th)
• Free Sample Pak – assortment of Kotex (4 in all)
• Free Kit – Important information about Breast Cancer and toold to prevent and detect it.

As always, Babies Online has an impressive list of freebies for you to choose from as well. Click here to see these exclusive offers.

A recent study has stated that women who were breastfed as babies have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer. According to the study, women who were breastfed as infants ‘had a 17 percent decrease in breast cancer risk’ note one member of the study team, Hazel B. Nichols. She further stated that, ‘we did not observe this reduction when we looked specifically among first-born women.’

The researchers interviewed over 2016 women between 29 and 60 years old who had breast cancer and 1,960 in the same age group who didn’t. The survey revealed a lower breast cancer risk among women who had older siblings regardless of their mother’s age when she gave birth.

The study team noted as well that additional studies were needed to determine if the length of breastfeeding also impacted the reduction in the risk of developing breast cancer among women who were breastfed.

The article published in Epidemiology, a medical journal suggests that there may also be a link between the ‘levels of environmental contaminants in breast milk and breast cancer’. Previous studies have also indicated that there be well be some connection to contaminants in the environment and breast cancer.

As a firstborn daughter and child, this is not great news to me personally. However, it is important for a lot of women and as a woman I’m glad to know that breastfeeding may help ward off breast cancer for our daughters.

OK, it may seem like I’m on a breastfeeding promotion, but I just find these bit of information when I am surfing the Internet for news. But seriously, with all the information out there, if it is possible to breastfeed – I say go for it. The breast really is best!

However, if you are unable to breastfeed for whatever reason, don’t beat yourself up; just continue taking care of your baby the best way you can. Luckily there are lots of baby formulas on the market fortified with nutrients found only in breast milk.

I had a nephew who did not taste a drop of breastmilk in his short life. And I say ’short life’ because he was diagnosed with a congenital type of cancer at age two. He, Pyro, valiantly fought for over a year but the cancer was too aggressive and his body so young. I had often wondered if things could have gone better for him had he been breastfed. He died at age three.

I was a breastfeeding advocate even before I got married. And when we found out that we were pregnant, we made sure we got all the help we can get to prepare for the baby. We attended breastfeeding seminars and in these seminars we were often told that one of the benefits of breastfeeding is lowering risks for certain types of cancer for both the mother and the child.

So having suffered much pain over the loss of my nephew, I vowed even more to breastfeed my child.

Breastfeeding was one of ten recommendations in the conclusion of a recently published report (Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective) by the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). It was found that after looking at a host of variables with diet, nutrition, weight and activity, lactation was the only one found to lower risk of breast cancer throughout a woman’s life. This is especially good news since the breast cancer that afflicts women before menopause is different from the one they have after menopause. It is believed that the protection is linked to breastfeeding’s effect on a woman’s hormones, which delays the return of menstruation. It has already been established that the fewer menstrual cycles a woman has during her lifetime, the lower her risk for breast cancer gets.

Breastfeeding also protects the child from cancer in two ways. First, breastmilk provides protection from the more common childhood cancers like leukemia by passing on the mother’s antibodies which boosts the baby’s immune system and possibly stops any genetic changes. Secondly, breastfeeding protects from developing obesity in the child, possibly due to the transfer of appetite-regulating hormone leptin. Fats from childhood are carried over into adulthood, an excess of which has been convincingly linked by AICR experts to cause six common cancers: colon, kidney, pancreas, endometrium, adenocarcinoma of the esophagus and post-menopausal breast cancer. Essentially, not being overweight when you were young because you were breastfed will lower your risks for these types of cancer in adulthood.

These findings should especially encourage more women to breastfeed exclusively for six months to get maximum benefits. Furthermore, the longer a woman breastfeeds, the more anti-cancer benefits she gets for herself and gives to her child. Breastfeeding has been touted to have so many benefits and medical research has proven again and again that these are true. There really is no good reason NOT to breastfeed and surely, the threat of cancer is more than enough reason to insist on all the protection one can get… and in breastfeeding’s case, give.

Talk about long-term investments.

Source:
Medical News Today

Researchers report that therapeutic vaccines to fight breast and ovarian cancer are in the first stage of clinical trials to determine their effectiveness and safety.

Dr. Leisha A. Emens, assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University is working on a new therapeutic vaccine to fight breast cancer. The vaccine is designed to treat HER-2/neu disease, a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer. The vaccine is designed to stimulate the body’s immune system to fight the cancer.

Emens has found that combining the the vaccine with specific currently used chemotherapy drugs increases the vaccine’s effectiveness. She is also working on a vaccine that when used in conjunction with chemotherapy, would prevent blood vessels from feeding the cancer, essentially starving and killing the cancer cells. So far, Emens and her colleagues have enrolled eight breast cancer patients in the treatment and have seen positive results. By continuing their research and further developing immune-based and gene-based therapy, Emens says we can expect to cure breast cancer in our lifetime.

The vaccine for ovarian cancer, developed by Dr. George Coukos, assistant professor at University of Pennsylvania’s division of gynecologic oncology, is designed to “re-educate” the patient’s immune system cells to destroy cancer cells. The trial is a phase I/II trial that is just getting started, and will include about 30 women with ovarian cancer. The trial is being used to test two different new drugs, to see which is more effective. It involves creating individualized cancer vaccines composed of a patient’s own cells, so treatments are customized for individual patients.

There were some 22, 430 new cases of ovarian cancer and approximately 15, 280 deaths from the disease in the U.S. in 2007. About 178, 480 U.S. women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer this year and about 40, 460 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. These staggering numbers are certainly reason to support and hope for cures to these devastating diseases.

www.everydayhealth.com