Breast Cancer Archive

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Targeted cancer therapies have limits, but some may offer a better option than standard chemotherapy.

Mention cancer treatment, and most men think of chemotherapy—complete with hair loss and extreme fatigue. But for some men, there is another option. Targeted therapies can sometimes treat certain cancers with fewer side effects and better outcomes.

In the journals

If you have suffered a heart attack and plan to undergo prostate cancer treatment, you may want to weigh the risks and benefits of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). ADT decreases the amount of androgens in the body, which prostate cancer needs to grow and survive. It is also often used along with radiation therapy, and the combination has been shown to prolong survival in men with unfavorable-risk prostate cancer—defined as cancer with two or more high-risk factors, like a PSA level between 10 and 40 ng/mL, a Gleason score of 7 or higher, or biopsies with 50% or higher cancerous cells.

But a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that men who had a prior heart attack can increase their risk of a fatal one if they undergo both radiation therapy and ADT. Researchers compared overall survival and death from prostate cancer, fatal heart attack, and other causes in a group of 206 men with unfavorable-risk prostate cancer. The men received either radiation alone, or radiation and six months of ADT. The researchers also categorized the men into subgroups based on other health conditions, including heart disease.

By the mid-20th century, most births took place in the hospital. But increasingly, some women are choosing to have their babies at home in an effort to avoid seemingly unnecessary interventions and find an alternative to hospital environments. We don’t have the best data to assess the safety of home birth. But a recent analysis offers insights that can help women make choices based on what they value the most.

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Flibanserin is the first treatment of its kind. But it comes with a steep price tag and severe health risks.

It's now six months since the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi), which is the first medication for sexual desire disorders. The drug was hailed as a "female Viagra," but is it living up to the hype? "It's not the solution we were hoping for," says Dr. Hope Ricciotti, editor in chief of Harvard Women's Health Watch and an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

For years, there has been concern about the high rate of cesarean births — but just how many cesareans are too many? A recent study suggests that a cesarean rate of 19% is about right. The reasons for high cesarean rates may be related more to each hospital’s circumstances and processes than to other, more commonly cited reasons. If you’re concerned, find out the C-section rate at the hospital where you plan to deliver your baby.

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Being checked for hidden colorectal cancer is a smart bet, though it's hard to say whether it will ultimately extend your life span.

Recently, the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable—a national organization of medical groups, health care providers, government agencies, and patient advocates—launched the "80% by 2018" initiative. The goal is to convince more people to get screened for hidden colorectal cancer. Right now, about 65% of Americans do so.

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Women can devise their own breast cancer screening schedules based on their risk and preferences.

If you tend to "go by the book" for preventive health care, you probably get a flu shot each fall, have a colonoscopy every 10 years, and generally follow the experts' recommendations. But what do you do about mammograms? For decades, the two most influential expert groups—the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF)—haven't agreed about when to start having mammograms, how often to have them, or how long to keep on having them. Although the two groups come a little closer together with their most recent guidelines, they still disagree about breast cancer screening for women ages 45 through 54.