LungBlog

A study out Tuesday is the most powerful evidence yet of women’s higher vulnerability to cigarette smoke.

Angiogenesis inhibition is a popular research subject for which an increasing number of drugs are being tested. The one drug that is currently available, and that has been demonstrated to be beneficial in lung cancer, is bevacizumab. The ECOG trial 4599 demonstrated about a 2- to 2.5-month improvement in median survival, and about a 10% improvement in 1-year survival for patients given bevacizumab with chemotherapy as compared with chemotherapy alone.

Two drugs recently approved for use in renal cell carcinoma, sorafenib (Nexavar, Bayer) and sunitinib (Sutent, Pfizer), have shown promising activity in uncontrolled phase 2 trials in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), researchers reported at the recent 42nd meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. A third drug, the investigational agent ZD6474 (Zactima, AstraZeneca), showed a significant advantage over the marketed drug gefitinib (Iressa, AstraZeneca) in a double-blind, randomized phase 2 trial presented at the same session.

A helium-based imaging technique may help doctors detect smoking-related lung damage in healthy smokers sooner and more accurately than existing imaging methods, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Malignant mesothelioma — cancer of the lining of the chest or abdomen — is associated with exposure to asbestos and tends to be rare.  This is a truly fascinating article that suggests that some may have a genetic predisposition to the disease so that its cause is not solely due to exposure to environmental factors.

A case of solitary fibular metastasis from lung cancer mimicked a stress fracture.  According to recent research from Taiwan, “Most metastatic bone disease appears in the axial skeleton. Appendicular bone metastases are usually found in cases of general spread of the disease, and frequent sites are in the femur and humerus.”

Tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, if current trends hold, health officials said yesterday.

Scientists believe that pemetrexed should be the standard treatment choice for unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) and recurrent metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Women who smoke are more likely to develop lung cancer than men who smoke.  However, women smokers are less likely to die of the disease than their male counterparts, according to new research.

This is an article for teens on smoking and its promotion by the tobacco industry.  It is an excellent article and everyone should read it.