Women Affairs

Fermín Apezteguia The health of women reaching menopause is principally threatened by three illnesses: cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and breast cancer. The document presented by the Spanish specialists in Amsterdam contains an innovative proposal to help reduce the number of women who develop breast cancer following the menopause. It is called chemoprevention, and forms part of a series of initiatives aimed at containing the advance of this disease. The idea is to treat post-menopausal women who have a high risk of breast cancer with drugs. So who are the women in this risk group? Not, as one might expect, women whose families have a history of the disease, but those with other risk factors such as having had their first period at an early age, late menopause, a first pregnancy at an advanced age or a history of tumours. In Spain, the number of such women could be two million. At the moment, this post-menopausal treatment is still only an idea, although internat...

Researchers from Eli Lilly & Company and the Phoenix-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) today announced finding a novel recurring mutation of the gene AKT1 in breast, colorectal and ovarian cancers. The altered form of AKT1 appears to cause tumor cell proliferation and may play a role in making cells resistant to certain types of therapies. The findings are reported in an advance online publication (AOP) of the journal Nature. The PI3-Kinase/AKT pathway is among the most commonly activated cellular pathways in human cancers and members of this pathway are among the most frequently targeted for new cancer drug discovery efforts. Activation of this pathway results in cancer cell growth and cell survival. Although AKT1 is central to pathway activation, its role in cancer has been that of an intermediary between mutated upstream regulatory proteins and downstream survival signaling proteins. This is the first evidence of direct mutation of AKT1 in human cancer tumor...

There’s no one big way to reduce your risk for breast cancer, but a combination of approaches could make a difference. In recent years the statistical picture of breast cancer has brightened, thanks to early detection and advances in treatment. More tumors are being caught at an early stage; the rise in incidence of the disease has slowed; and the death rate has dropped. Nevertheless, breast cancer is still the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the second most likely (after lung cancer) to take their lives. Data aside, breast cancer looms large in our health concerns because most of us know it personally. Some of us have had the disease ourselves, and others have experienced it through friends or relatives. Particularly unsettling is its seeming randomness: Nothing seems to explain why one woman develops breast cancer and another doesn’t. Granted, family history and certain gene mutations can substantially increase risk. But such factors aren’t involved in most...