My Medical Choice

By ANGELINA JOLIE
Published: May 14, 2013

Loren Capelli

MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

We often speak of “Mommy’s mommy,” and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. . . .

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html?smid=pl-share

Angelina talks to Good Morning America about her next life-saving operation: removing her ovaries>>

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/angelina-jolie-double-mastectomy-actress-remove-ovaries-double-19182890

NEW ORLEANS -- Offering women bilateral salpingectomy [fallopian tube removal] with preservation of ovaries as part of hysterectomy may reduce their risk of developing adnexal masses, researchers reported here.

In a single center study, the bilateral salpingectomy rates rose from 2.9% in 2009 and 2010, to 26% in 2011, when the center began offering bilateral salpingectomy to all women undergoing hysterectomy with ovary preservation. The salpingectomy rate jumped to 73% in the first 6 months of 2012, Susan K. Park, MD, of Olive View-UCLA Medical Center and colleagues, reported at the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists meeting.

Park and colleagues said the center began offering salpingectomy in response to research that identified the fallopian tubes as a common site of pelvic carcinoma development without regard to BRCA status.

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Report from the Society of Gynecologic Oncology 2013 Annual Meeting

At this year’s Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting, numerous presentations and posters explored issues related to ovarian cancer, some of which are summarized below.

This year’s SGO Annual Meeting theme, “Embrace the Past, Revolutionize the Future,” was especially fitting given the changing landscape of ovarian cancer treatment. As the Cancer Genome Atlas reveals challenges to heterogeneity and our nation makes changes in the delivery of health care, how we treat ovarian cancer is very much in flux. The SGO is committed to continuing to identify and deliver the best quality health care to gynecologic patients, as well as improving access to care based on National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines and finding solutions to economic, geographic and racial disparities.

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http://www.ovariancancer.org/2013/04/02/report-from-the-society-of-gynecologic-oncology-2013-annual-meeting/

Endometriosis Treatments Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk

Women who had surgery to treat their endometriosis also lowered their risk of developing ovarian cancer. A study of approximately 600 Swedish women found that those who either had one ovary removed or had surgery to remove endometriotic tissue had a 20 to 42 percent lower risk of developing ovarian cancer.

See the abstract here

See an article about the study here

Antidepressant May Help With Chemotherapy Side Effects

A study of 231 cancer patients found that the use of duloxetine (Cymbalta) reduced chemotherapy induce peripheral neuropathy. Patients either recieved Cymbalta or a placebo; in the Cymbalta arm, 59% of patients had an improvement in symptoms, whereas in the placebo arm only 38% of patients had an improvement in symptoms.

The abstract is available here

New Type of Experimental Drug Active in Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancers

Apr. 6, 2013 undefined The antibody-drug conjugate DMUC5754A, a novel member of a relatively new class of drugs, showed activity in women with ovarian cancer, even those with hard-to-treat, platinum-resistant disease, in a phase I trial presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, held in Washington, D.C., April 6-10. Those women with the highest expression of the drug's target, MUC16, gained the most benefit from treatment, which may help researchers predict which patients will benefit from treatment.

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Two-Step Immunotherapy Attacks Advanced Ovarian Cancer, Penn Medicine Researchers Report

Personalized Vaccine Made from Patients' Own Tumors Spurs Immune System

PHILADELPHIA
Most ovarian cancer patients are diagnosed with late stage disease that is unresponsive to existing therapies. In a new study, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine show that a two-step personalized immunotherapy treatment undefined a dendritic cell vaccine using patients’ own tumor followed by adoptive T cell therapy undefined triggers anti-tumor immune responses in these type of patients. Four of the six patients treated in the trial responded to the therapy, the investigators report this month in OncoImmunology. . . .

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http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_Releases/2013/01/kandalaft/

Preclinical study identifies 'master' proto-oncogene that regulates stress-induced ovarian cancer metastasis

Beta blockers inhibit cancer progression, decrease mortality

MD Anderson News Release 01/29/13

Anil K. Sood, M.D.

Scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered the signaling pathway whereby a master regulator of cancer cell proteins - known as Src - leads to ovarian cancer progression when exposed to stress hormones. The researchers report in the current issue of Nature Communications that beta blocker drugs mitigate this effect and reduce cancer deaths by an average of 17 percent . . .

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http://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/news-releases/2013/preclinical-study-identifies-master-proto-oncogene-that-regulates-stress-induced-ovarian-cancer-metastasis.html