Mesothelioma Pain Control With Radiation Therapy

Mesothelioma pain control is essential for being able to live every moment to the fullest. To do that it is essential that your medical team help you manage mesothelioma pain (Pain management is also called palliative care). The goal of mesothelioma pain control is simply to relieve pain, reduce symptoms and optimize the quality of life. As the illness progresses, pain may unfortunately increase and may not respond to the usual pain medications. An alternative to consider with your physician is radiation therapy.

Why Mesothelioma Pain Control Works With Radiation Therapy

Radiation therapy uses X-rays to destroy cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation damages the genetic material inside the cells in the area being treated. This makes it impossible for the cells to continue to grow. Radiation can damage normal cells as well as cancer cells, but the normal cells repair themselves. The cancer cells do not.

Radiation can help with mesothelioma pain control by destroying a growing tumor that is invading or interfering with normal tissue. Pain results when a tumor presses on bones, nerves, or other organs and destroying the tumor with radiation can relieve this pain. This may be done with radiation to part of the body or, in rare cases, with radiation to the whole body. Another method uses injections with radioactive medicine. Often only a single treatment is needed to relieve pain.

Possible Side Effects of Radiation for Mesothelioma Pain Control

While mesothelioma pain control is an important goal, the possible side effects common to radiation therapy need to be anticipated. These side effects usually go away after radiation therapy is over and in some instances, can be minimized with medication.

Side effects may include:

    Tiredness
    Loss of hair near a treated area
    Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea
    Appetite loss
    Reddened or darkened skin in the area exposed to a beam of radiation
    Sore throat (with neck or chest radiation)

Mesothelioma Pain Control with Two Types of Radiation Therapy

Mesothelioma pain control is treated with either of two types of radiation therapy:

    External radiation beam therapy
    Internal radiation therapy with radioactive injections

External radiation therapy is the most common type of radiation treatment. The radiation beam is directed at the area affected by mesothelioma from outside the body. It is similar to having an X-ray taken. You may have a single treatment or a series of daily treatment sessions every one to two weeks.

You can’t feel the radiotherapy. It doesn’t hurt but you may find it uncomfortable to lie in one position for the duration of the treatment. You can ask your doctor or nurse if you can take a pain reliever half an hour before your appointment if you think it might help.

Internal radiation therapy may be suggested by your oncologist. This involves an injection of a very small amount of radioactive material. The treatment is targeted to where you need it most. It is only a small amount but can work well for mesothelioma pain control.

How well does radiation therapy control mesothelioma pain?

Mesothelioma pain control with radiation therapy generally achieves good results. It may take several weeks to work fully.

Some studies report that about 3 out of 10 people (30%) will have no pain within a month of radiotherapy treatment. For at least another 4 out of 10 (40%) people, the treatment reduces the pain by half. That means about 7 out of 10 people (70%) experience anywhere from no pain to half as much pain after radiotherapy treatment.

It typically takes between one and four weeks for radiation therapy to start to reduce pain. The pain relief may last for up to 18 months.

You will need to keep taking pain relief medication at first. But within a few weeks, you may be able to cut down on the amount of pain medication you take. Ask your doctor or nurse about how to safely reduce your pain medication as the radiotherapy treatment results take effect.

If your first course of mesothelioma pain control radiation therapy doesn’t work well, your doctor may recommend that you have a second course. You may also have a second course if the pain gets better, but then comes back again.

source: mesotheliomacircle.org

Mesothelioma Research Points to Possible New Treatment

The hope of discovering a new effective mesothelioma treatment is the main reason that our sponsor’s philanthropic foundation funds mesothelioma research at leading universities. Mesothelioma research is complex and intricate with many small steps needed along the way. So it was very exciting when Kazan Law’s foundation received news that research they’d helped fund has made a key step in the path to mesothelioma treatment.

They recently were informed that the Mesothelioma Program at the University of Chicago Medicine co-published results of a successful new experiment in PLOS ONE: a peer-reviewed, open-access online scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science.

In a new experimental mesothelioma treatment approach, instead of just zapping malignant pleural mesothelioma cells, the treatment also targets a genetic cell growth protein that helps these cells proliferate. It is like when you want to get rid of mosquitoes at your house, you not only spray the mosquitoes but you also eliminate any standing water that gives them a place to breed.

The cell growth factor that the research focused on is called MET. It is essential for the healthy development of babies in the womb and for wound healing. But when it gets activated by cancer, it triggers tumor growth, spurs the formation of blood vessels that supply tumors with nutrients and helps cancer spread throughout the body

Using preserved mesothelioma cells and laboratory mice, the researchers found that using a new drug designed to inhibit MET and its helpers in combination with standard mesothelioma treatment medication was effective.

“These results suggest that the combined use of this small molecule inhibitor is far more effective than the use of single drugs in suppressing malignant mesothelioma tumor growth and motility,” the researchers state in their official mesothelioma research report.

In a recent letter to Kazan Law to highlight this and other new University of Chicago mesothelioma research projects, Callie Johnston, director of the medical school’s donation program, said, “These research projects, which study new potential targets for mesothelioma therapy, were both started with seed funding from philanthropic partners, including you.”

“On behalf of the Mesothelioma Program at the University of Chicago Medicine, I want to thank you for your generous partnership,” Johnston said in her letter to Kazan Law. “Thanks to supporters like you, our investigators are advancing mesothelioma research and improving therapeutic and preventative strategies to treat the patients for whom we all care so deeply.”

source: mesotheliomacircle.org

Oral contraceptives are a good option for women’s acne – study

NEW YORK - Birth control pills seem to work as well as antibiotics for long-term treatment of acne in women, according to a new review of past clinical trials.

After six months, both treatments reduced acne by just over 50 percent, prompting dermatologists to call the Pill a good alternative for some women and a means of avoiding the drawbacks of stronger oral acne medications or long-term antibiotic use.

Past research has shown that both antibiotics and birth control pills can improve acne, but the new review compared the two options side-by-side and found antibiotics worked better after three months, but after six months of use, results were about equal.

“Oral contraceptives (OCPs) take longer to work because they have a different mechanism of action,” said Dr. Kelly H. Tyler, who was not involved in the new review.

“Antibiotics have anti-inflammatory properties, and OCPs do not have those same properties, so the reduction in acne is going to be more gradual and less dramatic in the beginning,” said Tyler, a dermatologist at Ohio State University in Columbus.

Antibiotics help to reduce inflammation of existing acne, whereas oral contraceptives reduce free or circulating androgens, lowering production of the oily sebum that plugs pores, which lowers the risk of new acne developing, she told Reuters Health by email.

The review included 32 randomized controlled trials of antibiotics or oral contraceptives for treating acne. In general, after three months of treatment, antibiotics had reduced the number of whiteheads or cysts by 48 percent, compared to 37 percent with oral contraceptives.

But by six months, oral contraceptives had caught up, reducing acne by 55 percent, compared to 53 percent with antibiotics, according to the results published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

The authors caution that the antibiotics trials they analyzed included both men and women, which interferes with the comparison to the contraceptive trial results because hormones do play such an important role in acne.

Nonetheless, they write, the findings suggest birth control pills “may have a more important first-line preventive role in chronic acne than previously accepted.”

Dr. Steven R. Feldman, a dermatologist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, agreed. “This confirms that birth control pills are a good solid treatment for acne, and they’re probably underutilized,” he told Reuters Health.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved many birth control medications for treating acne as well as preventing pregnancy, so there should be no barrier to prescribing them, but dermatologists may still be reluctant, said Feldman, who was not involved in the new study.

Dermatologists often recommend low-dose hormonal birth control as an option for female patients, but don’t actually write a prescription for it, he told Reuters Health. Then the patient returns to her primary care doctor, who may write the prescription, and when the acne clears up the patient does not return to the dermatologist.

If the hormonal option does not work, the patient does return to the dermatologist, which gives dermatologists a biased impression of how effective the drugs are, he said.

“Given the desire to minimize antibiotic resistance and exposure, hormonal birth control could be a good alternative,” Feldman said.

Both antibiotics and birth control can interfere with other medications, and both options have side effects, said Dr. Robert Dellavalle, chief of the dermatology service at the Denver VA Medical Center.

“Severe allergic reactions are very rare but more common with antibiotics,” he told Reuters Health by email. “Blood clots are more common with oral contraceptives.”

According to the review, oral contraceptives are more effective than he had previously assumed, said Dellavalle, who was not involved in the study.

Even if a woman’s employer refuses to reimburse for birth control, they would be required to reimburse for the same hormonal medication prescribed for acne rather than for preventing pregnancy, Feldman said.

“They may or may not cover birth control, but they do cover treatment for acne,” he said. “There should be no issue.”

“Even if you got a denial from your insurer, probably a quick appeal letter might well get that corrected,” he said.

For women with severe acne, a combination of hormonal birth control and antibiotics may lessen symptoms and remove the need for Isotretinoin, a much stronger oral acne medicine that carries a serious risk of birth defects, Feldman said.

Women using Isotretinoin are required to avoid pregnancy because the drug has been shown to be teratogenic, meaning it causes serious abnormalities in a developing fetus.

Feldman said he does not prescribe medications that are so “horribly teratogenic” to women of childbearing age if there is another option that may work. He prescribes hormonal birth control first, to see if it will help clear up the skin and prevent pregnancy in the coming weeks and months. Only if acne is a persistent problem, then he may prescribe the stronger medication as well.

Men do not have to worry about potential birth defects, Feldman noted. “For severe acne in men with scarring, you might even go to Isotretinoin first.” — Reuters

source: gmanetwork.com