Pink Lid Parade is on the way

October is coming quickly and once again we'll see the pundits roll out the Pink Parade to help you believe you are really contributing to the "cure". Of course you should know by now this is just a campaign to allow scientists to continue chasing down paths that fail to offer a cure.

To help alert you to important issues in women's health, breast health and options for cancer, related articles till be tagged with the pink lid.

Remember, cures and better care along with better screening is already available, you just aren't getting the message from standard venues.


Breast cancer drugs raise blood clot risk

PORTLAND, Ore., Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Drugs used to lower the risk of breast cancer in women have the side effect of increasing the likelihood of blood clots, researchers in Oregon say.

The study, published in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, examined the effects of tamoxifen, raloxifene and tibolone reduce the risk of invasive breast cancer by 30 percent to 68 percent. But it also found tamoxifen and raloxifene increase the chance of blood clots by 60 percent to 90 percent, and that tiboline, which is not on the U.S. market, is associated with strokes in women over 70.

"They did differ on the harm side. That's important to know," said Dr. Heidi D. Nelson, a research professor at Oregon Health & Science University who was the lead author.

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Tumors fueled, in part, by free radicals

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Sept. 14 (UPI) -- The growth of cancerous tumors is fueled, in part, by the buildup of free radicals, or oxygen-containing molecules, U.S. researchers say.

Chemical biologist Kate Carroll of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and colleagues say their method monitors an early tip-off of oxidative stress -- sulfenic acid in proteins produced when the oxidant hydrogen peroxide reacts with the protein building block cysteine.

The researchers managed to use a chemical probe to "trap" the small, transient, hard-to-detect sulfenic acid and tag it for recognition with a fluorescence microscope in a panel of breast cancer cell lines.

"For each line, we saw a very distinct pattern of sulfenic acid modifications, indicating different oxidative stress levels and hinting at differences in the underlying molecular events associated with tumor growth," Carroll, the study leader, said in a statement.

"Whether the patterns we see will correlate with response to anti-oxidant treatment or other therapies that modulate oxidative stress level remains to be seen, but now we at least have a way to investigate that question."

The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.