SNIPPETS

In North Wales

Obviously we had been feasting on too many Welch pastries

I have lost that hat, but not that stomach

 

Snippets of fact observed while whipping through a week’s worth of Google Alerts on ovarian cancer, trying to get caught up:

Intraperitoneal chemotherapy now is the treatment of choice for ovarian cancer, and has been for some time.  (Linda wasn’t offered it.  I sometimes wonder why.)  It involves drilling a hole in your abdomen, inserting the chemo fluid directly into the peritoneal cavity, then sloshing it around by tilting the patient this way and that.  It works, but they don’t know why.  True to the spirit of investigation that I particularly like, they are trying to find out why it beats chemo-in-the-bloodstream.  The answer apparently involves changes in the miRNA and gene  population of the tumor.  Short article, easy going:

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2015/04/19/seeking_new_targets_for_ovarian_cancer_treatment.html

 

A $249 test for the BRCA mutations, plus 17 other mutations known to be involved in ovarian cancer, is about to hit the market – even though the powers that be continue to insist on testing only women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer.  Up theirs, say I.  The test involves saliva - you spit in a bottle and mail it in, I guess.  Here are a couple of links:

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-21/color-genomics-brings-245-breast-cancer-risk-test-kit-to-masses

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/04/22/at-home-saliva-test-gauges-breast-and-ovarian-cancer-risk

Delaying pregnancy until her mid-30s may reduce a woman’s risk of ovarian cancer, although the reason for this seems to be obscure.  I suppose that if the delay involved taking birth control measures that suppressed ovulation  this might be true.  Of course, delaying child birth potentially has several important negative consequences.  The statistics on this study seemed particularly skimpy.  I’ll bet that Dr. Ioannidis would read the report with wrinkled brow (see my blog http://ljbquiltcutie.blogspot.com/2014/04/metrics-scourge-of-sloppy-science.html)

 

The article discussed is the following:

http://www.inquisitr.com/2034690/delaying-pregnancy-until-mid-30s-may-help-prevent-ovarian-cancer-but-decreasing-fertility-complicates-issue/

Somewhere in all this skimming I ran on the statement that the mortality rate for ovarian cancer is not much different than what it was in the 1970s.  That grinding sound you hear derives from the collective teeth of Dr. Saul Rivkin, Dr. (of geology) Myrl Beck, and important published author Clifton Leaf - and no doubt a vast host of others

And, by golly, I’ve found something worth working on, but I will save it for another day.