Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
---

Title: The Medical Revolutions That Prevented Millions of Cancer Deaths

Link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/06/09/0...

Vox publishes a story about "the quiet revolutions that have prevented
millions of cancer deaths.... "The age-adjusted death rate in the US for
cancer has declined by about a third since 1991, meaning people of a given
age have about a third lower risk of dying from cancer than people of the
same age more than three decades ago... " The dramatic bend in the curve of
cancer deaths didn't happen by accident - it's the compound interest of three
revolutions. While anti-smoking policy has been the single biggest lifesaver,
other interventions have helped reduce people's cancer risk. One of the
biggest successes is the HPV vaccine. A study last year found that death
rates of cervical cancer - which can be caused by HPV infections - in US
women ages 20-39 had dropped 62 percent from 2012 to 2021, thanks largely to
the spread of the vaccine. Other cancers have been linked to infections, and
there is strong research indicating that vaccination can have positive
effects on reducing cancer incidence. The next revolution is better and
earlier screening. It's generally true that the earlier cancer is caught, the
better the chances of survival... According to one study, incidences of late-
stage colorectal cancer in Americans over 50 declined by a third between 2000
and 2010 in large part because rates of colonoscopies almost tripled in that
same time period. And newer screening methods, often employing AI or using
blood-based tests, could make preliminary screening simpler, less invasive
and therefore more readily available. If 20th-century screening was about
finding physical evidence of something wrong - the lump in the breast - 21st-
century screening aims to find cancer before symptoms even arise. Most
exciting of all are frontier developments in treating cancer... From drugs
like lenalidomide and bortezomib in the 2000s, which helped double median
myeloma survival, to the spread of monoclonal antibodies, real breakthroughs
in treatments have meaningfully extended people's lives - not just by months,
but years. Perhaps the most promising development is CAR-T therapy, a form of
immunotherapy. Rather than attempting to kill the cancer directly,
immunotherapies turn a patient's own T-cells into guided missiles. In a
recent study of 97 patients with multiple myeloma, many of whom were facing
hospice care, a third of those who received CAR-T therapy had no detectable
cancer five years later. It was the kind of result that doctors rarely see.
The article begins with some recent quotes from Jon Gluck, who was told after
a cancer diagnosis that he had as little as 18 months left to live - 22 years
ago...

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528