Questions and Answers on the New Study Linking Cellphones and Cancer in Rats The NY times got it correct. A lot of other news outlets were reporting that cell phones cause cancer, based on prelimineray results of a study that found 2% of male rats and 0% of female rats exposed to a lot of cell phone radiation developed brain tumors. None of the rats in the control group developed tumors, but in the past, historically with this line of rats, 2% would be expected to develop brain tumors. That none did in the control group is a simple statistical fluke - it can easily happen that a few less or more than expected develop tumors. And that is what happened in the treatment group - the expected 2% of males developed it but the females didn't.
The Times pointed out that the incidence of brain tumors in the USA has not gone up over the last 20 years, during a time when cell phone use has grown exponentially.
My thoughts - there is no reason to give up your cell phones.
Rapid regression of glioblastoma following carmustine wafer implantation: A case report. You can never make decisions based on individual case reports but they are nice to see. Gliadel has been neglected by some medical centers. On average, it adds a little extra time before the tumor progresses, sometimes allowing time for other treatments to have a chance at working. It was never meant to be a cure by itself. We do not have enough patients in our brain tumor virtual trial (virtualtrials.com) to make a statistically significant statement about it, but taking a look at just our long term (over 5 year) GBM survivors, 5 out of the 21 (24%) have used Gliadel as part of the plan. Looking at all GBM patients, 36 out of 469 (8%) have used Gliadel. To me this means that if Gliadel had no effect, you would expect the same % of patients who used it as the % of long term survivors who use it. But we see a tripling of the %, which means Gliadel does have a big increase (possibly tripling) in the chances of becoming a long term survivor, and it should be studied more in depth.
The earlier the better? Bevacizumab in the treatment of recurrent MGMT-non-methylated glioblastoma. These are puzzling results. Avastin increased the time to progression by over 100% compared to chemotherapy, but the overall survival time was about 30% less. This doesn't make sense. This brings up the question of quality vs quantity of life. Patients did well for twice as long using Avastin, but died sooner. What is worth more? I would like to find out why the people in the Avastin group didn't live as long as those in the chemotherapy group. I wonder if the chemotherapy group used Avastin after recurrence?
Scientists just discovered we've been looking at cancer growth all wrong.
This could change everything. This is still preliminary work, but raises an important point: that we should recheck everything that we thought we knew about these tumors. The technology we have now is amazing compared to what was available in the 1950s when it was decided that brain tumors use glucose as the main energy source. This article points out that by culturing the tumor cells in blood, you change the tumor cells to use what is most common in the blood, which is different than what is in the brain. On the other hand, they also mention that PET scans show where glucose is being used - and the tumors do use a lot more glucose than non tumor brain.
