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Genetic abnormalities — missing DNA or duplicate DNA — that fuel the growth of one type of cancer may actually be at work in several others, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The finding, based on a large-scale study of the genetic make-up of 26 different types of cancers, suggests cancer has less to do with where in the body it occurs, and more to do with the genetic changes that cause it to grow.

“A lot of the events that cause cancer are common between cancers of different tissue types,” said Matthew Meyerson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, whose study appears in the journal Nature.

“You have breast cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the kidney — many of the events that cause these cancers are going to be the same,” Meyerson said in a telephone interview.

“What that means for treatment is that many treatments may be used across many different kinds of cancers.”

The finding is based on an effort started in 2004 to systematically map the genetic changes across different types of cancers.

The team focused on specific aberrations in the genetic code known as somatic copy-number alterations, in which segments of a tumor’s genome contain extra copies of a piece of DNA or lack the segment altogether.

For the study, the team collected more than 2,500 cancer specimens representing more than 24 cancer types, including lung, prostate, breast, ovarian, colon, esophageal, liver, brain and blood cancers.

They combined this with publicly available data from another 600 tumor samples.

“What we’re seeing here is that the copy number events that are happening in some of one cancer type are happening in some of another cancer type,” Meyerson said.

Out of 17 different types of cancer, they found that most copy number changes — either extra or missing DNA — were present in more than one type.

For drug companies, Meyerson said the finding suggests that rather than developing drugs to treat a specific type of cancer, companies may need to focus on drugs that target genetic changes that drive cancer growth.

“In principle, there could be broader drugs that could be effective against many cancers,” he said.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Regular use of ibuprofen, a common anti-inflammatory drug, significantly lowers the risk for developing Parkinson’s disease, Harvard researchers report.

People who took three or more tablets a week showed a 40 percent lower risk than those who didn’t take the common pain reliever, their study found.

Study author Dr. Xiang Gao, an instructor and epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the findings are important for anyone at increased risk for Parkinson’s because most people with the disease eventually become severely disabled.

“There is thus a need for better preventive interventions,” Gao said. “In this context, our findings regarding the potential neuroprotective effect of ibuprofen, one of the most commonly used analgesics, on Parkinson’s disease may have important public health and clinical implications.”

Parkinson’s is a disease that affects nerve cells in the brain that control the movement of muscles. It affects an estimated 1 million people in the United States, men far more often than women. The exact cause is unknown, but experts believe it’s a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Gao said that though the drug levodopa is the current standard treatment for Parkinson’s, much more is needed. He is scheduled to present the findings in Toronto at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in April.

The findings came from an analysis of data on 136,474 people who did not have Parkinson’s at the start of the study. In a six-year span, 293 were diagnosed with the disease. Those who took the largest doses of ibuprofen were less likely to have developed Parkinson’s than were those who took smaller amounts of the drug, the study found.

No other pain reliever was found to lower the risk for Parkinson’s.

Dr. Michele Tagliati, an associate professor of neurology and director of the Parkinson’s Disease Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, described the results as somewhat surprising and said they emphasized the need for further study.

“It’s intriguing [that the finding applied to] just ibuprofen and not aspirin or acetaminophen or other commonly prescribed medications for inflammation because it implies something more specific to ibuprofen that should be investigated,” Tagliati said. “So it narrows the focus to a subgroup of [anti-inflammatory drugs].”

Tagliati called the study “eye-opening.” Parkinson’s is not considered an inflammatory disease, he said, adding: “We might be missing something. There is more work to be done.”

But in the meantime, Tagliati said, he would “definitely discuss ibuprofen use” with his patients because, if it works to protect against the disease, it could very well benefit those who already have it.

He cautioned that persistent use of ibuprofen can lead to gastritis, or inflammation of the stomach lining, but said that, in comparison, “there is very little to lose when measuring its side effects against the effects of Parkinson’s,” which can include loss of balance, stiffness, hallucinations and dementia.

SOURCES: Xiang Gao, M.D., Ph.D., instructor, medicine, and associate epidemiologist, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston; Michele Tagliati, M.D., associate professor, neurology and director, Parkinson’s Disease Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City

Surging use of improved medical technology, including new drugs, is driving up life expectancy for Americans and driving down rates of major killers such as heart disease and cancer, a new national health report finds.

At the same time, some things about the nation’s health that experts hoped were changing actually did not, the report found, and the use and misuse of medical technology may also be a factor behind the ever-increasing cost of health care.

The findings are included in a report, entitled “Health, United States, 2009,” issued Wednesday by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although Americans are living longer than ever before — 77.9 years on average — “a lot of things that should have been changing aren’t really changing that much,” said Amy B. Bernstein, chief of the Analytic Studies Branch in the Office of Analysis and Epidemiology at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics.

“Cigarette smoking has pretty much leveled off,” she said. “There is still 20 percent of the population that smokes; that’s bad. People are not exercising more. Obesity is not decreasing.”

Obesity has doubled over the past three decades, from 15 percent of adults in 1976 to 35 percent by 2006, according to the report. As of 2006, 15 to 18 percent of school-age children and adolescents were overweight.

These are things that should be changing and need to be worked on, Bernstein said.

The annual report on the nation’s health also found that:
Heart disease, cancer and stroke, in that order, remain the three leading causes of death in the United States, although deaths attributed to all three have declined.
About 10 percent of Americans rate their health as only “fair or poor,” an increase since the last report.
Americans’ use of medications has tripled, with 47 percent of U.S. residents now taking at least one prescription drug. Half of adults older than 45 take diabetes medications, and 10 times as many people took cholesterol-lowering drugs from 2003 to 2006 as took the drugs from 1988 to 1994.
More Americans are going without health insurance, with almost 8 percent of those aged 18 to 64 uninsured, according to the report, based on data collected in 2007, before the worst of the current economic crunch set in.

Nonetheless, Americans are living longer, which might be due in large part to the ever-increasing use of medical technology.

“Technology is really what’s driving our medical care system,” Bernstein said. The report found, for instance, that the rate of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and computed and positron emission tomography (CT/PET) scans tripled from 1996 to 2007.

Knee replacements, the report found, increased 70 percent in the past decade. And organ transplants also became more common. The number of kidney transplants per 1 million people increased 31 percent, for example, and the number of liver transplants increased 42 percent.

But, all of this technology comes at a price, Bernstein said. “Once a technology is introduced, it seems to have a life of its own,” she said. “Once you start using it, it is hard to stop using it — even if there are reasons that you should.”

As an example, she cited the use of drug-eluting stents, which were highly touted as better than bare-metal stents, used to keep arteries open. However, Bernstein said, new research indicates that they may not benefit everyone.

“There is no doubt that technology can improve life and save life,” she said. “But the question is: ‘Do you need to do everything to everyone?’”

The increased use of technology also raises ethical questions, Bernstein said. For example, the report found a dramatic increase in the use of mechanical ventilation to keep people alive.

“There is no way we can say it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” she said. “It’s clearly a good thing for the people it saved. The question then is: ‘Is it a good thing for the people who aren’t saved?’”

Bernstein said she believes that the use of technology will continue to increase.

That, however, can have a downside, explained Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale School of Public Health.

“Age-adjusted mortality rates in the U.S. have been falling steadily over recent years, and life expectancy has been increasing. Advances in medical technology and pharmacotherapy are important reasons for these favorable trends,” Katz said.

“But the rise in use of high-tech scans, such as MRI and PET, and the rise in related health-care costs far exceed any measurable health benefits that may be related,” he noted.

“In other words, the bucks are clearly adding up a lot faster than the bang,” Katz said.

Compounding this concern, he said, is the fact that though medical technology can help stave off death, it does far less to preserve or establish vitality.

“Trends for death rates are favorable, while disability trends are neutral, and trends for the total population burden of obesity and chronic disease are decidedly adverse,” Katz said. “The more societal resources we allocate to medical technology, the less we may devote to supporting the lifestyle practices that can actually build health at its origins.”

In an age of evidence-based medicine and unsustainable health-care costs, Katz said, advanced medical technology cannot be “toys with which we play just because we have them.”