#21

Chinese paper from last year (“Hebei Province Hospital of Chinese Medicine”, so not the best university out there…): Impacts of ezetimibe on risks of various types of cancers: a meta-analysis and systematic review 2023

Nine trials enrolling 35 222 patients were included in the analyses. Compared with the control group, ezetimibe increased the number of new intestine cancer patients [relative risk (RR), 1.30; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.02–1.67; P = 0.03] and had a trend to increase the number of new breast cancer patients (RR, 1.39; 95% CI, 0.98–1.98; P = 0.07). There was no significant difference in new hepatobiliary cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer or cancer of other sites. Ezetimibe did not significantly increase the risk of new cancer in total (RR, 1.03; 95% CI, 0.96–1.11; P = 0.38), cancer-related death (RR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.98–1.26; P = 0.10) or cancer events (RR, 1.04; 95% CI, 0.97–1.12; P = 0.30). In terms of lipid-lowering effect, ezetimibe significantly reduced total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol.

Very bad if true. Any thoughts on this @Neo?

Also: does “intestine cancer” here refer to colorectal cancer (aka bowel or colon cancer) and/or small intestine cancer?

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#22

Maybe this whole model, where healthy people take medications intended for diseases, is flawed. Perhaps all medications have some drawbacks, meaning they increase the risk of some cancer or other illness. Now, if you’re healthy and don’t know your personal genetic risk factors, you might do more harm than good. The situation is much more clear when it’s known that there’s a significantly high risk of a certain disease. This is just a thought.

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#23

What do you call “healthy” and “disease” here? I mean: from which levels of ApoB (or whatever other marker) do you consider someone to have a “disease” and not being “healthy”?

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#24

I mean the actual clinical recommendations for the use of medications.The comment was made on a general level, not specifically directed at Ezetimibe. I use it myself, but on the other hand, I have a known elevated genetic risk for cardiovascular diseases.

I use few medications for which there are no clinical indications, but I have often thought about what I wrote.

#25

Yes, I think they are referring to colon cancer. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to screen for.

2 Likes
#26

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全文：

New generation of cancer-preventing vaccines could wipe out tumors before they form

Shots enter early clinical trials for healthy people at high risk for disease

When Dave Dubin learned at age 29 that he had colon cancer, it wasn’t a big surprise. His grandfather and father had both survived the disease. “It was almost the Dubin way, and we just went on,” Dubin says. He had surgery and chemotherapy, but his cancer came back 10 years later. Genetic testing finally found an explanation for his family’s trials: a mutation in a DNA repair gene that lets genetic errors pile up in dividing cells. The disease, Lynch syndrome, comes with up to a 70% lifetime risk of cancer.

Dubin, 55, gets annual colonoscopies, endoscopies, and imaging scans, which caught a third cancer, in his kidney. His eldest son, Zach Dubin, 26, inherited the DNA repair mutation and also regularly gets checked for cancer. “It’s no fun. Nobody enjoys it,” Dave Dubin says—not the 2-day colonoscopy prep and procedure, nor the worrying about possible tumors. The disease also turned him into an activist. He and his family in Haworth, New Jersey, launched a nonprofit, AliveAndKickn, to promote research and awareness of Lynch syndrome, which affects an estimated 1.1 million people in the United States.

…

Vaccines to prevent certain types of cancer already exist. They target viruses: hepatitis B virus, which can trigger liver cancer, and human papillomavirus, which causes cervical and some other cancers. But most cancers are not caused by viruses. The Lynch vaccine trial will be one of the first clinical tests of a vaccine to prevent nonviral cancers.

The idea is to deliver into the body bits of proteins, or antigens, from cancer cells to stimulate the immune system to attack any incipient tumors. The concept isn’t new, and it has faced skepticism.

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-generation-cancer-preventing-vaccines-wipe-tumors-form

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#27

lung-cancer-bryant-lin-copy-1-2

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#28

Oropharyngeal cancers, which occur in the throat and mouth, have reached epidemic levels in some parts of the world, including the US and Europe, and men are much more likely to be diagnosed as women, even if they don’t have other risk factors for cancer, like smoking or drinking.

The new evidence from the US, Brazil, and Mexico suggests a preventable infection is contributing to that surge.

Among 3,137 healthy men, aged 18 to 70, researchers found the risk of acquiring a new, cancer-causing strain of HPV “did not differ by age”. In other words, men were susceptible to the infection throughout their lifetime, not just in their youth.

HPV can be sexually transmitted, and while not all strains of the virus cause cancer, strains HPV-16 and HPV-18 are present in up to 90 percent of HPV-associated oral cancer cases.

The good news is that there’s a vaccine, and it protects against both of those strains.

The bad news is that young males are receiving the HPV vaccine at much lower rates than young females, which could explain why oropharyngeal cancers are continuing to rise, even while cervical cancer cases plummet.

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#29

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Open Access Paper:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35226

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#30

Alas, I’m seeing disappointingly small effect sizes, where the HRs are statistically significant (90% of cancer types).

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#31

Yes, nothing is clinically significant. But at least it shows that omega 3 supplementation is probably safe from a cancer point of view.

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#32

A friend of a friend just got this type of nasopharyngeal cancer. He’s a young lad in his 20s. He’s had to have part of his vocal chords removed and now sounds like a 50 year old chain-smoker. The cancer still isn’t completely treated.

All the more reason to get this vaccine.

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#33

My famous cousin got this in his 70’s and the operation drastically changed his voice and appearance.

It likely was contracted decades earlier as a young man during the promiscuous times of the psychedelic era.

1 Like
#34

Several factors are probably behind this increase in mouth cancer cases. Changing lifestyle habits, particularly those related to known risk factors, play a significant role.

Tobacco use, including smoking and chewing tobacco, remains a primary cause, with around two-thirds of cases directly linked to smoking. Excessive alcohol consumption is another major contributor, responsible for about one-third of all mouth cancers.

The combined effects of heavy drinking and smoking can increase the risk by a staggering 30 times.

Additionally, the human papillomavirus (HPV) has emerged as an increasingly important risk factor, particularly for oropharyngeal cancers, a type of mouth cancer affecting the throat. Oral HPV is thought to mainly spread through oral sex.

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#35

Get the vaccine! (second dose in December for me…)

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#36

I find this interesting as I know people who have had a stroke and then get diagnosed with cancer a few years later…

Epigenetic age and long-term cancer risk following a stroke

Background

The association between increased cancer risk following a cerebrovascular event (CVE) has been previously reported. We hypothesize that biological age (B-age) acceleration is involved in this association. Our study aims to examine B-age as a novel contributing factor to cancer development post-CVE.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that epigenetic accelerated aging, as indicated by Hannum’s EEAA, may play a significant role in the increased cancer risk observed in CVE survivors.

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Cumulative incidence of cancer in the cohort. Values represent the number of patients at risk and the cumulative number of events. A shows the cumulative incidence function in the whole sample, while in B we stratified the incidence by tertile-split Hannum extrinsic epigenetic age acceleration. Time is represented in years. T1, first tertile; T2, second tertile; T3, third tertile

Open Access Paper:

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#37

Michael Douglas?!?!?

#38

If that’s him I was going to say I loved him in Apocalypse Now, then I realized that’s Martin Sheen.

#39

I got the HPV vaccine this year after specifically requesting it from my PCP. Even though I’m too old to qualify for it, it still could reduce my risk of cancer so I figured I had nothing to lose! My doc agreed and my insurance even paid for it.

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#40

Yet another reason to split my ezetimibe pills in half?

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