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CANCER NEWS: Two vaccines against a virus that can cause cervical cancer are being widely used without sufficient evidence about whether they are worth their high cost or whether they will effectively stop women from getting the disease, two articles in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine conclude. Both vaccines target the human [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: The ADEPT software package is not a statistical method in its own right as implied by Gerke and Siedentop (Statist. Med. 2008; DOI: ). ADEPT implements two-parameter CRM models as described in O’Quigley et al. (Biometrics 1990; 46(1):33-48). All of the basic ideas (use of a two-parameter logistic model, use of a [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Partial verification refers to the situation where a subset of patients is not verified by the reference (gold) standard and is excluded from the analysis. If partial verification is present, the observed (naive) measures of accuracy such as sensitivity and specificity are most likely to be biased. Recently, Harel and Zhou showed [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Partial verification refers to the situation where a subset of patients is not verified by the reference (gold) standard and is excluded from the analysis. If partial verification is present, the observed (naive) measures of accuracy such as sensitivity and specificity are most likely to be biased. Recently, Harel and Zhou showed [...]

VIOXX CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT UPDATE:
Partial settlement payments will soon be in the mail to those people who claim that taking Vioxx caused them to suffer heart attacks, the Associated Press is reporting. Vioxx is the pain reliever that was linked to heart failure and has since been removed from the market.  Payments are scheduled to [...]

CANCER NEWS: Background
The observation that angiotensin II is a potent angiogenic and growth factor raises the possibility that blocking its effects could reduce the incidence of cancer. We evaluated associations between use of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and of angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) and keratinocyte cancer incidence in a population at high risk of [...]

CANCER NEWS: Background
The risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) increases with increasing level of hepatitis B virus (HBV) in serum (viral load). However, it is unclear whether genetic characteristics of HBV, including HBV genotype and specific genetic mutations, contribute to the risk of HCC. We examined the HCC risk associated with HBV genotypes and common [...]

CANCER NEWS: Background
The benefit of radical prostate (men’s)ctomy in patients with early prostate (men’s) cancer has been assessed in only one randomized trial. In 2005, we reported that radical prostate (men’s)ctomy improved prostate (men’s) cancer survival compared with watchful waiting after a median of 8.2 years of follow-up. We now report results after 3 [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Interventions targeting the treatment of diabetic complications have not been nearly as successful as initially estimated, despite a marked improvement in therapeutic options for diabetes. The need for understanding why some very promising interventions have failed demands a closer look at the pathomechanisms of the complications. Great strides have been made in [...]

MEDICAL NEWS:
Objective: In severe paracetamol hepatotoxicity, orthotopic liver transplant (OLT) is a standard treatment in patients judged to have a hopeless prognosis. The most commonly used criteria to make this decision are the King’s College Criteria (KCC). We aimed to compare the expected survival for patients who meet the KCC and do not receive transplant [...]

CANCER NEWS:
There is limited prognostic information to identify breast (women’s) cancer patients who are at risk for late recurrences after adjuvant or neoadjuvant systemic therapy (AST). We evaluated the residual risk of recurrence and prognostic factors of 2838 patients with stage I–III breast (women’s) cancer who were treated with AST between January 1, 1985, and [...]

CANCER NEWS: TORONTO — World’s largest landmark study of its kind presented first in Canada - An international study published in the August issue of the European Urology journal and presented first in Canada at the Canadian Urology Association’s annual meeting in June demonstrates that Levitra(R) (vardenafil HCI), taken on-demand, is highly effective in [...]