WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Transcendental meditation reduces stress and improves the emotional and mental well-being of breast cancer patients, new study findings suggest.

The two-year trial included 130 patients at Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago, aged 55 and older, randomly assigned to either a transcendental meditation group or to a usual care control group. Quality of life was assessed every six months.

"Emotional and psychosocial stress contribute to the onset and progression of breast cancer and cancer mortality," study author Sanford Nidich, senior researcher at the Institute for Natural Medicine and Prevention at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, said in a news release from Saint Joseph Hospital.

"The transcendental meditation technique reduces stress and improves emotional well-being and mental health in older breast cancer patients. The women in the study found their meditation practice easy to do at home and reported significant benefits in their overall quality of life," Nidich added.

"It is wonderful that physicians now have a range of interventions to use, including transcendental meditation, to benefit their patients with cancer. I believe this approach should be appreciated and utilized more widely," study co-author Dr. Rhoda Pomerantz, chief of gerontology at Saint Joseph Hospital, said in the release.

The study, published in a recent issue of the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies, received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about meditation.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 28 (HealthDay News) -- For men with testicular cancer, survival comes at a price: New research suggests that those who recover from the disease face higher risks of long-term illness unrelated to tumors.

"Current patients with testicular cancer should be informed about the risk of short-term and particularly long-term side effects of their highly effective treatment," said Sophie D. Fossa, a professor at the University of Oslo in Norway and lead author of a study in the November issue of the journal BJUI.

The study found that one in four survivors will develop long-term neurological, hearing and circulatory problems. They are also nearly twice as likely to develop another form of cancer.

But there's good news, too. As many as four out of five survivors who try to become fathers are successful, the study authors noted.

"Patients can suffer considerable mental distress after having one testicle removed due to cancer, but this gradually decreases with treatment," Fossa said. "Gastrointestinal side effects are common during both chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and chemotherapy carries added risks like infections and blood clots. Long-term problems include secondary cancers, heart problems, and conditions related to lower hormone levels."

The researchers reviewed 40 studies published between 1990 and 2008. Among the findings:

• The drug bleomycin can cause lung problems if used before some types of surgery, especially in men 40 and older.
• Cisplatin-based chemotherapy can damage nerves in many patients, and one in five survivors suffers from hearing loss and tinnitus, also known as ringing in the ears.
• The avoidance of mediastinal radiotherapy has reduced the likelihood of long-lasting heart problems. But infra-diaphragmatic radiotherapy boosts death rates slightly.

"It is important to focus on reducing risks through healthy lifestyle choices and consider important issues like preserving future fertility," Fossa said. "We would also like to see screening guidelines developed to ensure that the long-term side effects are diagnosed and treated as early as possible."

More information

Learn more about testicular cancer from the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

TUESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- New research suggests that alcohol may boost the progression of cancer by stimulating a pathway inside cells.

The findings could have meaning for the prevention and treatment of cancer, which has been linked to alcohol use in some cases. In particular, scientists suspect that alcohol is connected to colon and breast cancer, although it's not known exactly how.

A new study, published online in advance of the January 2010 issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, says that a pathway known as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) could play a role in the process in which cancer cells affected by alcohol grow and spread.

"Alcohol consumption is known to increase the risk of several cancers, including cancers of the oral cavity, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and, in women, the breast," study co-author Christopher B. Forsyth, an assistant professor of medicine and biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center, said in a news release from Rush. "We also suspect an association with cancers of the pancreas and lung. However, the mechanisms by which alcohol increases the risk for these cancers have not been established. EMT is an active area of cancer research and growing evidence supports a role for EMT during cancer progression and metastases for several cancer types but previously not for alcohol-associated cancers."

The researchers made their findings after studying four alcoholic men and four healthy men.

"Our data are the first to show that alcohol turns on cell signals as well as biomarkers characteristic of EMT in cancer cells," Forsyth said. "We also show alcohol turns on the EMT pathway in non-cancer intestinal cells, thus supporting a possible role for alcohol stimulation of EMT in cancer initiation. Thus, our study supports a possible new mechanism through which alcohol may promote cancer progression by stimulating EMT. This now provides a new target for therapeutic intervention for treatment of alcohol-related cancers and for prevention of alcohol-related cancer metastasis."

More information

Learn more about cancer from the National Cancer Institute.

TUESDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Combining chemotherapy with radiation treatment for patients with advanced head and neck cancer increases their event-free survival to 2.2 years from just one year with radiotherapy alone, finds a new study.

According to the study authors, "events" include cancer recurrence, new tumors or death.

British researchers looked at the 10-year outcomes of 966 patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer. Those who hadn't undergone surgery for their cancer were randomly assigned to one of four groups: radiotherapy alone (233 patients); two courses of simultaneous (SIM) chemotherapy given at the same time as radiotherapy (166 patients); two courses of chemotherapy after (subsequent -- SUB) completing radiotherapy (160 patients); or both SIM and SUB (154 patients). Patients who'd had surgery were randomly assigned to radiotherapy alone (135 patients) or SIM alone (118 patients).

Overall, non-platinum-based chemotherapy given at the same time as radiotherapy reduced deaths and cancer recurrence in patients who hadn't undergone surgery, with acceptable toxicity. But patients who'd undergone surgery didn't benefit from this combined treatment. The researchers also found that chemotherapy given after radiotherapy was ineffective, didn't improve survival, and doubled the rate of toxicity.

Among patients who didn't have surgery, median survival time was 2.6 years in the radiotherapy group, and 4.7 years, 2.3 years and 2.7 years, respectively, in patients who received SIM alone, SUB alone, and SIM plus SUB.

Median event-free survival among patients who didn't have surgery was one year in the radiotherapy group, 2.2 years in patients who received SIM alone, and one year in those who received either SUB alone, or SIM plus SUB.

The findings show the long-term benefit of non-platinum chemotherapy drugs, which are "inexpensive, relatively easy to deliver, and have lower toxicity than platinum therapies ... [which] considerably improves the likelihood of completing treatment, essential for improving the chances of a cure," wrote the U.K. Head and Neck Cancer Group researchers in their report published in the Oct. 27 online edition of The Lancet Oncology.

Combination chemotherapy/radiation treatment should be standard for all advanced head and neck cancer patients for whom surgery isn't appropriate, they concluded.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about head and neck cancer.