New Research Study: benign brain tumors less likely with high blood sugar

I’ve always thought that obesity and diabetes were risk factors for meningioma.

But the results of a research study in The British Journal of Cancer reports findings that contradict that belief and previous studies. Here’s a link to the abstract:  http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/bjc2016157a.html

Science Daily highlighted this contradiction writing “In a surprising twist, benign brain tumors that have previously been tied to obesity and diabetes are less likely to emerge in those with high blood sugar, new research has found.”
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160620100649.htm

The Science Daily article provided context noting that “… previous research had established that the slow-growing tumors are more common among people who are obese and those who have diabetes, researchers led by The Ohio State University's Judith Schwartzbaum set out to look for a relationship between meningiomas and blood markers, including glucose.”

This relationship made sense to me as a non-scientist and a meningioma survivor: if I lead an unhealthy lifestyle, I could get whacked with a brain tumor. The unexpected finding seems to have also confused Schwartzbaum who said: "It's so unexpected. Usually diabetes and high blood sugar raises the risk of cancer, and it's the opposite here."

And she should know, Schwartzbaum is an associate professor of epidemiology and a researcher in Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center. 

This confusion or unexpected result has dampened my sense of control, or at least my hope that I can improve my odds of avoiding a meningioma reoccurrence by doing what I thought made sense – staying thin. Now another weapon/practice/solution has been deleted from my arsenal.

Arrggghhh!

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Researchers find potential new treatment target for deadly brain cancer

That’s the title of an abstract from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. The summary says “A key player in brain tumor formation has been found that may lead to new therapies for a deadly and incurable cancer. The study is the first to show that a protein called OSMR (Oncostatin M Receptor) is required for glioblastoma tumours to form. Glioblastoma is one of the most deadly cancers, resistant to radiation, chemotherapy and difficult to remove with surgery.”

I don’t have anything to add to the quotes from the lead author, which I’ve cut and pasted in the following:

"The fact that most patients with these brain tumours live only 16 months is just heartbreaking," said Dr. Arezu Jahani-Asl, the lead author who performed this research largely in Ottawa while she was a postdoctoral fellow co supervised by Dr. Michael Rudnicki at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa and by Dr. Azad Bonni from Harvard Medical School and Washington University School of Medicine. "Right now there is no effective treatment, and that's what drives me to study this disease." Dr. Jahani-Asl is now an assistant professor in the Department of Oncology at McGill University and a principal investigator at the Jewish General Hospital, with a laboratory dedicated to how glioblastoma develops.

Here’s a link to the article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160425141536.htm

PS - Please excuse the the morbid black and white graphic, but I'm feeling awfully sad about this GBM and the near term options for victims which, at this moment, still seem to be slim and none. 

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“Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in eight weeks”

That’s the headline in Science Digest.com reporting on “…study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging." A team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers will report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain's grey matter. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121144007.htm

Interested?  I was. The next line hooked me: “Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.”

What intrigues me about this study is that it is all based on hard science, and gives some evidence to support the long-reputed benefits of mindfulness.

"Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day," says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study's senior author. "This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing."

The following quote also resonated with me:

"It is fascinating to see the brain's plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life." says Britta Hölzel, PhD, first author of the paper and a research fellow at MGH and Giessen University in Germany. "Other studies in different patient populations have shown that meditation can make significant improvements in a variety of symptoms, and we are now investigating the underlying mechanisms in the brain that facilitate this change."

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New Treatment for (some) Medulloblastoma tumors

Here’s some good news I just read on ScienceDaily.com, “A targeted therapy already used to treat advanced skin cancer is also effective against the most common subtype of the brain tumor medulloblastoma in adults and should be considered for treatment of newly diagnosed patients, according to research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.” Here’s a link to the article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150729155241.htm

 

To be clear, in case you aren’t a regular reader of my blog, I hate brain tumors, and I especially hate brain tumors that attack children. Unfortunately, that’s just what medulloblastoma does. According to the article, “Medulloblastoma develops in the cerebellum at the base of the skull and involves four different subtypes, each with different genetic alterations. The tumor is diagnosed in as many as 400 children and adolescents annually in the U.S., making it the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. (I added the bold type)

I hate that. Some poor child who hasn’t done anything to anybody gets whacked with a sinister, deadly, uncaring malignant brain tumor. Every time I read about these my heart goes out to the kids, their parents, their family and friends.

As usual with brain tumors, the treatment is not a blanket cure for all afflicted as the research team reports that “"While it was disappointing that not all medulloblastoma patients with the SHH subtype will benefit, for the right patients these results mark the beginning of a new era of targeted therapy for treatment of this tumor," said first and corresponding author Giles Robinson, M.D., an assistant member of the St. Jude Department of Oncology. ”The findings also highlight the importance of ongoing research to identify the genetic alterations that define who the right patients are and help identify those most likely to benefit from this drug as well as those for whom different therapy is needed.”

Right about now you might be asking yourself the question “What is the “SHH subtype?” or some other important and related question. 

If you’ve read any of my other postings, you will know that I haven’t a clue. But if you are a scientist or doctor of have taken a lot of medical coursework, here’s a link to the journal abstract in the Journal of Clinical Oncology which explains the : http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2015/07/08/JCO.2014.60.1591