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WASHINGTON--An announcement by NIH director Harold E. Varmus, MD, of a plan to form a national pain research consortium came as a complete, but pleasant surprise to the American Pain Society, Martin Grabois, MD, president of the Society, said in an interview with Oncology News International.

CHICAGO--Medical groups that advocate routine screening mammogra-phy for women between the ages of 40 and 49 have new ammunition to challenge the NCI's controversial 1993 decision to raise the suggested age for beginning mammography screening to 50 years.

ORLANDO--Fludarabine (Flu-dara) improves response, duration of response, and progression-free survival over standard therapy in previously untreated patients with active B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and it should be included in the list of drugs for first-line treatment of this disease, Kanti R. Rai, MD, said at the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

Secondary lymphedema is quite prevalent in cancer patients who require lymph node dissection for staging and/or treatment of their disease. Chronic lymphedema may arise shortly after surgical intervention or months to years afterward. The tendency of chronic lymphedema is to worsen over time.

Lymphedema continues to plague women after breast cancer treatment. The cosmetic deformity cannot be disguised with normal clothing; physical discomfort and disability are associated with the enlargement; and recurrent episodes of cellulitis and lymphangitis may be expected. Added to the physical symptoms is the distress caused unintentionally by clinicians, who are more interested in cancer recurrence and often trivialize the nonlethal nature of lymphedema.

We treated 119 consecutive patients with lymphedema with complex lymphedema therapy (CLT). Lymphedema reductions after CLT averaged 62.6% in the 56 patients with one affected arm and 68.6% in the 38 patients with

Managed care and proper cancer care need not be mutually exclusive entities. Managed-care organizations (MCOs) that are committed to patients and society should have the following characteristics: accountability for

WASHINGTON--The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) has funded a new analysis of the impact of the recent growth and concentration of HMOs on employers, health-insurance coverage decisions, health care premiums, and employees' health insurance choices. Jack Hadley, MD, of Georgetown University, will lead the $307,437, year-long project.

About one in three newly diagnosed cancer patients in the United States receives radiation treatment, which is being used increasingly as the first line of cancer therapy, according to Dr. Steven Leibel, president of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology (ASTRO).

Women who take sex hormones before and during pregnancy are three times more likely to have children who develop cancer, according to researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

LOS ANGELES--The American Society for Therapeutic Radiation and Oncology (ASTRO) honored two of its members at its 38th annual meeting, and welcomed two renowned physicians into the society as honorary members.

WASHINGTON--The national cancer community has joined together to create a nonprofit organization, the Friends of Cancer Research, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the National Cancer Act through a public awareness and education campaign on the importance of cancer research.

MANHASSET, NY--High-risk individuals are being enrolled in four multicenter clinical trials aimed at preventing lung, breast, colorectal and prostate cancers. These cancers together account for more than half of all cancer deaths, Laura Donahue, MD, said as she recruited participants at North Shore University Hospital's Don Monti Cancer Center Screening and Education Day.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala--After 60 years of steadily increasing cancer mortality, the tide appears to have turned. From 1990 to 1995, age-adjusted cancer mortality declined by a total of 3.1%, say Philip Cole, MD, and Brad Rodu, DDS, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health and School of Dentistry.

NEW YORK--To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the American Cancer Society has led an effort to anticipate how the world might be in 2015 and how that might affect the control of cancer.

In August, AIDS researchers received some good news when two teams of scientists reported that people born with changes in both copies of a gene called CKR5 seem to have a natural resistance to HIV-1 infection.

WASHINGTON--The two Congressional branches will meet in early January to organize, set the size of committees, and select committee and subcommittee chairmen.

CHICAGO--Findings from the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) may support the routine use of G-CSF (Neupogen) during the induction phase of therapy in elderly patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), Richard Larson, MD, said at the Ninth Annual Meeting of the Network for Oncology Communication & Research, based in Atlanta.

BETHESDA, Md--The human gene map has found a worldwide audience via the Internet. Researchers have published a new map containing the locations of more than 16,000 genes identified so far in the Human Genome Project (Science 274:547-562, 1996).

NEW YORK--People often continue to smoke even after a diagnosis of cancer, Jamie Ostroff, PhD, said at a symposium on tobacco control at the Third World Congress of Psycho-Oncology.

Dr. William Brose, director of the Pain Management Center for Stanford University, reported detailed study results from a chronic pain study with SNX-111 at the American Pain Society on November 16, 1996.

Combining two widely known anticancer drugs with radiation therapy can dramatically improve the survival of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a new clinical trial has shown. In most cases, physicians now recommend only radiation therapy for such patients.

Using antiseptic-impregnated catheters reduces the risk of catheter-related infection, according to a study authored by Dr. Joseph Civetta in the October 1996 issue of Critical Care Medicine.

WASHINGTON--Before a group of reporters assembled in the White House Rose Garden, President Clinton recently announced three new federal cancer programs that he predicted would "bring us closer to a cure and improve the lives of those who do survive."

WASHINGTON--Exposure to residential electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) appears to pose no serious threat to human health, according to a National Research Council (NRC) committee. The panel reviewed more than 500 studies conducted in the 17 years since researchers reported that children living near high-voltage power lines were 1.5 times more likely to develop leukemia.

WASHINGTON--The number of new AIDS cases diagnosed in the United States last year totaled 62,600, according to the first estimate of the 1995 AIDS incidence released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The incidence rose from 61,500 in 1994.

Intense lobbying by the Intercultural Cancer Council (ICC) resulted in Congress providing $600,000 for a study on "the status of research into cancer among minorities and the medically underserved at the National Institutes of Health." The study will be carried out by an advisory committee expected to be established in early 1997 by the Institute of Medicine. The committee will examine a laundry list of issues, some of them already the subject of analysis by the new NCI office of special populations headed by Otis Brawley, md, an oncologist. Brawley says he is trying to come up with a research agenda that gets beyond some of the myths that have politicized the cancer field. For example, he notes that contrary to conventional wisdom, blacks in many cases form a disproportionately high percentage of participants in cancer treatment trials. Lovell Jones, phd, director of experimental gynecology-endocrinology at the Univeristy of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and co-founder of the ICC, says, "Our hope is that the IOM's findings will reveal new research directions and opportunities, and help overcome research shortcomings of earlier years when minority scientists were only on the fringes of U.S. medicine." The IOM will be reporting their findings back to Congress by January, 1998

A national study underway at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) will determine whether breast cancer patients can benefit from a biopsy procedure that has been successfully used for skin cancer patients. Patients with melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer, have benefited from an advance that has reduced the pain and complications of surgery performed to ascertain whether their cancer has spread.

Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute have cast doubt on the widely held belief that the mutation of the p53 gene triggers the chain reaction of cancer development.

A new 20-member National Cancer Policy Board (NCPB) is being set up within the National Academy of Sciences. Just as we went to press, it was announced that Peter Howley, chairman of pathology at Harvard, had been named chairman and Joseph Simone of the Huntsman Cancer Institute in Utah had been named vice-chairman. Bob Cook-Deegan, the executive director of the NCPB, said that other members will be appointed soon and the first meeting is scheduled for mid-February. Joe Harford, associate director of special projects at the National Cancer Institute, says the new Board hopes to provide a common meeting ground for all interested in furthering cancer research and treatment, including governmental bodies-- federal, state, and local--and private organizations. The Board is not meant to replace but rather supplement other advisory groups already in existence. Its function will be to make recommendations on various aspects of cancer policy. These might be issues such as how managed care affects payment for patients in cancer clinical trials, or the advisability of restrictions on tobacco advertising. The Board may also lend its recommendations to various groups as to how research monies might best be spent. Richard Klausner, Director of the National Cancer Institute, has been an enthusiastic advocate for the new Board, according to Harford. Of course, there already is a three-member President's Cancer Panel. But its members are presidential appointees, and the executive secretary is a member of Klausner's office. The NCI will not have a representative on the NCPB, Harford says. Susan Polan, director of government relations for the American Cancer Society, says the ACS "supports the idea of coordination of all agencies involved in the fight against cancer."