| Cancer death rates still declining
The death rate from most forms of cancer has continued a decline begun in the early 1990s, driven in large part by decreases in lung cancer in men, according to an annual national cancer report released Wednesday. Between 1993 and 2003, deaths from cancer dropped about 16 percent in men and 8 percent in women, the study found. Deaths from lung cancer declined about 15 percent in men. The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer also found recent increases in breast cancer appear to have leveled off, but scientists say it's too soon to call that a trend. They also uncovered a surprising jump in thyroid cancer. "The bottom line is we are making progress," said Ahmedin Jemal, program director for cancer occurrence at the American Cancer Society.
September 2006 Clinical Briefs
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month approved Chantix (varenicline tartrate) tablets, to help cigarette smokers stop smoking. The active ingredient in Chantix, varenicline tartrate, is a new molecular entity that received a priority FDA review because of its significant potential benefit to public health. Chantix acts at sites in the brain affected by nicotine and may help those who wish to give up smoking in two ways: by providing some nicotine effects to ease the withdrawal symptoms and by blocking the effects of nicotine from cigarettes if they resume smoking. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 44.5 million adults in the United States smoke cigarettes and more than 8.6 million of them have at least one serious illness caused by smoking.
European Commission Approves GARDASIL(R), Merck's Cervical Cancer Vaccine
GARDASIL(R) (Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus (Types 6, 11, 16, 18) Recombinant Vaccine), the cervical cancer vaccine from Merck & Co., Inc., has been granted a license by the European Commission. GARDASIL has been approved as the first and only vaccine in the European Union (EU) for use in children and adolescents aged 9 to 15 years and in adult females aged 16 to 26 years for the prevention of cervical cancer, high-grade cervical dysplasias/precancers (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN 2/3)), high-grade/precancerous vulvar dysplastic lesions (VIN 2/3) and external genital warts (condyloma acuminata) caused by human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6, 11, 16 and 18. This license applies to the 25 countries that are members of the EU, including the five largest which are France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
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