Cervical Cancer

Hospice of the Chesapeake names board member The board of directors of Hospice of the Chesapeake Inc. has named Catherine J. Brady-Copertino, executive director for the Anne Arundel Medical Center's Geaton and JoAnn DeCesaris Cancer Institute, as a member of its board. She has been executive director for the Geaton and JoAnn DeCesaris Cancer Institute since 2007, leading the hospital's Breast Center, Radiation Oncology, Nurse Navigation and other programs. Since 2005, she has served as vice president of corporate development and operations for Global Oncology Care, an Irish-owned company developing cancer centers in Ireland and Europe.

Family and friends gather for Natasha Richardson's funeral A somber group of friends and family gathered in Lithgow, N.Y., yesterday to say a final farewell to Tony Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson. Liam Neeson, in a dark suit and sunglasses, was at the head of the casket as he and five other pallbearers carried his wife's coffin into St. Peter's Episcopal Church, near the home where the two married in 1994. He and Richardson's mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, waved to the dozens of reporters crowded behind a police barricade on the dirt road leading to the tiny white clapboard church.

Sometimes, good policy is a question of good timing. The human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine - which Texas required for its sixth-grade girls last week, and which state legislatures around the country, including Maryland's, have been considering - is a good case in point. By all accounts, the new vaccine against cervical cancer, developed by Merck Co., can provide an important advance in health. In scientific trials, it proved 100 percent effective in preventing infections with the two types of HPV that cause 70 percent of the 3,500 deaths by cervical cancer in this country every year.

BOSTON -- Hasn't anyone ever told drug companies to put a warning label on their lobbying? You know, the kind you find on every little prescription bottle? "Caution: Too much lobbying may result in an overdose of suspicion. Push too hard and you may experience political acid reflux." As it is, Merck seems to have rolled a million - or many millions - into a shoestring. And the real losers may be girls and women who need access to the vaccine against cervical cancer. Let's return to that magical moment when clinical trials proved that a new vaccine was nearly 100 percent effective in preventing two strains of the human papillomavirus that causes most cervical cancer.

At health clinics operated by Omnia Inc. in Chicago and the Northeast, women are routinely tested for cervical cancer using that stalwart of gynecology, the Pap smear, and a new, more sensitive test that many medical experts believe could one day replace it.Philadelphia-based Omnia, which manages private gynecology practices serving 400,000 women, is the first managed care organization in the United States to use the new test in conjunction with the Pap....

Digene Corp. said yesterday that the Food and Drug Administration has approved use of its second-generation test for a common sexually transmitted disease as a follow-up to determine if women with inconclusive Pap smear results are at risk for cervical cancer.The test approved yesterday, said company officials, is a marked improvement over its currently available screening for human papillomavirus because it detects all HPV types. There are 70 HPV types; 13 are known to cause cancer.As with the Beltsville-based company's first-generation test, approved by the FDA in 1997, the new HPV test was approved by the regulator only for use as a follow-up to abnormal Pap smear results, which are considered "inconclusive" or "borderline."

Digene Corp. a Beltsville-based developer of DNA-based medical tests for diseases, said yesterday that drug giant Abbott Laboratories will act as the marketer and distributor for its tests in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.Among the tests Abbott will market are Digene's diagnostic products for hepatitis B and the human papillomavirus (HPV), considered a precursor to cervical cancer.In the United States, Abbott, one of the world's largest marketers of medical diagnostics, will launch sales of Digene's new automated tests for chlamydia, a urinary tract infection, and gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease.

A swab of vinegar could provide a simple, inexpensive way to screen women for early signs of cervical cancer, the leading cause of cancer death among women in poor countries where Pap smears are not available.Reporting on a study in Zimbabwe, doctors from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the University of Zimbabwe said the test could lead thousands of women each year to life-saving treatments."This really offers the promise of prevention," said Dr. Paul D. Blumenthal, a Hopkins gynecologist who directed the study.

So your New Year's resolution will be to finally go for your ``annual'' physical. It's been a couple of years - at least. What's the doctor going to do? There are so many health problems the basic physical doesn't check for - from AIDS to hepatitis C - is it worth the expense?In short, yes - the basic physical could save you great pain in the future. Here are the basics of what your doctor will do, and why:THE TESTS:After someone in a lab coat takes your height, weight and blood pressure - to check for hypertension - you will have blood drawn.

Digene Corp. of Beltsville has acquired Viropath BV, a Dutch company that has been developing tests and other products for cervical cancer. The purchase was accomplished through a stock swap worth an estimated $1.5 million.Under the terms of the stock purchase agreement, Digene purchased all of the outstanding capital stock of Viropath in exchange for 181,884 shares of newly issued Digene common stock.The deal closed in July but was not disclosed until yesterday, said Charles M. Fleischman, chief financial officer for Digene.

Actress Farrah Fawcett's battle with anal cancer, featured last week in a television special, has brought the rare disease into the national spotlight. According the National Cancer Institute, there were an estimated 5,000 new cases of anal cancer in 2008. The number of new colon cancer cases was 106,100 for the same year. While the details of Fawcett's case are not known, Dr. Petr Hausner, an oncologist at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center who specializes in gastrointestinal and thoracic cancers, offers five things people should know about the disease: * Anal cancer is a rare cancer.

Family and friends gather for Natasha Richardson's funeral A somber group of friends and family gathered in Lithgow, N.Y., yesterday to say a final farewell to Tony Award-winning actress Natasha Richardson. Liam Neeson, in a dark suit and sunglasses, was at the head of the casket as he and five other pallbearers carried his wife's coffin into St. Peter's Episcopal Church, near the home where the two married in 1994. He and Richardson's mother, actress Vanessa Redgrave, waved to the dozens of reporters crowded behind a police barricade on the dirt road leading to the tiny white clapboard church.

Healthy diet program at 8 supermarkets County residents can learn about eating for good health during Good Food for Good Health Weekends at local supermarkets. Health educators will answer questions about nutrition and distribute free low-fat recipes and other information for eight weekends. The weekends are sponsored by the Anne Arundel County Health Department's Learn to Live program and will be available at the following stores: * Lauer's Supermarket, 8095 A Edwin Raynor Blvd., Pasadena, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday; and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 8. * Lauer's Supermarket, 8479 Fort Smallwood Road, Pasadena, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. March 13; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 14; and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 15. * Graul's, 1388 Cape St. Claire Road, Annapolis, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. March 20; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 21; and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 22. * Graul's, 607 Taylor Ave., Annapolis, 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. March 27; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 28; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 29. * Box 'N' Save, 7931 Baltimore-Annapolis Blvd.

Hospice of the Chesapeake names board member The board of directors of Hospice of the Chesapeake Inc. has named Catherine J. Brady-Copertino, executive director for the Anne Arundel Medical Center's Geaton and JoAnn DeCesaris Cancer Institute, as a member of its board. She has been executive director for the Geaton and JoAnn DeCesaris Cancer Institute since 2007, leading the hospital's Breast Center, Radiation Oncology, Nurse Navigation and other programs. Since 2005, she has served as vice president of corporate development and operations for Global Oncology Care, an Irish-owned company developing cancer centers in Ireland and Europe.

Each year, about 11,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. This cancer is relatively slow-growing and may not cause any symptoms, but it can be detected with regular tests called Pap smears. If detected early enough, the cure rate - or five-year-survival rate - is about 80 percent, says Robert E. Bristow, director of the Kelly Gynecologic Oncology Service and the Ovarian Cancer Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Twenty-five years ago, a diagnosis of AIDS was a nearly immediate death sentence. But now that patients with the AIDS virus are living longer, doctors are discovering a new set of complications: People with HIV have a much higher risk of developing certain cancers - lung, liver, head and neck, to name a few - and doctors fear that a cancer epidemic among this group could be coming. Researchers in Maryland, home to one of the nation's largest AIDS populations per capita, are among the leaders in an effort to solve what has become something of a medical mystery.

For the past two days, Annie Siple has patiently crisscrossed the Johns Hopkins medical campus for test after test, being scanned by big machines, pricked with small needles, fastened to electrodes, injected with dye. Soon she will find out who is winning, Annie or the cancer. Not for one minute has she worried about the results. How could the news be bad, she is wondering when she is led into a tiny exam room. She looks and feels terrific on this May afternoon. Her cancer appeared first in her breast.

The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women has now been linked to an uptick of throat, tonsil and tongue cancers - in a younger and healthier group of patients than doctors have ever seen before. These head and neck cancers were once the scourge of older men - mostly the result of lifetimes of heavy smoking and drinking. The treatments often left victims disfigured. But with those cases on the decline, doctors are seeing a new group of victims. They're men in their 40s, and even 30s, whose cancer is brought on by the increasingly common human papillomavirus (HPV)

Dr. Douglas Lowy of Bethesda and John Schiller of Kensington invented a vaccine to thwart HPV, the most common sexually transmitted disease in America and the leading cause of cervical cancer. Their work is saving thousands of women's lives annually, but their role in discovering the vaccine is not and might never be well-known. Lowy and Schiller are federal employees, inventors on government-owned patents that have been licensed to drug companies for the testing and sale of the vaccine.

New data on the HPV vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer have raised serious questions about its efficacy, researchers reported today, perhaps undercutting the efforts in many states to make vaccination mandatory. Although the Merck vaccine, called Gardasil, blocked nearly 100 percent of infections by the two HPV strains it targets, it reduced the incidence of cancer precursors by only 17 percent overall. Part of the reason was that many of the teenage girls and young women who participated in the three-year study had been exposed to the virus, according to the report in the New England Journal of Medicine.