Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. 

                                                                   William James

FRIDAY, Aug. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Listening to music or having sessions with trained music therapists can help ease cancer patients' anxiety, researchers say.

Music may also have positive effects on their mood, pain and quality of life, according to Joke Bradt of the department of creative arts therapies at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Bradt and colleagues examined evidence from 1,891 cancer patients who took part in 13 trials that used music therapists and 17 trials that used pre-recorded music.

Compared to standard treatments, music was associated with a considerable reduction in anxiety, along with benefits in mood, pain, heart and respiratory rates, and blood pressure, according to a systematic review by the Cochrane Collaboration, which evaluates primary research and evidence-based medicine.

"The evidence suggests that music interventions may be useful as a complementary treatment to people with cancer," Bradt said in a news release.

"Music interventions provided by trained music therapists as well as listening to pre-recorded music both have shown positive outcomes in this review, but at this time there is not enough evidence to determine if one intervention is more effective than the other," she added.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about anxiety and stress among cancer patients and their families.

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- A small group of patients with an advanced form of tough-to-treat leukemia appears to have benefited from a radical new form of immune therapy, researchers say.

To treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) that had not responded to other therapies, scientists inserted a genetically modified version of the patients' own T cells (immune cells) into three patients to specifically target the CLL cells. Almost a year later, the patients are in complete or partial remission.

This is the first time scientists have successfully used gene transfer therapy to kill cancer cells, and the results might be applicable to other forms of cancer, including ovarian and lung tumors, the researchers said.

"This approach to adaptive therapy with T cells is different and better [than previous immunotherapy attempts] because the cells are long-lived once they're transferred and active over a period of time," said William Chambers, director of the Clinical Cancer Research and Immunology Program at the American Cancer Society. "And it seems that a small number of them actually have a big impact," he noted. "This is going to prove useful and important."

The challenge now is to find the right target on other cancers, he added.

The researchers, who presented their findings Aug. 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine, removed the patients' own T cells and then added an artificial receptor that specifically targeted CD19, a protein found on these types of cancer cells.

These engineered T cells, which were re-introduced after chemotherapy, also were programmed to produce even more killer cells.

"This turned every genetically modified T cell into a tumor-seeking missile," explained Bruce Levine, co-author of both papers and associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

In the case of a 64-year-old man, whose experience is chronicled in the NEJM article, T cells started killing tumor cells within two weeks of the first treatment.

Four weeks out, he showed no evidence of leukemia at all.

All the patients are now 10, 11 and 12 months out from treatment.

The gene-modified T cells destroyed about two pounds of tumor in each patient in about a month. One T cell was able to kill about 1,000 cancer cells, the authors said.

"The results were quite striking considering that each of these patients had been undergoing the best conventional medicine could give," said Levine. "When you look at the responses these patients achieved and the time frame in which they achieved them, it's extraordinarily remarkable."

Chambers was impressed that the T cells were active for as long as six months.

"That's important because a cancer like this can go all through the body and be hidden in different places," he said. "One would presume that you wouldn't have to go back and do a bunch of continuing treatments."

But there was one downside to treatment, Chambers said. In one patient, normal immune cells were also affected.

CLL, which typically strikes in middle age, is diagnosed in almost 15,000 men and women in the United States each year, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. More than 4,000 adults die of it a year. Current treatments include chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants and biologics (such as rituximab).

For now, the new treatment is only available for patients in clinical trials for leukemia and lymphoma, and the researchers need to get a longer-term view before it can be recommended for broader use.

Their next step is to try the approach in patients who have other CD19-positive tumors, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia, and in children who don't respond to conventional treatments for pediatric leukemia.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

MONDAY, Aug. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Countering conventional wisdom, researchers in France say that elderly lung cancer patients can gain significant benefit from an aggressive, double-barreled chemotherapy that's often used in younger patients.

Typically, older patients have been offered less harsh -- but also less effective -- chemotherapies containing a single agent. That's because, until now, it's been assumed that the benefits to elderly patients of dual-chemo ("doublet") regimens simply weren't worth their onerous side effects and risks.

But, "our study demonstrates clearly that [the doublet] scheme is feasible in elderly patients," study author Dr. Elisabeth Quoix, from the department of chest diseases at Hopitaux Universitaires de Strasbourg at the University of Strasbourg. She noted that survival rates among elderly patients, even among those over the age of 80, appeared comparable to those of younger patients on the dual-drug regimen.

The findings are reported online Aug. 9 in The Lancet.

As life expectancy increases, so does the risk for lung cancer, the leading cancer killer worldwide. As a result, studies show that lung cancer rates have been ramping up among the elderly, with patients in the developed world now averaging between 63 and 70 years of age at diagnosis.

According to Quoix, that means that "elderly patients represent around 50 percent of all patients with lung cancer." She also believes that "there has been for quite a long time such a nihilism toward this disease, especially for elderly patients, that unfortunately most of these patients are under-treated."

In fact, prior research indicates that, in recent years, as little as one-quarter of NSCLC patients over the age of 66 have gotten the same first-line standard of care as younger patients.

To learn more, between 2006 and 2009 Quoix' team recruited just over 450 NSCLC patients between the ages of 70 and 89. All of these patients were undergoing treatment at one of 61 different medical centers across France.

Half were placed on a dual-chemotherapy regimen involving the agents carboplatin and paclitaxel, which together comprise what doctors call "platinum-based doublet chemotherapy." The other half were placed on a single drug ("monotherapy") regimen involving either vinorelbine or gemcitabine.

Dual-regimens were spread across four weeks, while the single regimens were spaced over three weeks.

The researchers found that toxic side effects were indeed more common among those exposed to two chemotherapy agents at once. Yet over the course of 2.5 years of follow-up (on average), the team also found that survival rates were much higher among the dual-chemo group.

For example, elderly patients who were placed on the two-drug therapy survived more than 10 months on average, compared with just over 6 months for those getting the single therapy group.

What's more, nearly 45 percent of doublet patients survived to the one-year mark post-treatment, compared with about 25 percent of those in the single-chemo group.

The authors concluded that -- harsher toxic side-effects notwithstanding -- double-chemo treatment appears to afford elderly lung cancer appreciable and worthwhile benefits. They therefore called for a reconsideration of current protocols for lung cancer treatment among the elderly.

However, in an editorial, Dr. Karen L Reckamp, from the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif., said that there have been too few clinical trials involving older men and women with lung cancer. That means that the "optimum chemotherapy regimen remains unknown" for elderly lung cancer patients, she wrote.

"Clinical trials that examine therapy for lung cancer usually include a minority of patients over 70, so that results do not provide guidance on the best treatment for this group," Reckamp explained.

But she agreed that the new French study "moves the field forward" by highlighting the apparent "dramatic improvement in survival" among elderly afforded dual-chemo treatment.

"This strongly supports doublet chemotherapy in carefully selected older individuals with NSCLC," Reckamp said. However, "the results must be balanced by a look at the increased toxicities and deaths in the combination arm. We are still in need of addition studies that evaluate older individuals with NSCLC and perform an assessment so that we might predict those who may have greater benefit or who might be at greater risk for toxicity."

More information

For more on non-small cell lung cancer, visit the American Cancer Society  .

TUESDAY, Aug. 9 (HealthDay News) -- People who regularly eat legumes, brown rice, cooked green vegetables and dried fruit have a reduced risk of colon polyps, a precursor to colon cancer.

That's the finding of California researchers who analyzed data from 2,818 people who were followed for 26 years. During that time, 441 cases of rectal/colon polyps were detected among the participants.

The risk of polyps was 40 percent lower among those who ate brown rice at least once a week and 33 percent lower among those who eat legumes (a class of vegetables that includes beans, peas and lentils) at least three times a week, the Loma Linda University team found.

Eating dried fruit three times or more a week, compared to less than once a week, was associated with a 26 percent reduced risk. Eating cooked green vegetables once a day or more, vs. less than five times a week, was associated with a 24 percent reduced risk, according to the report published online in the journal Nutrition and Cancer.

"Eating these foods is likely to decrease your risk for colon polyps, which would in turn decrease your risk for colorectal cancer," study author Dr. Yessenia Tantamango, a postdoctoral research fellow, said in a university news release.

"While a majority of past research has focused on broad food groups, such as fruits and vegetables, in relation to colon cancer, our study focused on specific foods, as well as more narrowed food groups, in relation to colon polyps, a precursor to colon cancer. Our study confirms the results of past studies that have been done in different populations analyzing risks for colon cancer," Tantamango said.

"Legumes, dried fruits and brown rice all have a high content of fiber, known to dilute potential carcinogens," Tantamango noted. "Additionally, cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, contain detoxifying compounds, which would improve their protective function."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about colon polyps.