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U.S. researchers may have found a way to overcome resistance to hormone-blocking breast cancer drugs, extending the life of treatments that keep the disease in check.

They said the drug Nexavar or sorafenib, made by German drugmaker Bayer and its development partner Onyx Pharmaceuticals, helped re-sensitize breast cancer to treatment with aromatase inhibitors, drugs given to post-menopausal women with hormone-sensitive breast cancers.

“Hormone-receptor positive breast cancers eventually become resistant to hormonal therapy,” said Dr. Claudine Isaacs of Georgetown University in Washington, who presented her findings at the American Association for Cancer Research’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

“There has been a great deal of interest in trying to figure out how we might overcome that resistance or stop the cancer cells from figuring out how to circumvent that hormonal therapy,” Isaacs said in a telephone interview.

She said Nexavar, a drug approved for liver and kidney cancer, acts on a lot of cancer-related genes and it also acts to inhibit new blood vessels from forming.

The researchers studied the drug in 35 post-menopausal women with advanced breast cancer resistant to treatment with aromatase inhibitors.

Women in the trial, funded with a grant by Bayer, continued to take the aromatase inhibitor, but they also took Nexavar.

“These women all had disease progression. Twenty-three percent of the women in the study had a clinical benefit from it. It means they either had shrinkage of their tumors or it stayed stable,” Isaacs said.

Isaacs said the finding suggests the drug somehow circumvents the mechanism used by the cancer to resist the effects of the aromatase inhibitors.

“It puts the brakes on it so it didn’t grow for at least six months,” she said.

The treatment was not without side effects. Many women in the study developed a rash called hand-foot syndrome, which causes redness, peeling and some tenderness on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.

It also caused elevated blood pressure in 11 percent of the women, but Isaacs this could be overcome by putting women on blood pressure drugs before taking Nexavar.

She said the findings were strong enough to inspire the drug companies to start a large, late-stage study to see if it has a significant benefit for women.

Aromatase inhibitors include anastrozole, made by AstraZeneca under the brand name Arimidex, and exemestane, made by Pfizer Inc, under the brand name Aromasin.

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women, after lung cancer. It kills 500,000 people globally every year.

Most American women know that age is an important factor in the success of fertility treatments, finds a new survey of 763 women, aged 18 and older, including 125 women who’ve had fertility treatment.

The HealthyWomen poll found that 88 percent of respondents were under age 35 when they first sought medical advice about their fertility.

The survey asked women about their views and priorities when it comes to having children, and their experiences when seeking medical help to treat fertility problems.

Fifty percent believed fertility problems are equally likely to be a female or male issue, while just 5 percent believed men are more likely to be infertile. In fact, infertility is a female problem in 40 percent of cases, a male problem in 40 percent of cases, and a combined or unexplained problem in 20 percent of cases, according to HealthyWomen.

The majority of women knew that risk factors for infertility in women include medical conditions affecting the reproductive system (83 percent), age (83 percent), complications from sexually transmitted diseases (80 percent) and ovulation problems (79 percent). But they were less aware of other factors.

“Many factors and conditions can affect a woman’s ability to conceive naturally. Some of these include being overweight or underweight, and chronic health conditions such as diabetes and thyroid disorders, substance abuse, alcohol consumption and some medications,” Elizabeth Battaglino Cahill, executive director of HealthyWomen, said in a news release. “It is important that a woman work closely with her health care provider to determine the best plan for maintaining optimal health while trying to conceive a child while also assessing her partner’s health and possible fertility issues.”

Of the respondents who had fertility treatments, 88 percent found it emotionally challenging, 84 percent found it stressful, 60 percent reported a negative impact on their self-esteem, 79 percent said they felt hopeful, 76 percent said their partners were supportive and 33 percent said the fertility treatments had a positive impact on their relationship.

A history of juvenile delinquency raises a man’s risk of dying or becoming disabled by the time he is 48 years old, according to U.K. researchers.

The findings are from a study that began following 411 South London boys who were 8 to 9 years old in 1961. Among those who at age 10 displayed antisocial behavior (such as skipping school or being troublesome or dishonest) and who also were convicted of a crime by the age of 18, one in six (16.3 percent) had died or become disabled by the time they turned 48.

That’s nearly seven times higher than the one in 40 (2.6 percent) death or disability rate among men who stayed out of trouble when they were young, the study authors noted in their report in the December issue of the Journal of Public Health.

“We were surprised to see such a strong link between these early influences and premature death, and this indicates that things that happen in families at age 8 to 10 are part of a progression towards dying prematurely,” study leader Jonathan Shepherd, director of the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University in Wales, said in a news release from the journal’s publisher.

“It was also surprising that the increase was not limited to substance abuse or other mental health problems known to be linked with an antisocial lifestyle, but included premature death and disability from a wide variety of chronic illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and cancer,” Shepherd added.

“At this point, we don’t know exactly why delinquency increases the risk of premature death and disability in middle age, but it seems that impulsivity — or lack of self-control — in childhood and adolescence was a common underlying theme,” Shepherd said. “It may be that the stresses and strains of an antisocial lifestyle and having to deal with all the crises that could have been avoided with more self-control take their toll.”

The finding “fits with the biological evidence of the effects of chronic stress on illness,” he said.

The cornea is the tissue at the front of eye that helps focus light. A corneal abrasion occurs when that tissue is cut or scratched.

The American Academy of Family Physicians offers these suggestions to help prevent a corneal abrasion:
Always use safety eye wear any time you’re working with machines that expel wood, sawdust, metal, etc.
Cut your fingernails to avoid scratching your eye. Keep babies’ and children’s nails trimmed, as well.
Keep all tree and shrub branches, especially those at eye level, trimmed.
Be careful when putting contact lenses in your eyes. Make sure the lenses are cleaned properly each day, and never sleep with them.