Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a red or scaly patch of skin. In those with distant spread of the disease, there may be bone pain, swollen lymph nodes, shortness of breath, or yellow skin.
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bleeding, prolonged cough, unexplained weight loss, and a change in bowel movements. While these symptoms may indicate cancer, they can also have other causes. Over 100 types of cancers affect humans.
Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, then, are metastases (mets). It is generally distinguished from cancer invasion, which is the direct extension and penetration by cancer cells into neighboring tissues.
Mastitis is inflammation of the breast or udder, usually associated with breastfeeding. Symptoms typically include local pain and redness. There is often an associated fever and general soreness. Onset is typically fairly rapid and usually occurs within the first few months of delivery. Complications can include abscess formation.
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called passive smoke, secondhand smoke (SHS) or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by individuals other than the active smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke diffuses into the surrounding atmosphere as an aerosol pollutant, which leads to its inhalation by nearby bystanders within the same environment. Exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke causes many of the same health effects caused by active smoking, although at a lower prevalence due to the reduced concentration of smoke that enters the airway.
Spinal tumors are neoplasms located in either the vertebral column or the spinal cord. There are three main types of spinal tumors classified based on their location: extradural and intradural. Extradural tumors are located outside the dura mater lining and are most commonly metastatic. Intradural tumors are located inside the dura mater lining and are further subdivided into intramedullary and extramedullary tumors. Intradural-intramedullary tumors are located within the dura and spinal cord parenchyma, while intradural-extramedullary tumors are located within the dura but outside the spinal cord parenchyma. The most common presenting symptom of spinal tumors is nocturnal back pain. Other common symptoms include muscle weakness, sensory loss, and difficulty walking. Loss of bowel and bladder control may occur during the later stages of the disease.
Angiosarcoma is a rare and aggressive cancer that starts in the endothelial cells that line the walls of blood vessels or lymphatic vessels. Since they are made from vascular lining, they can appear anywhere and at any age, but older people are more commonly affected, and the skin is the most affected area, with approximately 60% of cases being cutaneous (skin). Specifically, the scalp makes up ~50% of angiosarcoma cases, but this is still <0.1% of all head and neck tumors. Since angiosarcoma is an umbrella term for many types of tumor that vary greatly in origin and location, many symptoms may occur, from completely asymptomatic to non-specific symptoms like skin lesions, ulceration, shortness of breath and abdominal pain. Multiple-organ involvement at time of diagnosis is common and makes it difficult to ascertain origin and how to treat it.
Ataxia–telangiectasia, also referred to as ataxia–telangiectasia syndrome or Louis–Bar syndrome, is a rare, neurodegenerative disease causing severe disability. Ataxia refers to poor coordination and telangiectasia to small dilated blood vessels, both of which are hallmarks of the disease. A–T affects many parts of the body:
Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of disease that will never cause symptoms or death during a patient's ordinarily expected lifetime and thus presents no practical threat regardless of being pathologic. Overdiagnosis is a side effect of screening for early forms of disease. Although screening saves lives in some cases, in others it may turn people into patients unnecessarily and may lead to treatments that do no good and perhaps do harm. Given the tremendous variability that is normal in biology, it is inherent that the more one screens, the more incidental findings will generally be found. For a large percentage of them, the most appropriate medical response is to recognize them as something that does not require intervention; but determining which action a particular finding warrants can be very difficult, whether because the differential diagnosis is uncertain or because the risk ratio is uncertain.
Topotecan, sold under the brand name Hycamtin among others, is a chemotherapeutic agent medication that is a topoisomerase inhibitor. It is a synthetic, water-soluble analog of the natural chemical compound camptothecin. It is used in the form of its hydrochloride salt to treat ovarian cancer, lung cancer and other cancer types.
Receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-Β ligand (RANKL), also known as tumor necrosis factor ligand superfamily member 11 (TNFSF11), TNF-related activation-induced cytokine (TRANCE), osteoprotegerin ligand (OPGL), and osteoclast differentiation factor (ODF), is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TNFSF11 gene.
Post-chemotherapy cognitive impairment (PCCI) describes the cognitive impairment that can result from chemotherapy treatment. While there is no concrete statistic for the number of patients that experience some level of post-chemotherapy cognitive impairment, the estimated percentage is between 13 and 70 percent of patients. The phenomenon first came to light because of the large number of breast cancer survivors who complained of changes in memory, fluency, and other cognitive abilities that impeded their ability to function as they had pre-chemotherapy.
The retrosplenial cortex (RSC) is a cortical area in the brain comprising Brodmann areas 29 and 30. It is secondary association cortex, making connections with numerous other brain regions. The region's name refers to its anatomical location immediately behind the splenium of the corpus callosum in primates, although in rodents it is located more towards the brain surface and is relatively larger. Its function is currently not well understood, but its location close to visual areas and also to the hippocampal spatial/memory system suggest it may have a role in mediating between perceptual and memory functions, particularly in the spatial domain. However, its exact contribution to either space or memory processing has been hard to pin down.
Protein phosphatase 1 regulatory subunit 1B (PPP1R1B), also known as dopamine- and cAMP-regulated neuronal phosphoprotein (DARPP-32), is a protein that in humans is encoded by the PPP1R1B gene.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT), also known as menopausal hormone therapy or postmenopausal hormone therapy, is a form of hormone therapy used to treat symptoms associated with female menopause. Effects of menopause can include symptoms such as hot flashes, accelerated skin aging, vaginal dryness, decreased muscle mass, and complications such as osteoporosis, sexual dysfunction, and vaginal atrophy. They are mostly caused by low levels of female sex hormones that occur during menopause.
A mixed tumor is a tumor that derives from multiple tissue types. A biplastic tumor or biphasic tumor has two tissue types.
AM-1241 (1-(methylpiperidin-2-ylmethyl)-3-(2-iodo-5-nitrobenzoyl)indole) is a chemical from the aminoalkylindole family that acts as a potent and selective agonist for the cannabinoid receptor CB2, with a Ki of 3.4 nM at CB2 and 80 times selectivity over the related CB1 receptor. It has analgesic effects in animal studies, particularly against "atypical" pain such as hyperalgesia and allodynia. This is thought to be mediated through CB2-mediated peripheral release of endogenous opioid peptides, as well as direct activation of the TRPA1 channel. It has also shown efficacy in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in animal models.
Myra Sally Hunter is Professor of Clinical Health Psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College, London, and a Clinical and Health Psychologist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
Denial, abnegation or Negation is a psychological defense mechanism postulated by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.
The timing hypothesis, gap hypothesis, gap theory, or critical window hypothesisfor menopausal hormone therapy is a scientific theory that the benefits and risks of menopausal hormone therapy vary depending on the amount of time a woman has been in menopause upon initiation of treatment. More specifically, it is thought that hormone therapy may be protective against coronary heart disease in women who initiate it in early menopause but may be harmful in women who start it in late menopause. The timing hypothesis may also extend to risks of breast cancer and dementia with hormone therapy. It is thought that the increase in breast cancer risk may be greater in women who start hormone therapy in early menopause but may be lower or that even decreased risk of breast cancer may occur in women who start in late menopause. The influence of hormone therapy on depressive symptoms may additionally be influenced by menopausal stage, with significant benefit seen in perimenopausal women but not in postmenopausal women. The timing hypothesis is potentially able to resolve conflicting findings between large observational studies and randomized controlled trials on long-term health outcomes with menopausal hormone therapy.
