Hii kitu huwa na huzuni
That is life bro. The friend who lost his son it was bone marrow cancer too. The tragedy is that the boy went through chemo successfully, what actually killed the boy was the bone marrow transplant side effects.
Wah. Hizi story nazijua first hand maze. Saa hii niko India nangoja 5th nifanye test nijue kama naanza chemo tena ama ninafanyiwa stem-cell transplant nirudi nyumbani. Kama naanza chemo tena niko 50% I’m not walking out alive. Kama nitakuwa in remission nitafanyiwa stem-cell. Uzuri ni ninafanyiwa na cells zangu so sihitaji donor na side effects zitakuwa less. Pia rejection ni rare.
Lost my mother in law in April this year…let’s not just talk about it
Pole Sana.
I lost my uncle in Feb this year. Yaani, within a couple of months ilimpepeta to something else wacha tu.
I’m lucky not to have lost a close relative to it but I saw it eating my friend’s grandpa. Colon cancer. He was old when they discovered it so he elected to just manage the pain until he died because at his age, the treatment itself may have been fatal. He died within the year.
For those who are affected poleni sana.
keep strong.
Waaaaah Sad Poleni.
Get well br
Afro, that could be an enlarged lymph node signifying cancer but I hope it’s something benign, like an infection. Please get help!
Every woman should get an annual screening mammogram starting at age 40. Please spread the word to all your female loved ones!
[SIZE=7]Nobel-winning therapy weaponises immune system against cancer[/SIZE]
AFP Relax News October 1, 2018, 2:26 PM EDT
A revolutionary cancer treatment pioneered by the winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine has been hailed as the future of fighting the disease – and it has fewer devastating side effects than chemotherapy.
While chemotherapy destroys cancerous cells along with normal cells – often with toxic and debilitating effects on a patient – immunotherapy unleashes the body’s immune system to target tumour cells.
James Allison of the US and Tasuku Honjo of Japan won the Nobel on Monday for identifying two different brakes on the immune system which, when turned off, allow the body’s defence system to attack cancerous cells faster and more effectively.
Allison was one of two scientists to discover the blocking effect for one such brake – or checkpoint inhibitor molecule – called CTLA-4 in 1995. Honjo discovered another, PD-1, around the same time.
Once these brakes were identified, researchers were able to work on how to turn them off and get T-cells – white blood cells – to start attacking.
“The goal is to neutralise these molecules, among them CTLA-4 and PD-1, and these are what the recipients of the Nobel prize have been working on,” said Pierre Goldstein, emeritus professor at the Marseille-Luminy Immunology Centre.
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The US Food and Drug Administration has already approved a number of immunotherapy treatments, including some targeting PD-1.
“The booming field of immunotherapy that these discoveries have precipitated is still relatively in its infancy, so it’s exciting to consider how this research will progress in the future,” said Charles Swanton, Cancer Research UK’s chief clinician.
Goldstein, whose team first identified the CTLA-4 molecule in 1987, said the results have been very promising.
“Immunotherapy is now possibly the most important recent discovery for cancer therapy in general, as an alternative to chemo,” he said.
“For example, immunotherapy can control between 20 and 50 percent of certain advanced melanomas, which is something considering that situation would have been a death sentence not too long ago.”
But it’s also not totally harmless, he added.
“Activated immune cells can cause certain auto-immune complications in certain organs, but we can control those,” he said.
A study released in June tested a form of immunotherapy against chemo for non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common lung cancer worldwide.
It found that the drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab) – which famously helped former US president Jimmy Carter stave off advanced melanoma that had spread to his brain – helped lung cancer patients live four to eight months longer than chemo.
[SIZE=6]- Not for all cancers -[/SIZE]
However, Karl Peggs of the University College of London said the therapy is not for everyone.
“We know that some patients have a very low chance of responding… those with little evidence that these pathways are actively restricting the immune system, or those with cancers that are less heavily mutated,” he said.
While in theory it should work for most forms of cancer, it’s most effective on those with the highest numbers of mutations such as melanomas, lung cancer and smoking, he added.
And it has sometimes been met with too much enthusiasm by patients. In the US, some have reportedly asked their doctors to immediately use immunotherapy instead of traditional treatments like chemotherapy, even when they are more effective.
After his big win on Monday, Allison warned that immunotherapy will not replace all other cancer treatments.
Instead, it is “going to be part of therapy that potentially all cancer patients will receive in five years,” he told a press conference in New York.
Honjo, meanwhile, said he wanted to continue his research “so that this immune therapy will save more cancer patients than ever”.
Seeing as how October is cancer awareness month I won’t smoke for the next 30days, I’ll also abstain from processed meats, alcohol and salty foods
Hii ugonjwa mimi huiskia napoteza appetite.
I try to be very conscious of what I eat to just maybe improve my chances of not getting it. Be safe fam