Cough medicine component can treat prostate cancer

WASHINGTON: Something as common as a cough medicine has an ingredient that could effectively treat advanced prostate cancer.

Researchers found that noscapine, used in cough medication for nearly 50 years, reduced tumour growth in mice by 60 per cent and limited their spread by 65 per cent without adverse side-effects.

Noscapine has previously been studied as a treatment for breast, ovarian, colon, lung and brain cancer and for various lymphomas, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and melanoma. This study, however, is the first to demonstrate its effectiveness in treating prostate cancer.

American Cancer Society estimates that 186,320 men in the US will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008 and 28,660 will die from it. One man in six will get prostate cancer during his lifetime. Although slow-growing in most men, the cancer is considered advanced when it spreads beyond the prostate. There is no known cure.

Hormone therapy and chemotherapy, along with radiation and surgery, are currently used to slow the progression of advanced prostate cancer. Side effects resulting from these treatments include impotence, incontinence, fatigue, anaemia, brittle bones, hair loss, reduced appetite, nausea and diarrhoea. No toxic side effects were observed in the laboratory study of noscapine.

The lab study was a joint effort by Israel Barken of the Prostate Cancer Research and Educational Foundation, Moshe Rogosnitzky of MedInsight Research Institute and Jack Geller of University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Noscapine is a naturally-occurring substance, a non-addictive derivative of opium. As a natural substance, noscapine cannot be patented, which has limited the potential for clinical trials. Rogosnitzky notes that drug companies are generally unwilling to underwrite expensive clinical trials without being able to recoup their investment. A synthetic derivative of noscapine has been patented but has not yet reached the clinical testing phase.

Since noscapine is approved for use in many countries as a cough suppressant, however, it is available to doctors to prescribe for other uses as well. This common practice is known as ‘off-label’ prescription. Noscapine is increasingly being used off-label to treat a variety of cancers. Barken used noscapine to treat a handful of prostate cancer patients before retiring from clinical practice, said an UCSD release. — HNS

Women avoiding exercise

SYDNEY: More and more women are avoiding activity, when exercise facilities are virtually available at their very doorstep, according to a study. It also revealed that one in four women did not know there was a swimming pool nearby; one in three was unaware of tennis courts and one in five did not know about a nearby gymnasium. Deakin University health expert Kylie Ball, associate professor, said this lack of awareness could be impacting the level of physical activity undertaken by women and be putting their health at risk. “However, the results of this study point to a lost opportunity for women to be involved in some form of exercise,” she said. “With 42 per cent of women in this study overweight or obese and 25 per cent not getting enough exercise in their leisure time, it is unhealthy for them not to be taking advantage of the exercise opportunities close to home.” Information was collected from 1,540 women across 45 Melbourne neighbourhoods about the availability of public open space, gyms/sports centres, walking tracks, swimming pools, tennis courts, squash courts and golf courses within 2 km of their homes. The results showed that some groups of women were worse off than others when it came to identifying the facilities available, said a Deakin release.

“Younger (under 30 years) and older (over 50 years) women, women of lower income, those with low confidence in their ability to be active and those less active were the groups unable to accurately pinpoint facilities in their neighbourhood,” Ball said. “For the over 50s this is particularly troubling since this is a group at risk of a range of chronic diseases associated with physical inactivity such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and some cancers.” — HNS