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The headlines don't bear out the content in two news items from late this week.

The first item is that periodontal disease treatment reverses the risk of premature birth.  There was no evidence, in the extremely limited amount of information presented in the press release, that investigators were blinded to whether the patients had a preterm delivery.  The decision of whether their periodontal disease treatment was successful was performed "post-hoc" so one can't rule out a bias in assessing a successful outcome.  We just don't know.

There are not too many drugs that improve overall survival in prostate cancer.  Right now, the list is pretty short: Taxotere.

So the announcement that researchers have survival improvement with a new drug, cabazitaxel, is pretty exciting for us oncologists.

It's easy to become discouraged, but once in a while we get something to be happy about.  Today is one of those moments.

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Yesterday's news that osteoporosis drugs known as bisphosphonates may help prevent breast cancer was exciting.

Results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December 2009 showed a similar finding, also in the retrospective setting.

Can anyone really be surprised?  I remember Dr. Brawley talking to us young fellows about the hazards of prostate cancer screening as far back as 2003.  As I recall, he was even mad that there was a prostate cancer postage stamp! 

Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports this week that your diet before diagnosis with ovarian cancer affects your longevity, and by quite a bit.»

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Remember 2007?  That was the year Avastin was going to set the world on fire.  There was improved survival success in colon cancer, then lung cancer.  Avastin was on a tear.

Improved survival is an easy sell to the FDA.  The survival advantage wasn't huge, but it was statistically reproducible, and so the benefit of helping people with advanced cancer live longer made this new treatment attractive.

NYT today has an excellent long narrative about the clinical trial drug PLX4032.  For some, the drug seems to work very well in eradicating metastatic melanoma.

TED releases a video recorded in October 2009, in which famed oncologist David Agus reports what's wrong with cancer research, and how to fix it.

Dr. Healy is both a thoughtful, seasoned doctor and a health columnist for US News and World Report.  She was the prime motivator for the outstanding Womens' Health Initiative study, a project that continues to bear fruit to this day.