A historical and palaeopathological perspective on cancer.

Cancer is often wrongly considered to be a modern disease in many popular medical venues. Cancers have been known to humanity since ancient times. In fact, its antiquity can be identified through the application of palaeopathological methodologies. The present perspective demonstrates by means of a historical and palaeopathological analysis how oncological manifestations were present long before the emergence of anatomically modern humans and addresses the epidemiological transition from ancient times to the contemporary world. The final section of the article examines breast cancer and its identification in ancient human remains.

Para além das classificações biomédicas: a experiência do câncer de mama no Brasil, 1990-2015 / Beyond biomedical classifications: breast cancer experience in Brazil, 1990-2015

Resumo Analisa as experiências de adoecimento por câncer de mama de mulheres em tratamento no Hospital do Câncer III do Instituto Nacional de Câncer, Rio de Janeiro. Argumenta que parte da experiência das mulheres entrevistadas foi construída pela interação entre a convivência familiar e a mobilização de diferentes significados culturais da doença e da feminilidade, negociando sentidos para entidades biomédicas. O estudo resulta de uma pesquisa qualitativa de inspiração etnográfica, que entrevistou mulheres em tratamento de câncer de mama ao longo de 2015. Parte dos depoimentos para discutir a interação da sociedade com as entidades biomédicas para a significação do câncer no Brasil entre as décadas de 1990 e 2010.

Abstract The paper analyses illness experiences of breast cancer in women undergoing treatment at the Hospital of Cancer III of the National Institute of Cancer. It argues that part of the interviewed women's experience was constructed from the interaction between family coexistence and the mobilisation of different cultural meanings of the disease and femininity, negotiating senses for biomedical entities. The study results from a qualitative research of ethnographic inspiration that interviewed women undergoing treatment from breast cancer during 2015. It draws on the accounts to discuss the interaction of society with biomedical entities for the significance of cancer in Brazil between the 1990s and 2010s.

Breast cancer-The catalyst of contemporary trials design.

Surgical trials in breast cancer have catalyzed contemporary trial design for solid organ cancers and are a prime example of surgeons taking the lead in clinical trial design. Surgeons have lead trials that have improved patient outcomes and quality of life without sacrificing oncologic safety. We have evolved from radical mastectomy to breast conservation and sentinel node biopsy. Contemporary trial design in breast cancer now focus on personalizing care based on tumor genomics.

Historical Trends in Incidence of Breast Cancer in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Los Angeles, 1973-2012: A Joinpoint and Age-Period-Cohort Analysis.

Objectives: This study aimed to estimate the long-term trends of breast cancer incidence in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles (LA). Methods: Data were obtained from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents (CI5plus) database. The average annual percent change (AAPC) was conducted by joinpoint regression analysis, and the age, period and cohort effects were estimated by age-period-cohort (APC) analysis. Results: The age-standardized incidence rates (ASIRs) in LA were higher than Shanghai and Hong Kong. During 1988-2012, the ASIRs significantly decreased in white women in LA (AAPC = -0.6%, 95% CI: -0.9% to -0.4%) while increased in Shanghai (2.5%: 2.1%-2.9%) and Hong Kong (2.2%: 2.0%-2.5%). The APC analysis revealed significantly increased effects of age and period, and decreased effect of birth cohort. Conclusion: Although age and cohort effects were relatively strong, the period effect may be the key factor affecting trends of incidence, which may be caused by increasing exposures to carcinogens and risk factors. Therefore, more effective measures should be carried out promptly to protect high-risk populations such as elder women, to avoid exposures to risk factors of breast cancer.

The development of breast radiology: the Acta Radiologica perspective.

The encouraging results of modern breast cancer care builds on tremendous improvements in diagnostics and therapy during the 20th century. Scandinavian countries have made important footprints in the development of breast diagnostics regarding technical development of imaging, cell and tissue sampling methods and, not least, population screening with mammography. The multimodality approach in combination with multidisciplinary clinical work in breast cancer serve as a role model for the management of many cancer types worldwide. The development of breast radiology is well represented in the research published in this journal and this historical review will describe the most important steps.

Risk of contralateral breast cancer according to first breast cancer characteristics among women in the USA, 1992-2016.

BACKGROUND: Estimates of contralateral breast cancer (CBC) risk in the modern treatment era by year of diagnosis and characteristics of the first breast cancer are needed to assess the impact of recent advances in breast cancer treatment and inform clinical decision making. METHODS: We examined CBC risk among 419,818 women (age 30-84 years) who were diagnosed with a first unilateral invasive breast cancer and survived ≥ 1 year in the US Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program cancer registries from 1992 to 2015 (follow-up through 2016). CBC was defined as a second invasive breast cancer in the contralateral breast ≥ 12 months after the first breast cancer. We estimated standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) of CBC by year of diagnosis, age at diagnosis, and tumor characteristics for the first breast cancer. Cumulative incidence of CBC was calculated for women diagnosed with a first breast cancer in the recent treatment era (2004-2015, follow-up through 2016). RESULTS: Over a median follow-up of 8 years (range 1-25 years), 12,986 breast cancer patients developed CBC. Overall, breast cancer patients had approximately twice the risk of developing cancer in the contralateral breast when compared to that expected in the general population (SIR = 2.21, 95% CI = 2.17-2.25). SIRs for CBC declined by year of first diagnosis, irrespective of age at diagnosis and estrogen receptor (ER) status (p-trends < 0.001), but the strongest decline was after an ER-positive tumor. The 5-year cumulative incidence of CBC ranged from 1.01% (95% CI = 0.90-1.14%) in younger women (age < 50 years) with a first ER-positive tumor to 1.89% (95% CI = 1.61-2.21%) in younger women with a first ER-negative tumor. CONCLUSION: Declines in CBC risk are consistent with continued advances in breast cancer treatment. The updated estimates of cumulative incidence inform breast cancer patients and clinicians on the risk of CBC and may help guide treatment decisions.

Outubro Rosa: Quem ama, se cuida!

Outubro rosa. câncer de mama. Roda de conversa com: Adriana Aguiar (Secretária de Educação), Maria Aurileuda Freitas de Vasconcelos e Taiana Coelho - Medica. Com tradução em libras por: Lelma Nunes e Tullyo Braga.

A human MMTV-like betaretrovirus linked to breast cancer has been present in humans at least since the copper age.

The betaretrovirus Mouse Mammary Tumor Virus (MMTV) is the well characterized etiological agent of mammary tumors in mice. In contrast, the etiology of sporadic human breast cancer (BC) is unknown, but accumulating data indicate a possible viral origin also for these malignancies. The presence of MMTVenv-like sequences (MMTVels) in the human salivary glands and saliva supports the latter as possible route of inter-human dissemination. In the absence of the demonstration of a mouse-man transmission of MMTV, we considered the possibility that a cross-species transmission could have occurred in ancient times. Therefore, we investigated MMTVels in the ancient dental calculus, which originates from saliva and is an excellent material for paleovirology. The calculus was collected from 36 ancient human skulls, excluding any possible mouse contamination. MMTV-like sequences were identified in the calculus of 6 individuals dated from the Copper Age to the 17th century. The MMTV-like sequences were compared with known human endogenous betaretroviruses and with animal exogenous betaretroviruses, confirming their exogenous origin and relation to MMTV. These data reveal that a human exogenous betaretrovirus similar to MMTV has existed at least since 4,500 years ago and indirectly support the hypothesis that it could play a role in human breast cancer.

Historical trends in breast Cancer among women in China from age-period-cohort modeling of the 1990-2015 breast Cancer mortality data.

BACKGROUND: Evidence on historical trends extracted embedded in recent data can advance our understanding of the epidemiology of breast cancer for Chinese women. China is a country with significant political, socioeconomic, and cultural events since the 1900s; however, no such studies are reported in the literature. METHODS: Age-specific mortality rates of breast cancer during 1990-2015 in China were analyzed using APC modeling (age-period-cohort modeling) method. Net effect from birth cohort was derived to measure cancer mortality risk during 1906-1990 when no mortality data were collected, and net effect from time period was derived to measure cancer mortality risk during 1990-2015 when data were collected. Model parameters were estimated using intrinsic estimator, a novel method to handle collinearity. The estimated effects were numerical differentiated to enhance presentations of time/age trend. RESULTS: Breast cancer mortality rate per 100,000 women increased from 6.83 in 1990 to 12.07 in 2015. After controlling for age and period, the risk of breast cancer mortality declined from 0.626 in 1906-10 to - 1.752 in 1991-95 (RR = 0.09). The decline consisted of 3 phases, a gradual phase during 1906-1940, a moderate phase with some fluctuations during 1941-1970, and a rapid phase with large fluctuations during 1971-1995. After controlling for age and cohort, the risk of breast cancer mortality increased from - 0.141 in 1990 to 0.258 in 2015 (RR = 1.49) with an acceleration after 2005. The time trends revealed by both the cohort effect and the period effect were in consistency with the significant political and socioeconomic events in China since the 1900s. CONCLUSIONS: With recent mortality data in 1990-2015, we detected the risk of breast cancer mortality for Chinese women over a long period from 1906 to 2015. The risk declined more than 90% from the highest level in 1906-10 to the lowest in 1990-95, followed by an increase of 49% from 1990 to 2015. Findings of this study connected historical evidence with recent data, supporting further research to exam the relationship between development and risk of breast cancer for medical and health decision-making at the population level and prevention and treatment at the individual level.

I Thought I Must Have Expired - Experiences of Surgery Before Anaesthesia.

In 1812, Frances (Fanny) Burney (born in 1752 and died in 1840) underwent a mastectomy performed by Larry without anaesthesia. In the days after surgery, Burney wrote a letter to her sister, Esther Burney, describing her experience. In total, the letter is four pages long including information on before, during and after the surgery. Although this letter has been cited in numerous texts, it has yet to be analysed from multiple perspectives, shedding new light on the history of anaesthesia.

Management of breast cancer 50 years ago.

In 1970, 50 years ago, I had headed the newly established Academic Unit of Surgery at the Westminster Medical School for 10 years. Since my appointment there in 1960, and for the next 30 years, one of my main interests as a general surgeon was the management of diseases of the breast - breast cancer in particular.

Still Controversial: Early Detection and Screening for Breast Cancer in Brazil, 1950-2010s.

Mammographic screening for breast cancer is a widely used public health approach, but is constantly a subject of controversy. Medical and historical research on this topic has been mainly conducted in Western Europe and North America. In Brazil, screening mammography has been an open topic of discussion and a challenge for health care and public health since the 1970s. Effectively, Brazilian public health agencies never implemented a nationwide population-based screening programme for breast cancer, despite the pressures of many specific groups such as advocacy associations and the implementation of local programmes. This article examines the complex process of incorporating mammography as a diagnostic tool and the debates towards implementing screening programmes in Brazil. We argue that debates about screening for breast malignancies, especially those conducted in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, took place in a context of change and uncertainty in the Brazilian health field. These discussions were strongly affected both by tensions between the public and the private health care sectors during the formative period of a new Brazilian health system, and by the growing role of civil society actors. Our study investigates these tensions and their consequences. We use several medical sources that discussed the topic in Brazil, mainly specialised leading oncology journals published between 1950 and 2017, medical congress reports for the same period, books and theses, institutional documents and oral testimonies of health professionals, patients and associations collected in the framework of the 'The History of Cancer' project from the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and Brazilian National Cancer Institute.

[A historical view of breast implants: Controversy on silicones and breast implant associated -anaplastic large cell lymphoma]. / Seins à dessein. Une histoire d' implants mammaires : controverses autour de la silicone et du lymphome anaplasique a grandes cellules-associe implants mammaires.

Since the dawn of breast implantation back in the sixties, five generations of breast implants have tried to provide the most natural-looking results while striving to eliminate the risk of unpleasant ruptures or capsular contractures. National Health regulators (i.e. the FDA in USA and ANSM in France) have had an "after the facts" reaction, which led to a so-called "dirty war" among producers in the form of a 1992 Silicone's Moratorium (after suspicions of associated cancer or immune-related disorders) all this under the rigid oversight of a FDA director, who seemed more sensible to media scandal than scientific data. After more than a decade of consistent scientific evidence, the interdiction was finally ended in France in 2001 and in the USA in 2006, however the scandals resurfaced again in 2011 after a proven fraud on the "PIP - affair" and most recently with "breast implant associated - anaplastic large cell lymphoma", an extremely serious and rare pathology, treated only by surgical means, until further research. We describe also a chronology on the way the FDA finally recognized this dramatic complication.

Pathology of breast cancer in the last half century.

The past 50 years has been an era of technological innovation converging with the now dominant culture of testing hypotheses using clinical trials and case cohort methodology with rigorous statistical analysis. Great advances have been made in early diagnosis and, especially, less toxic and disfiguring primary therapy. Many of the advances in pathology have been in conjunction with efforts to support clinical initiatives, improve diagnostic reliability and translate basic science discoveries into tests that stratify patient management. Pathologists, with the support of epidemiologists, have lead significant advancements in the description and clinical significance of benign breast disease. Despite considerable efforts, the cure for breast cancer awaits better understanding of the pathophysiology of metastasis. We stand now at the brink a new era of technology, in which powerful genomic assays may be put to use in uncovering targets of therapy and defining mechanisms of disease progression. Pathologists must be active in ensuring that discoveries in this realm are optimized by assuring association with appropriate histological correlation and valid clinical endpoints.

Cancer and the emotions in 18th-century literature.

This essay argues that the emotional rhetoric of today's breast cancer discourse-with its emphasis on stoicism and 'positive thinking' in the cancer patient, and its use of sympathetic feeling to encourage charitable giving-has its roots in the long 18th century. While cancer had long been connected with the emotions, 18th-century literature saw it associated with both 'positive' and 'negative' feelings, and metaphors describing jealousy, love and other sentiments as 'like a cancer' were used to highlight the danger of allowing feelings-even benevolent or pleasurable feelings-to flourish unchecked. As the century wore on, breast cancer in particular became an important literary device for exploring the dangers of feeling in women, with writers of both moralising treatises and sentimental novels connecting the growth or development of cancer with the indulgence of feeling, and portraying emotional self-control as the only possible form of resistance against the disease. If, as Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, today's discourse of 'positive thinking' has been mobilised to make patients with breast cancer more accepting of their diagnosis and more cooperative with punitive treatment regimens, then 18th-century fictional exhortations to stay cheerful served similarly conservative political and economic purposes, encouraging continued female submission to male prerogatives inside and outside the household.

Câncer de mama no Brasil: medicina e saúde pública no século XX / Breast cancer in Brazil: medicine and public health in 20th century

Resumo Neste artigo, discutimos os caminhos que levaram o câncer de mama ao estatuto de grande problema de saúde pública e tópico constante de debates pela sociedade brasileira. Tendo como marco temporal o século XX, traçamos um amplo perfil das transformações nas abordagens ao câncer de mama no Brasil com base no desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias diagnósticas e terapêuticas e no jogo de forças entre diferentes grupos relacionados à sua implantação. Mostramos como, a partir do desenvolvimento de tecnologias médicas de diagnóstico precoce, deu-se mais atenção ao processo de prevenção à doença, implicando controvérsias sobre a melhor forma de implementar as práticas de prevenção. A análise se caracteriza como um estudo qualitativo de abordagem histórica, dialogando com trabalhos da história da medicina e dos estudos sociais das ciências. A investigação é pautada em fontes médicas (revistas especializadas, anais de congressos, teses, manuais); documentos institucionais e legislativos; jornais e revistas leigas; e um conjunto de entrevistas realizadas pelo projeto "História do Câncer: Atores, Cenários e Políticas Públicas" (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz/Instituto Nacional de Câncer).

Abstract This study discusses the trajectory of breast cancer to becoming a major public health issue and constant topic of discussions in Brazilian society. We trace an extensive profile on the changes in approach concerning breast cancer in Brazil, considering the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic technologies and the power struggles between the different groups involved in their implementation. We show that with new technologies major attention was directed to the prevention of breast cancer, which led to controversies on how it would be done. The analysis is framed as a qualitative study with a historical approach based on studies of medical history and the Social Sciences. The data were collected from medical sources (specialized journals, congress reports, medical thesis and books); institutional and legislative documents; magazines and newspapers; and a corpus of interviews made by the project "History of Cancer: Actors, Scenarios and Public Policies" (Fiocruz/INCA).