METHODS: A collaborative partnership comprising researchers from Malaysia and the UK as well as policy makers, public health experts and non-government organisations from Malaysia was formed to design, deliver and evaluate the Be Cancer Alert Campaign. Each awareness-raising campaign will run for five weeks (Colorectal Cancer in April 2018, followed by Breast Cancer in October 2018). Evaluation of the campaigns will take place in Gombak district (Colorectal Cancer) and Petaling district (Breast Cancer) respectively, in the form of a pre-post randomly selected household survey and collection of service utilisation data. Occupants who are aged 40-years and above and are able to answer questions independently will be selected from each household. A sample of 730 with 80% power will detect a change of 6.09% in knowledge that unexplained lump or swelling is a symptom of breast cancer or changes in bowel habits is a symptom of colorectal cancer.
DISCUSSION: Malaysia and most South-East Asian countries have a low middle-income economy, with limited resources for cancer control. Late-staged cancers impose a significant economic burden on patients, households, communities, employers, health systems and governments. Our proposed strategy for the implementation of the culturally sensitive mass media cancer awareness-raising campaign will serve as a blueprint for cancer prevention and control policy in South-East Asian countries where the burden of cancer is increasing and there are high cancer death rates.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study involved 168 women diagnosed with breast cancer. The inclusion criteria were age >18 years old, having histologically confirmed breast cancer, and being diagnosed between January 1, 2009 to December 31, 2012. The exclusion criteria were being illiterate and having cognitive impairment. For data collection patients' medical records and the Cancer Behaviour Inventory-Brief (CBI-B) Malay version questionnaire were used. Simple and multiple logistic regression methods were used to analyse the data.
RESULTS: Patients' mean (SD) age was 51.4 (10.8) years old. Most of the patients were Malays, married, diagnosed at stage 2 breast cancer (41%), and completed their breast cancer treatment. The mean score for self-efficacy for coping with breast cancer was 83.67 (95% CI: 81.87, 85.47). The significant factors positively correlated with self-efficacy for coping with breast cancer were higher educational background and a higher family income. However, factors such as a family history of breast cancer and breast surgery reduced the mean score of self-efficacy for coping with breast cancer.
CONCLUSION: The mean score of self-efficacy for coping with breast cancer in this study was moderate. Self-efficacy for coping with breast cancer in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia was not adequate among sufferers and improvement is needed probably by providing education to these patients.
METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 14 998 women with incident HF (iHF) or prevalent HF (pHF) enrolled in the Swedish HF Registry within and after 1 month since HF diagnosis, respectively, between 2008 and 2013. Patients were linked with the National Patient-, Cancer-, and Cause-of-Death Registry. Two hundred and ninety-four iHF and 338 pHF patients with BC were age-matched to 1470 iHF and 1690 pHF patients without BC. Comorbidity and treatment characteristics were compared using the χ2 tests for categories. Cox proportional hazard models assessed the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality among HF patients with and without BC. In the pHF group, BC patients had less often myocardial infarction (21.6% vs. 28.6%, P
METHODOLOGY: We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study on 57 archived formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue blocks of PT from the years 2015 to 2018 from two hospitals in East Coast Malaysia. The histopathological examination and immunohistochemical stain for Ki67 and p53 were analysed.
RESULTS: There was an association between clinical descriptive data of skin changes, lump size of more than 3 cm, cytological atypia, stromal hypercellularity, mitosis and immunohistochemistry with the clinical diagnosis of PT. Both marked expression of Ki67 and p53 were seen in borderline and malignant PT. Our study showed that in the presence of high mitotic figures, marked expression of Ki67 was only seen in cases of malignant PT.
CONCLUSION: We found a significant association of Ki67 and p53 expressions, high mitosis and other descriptive histopathological features in malignant PT. Further study with larger sample size is recommended to predict tumour grade and prognosis as well as the disease-free survival of the tumour.
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DESIGN: Single-blind, controlled, randomized cross-over study. Patients received 5-day aromatherapy treatment using either ginger essential oil or fragrance-matched artificial placebo (ginger fragrance oil) which was instilled in a necklace in an order dictated by the treatment group sequence.
SETTING: Two oncology clinics in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: VAS nausea score, frequency of vomiting and HRQoL profile (EORTC QLQ-C30 scores).
RESULTS: Sixty female patients completed the study (age=47.3±9.26 years; Malay=98.3%; on highly emetogenic chemotherapy=86.7%). The VAS nausea score was significantly lower after ginger essential oil inhalation compared to placebo during acute phase (P=0.040) but not sustained for overall treatment effect (treatment effect: F=1.82, P=0.183; time effect: F=43.98, P<0.001; treatment×time effect: F=2.04; P=0.102). Similarly, there was no significant effect of aromatherapy on vomiting [F(1, 58)=0.29, P=0.594]. However, a statistically significant change from baseline for global health status (P<0.001) was detected after ginger essential oil inhalation. A clinically relevant 10 points improvement on role functioning (P=0.002) and appetite loss (P<0.001) were also documented while patients were on ginger essential oil.
CONCLUSION: At present time, the evidence derived from this study is not sufficiently convincing that inhaled ginger aromatherapy is an effective complementary therapy for CINV. The findings for HRQoL were however encouraging with significant improvement in several domains.
AIMS: This study aimed to translate, adapt and validate the internationally recognised Breast Cancer Awareness Measure (B-CAM) into the Malay language.
METHODS: The original B-CAM (Cancer Research UK) was forward and backward translated and content validation was ascertained. Face validity (n=30), test-retest reliability (n=50) and the internal consistency of the B-CAM-M (M for Malay language) were assessed in a community sample of adults (n=251) in 2018.
RESULTS: The translated B-CAM-M was validated by an expert panel. The Item-Content Validity Index ranged from .83 to 1.00. The results from the survey (n=251) indicated that the B-CAM-M was well received by Malay-speaking women across the main ethnic groups (85 Malay, 84 Chinese and 82 Indian adults). Cronbach alpha scores for the knowledge about breast cancer symptoms (0.83) and the barriers to healthcare seeking items (0.75) were high. Test-retest reliability (separated by 2-week-interval) with 50 randomly selected participants from the community survey produced intra-class correlations ranging from 0.39 to 0.69.
CONCLUSION: The Malay-version, the B-CAM-M, is a culturally acceptable, valid and reliable assessment tool with which to measure breast cancer awareness among Malay-speaking women.
METHODS: We evaluated 88 breast cancer risk variants that were identified previously by GWAS in 11,760 cases and 11,612 controls of Asian ancestry. SNPs confirmed to be associated with breast cancer risk in Asian women were used to construct a polygenic risk score (PRS). The relative and absolute risks of breast cancer by the PRS percentiles were estimated based on the PRS distribution, and were used to stratify women into different levels of breast cancer risk.
RESULTS: We confirmed significant associations with breast cancer risk for SNPs in 44 of the 78 previously reported loci at P breast cancer (95% CI: 2.15-3.40). The risk prediction model with the PRS had an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.606. The lifetime risk of breast cancer for Shanghai Chinese women in the lowest and highest 1% of the PRS was 1.35% and 10.06%, respectively.
CONCLUSION: Approximately one-half of GWAS-identified breast cancer risk variants can be directly replicated in East Asian women. Collectively, common genetic variants are important predictors for breast cancer risk. Using common genetic variants for breast cancer could help identify women at high risk of breast cancer.
METHODS: We analysed the relationship between pre-diagnostic prolactin levels and the risk of in situ breast cancer overall, and by menopausal status and use of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) at blood donation. Conditional logistic regression was used to assess this association in a case-control study nested within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort, including 307 in situ breast cancer cases and their matched control subjects.
RESULTS: We found a significant positive association between higher circulating prolactin levels and risk of in situ breast cancer among all women [pre-and postmenopausal combined, ORlog2=1.35 (95% CI 1.04-1.76), Ptrend=0.03]. No statistically significant heterogeneity was found between prolactin levels and in situ cancer risk by menopausal status (Phet=0.98) or baseline HT use (Phet=0.20), although the observed association was more pronounced among postmenopausal women using HT compared to non-users (Ptrend=0.06 vs Ptrend=0.35). In subgroup analyses, the observed positive association was strongest in women diagnosed with in situ breast tumors<4 years compared to ≥4 years after blood donation (Ptrend=0.01 vs Ptrend=0.63; Phet=0.04) and among nulliparous women compared to parous women (Ptrend=0.03 vs Ptrend=0.15; Phet=0.07).
CONCLUSIONS: Our data extends prior research linking prolactin and invasive breast cancer to the outcome of in situ breast tumours and shows that higher circulating prolactin is associated with increased risk of in situ breast cancer.