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May 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda WEDNESDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) — People with thyroid cancer
are often given a radioactive iodine treatment to wipe out stray cancer
cells, a treatment that comes with its own health risks.
Now, two new studies find that a safer, lower dose of radioactive
iodine is just as effective as the higher dose at getting rid of any such
cells that remain after surgery.
The research also found that patients were just as likely to have their
thyroid shrunk away if they took a drug called Thyrogen (thyrotropin) as
if they underwent thyroid hormone withdrawal — which leads to fatigue,
pain and weight gain — before embarking on the radioiodine treatment.
The two studies, published in the May 3 issue of the New England
Journal of Medicine, compared low- and high-dose radioactive iodine in
a total of more than 1,000 patients. The participants, from Britain and
France, also received either Thyrogen or thyroid hormone withdrawal as
part of the therapy.
In either study, the researchers found that patients who received the
low-dose (30 millicuries) of radioactive iodine in combination with
Thyrogen were just as apt to have their remaining thyroid cells mopped
up — with fewer side effects — than patients who received higher-dose
(100 millicuries ) radioiodine along with either Thyrogen or hormone
withdrawal.
However, the researchers say they plan on monitoring the patients for
several years to see if rates of cancer recurrence are similar in the
different groups.
“We try to give the lowest possible effective radiation dose so that we
cure the current cancer, but we do not increase the risk of producing a
second cancer resulting from the radiation itself,” explained Dr. Ujjal
Mallick, an oncologist at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care in Newcastle
upon Tyne, in England, and lead author of the UK study.
Radioactive iodine has been associated with increased risk of a number
of cancers, particularly leukemia, as well as short-term side effects such
as nausea.
“Our study shows that clinicians can consider low-dose radioactive
iodine in selected patients that have up to a four-centimeter tumor in the
thyroid gland that has not spread outside the neck and have been operated
on by expert surgeons,” Mallick said.
The number of people diagnosed with thyroid cancer has been on the rise
in the past decade, and there will be more than 56,000 new cases in the
United States in 2012, according to the American Cancer Society’s
estimate. The disease, which is highly curable if caught early, affects
more women than men, with patients tending to be diagnosed in their 40s
and 50s.
The new studies suggest that, “we can spare a lot of young patients by
using low-dose radioactive iodine,” Mallick said.
However, Dr. David Cooper, an endocrinologist at Johns Hopkins School
of Medicine in Baltimore, said that patients under 45 probably can
probably avoid radioactive iodine altogether if their tumors are small
(less than 2 centimeters) and the cancer has not spread to other parts of
their body. Cooper was not involved in the new studies.
In fact, some of the low-risk patients in the current studies might not
have needed radioactive iodine treatment at all, Cooper said.
“The chance that a person with low-risk thyroid cancer is going to come
back in a year or two with recurrence is no different whether they got
radioactive iodine or not,” Cooper said.
In low-risk cases, the whole point of radiation treatment is more about
getting rid of the normal tissue, which makes monitoring patients for
recurrence easier, and less about wiping out disease, which surgery
usually takes care of, Cooper said. However tests are usually sensitive
enough to pick out recurrence even in patients who do not receive
radiation to help eliminate their thyroid.
The research, led by Mallick and his colleagues, involved 421 patients
at 29 centers in the U.K. who had thyroid cancer that had not spread
outside the neck. The other study looked at 684 patients in France who had
small thyroid tumors that had not metastasized (spread) beyond the
neck.
All of the patients had undergone surgery to remove the bulk of their
thyroid gland and were receiving thyroid hormone therapy to replace the
natural thyroid hormone.
In both studies, researchers found that the rates of effective thyroid
reduction in the months after treatment were similar in both the low- and
high-dose groups.
Mallick and his colleagues found that about 84 percent of patients who
received low-dose radioactive iodine along with Thyrogen had undetectable
levels of thyroid tissue six to nine months later, compared with about 90
percent in the high-dose-plus-Thyrogen group and about 88 percent in the
high-dose-plus-hormone-withdrawal group.
In addition, the rates of common side effects of radiation such as neck
pain and nausea were higher in the high-dose group than in the low-dose
group.
“These studies are not all that earth shattering” because smaller
studies have shown that low-dose therapy is effective, Cooper said.
“However these studies add something because they involve hundreds of
people that were monitored carefully.”
Many doctors in the United States are already using Thyrogen for
thyroid ablation because patients feel awful during the weeks of thyroid
hormone withdrawal leading up to radioactive iodine therapy, Cooper
said.
However, a major problem with radioactive iodine treatment in the
United States is that doctors use it in patients outside of the 2009
American Thyroid Association recommendations, which state that radioiodine
should be used for certain people with tumors larger than 1 centimeter
that have other properties, such as invasiveness, Cooper said. (Cooper was
the lead author of these recommendations).
The current studies could help doctors at least see that a large dose
of radioactive iodine is not necessary, Cooper said.
For his part, Mallick said, “In our hospital, we are going to start to
implement the low-dose radioactive iodine for patients who match the
criteria in the study.”
He and his collaborators are about to start a new trial comparing
low-dose with no radioiodine to see if radiation is necessary in selected
low-risk patients after surgery. “This will answer a question that has
plagued clinicians for several decades,” he said.
More information
To learn more about radioactive iodine, visit the American Cancer Society.
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