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Screening Can Miss Endometrial Cancer in Black Patients

When patients experience postmenopausal bleeding, doctors regularly suggest they undergo a pelvic transvaginal ultrasound (TVUS) to screen for endometrial cancer. A TVUS measures the thickness of a person’s endometrium, which is the lining of the uterus, with an endometrial thickness of 4 or more millimeters meriting tissue sampling to check for cancer. This technology, however, can miss malignancies in some Black individuals, according to a study published online June 27 in JAMA Oncology. Researchers evaluated 1,494 Black patients who received a TVUS before having a hysterectomy, with tissue sampled to see if they had endometrial cancer. Of 210 participants who had endometrial cancer, 11.4% had an endometrial thickness below 4 millimeters that would not have been flagged by a TVUS, Healthline reported. Experts noted studies testing TVUS have enrolled mostly white participants, and the best way to check for endometrial cancer in Black individuals is a biopsy. “The main takeaway I believe … is that we cannot rely simply on the image we see on an ultrasound report to determine whether to biopsy a patient with postmenopausal bleeding,” Diana Pearre, a gynecologic oncologist at the Roy and Patricia Disney Family Cancer Center in Burbank, California, who was not involved in the study, told Healthline.

Voice Box Transplant Offers Hope for People With Throat Cancer

Surgeons performed the first-ever voice box transplant in a person with cancer as they began a small clinical trial to see if the procedure might be an option for throat cancer patients. A decade ago, Marty Kedian was diagnosed with a rare laryngeal cartilage cancer. After multiple operations for treatment, he could barely whisper and required a tube to breathe and swallow. In February, he underwent a 21-hour surgery to remove his larynx, the part of the throat containing the vocal cords, and replace it with one from an organ donor. Today, Kedian is relearning to talk and swallow. While two other larynx transplants have been completed in the U.S., this was the first involving cancer, which is the most common reason people have their voice box removed, the Associated Press reported. Kedian’s surgery, described in a report published online July 9 in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, is the first of nine planned larynx transplants in a clinical trial to evaluate if the procedure is feasible for people who face the loss of their voice. When they have their larynx removed, “patients become very reclusive, and very kind of walled off from the rest of the world,” David Lott, the study’s lead investigator and a head and neck surgeon at Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, told the Associated Press. “People need to keep their voice,” Kedian said.

Diabetes Drugs Help Lower Risk for Obesity-associated Cancers

Diabetes drugs found to help people lose weight may also reduce the risk for 10 types of cancer, according to a study published online July 5 in JAMA Network Open. People who are overweight or have obesity are at increased risk for 13 cancer types, and these cancers constitute 40% of all diagnoses in the U.S., CNN reported. Researchers reviewed health data for more than 1.6 million people with type 2 diabetes. They found people taking GLP-1 medications, such as semaglutide, which is branded as Ozempic and Wegovy, had a lower risk of developing 10 cancers compared with those being treated with insulin. People taking the drugs had their risks for gallbladder, liver and pancreatic cancers and meningioma, a type of brain cancer, cut in half. Additionally, they had lower risk for colorectal, endometrial, esophageal, kidney and ovarian cancers and multiple myeloma, but GLP-1 use was not linked to lower rates of stomach, thyroid or postmenopausal breast cancers. “These findings provide preliminary evidence of the potential benefit of [GLP-1s] for cancer prevention in high-risk populations and support further preclinical and clinical studies for the prevention of certain [obesity-associated cancers],” the study authors wrote. (For more on how weight-loss drugs may impact cancer risk, read this column from our summer issue by William G. Nelson, director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore and Cancer Today’s editor-in-chief.)