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Drug shortages have reached an all-time high in the United States, pharmacists are warning.During the first three months of 2024, there were 323 active medication shortages, according to American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and Utah Drug Information Service. Previously, the record high was 320 shortages in 2014.This ASHP started tracking shortages in 2001.MORE: Patients, health care providers face shortages of critical drugs, Senate report finds"All drug classes are vulnerable to shortage," Dr. Paul Abramowitz, CEO of ASHP, said in a statement. "Some of the most worrying shortages involve generic sterile injectable medications, including cancer chemotherapy drugs and emergency medications...

Using patient data from six major U.S. cancer centers, researchers developed a risk prediction model for moderate-to-severe kidney injury after receiving the chemotherapy drug cisplatin in the largest, first generalizable study of its kind Cisplatin is a highly effective chemotherapy that has been used to treat cancer for decades, but it can cause kidney injury that can potentially lead to the discontinuation of life-saving cancer treatments. Investigators developed a comprehensive tool to predict which patients are at highest risk of moderate-to-severe kidney injury after cisplatin. They found the highest-risk patients had as much as a 20-fold higher risk of developing...

On Friday, Catherine, Princess of Wales, published a video explaining that post-operative tests revealed she has cancer and she is undergoing “preventative chemotherapy.” There may be another aspect to Kate’s story which isn’t being publicised and which Dr. Vernon Coleman discusses in the article below.He also discusses some facts about chemotherapy that you won’t read in corporate media.By Dr. Vernon ColemanSadly, Princess Kate has got cancer. We wish her a speedy and complete recovery. Just why they needed to keep the truth secret for so long is a mystery – though there may be an explanation which I’ll discuss in...

The Princess of Wales has announced tonight that she has been diagnosed with cancer aged 42 and is undergoing 'preventative' chemotherapy. In a deeply emotional video message, filmed at Windsor on Wednesday, Catherine revealed the news had come as a 'huge shock' and that she and William 'have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family'. It came days after she was seen smiling with Prince William as they left their favourite farm shop close to their Windsor home.

Kate, Princess of Wales, has revealed she has been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing preventative chemotherapy. In a personal message, the 42-year-old said planned abdominal surgery in January was successful and it was initially thought her condition was non-cancerous. But tests after the operation found cancer had been present, she said, adding: "This of course came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family."

People who are diagnosed with head and neck cancer often receive a standard type of chemotherapy as part of their treatment. If they are exposed to secondhand smoke during chemotherapy—even if they have never smoked themselves—the treatment may be far less effective at killing cancer cells. In her laboratory, Queimado and her team exposed head and neck cancer cells to secondhand smoke for 48 hours (a control group of cancer cells was not exposed to secondhand smoke). Simultaneously, the cells were treated with cisplatin, a chemotherapy drug commonly used to treat head and neck cancer. The findings were significant: Twice...

Bladder cancer is one of the more common cancers worldwide. Intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin (tuberculosis vaccine) has been used as adjuvant therapy by urologists since 1976. Unfortunately, BCG fails approximately 40% of patients in two years. Since 2012, BCG has been in a worldwide shortage situation. One of the most promising new strategies for NMIBC is the combination of intravesical chemotherapy drugs used as sequential therapy, one drug after the other, with one-hour bladder dwell time for each drug. Initial results with gemcitabine (Gem) and mitomycin C (MMC) appeared promising but shortages in MMC led to the need to substitute docetaxel...

Researchers have identified a receptor protein known as CHRM1 as a key player in prostate cancer cells' resistance to docetaxel, a commonly-used chemotherapy drug to treat advanced cancer that has spread beyond the prostate. The discovery opens the door to new treatment strategies that could overcome this resistance. The study showed that blocking CHRM1 in resistant prostate cancer cell lines and an animal model based on patient-derived resistant tissue restored docetaxel's ability to kill cells and stop tumor growth. The researchers did this by using dicyclomine, a drug that selectively inhibits CHRM1 activity. Dicyclomine is already on the market as...

Researchers have discovered that a certain type of chemotherapy improves the immune system's ability to fight off bladder cancer, particularly when combined with immunotherapy. These findings may explain why the approach, cisplatin chemotherapy, can lead to a cure in a small subset of patients with metastatic, or advanced, bladder cancer. Researchers also believe that their findings could explain why clinical trials combining another type of chemotherapy, carboplatin-based chemo, with immunotherapy have not been successful but others that use cisplatin with immunotherapy are successful. "We have known for decades that cisplatin works better than carboplatin in bladder cancer, however, the mechanisms...

New research suggests that patients who have insufficient levels of vitamin D before starting paclitaxel treatment are more likely to experience peripheral neuropathy. According to an analysis of 1,191 patients with early-stage breast cancer—using data collected in the SWOG S0221 study—20.7% of patients with vitamin D deficiency experienced at least a grade 3 level of chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN), compared to 14.2% of those with sufficient vitamin D levels. The researchers also found that inducing vitamin D deficiency in an accompanying mice model study caused neurotoxicity-like symptoms. "These results suggest that vitamin D supplementation in patients with lower levels of...

Men with high-grade prostate cancer and low prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels have a poor prognosis. The question remains as to whether the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, which increases survival in metastatic prostate cancer, can improve the cure rate in these patients. In a new study by investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital, a meta-analysis of five prospective randomized clinical trials (RCTs) found that adding docetaxel to standard-of-care (SOC) treatment was associated with a 70% reduction in death from prostate cancer-specific mortality (PCSM). Investigators performed a meta-analysis of the RCTs evaluating SOC treatment with radiotherapy and androgen deprivation therapy or with radical...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) with synchronous peritoneal metastases (SPM) is a challenging disease to treat with a relatively poor prognosis. However, recent advances in treatment strategies have led to improved outcomes for patients with SPM. The optimal treatment approach for CRC with SPM remains controversial. A growing body of evidence suggests that comprehensive treatment, including cytoreductive surgery (CRS), chemotherapy, and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC), may improve patient outcomes. A recent study evaluated the treatment strategies and outcomes of patients with CRC with SPM. The study included a large sample of patients and the findings suggest that comprehensive treatment was associated with...

Despite Biden administration efforts, children’s hospitals across the country report some chemotherapy drugs commonly used for leukemia and lymphoma are hard to find. Pediatric cancer doctors are sounding the alarm about a growing shortage of chemotherapy drugs for children. The dwindling supplies add another layer to the ongoing cancer drug shortage crisis that’s left doctors scrambling and forced patients to make difficult choices about treatments since early February. The Biden administration has taken steps to address the crisis, in some cases successfully: Doctors say that shortages of two cancer drugs, carboplatin and cisplatin, have eased significantly in recent weeks. However,...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat, being highly resistant to chemotherapy. However, there are no effective alternative therapies to chemotherapy, so chemo remains the best available treatment. Researchers report that a hyperglycemic state—that is, one where the blood glucose level is raised—made pancreatic cancer more sensitive to chemotherapy in a mouse model. (Pancreatic cancer is more formally known as Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma and shortened as PDAC). Results were replicated in cell culture and a cohort of patients with metastatic PDAC. These findings present a potentially new method of making chemotherapy more effective against pancreatic cancer,...

Researchers have found a link between chemotherapy-induced changes to gut bacteria and the unhealthy weight gain seen in breast cancer patients, pointing the way to potentially help survivors avoid obesity-related illness later in their lives. In newly published research, a team found that the patients treated with chemotherapy lost muscle mass and gained abdominal fat, which has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and even cancer recurrence. The chemo patients also exhibited signs of inflammation and significant changes to the number and variety of bacteria in their guts. Obesity has been linked with several kinds of cancer, including breast cancer,...

A shortage of cancer drugs is forcing doctors to confront the reality that some patients could die needlessly. “Lives will be shortened,” Dr. Patrick Timmins III, a gynecologic oncologist at Women’s Cancer Care Associates in Albany, New York, told the Atlantic. “A lot of people are going to be hurt,” he added. “I’ve been doing this forever, and this is absolute lunacy.” SNIP Some of these are nonprescription drugs, like cold and flu medicines. But life-saving drugs for cancer patients are also not available. The drug shortage is so extreme that it’s a national security threat, according to a recent...

Cancer centers are contending with shortages of key chemotherapy drugs, with potentially dire consequences once the scarcity starts hitting patients. A new survey released this week by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) found that 93 percent of cancer centers are reporting shortages of carboplatin and 70 percent are reporting shortages of cisplatin. These two drugs are commonly used together to treat a wide variety of cancers — including breast, lung, prostate and many types of leukemias — often with the aim of curing them.

Cancer therapy is limited by toxicity in normal cells and drug-resistance in cancer cells. In his latest review, Mikhail V. Blagosklonny, M.D., Ph.D., discusses the theory that cancer resistance to certain therapies can be exploited for protection of normal cells—simultaneously enabling the selective killing of resistant cancer cells by using antagonistic drug combinations, which include cytotoxic and protective drugs. "No cancer cell, no matter how resistant it is, can survive chemotherapy in a cell culture. In the organism, however, therapy of cancer is limited by killing or damaging normal cells. Selective protection of normal cells from chemotherapy would increase the...

Researchers found [a] test can predict whether a bowel cancer patient will benefit from chemotherapy. It is thought that this could spare patients who will not benefit from treatment from unnecessary toxicity and debilitating side effects. The genetic test is already used as part of standard of care in the UK and worldwide to predict patients' responses to other targeted cancer drugs, meaning doctors could apply it to guide chemotherapy straight away. In bowel cancer, responses to last-line chemotherapy treatment trifluridine/tipiracil vary greatly between patients—with some patients showing good, long-term responses, and others seeing no benefits. The researchers found that...

A large team has discovered some of the ways gut bacteria can positively impact treatments for cancer. The group studied the impact of gut microbiota on chemotherapy given to patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Prior research has shown that chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer that has metastasized sometimes works well but is sometimes ineffective, and this difference may be tied to dietary resistance, though its source is not known. In this new study, the team looked at the possibility that certain microorganisms in the gut microbiome play a role in the process. To better understand how the gut microbiome might play...