Diagnosis and Treatment

An unhealthy gut triggers changes in normal breast tissue that helps breast cancer spread to other parts of the body, new research from UVA Cancer Center reveals.

The gut microbiome – the collection of microbes that naturally live inside us – can be disrupted by poor diet, long-term antibiotic use, obesity or other factors. When this happens, the ailing microbiome reprograms important immune cells in healthy breast tissue, called mast cells, to facilitate cancer’s spread, UVA Health’s new discovery shows.

When Ben Bravery began studying medicine after surviving bowel cancer he found something missing from the curriculum – patients

The young patient sitting across from me is no longer calm. His left hand is clenched in a fist, his right one is shaking. Red blotches have broken out on his neck.

“Why am I sick?” he asks.

The stage of cancer indicates how advanced it is and what treatments will work best.

After a diagnosis is made, your doctor will stage the cancer.

The stage defines the location of the cancer, how much it has spread, how big it is, and how aggressive it is.

Knowing the stage of cancer is important because it typically determines your treatment options.

A cancer is referred to by the stage it’s given when you’re first diagnosed, even if it worsens to a different stage.

The finding could improve cancer immunotherapy, a promising therapy that targets cancer cells using the body’s own immune system rather than radiation.

Previously regarded merely as an immune system helper, a kind of white blood cell now seems to be the initiator of the body’s defenses against cancerous tumors. The finding could improve cancer immunotherapy, a promising treatment that targets cancer cells using the body’s own immune system rather than radiation.