Читать книгу Anti-Aging Therapeutics Volume XIII - A4M American Academy - Страница 7

In 1940, the classic textbook of pathology, Ewing’s Neoplastic Diseases¹ noted that PCa is a rare disease, accounting for 2.7 % of tumors in the male population of that era. Half a century ago, pathologists found a high percentage of men without “clinical” PCa to have malignant cells in the operative specimens of surgery for relief of benign prostatic obstruction. In addition, the rate of cancer being present in prostates examined during autopsy varies dramatically in different regions of the world, with the food supply being the single variable able to account for the differences. In the absence of demonstrable tumor invasion, perhaps cancer formation should be considered a non-threatening aspect of normal body aging, or at worst, a chronic disease that is governed by lifestyle and the available food supply.

This leads to a simple clinical question: Is there a way to determine whether a cancer is part of the natural aging process to be watched (inconsequential cancer) or whether the malignancy will have deadly consequences?

This question is being answered by a building body of knowledge that has recently been accelerated by technological advances in diagnostic imaging. In 1985, a prominent British physician, David Cosgrove, published a paper in the American Journal of Radiology demonstrating the presence of blood flows in breast cancers. The new generation of sonogram equipment had the capability to show pictures of blood vessels. The arteries and veins supplying a tumor could be clearly imaged. Moreover, the actual flowing blood in the cancer could be seen and velocity of flow of blood in the vessels accurately measured. At an international conference in Italy in 1997, Dr. Rodolfo Campani, an Italian radiologist specializing in studying the blood flows of cancers at the University of Pavia Medical Center, showed the criteria to differentiate malignant cancer vessels from benign tumor blood vessels. Benign vessels are few in number, smoothly outlined, follow straight courses and branch regularly. Malignant vessels are many in number, irregularly outlined, irregular in course and crooked in branching patterns. These findings have been confirmed by other investigators, and presented at the 2006 World Congress of Interventional Oncology. Today, malignant blood vessels may be accurately and noninvasively detected by newer Doppler sonography techniques and advanced blood flow MRI protocols.