Here are the 9 most common types of cancer
What Causes Black Specks In Stool?
Black specks in stool may be due to undigested food, such as blueberries. However, they can also be a sign of internal bleeding or liver problems. In newborns, black stool may be meconium.
Stool color can be affected by everyday fators such as diet or minor gastrointestinal distress. However, if stools turn black or have black specks for several days, a person should see their doctor to find out the cause.
In this article, we look at the causes of black specks in adult and baby stool, treatments, and when to see a doctor.
Healthy bowel movements are normally a medium brown color and long and smooth in shape. They should not require straining to pass or cause pain. Black specks are more noticeable when the stool is light in color than when it is darker.
Visually, the black specks may look like:
Some common causes of black specks in the stool include:
Diet
Some foods, such as the skins or seeds of fruit, are more difficult to digest than others. The following foods may leave black specks in the stool:
Food coloring can also cause the stool to change color because the body may have trouble digesting artificial dyes. For instance, black licorice can turn the stool black or very dark brown.
This cause is not necessarily a problem, although, it could mean a person is eating an unbalanced diet when it persists.
Iron supplements
Iron supplements, or food that is high in iron, can cause the stool to turn black. A sudden change could indicate that a person is getting too much iron. Black stools in a child could mean that they have consumed too many iron pills.
Medication
Some medications can temporarily change the color of the stool.
Bismuth, an active ingredient in some intestinal medications, mixes with the tiny amount of sulfur in a person's saliva and stomach to temporarily add black color to the stool and sometimes the tongue. The temporary color change is harmless, and it should disappear within a few days of using the medication.
A person should consult a doctor about potential stool changes if they have recently started taking a new prescription or over-the-counter drug.
Intestinal bleeding
Bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract, such as in the stomach or intestines, can make the stool appear black. The higher up in the digestive system the bleeding occurs, the darker the blood tends to be.
A person should see their doctor if they experience the following symptoms:
Liver problems
Stool color is a frequent indicator of liver disease. This is because the liver disease can cause cholestasis, where bile is reduced or blocked, sometimes leading to the pale-colored stool.
Liver disease can also cause black, tarry stool or black specks in the stool. This is because it can cause bleeding in the digestive tract, a complication called esophageal varices or portal hypertension.
Esophageal varices are bulging veins in the throat and stomach. They happen when blood flow to the liver is blocked. Scar tissue on the liver, often due to cirrhosis, is the most common cause of esophageal varices.
Esophageal varices signal a serious liver problem and need to be treated as a medical emergency.
Signs of liver disease include:
Some other conditions, including a blood clot and severe parasitic infections, may also block blood flow to the liver and cause esophageal varices.
A person with liver disease should talk to their doctor about what to do about signs of bleeding.
In newborns, meconium is usually the cause of black, tarry stools. Their stool is dark because they do not yet have the usual friendly gut bacteria that help people to digest their food and have bowel movements.
Once the baby leaves the womb, their intestines become colonized with bacteria, usually in the first days following birth, and the stools become gradually lighter. Black stool in a baby older than a week is unlikely to be meconium.
Older babies can develop black specks in their stools for the same reasons as adults. However, because babies are more vulnerable than adults to infections and diseases, it is important to notify a pediatrician immediately of changes in their stools.
A baby should be taken to the emergency room if they also show signs of:
People who feel otherwise healthy and who have no chronic illnesses can wait a day or two to see if black spots in their stool disappear.
A person should seek medical attention for black spots in the stool if they have:
Newborns should be immediately seen by a doctor if the black color is not due to meconium.
People who have had black specks in their stool for more than a day or two should see a doctor if they are not taking medication that turns the stool black. Similarly, they should see a doctor if they cannot explain the color by any foods they have recently eaten.
Treatment for black specks in the stool depends on the cause. A doctor will take a thorough medical history and may ask for a stool sample.
It may also be necessary to do imaging tests of the colon, stomach, or other parts of the gastrointestinal tract. Liver tests, including blood work, can assess the efficiency of the liver's functioning.
A person with liver disease may need to take medication, make dietary changes, or spend time in the hospital. If there is internal bleeding, a doctor will want to explore the cause and then have it treated.
Digestion is a complex process, and the appearance of stool can be affected by many factors. Many causes of stool changing color or having black specks are not emergencies.
A person should talk to a doctor to find out about personal risk factors related to this symptom, and they should seek prompt care for any troubling changes in stomach or digestive function.
Black Cohosh-Black Magic Against Breast Cancer
According to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, a herb used to treat menopausal symptoms may do more than that. It could be used to reduce the risk or even prevent the occurrence of breast cancer.Writing in the International Journal of Cancer, lead researcher Dr. Timothy R. Rebbeck said that the herb- black cohosh, when used by study subjects showed an effect of reducing breast cancer risk by up to 61 percent.
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The herb black cohosh is used along with dong quai, red clover, ginseng, yam and others, as hormone related supplements to deal with menopausal symptoms.As a part of their study to test the effects of these herbs on breast cancer, the researchers compared 949 women with breast cancer to 1,524 healthy controls. Each woman was asked to list up to five herbs she had used at least three times a week for at least one month prior to her diagnosis (for the breast cancer patients) or prior to the date she was screened for study participation (for the women without cancer). It was seen that out of the various herbs used, one particularly stood out. This was black cohosh as well as one of its derivatives; Remifemin.
It was also seen that African-American women were more likely than European Americans to use the herbs. Those women who reported taking black cohosh (5 percent of blacks and 2 percent of whites) were found to be at 61 percent lower risk of breast cancer. Those who took the herbal preparation derived from black cohosh called Remifemin, were observed to have a 53 percent lower risk of the disease.
According to the researchers, previous studies have revealed that black cohosh can block cell growth. The herb is also an antioxidant, and has been shown to have anti-estrogen effects as well.
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Many menopausal women seek relief from symptoms like hot flashes, heart palpitations, mood swings, and sleepless nights. For some, this search leads to hormone-related supplements (HRSs) – many of which contain phytoestrogens, plant-derived hormones that are chemically similar to the human estrogens in decline during menopause.Yet researchers ponder the fact whether the use of these supplements make a difference (good or bad) in a woman's likelihood of developing breast cancer, which is also largely regulated by estrogen. On the negative side, the herb can have side effects, and animal studies have suggested it may affect breast cancer severity.
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"Substantial additional research must be undertaken before it can be established that black cohosh, or some compound found in black cohosh, is a breast cancer chemopreventive agent," says Rebbeck. "We do believe that black cohosh has an effect on reducing breast cancer risk, but our data don't give us a good estimate of the magnitude of this effect," he adds.Because there is still so much to be understood about HRSs, Rebbeck cautions women against relying on any herbal preparation as their sole means of breast cancer prevention. "One of the dangers is that people sometimes think, 'I'm taking cohosh, so I don't have to do anything else. But not doing the other things – like getting regular mammography screenings – is what can hurt you. Herbal preparations are at best additions – not alternatives – to standard prevention methods", Rebbeck stresses.
At the same time Rebbeck agrees that there could be " something in these herbal compounds that could be a valuable addition to our cancer prevention medicine chest".
Source-MedindiaANN/V
Might Statins Help Fight Colon Cancer Tumor Growth?
Colon cancer is the third most prevalent type of cancer worldwide, and it can be screened for in order to catch it as early as possible.
Screening for colon cancer is done either through a fecal immunochemical test, which looks for blood in the stool that can come from polyps, or through a colonoscopy, to visualize the polyps.
There are two types of polyps:
Treatment generally involves removal of these polyps.
One particular type of polyp, known as a serrated adenoma, is considered precancerous, and needs to be removed completely.
This poses a challenge as the polyps are flat, rather than growing on stalks like other polyps, and are harder to visualize due to this and the part of the colon they appear in.
Cancers from this type of polyp make up 15 to 30% of colorectal cancers, and they are often particularly invasive and resistant to treatments.
So far, it has been unclear exactly why this particular type of polyp was more likely to result in cancer than other types of polyps, but now, a metabolic mechanism has been proposed by a group of scientists from Weill Cornell Medicine, NY.
The results of their study appeared in in Nature Communications on December 13, 2023.
Previous research by some members of the team had shown that serrated adenoma polyps had lower levels of a protein kinase C (PKC) enzyme, which is responsible for regulating a number of genes involved in cell proliferation, among other cell metabolic pathways. The cells also evaded the body's immune system, allowing the cancerous tumor to grow.'
In their latest study, the researchers used a previously developed mouse model that developed these serrated lesions in the colon.
The researchers started by analyzing the genes transcribed in these tumor cells, and found that cholesterol synthesis remained high in these cells, despite the high level of cholesterol present in them. This suggested cholesterol synthesis had become dysregulated in these tumor cells.
Further analysis of mouse tumor cells showed that loss of the protein kinases led to an activation of a transcription factor called SREBP2, which switches on cholesterol production.
Cholesterol is a driver of many metabolic processes, and the study authors showed that cholesterol drove cancer in these cells, initiating the growth of tumors.
Lead author Prof. Jorge Moscat, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, explained to Medical News Today:
"It gets activated normally when cholesterol is low, that happens in all cells in the body, cholesterol is low SREBP2 is activated, right, and then when cholesterol is high, SREBP2 is reduced. In the case of this tumor cell, the pathway is totally screwed up in a way that our cells know how to turn it on, but not to turn it off. So SREBP2 is constantly being activated, cholesterol is constantly made, and cholesterol is constantly being imported."
"So that that gives this particular type of cancer cells a competitive advantage," he added.
Researchers then looked at how applicable these results were in human cells using existing cell atlases. They used these to examine the gene activity in serrated adenomas in humans and found only serrated-type tumors, rather than other types of colorectal tumor, had low levels of PKC enzymes, and accumulation of the transcription factor SREBP2.
Dr. Misagh Karimi, a medical oncologist specializing in gastrointestinal cancers at City of Hope Orange County Lennar Foundation Cancer Center, Irvine, CA, who was not involved in the research, told MNT that "[t]he connection between cholesterol and cancer is an evolving area of research, in which previous studies have indicated that high cholesterol can trigger malignant cell activity and slow down the immune response to cancer cells."
"Studies have also shown that alterations in blood cholesterol level are common in many cancers, but researchers are still determining if these alterations cause the cancer or are the result of the cancer," he noted.
The scientists who conducted the research also created organoids from cancer patients' tumors, to examine the levels of these metabolites. These were used to test the effectiveness of a commonly prescribed statin, atorvastatin, at inhibiting growth of cells with low levels of PKC.
Statins are one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States, and many other countries and have been shown to reduce the risk of major cardiac events by reducing the amount of cholesterol in the blood.
Prof. Moscat and co-lead author Prof. Maria T. Diaz-Meco, professor of oncology in pathology at Weill Cornell Medical College, told MNT they were planning on developing a clinical trial to determine if statins could lower the risk of cancer in patients with serrated adenoma.
Designing a trial to examine whether statins could help people who have polyps removed would be a long-term investigation, as it takes around 5 years for the polyps to come back, if they do at all.
"I think this will be a beautiful chemo prevention protocol or strategy. Just using a statin. It's such a simple thing. Like we're looking for very sophisticated molecules and then we have something very easy," said Prof. Moscat.
Dr. Kamiri said evidence was growing that statins could help reduce the risk of several types of cancer. He said: "A 2020 study found evidence that statins may "starve" cancer cells to death.
In 2019, researchers in China found a link between taking a statin before diagnosis and a reduction in cancer-specific deaths among patients with colorectal cancer.
"Currently, statins are not generally prescribed to reduce cancer risk," Dr. Kamiri cautioned. "There are millions of patients in the U.S. On statins for their high cholesterol, and the cancer-protective benefits they may gain from taking them have not been fully proven. The best way to prevent colorectal cancer is to make healthy lifestyle choices and understand your individual genetic risk of the disease."
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