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A Message from Dr. Love
The most exciting part of conducting a research study is when you start to get data. This is when you can begin thinking big and forming hypotheses to fit what you have found. And this is precisely what Dr. Dixie Mills, our Foundation’s medical director, our students, and I have been doing this summer!
As you may recall, in 2007 we received a grant from the Avon Foundation to study the physiology of the resting breast—the first-ever study to look at what happens in the non-breastfeeding breast. (You’d think that by the 21st century we’d already have a full understanding of the basic anatomy and physiology of the breast—but we don’t.)
We know quite a bit about the breastfeeding breast. The breast is magical—it has the ability to make blood into milk. And as any woman who has breastfed knows, if you drink a glass of wine, your baby will get sleepy, whereas if you eat spicy food they will be up all night. And it’s not just what a woman eats that gets into her breast milk. Studies have found pesticides, nicotine, and other chemicals in a mother’s breast milk.
But what about when a woman is not breastfeeding? Do these substances also get passed into a woman’s breast fluid? To answer this question, we decided to see how long it takes certain substances to get into the breast fluid of women who are not breastfeeding.
What we have found so far is very interesting. And since no one has ever done this type of research before, what we have found is, for us, just like finding water on Mars!
MORE>
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Hot Topics
A new study adds more evidence to the belief that eating red meat may increase breast cancer risk.
Breast tissue begins to develop when a girl enters puberty. But the breast ducts do not fully form until after a first pregnancy. This had led breast cancer researchers to hypothesize that environmental exposures to carcinogens that occur during adolescence—when the breast is undergoing significant changes—have the potential to increase a woman’s breast cancer risk later in life.
For this study, investigators at the Harvard School of Public Health used data obtained from the 116,600 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II. They found that the women who ate the most red meat during high school were between 30% and 40% more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than were the women who ate the least red meat. But there are inherent problems in observational studies, like this one, that could impact the findings. MORE >
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Cause for Love
In celebration of Dr. Love's 60th birthday, and in recognition of her pioneering work as a breast cancer surgeon, advocate, and researcher, the Foundation invites you to join us in the Year of Love. Our goal is to raise $600,000 in honor of Dr. Love and her work. With your help, we can do it! When you donate in Dr. Love's honor, you'll have the opportunity to send her a personal message, which will be included on her virtual birthday card on our website. Donations in honor of Dr. Love can be made throughout 2008. Make a donation and send your birthday wishes.
What if the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation earned a penny every time you searched the Internet? And what if a percentage of every purchase you made online went to support our cause? Well, now it can!
GoodSearch.com is a new Yahoo-powered search engine that donates half of its advertising revenue, about a penny per search, to the charities its users designate. Just go to www.goodsearch.com and be sure to enter “Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation” as the charity you want to support.
GoodShop.com is a new online shopping mall that donates up to 37 percent of each purchase to the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation! Hundreds of great stores including Amazon, Target, Gap, Best Buy, ebay, Macy's, and Barnes & Noble have teamed up with GoodShop and every time you place an order, you’ll be supporting the Foundation.
Spread the word!
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Research Update
We are looking to recruit 30 Asian-American women in the next month to help us with our Breast Fluid Test Project. We would like you to come in to our office in Santa Monica for about an hour and try different methods of obtaining “nipple aspirate fluid”. Some women can just squeeze their nipples and fluid comes out, others need to massage their breasts for several minutes then squeeze or use warm heat on the breast. Asian and Asian-American women yield the lowest NAF of any group and in preparation for a larger study in China we hope to identify the easiest and best way do to this. We can compensate women $50 for their time. Please email research@dslrf.org or call 1-866-569-0388 for more information.
The Foundation is looking for 30 Californian women who have been diagnosed recently with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) to take part in a groundbreaking new research project that involves injecting a small amount of a chemotherapy drug into the affected breast duct. Study participants will then have their DCIS surgery four to six weeks later. The breast tissue collected during the surgery will be carefully examined to see the effects of the drug on the DCIS. If the study successfully shows that the drug has an impact on the DCIS, it could lead to a nationwide clinical trial of intraductal therapy for DCIS.
This research project, which was funded by the California Breast Cancer Research Program, is being conducted in collaboration with Ellen Mahoney, MD, and the Humboldt Community Breast Heath Project. Research participants will need to travel to Eureka, Calif., for the treatment and the surgery. Please call Ashley Casano at (310) 230-1712, Ext. 32, or send her an email for more information.
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On April 15, 2008, I was preparing to go back to work after being off for a week with bronchitis. I was rubbing the middle of my chest, where I was sore from coughing, and happened to feel a hard ridge along my sternum. Initially, I thought it was from coughing. But when I sat up, it fell into my left breast. My heart sank.