Tag: Foregut

In Neuroendocrine Neoplasms, foregut conceptually encompasses not only stomach and proximal duodenum, but also the pancreas, and probably for convenience, even thymus, lung and bronchus.

Neuroendocrine Cancer: At least 50 shades of grey

Awareness, Patient Advocacy

If you read any authoritative source on this cancer, it will normally begin with "Neuroendocrine Neoplasms (NENs) are heterogeneous tumours .............". The term heterogeneous means diverse in character or content; or a structure with dissimilar components or elements. This is not surprising as these tumours are found in Neuroendocrine cells throughout the vast majority of the human anatomy. And yet, when you look at many hospital/healthcare sites, advocate organisation sites, and cancer information sources not maintained by Neuroendocrine Cancer scientists or specialists, you might start to think there is just one big type of NET and only one syndrome. Once again, this is partly related to the lingering use of the term Carcinoid. Even within the community, so many people make blanket statements about Neuroendocrine Cancer which are misleading, e.g.…

08Sep 2016 by Ronny Allan 20 Comments

Serotonin – the NET effect

Diet and Nutrition, Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer, Patient Advocacy, The NET Effect Series

picture shows an actual serotonin receptor BackgroundI'd never heard of Serotonin until I was diagnosed with Neuroendocrine Cancer in 2010. It is frequently discussed, often with contrasting views from the respondents. One common assumption/question is that it is responsible for many things that can go wrong with Neuroendocrine Cancer patients who have serotonin-producing tumours. To a certain extent, that's true but statement such as "it's the hormones" is an easy assumption to make; or an easy answer to give in response to a complex set of circumstances. It's difficult to get a definitive answer and the science behind the behaviour of our hormones isn't really 100% tied down - the human body is extremely complex.You may see serotonin referred to as a 'neurotransmitter', a 'chemical' and a 'hormone' - this…

What is Satoreotide? It’s an agonist treatment. i.e. a ‘next generation’ radiologand for Peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) or more specifically the radiopharmaceutical that binds to both activated and unactivated somatostatin receptors which are upregulated on these tumours. There is far higher binding via this mechanism than standard octreotate. The technical name of the radiopharmaceutical […]

A review of September 2023 on RonnyAllan.NET – Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer

On my website RonnyAllan.NET, September was an interesting month because I had pushed out some blogs before I went on a planned overseas holiday from 6th – 25th Sep and then pushed out some more on return. This had the effect of producing higher figures than August. Normally holidays mean lower figures. I’m thankful to […]

Never mind the Bollocks – here’s the cancer

I don’t tend to share some very personal stuff, but this is on the boundary of that rule and there are some important messages to be teased out. For those who follow my blog in detail, you may remember the post entitled “Neuroendocrine Cancer – Signs, Suspicions, Symptoms, Syndromes, Side-Effects, Secondary Illnesses, Comorbidities, and Coincidences” […]

First and only FDA-cleared, fully automated chromogranin A assay

There has been controversy about the utility of Chromogranin A for many years now. Specialists have been critical about its use but to be fair even those less critical still confirm that alone it would not be trusted to formally diagnose Neuroendocrine Cancer. That said, it was still controversial when certain US guidelines were updated […]

Neuroendocrine Cancer: Question, Clarify, Confirm

One of the many observations I make in my private Neuroendocrine Cancer Facebook group is the misunderstandings caused by the use of non-standard terminology combined with a lack of understanding of what is up to date or not. And I don’t always mean a misunderstanding by patients. If I am to believe doctors uttered some […]