Cancer News and Research

Latest Cancer News and Research

Aspirin reduces the risk of breast cancer

According to a new British report, taking drugs such as Aspirin can reduce the risk of breast cancer by as much as 20 percent.

10 Mar 2008

A glass of wine a day protects middle-aged teetotallers from heart disease

Scientists say that middle-aged 'teetotallers' can quickly reduce their risk of heart disease by having a daily tipple.

10 Mar 2008

Refined carb diet increases risk of common diseases

Eating foods the body quickly converts into blood glucose - such as highly processed breakfast cereals and most white breads - leads to a greater risk of diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer.

9 Mar 2008

Colorectal cancer not always easy to detect by colonoscopy

According to a new study by researchers in the U.S. colonoscopies do not detect all colorectal cancers; they say that flat lesions can be easily overlooked during a colonoscopy.

9 Mar 2008

Sam Newman in the clear after prostate cancer scare

Doctors treating AFL sporting personality Sam Newman for prostate cancer have revealed the disease has not spread.

9 Mar 2008

Risks of long-term hormone therapy continue to outweigh benefits

New results from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) confirm that the health risks of long-term use of combination (estrogen plus progestin) hormone therapy in healthy, postmenopausal women persist even a few years after stopping the drugs and clearly outweigh the benefits.

6 Mar 2008

New way to assess a woman's risk for invasive breast cancer

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a way to quickly estimate a woman's risk for invasive breast cancer.

6 Mar 2008

Smoking marijuana (cannabis) does not increase risk of head, neck cancer

Smoking marijuana (cannabis) does not increase the user's risk of head and neck cancer, according to a new study published in the March 2008 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

6 Mar 2008

Curing cancer with natural products - a case for shamans and herb women?

Not at all, for many chemotherapies to fight cancer applied in modern medicine are natural products or were developed on the basis of natural substances. Thus, taxanes used in prostate and breast cancer treatment are made from yew trees. The popular periwinkle plant, which grows along the ground of many front yards, is the source of vinca alkaloids that are effective, for example, against malignant lymphomas. The modern anti-cancer drugs topotecan and irinotecan are derived from a constituent of the Chinese Happy Tree.

6 Mar 2008

Risk of surgery for lung cancer lower at teaching hospitals

Patients cared for by hospitals with residents in training have a 17 percent less chance of dying after lung cancer surgery compared with patients undergoing surgery at non-teaching hospitals, according to results of a Johns Hopkins study published in the March issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

6 Mar 2008

How much and how often people drink influences mortality risk

How much and how often people drink - not just the average amount of alcohol they consume over time - independently influence the risk of death from several causes, according to a new study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

6 Mar 2008

PET/CT planning beneficial for head and neck cancer patients

Using a combination of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography for radiation therapy treatment planning in head and neck carcinoma patients provides for excellent, local and regional disease control when compared to CT alone, according to a study in the March 1 issue of the International Journal for Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

6 Mar 2008

New malaria drug also treats toxoplasmosis

A new drug that will soon enter clinical trials for treatment of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the key medicine in the current gold-standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a related parasite that infects nearly one-third of all humans—more than two billion people worldwide.

6 Mar 2008

New test to assess risk of ovarian cancer

European women facing "the silent killer" now have access to a breakthrough test to identify their risk of ovarian cancer.

6 Mar 2008

Flat, non-polypoid colorectal neoplasms linked to colorectal cancer

Flat, non-polypoid colorectal neoplasms (NP-CRNs), which may be difficult to detect, appear to be relatively common and may have a greater association with cancer compared with the more routinely diagnosed type of colorectal polyps, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA.

6 Mar 2008

Five steps to get on track with preventive screenings

Five health prevention strategies could save more than 100,000 lives a year, according to recent research reported in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource.

6 Mar 2008

Genetic mutations involved in IGF-I signaling pathway influence life span

Mutations in genes governing an important cell-signaling pathway influence human longevity, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found.

6 Mar 2008

Chemotherapy with chemoradiation for pancreatic cancer has small survival benefit

The addition of the drug gemcitabine with chemoradiation for the treatment of patients who had surgery for pancreatic cancer was associated with a survival benefit, although this improvement was not statistically significant, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA.

6 Mar 2008

Cancer risk slightly higher for women in discontinued hormone treatment trial

A follow up study of participants in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) clinical trial led by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher has found that women who were taking the combined hormone therapy of estrogen plus progestin may have an increased risk of cancer since the intervention was stopped, compared to participants in the trial's placebo group.

6 Mar 2008

Bioniche receives fast track for bladder cancer therapy

Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. has announced that it has received notice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that its therapy for first-line non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer meets the criteria for Fast Track designation.

6 Mar 2008