Archive for July, 2008

A new study links having strong bones to an elevated risk of breast cancer. At first blush, that seems to put women in a bind: tumor if you do, fracture if you don’t. The temptation to punch a wall in frustration is totally understandable.

But you certainly shouldn’t be misled by these results into believing that doing things to make your bones stronger—like lifting weights and taking calcium—will increase your breast cancer risk. The new finding doesn’t have any such sinister implication.

Sizing up breast cancer risk in women over 60 is tricky business. The standard risk model takes into account, among other things, age, race/ethnicity, and family history of breast cancer, yet it produces only a rough estimate of a woman’s risk.

The new study, published online today in the journal Cancer, found that hip bone density, which can be measured with an X-ray scan, is just as good a predictor.

What’s more, combining the density scan with the risk model could more accurately pinpoint risk for women already at heightened risk for breast cancer, like those who’ve previously had breast biopsies.

As we all know, cancer is mainly caused due to abnormal growth of cells in our body. When this abnormal or cancerous growth of cells is confined to brain, it is considered as brain cancer. So, according to the size and location of these cancerous cells, brain cancer symptoms vary significantly.

Brain tumors mainly obstruct the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. As a result, this cerebrospinal fluid accumulates in your brain and increases the intracranial pressure in your brain. Brain tumors greatly damage the vital neurological pathways and invade your brain tissues significantly.

Always remember, not all brain tumors can lead you to brain cancer, but brain cancer is a term particularly reserved for malignant or cancerous tumors. When your brain develops malignant tumors, they spread aggressively, overpowers the healthy cell in your brain by merely taking space, nutrients and blood of your brain cells.

So, initial identification of these brain cancer symptoms is very crucial to prevent the spread of malignant tumors in brain. Certain most common brain cancer symptoms mainly include:

1. Headaches that usually becomes worse in mornings. Clumsiness, weakness and difficulty in walking are most common signs of brain cancer.

Scientists are claiming to have made a major breakthrough in the fight against prostate cancer with a new pill that shrinks tumors.

The new drug, abiraterone, could be used to treat up to 80 percent of patients with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which almost always proves fatal.

The pill has been shown to minimize tumors and end the need for chemotherapy, which usually has unpleasant side effects and is not always effective.

Each year, 680,000 men worldwide are diagnosed with the disease and about 220,000 die from it.

In trials at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital in Britain, the majority of patients with previously untreatable and advanced cancer are said to have experienced “significant” regression of the disease.

Abiraterone is now being tested on 1,200 men worldwide.

“This agent clearly looks promising, but it is still at the early stages of clinical development,” said David Webb, professor of clinical pharmacology at the University of Edinburgh.

Read more information at Fox News

Uterus plays the most critical role in woman’s reproductive system. Any abnormal growth in the lining of the uterus can possibly leads to uterus cancer, which can probably ruin your precious life.

So, to avoid all complications of your uterus, try to know more about it and be more conscious about your overall health.

Uterus cancer is a common gynecological cancer that affects most of the women all over the world. It usually develops in the body of the uterus, a hollow organ located in lower abdomen.

Role of estrogen and progesterone in developing uterus cancer!

More often, uterus cancer mainly results due to higher levels of estrogen without balancing levels of progesterone in your body.

The estrogen level in your body mainly promotes the growth of tissue and rapidly increases the cell division in the lining of your uterus. So, to control the levels of estrogen in your body, progesterone is very essential for your body.

Particularly, during your regular menstrual cycle, the secretion of estrogen hormone is significantly increased in your body.

So, experiencing early menstrual periods during your entire course of your life can certainly increase the risk of uterus cancer.

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have shown an association between certain past diagnostic radiation procedures and an increased risk of young-onset prostate cancer - a rare form of prostate cancer which affects about 10 per cent of all men diagnosed with the disease.

The study, the first of its kind to report the relationship between low dose ionising radiation from diagnostic procedures and the risk of prostate cancer, was funded by the Prostate Cancer Research Foundation (PCRF) [Prostate cancer research] and is part of the UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study (UKGPCS).

The study showed that men who had a hip or pelvic X-ray or barium enema 10 years previously were two and a half times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the general population. And the link appeared to be stronger in men who had a family history of the disease.

The research was led by Professor Kenneth Muir, from the Division of Epidemiology and Public Health at The University of Nottingham, in association with Dr Rosalind Eeles at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.

Did you recently notice any pale lump inside your mouth? Does it seem like anything which you have never seen before? Or do you feel that you are at increased risk of developing throat cancer? This sort of pale lump inside your mouth that doesn’t seem to heal quickly can be a throat cancer symptom.

The American cancer society approximately estimates that more than 30,000 cases of throat and oral cancers takes place annually. However, even it is difficult to predict who will get throat cancer. Here are certain most important factors, which can possibly help you to prevent the development of throat cancer symptoms.

Avoid over use of tobacco!

Tobacco can mainly damage the cells that are present in the lining of the oral cavity and upper portion of your throat. Particularly, if you have a habit of smoking, try to completely stay away from it as much as possible.

Do you know that almost 90% of people who have smoking habit can certainly develop throat cancer? Try to realize that smoking or over use of tobacco in other forms can possibly lead you to throat cancer, so try to stay away from these potential triggers of cancer.

California researchers say they have developed molecular “smart bombs” that stop pancreatic and kidney cancer from spreading in mice while causing fewer side effects and damage to healthy surrounding tissues than traditional chemotherapy.

A team from the University of California, San Diego, designed a “nanoparticle” anti-cancer drug delivery system that zooms in on a protein marker called integrin , which is found on the surface of certain tumor blood vessels. The marker is tied to the development of new blood vessels and malignant tumor growth.

While the system had little impact on primary tumors, it halted the metastasis of pancreatic and kidney cancers throughout the bodies of mice. Cancer metastasis normally is much harder to treat than the primary tumor, and it usually leads to the patient’s death.

According to the report, the system works with a lower dose of chemotherapy because it attacks the cancer with such precision. In most chemo treatments, the destruction of healthy tissue is a side effect as it floods the body with cancer-killing toxins.

“We were able to establish the desired anti-cancer effect while delivering the drug at levels 15 times below what is needed when the drug is used systemically,” study leader David Cheresh, vice chairman of pathology at UCSD, said in a university news release.

A prostate cancer study that could change practice found that widely used hormone-blocking drugs did not improve survival chances for older men whose disease hadn’t spread.

In fact, men given the drugs alone were slightly more likely to die of prostate cancer during the next six years than men who’d gotten medical monitoring but no or delayed treatment, another common treatment approach.

The study involved nearly 20,000 Medicare patients with prostate cancer that hadn’t spread.

A surprising 41 percent got only drug treatment, in shots or implants, showing that the therapy has become a popular alternative to surgery and radiation[Radiation Therapy], the study authors said.

Other experts said the study gives doctors important information about how to treat older men with slow-growing disease that hasn’t spread beyond the prostate.

However, the study didn’t look at whether hormone-blocking drugs alone benefit younger men or compare that treatment with radiation or surgery.

Randomized studies have shown that the drugs can benefit men with more aggressive disease when used along with surgery or radiation.

But research is sparse on using hormone-blockers alone or in patients with localized cancer, like those in their study, the authors said.