Category Archives: Cancer

New prostate cancer screening guideline recommends not using PSA test — ScienceDaily

“Some people believe men should be screened for prostate cancer with the PSA test but the evidence indicates otherwise,” states Dr. Neil Bell, member of the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and chair of the prostate cancer guideline working group. “These recommendations balance the possible benefits of PSA screening with the potential harms of false positives, overdiagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.” For men with prostate cancer diagnosed through PSA screening, between 11.3% and 19.8% will receive a false-positive diagnosis, and 40% to 56% will be affected by overdiagnosis leading to invasive treatment…

Prostate cancer risk reduced by sleeping with many women, but increased with many men, study finds — ScienceDaily

Marie-Elise Parent and Marie-Claude Rousseau, professors at university’s School of Public Health, and their colleague Andrea Spence, published their findings in the journal Cancer Epidemiology. The results were obtained as part of the Montreal study PROtEuS (Prostate Cancer & Environment Study), in which 3,208 men responded to a questionnaire on, amongst other things, their sex lives. Of these men, 1,590 were diagnosed with prostate cancer between September 2005 and August 2009, while 1,618 men were part of the control group. Risk associated with number of partners Overall, men with prostate cancer were twice as likely as others to have a relative with cancer…

Most Internet sources on prostate cancer disagree with expert panel’s recommendation — ScienceDaily

In an Internet search for the phrase “prostate cancer screening” on three main U.S. search engines, study researchers found that most sites appearing on the first results page recommended a patient-individualized approach to screening…

Improving breast cancer chemo by testing patient’s tumors in a dish — ScienceDaily

A team of biomedical engineers at Vanderbilt University headed by Assistant Professor Melissa Skala has developed the technique, which uses fluorescence imaging to monitor the response of three-dimensional chunks of tumors removed from patients and exposed to different anti-cancer drugs. In an article published last month by the journal Cancer Research the engineers describe applying the technique to the three major forms of breast cancer. They report that the test can detect significant drops in the metabolic activity levels of all three types of tumors within 72 hours when exposed to an effective drug whereas tumors that were resistant to a drug show no change…

Prostate cancer risk reduced by sleeping with many women, but increased with many men, study finds

Marie-Elise Parent and Marie-Claude Rousseau, professors at university’s School of Public Health, and their colleague Andrea Spence, published their findings in the journal Cancer Epidemiology. The results were obtained as part of the Montreal study PROtEuS (Prostate Cancer & Environment Study), in which 3,208 men responded to a questionnaire on, amongst other things, their sex lives…

Radiation exposure linked to aggressive thyroid cancers, researchers confirm for the first time

Researchers examined thyroid cancers diagnosed up to two decades after the Chernobyl accident and found that higher thyroid radiation doses estimated from measurements taken shortly after the accident were associated with more aggressive tumor features. “Our group has previously shown that exposures to radioactive iodine significantly increase the risk of thyroid cancer in a dose-dependent manner. The new study shows that radiation exposures are also associated with distinct clinical features that are more aggressive,” said the paper’s first author, Lydia Zablotska, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UC San Francisco (UCSF). The paper will be published online in the journal Cancer…

Most Internet sources on prostate cancer disagree with expert panel’s recommendation

In an Internet search for the phrase “prostate cancer screening” on three main U.S. search engines, study researchers found that most sites appearing on the first results page recommended a patient-individualized approach to screening. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men besides skin cancer, affecting one in seven American men over their lifetime according to the American Cancer Society.1 Screening, which is routine testing in the absence of symptoms, can detect prostate cancer early…

Tomosynthesis improves cancer detection in women with dense breast tissue

The study found that adding tomosynthesis (3D mammography) to routine biennial digital mammography screening among U.S. women with dense breasts could improve health outcomes at a reasonable cost relative to digital mammography screening alone. This is the first comparative effectiveness study performed at the national level using an established model, and it could influence future screening recommendations for women with dense breast tissue who comprise nearly half of all women in the United States. “We felt that this analysis would help inform timely policy and practice decisions given both increased attention to screening for women with dense breasts and rapid adoption of tomosynthesis in routine practice,” said Christoph I. …