Tag Archives: american

U.S. lung cancer rates vary by subtype, sex, race/ethnicity, and age

Overall, lung cancer rates are declining in the United States, but little is known about trends related to different subtypes of lung cancer and different demographic groups. To investigate, Denise Riedel Lewis, PhD, MPH, of the National Cancer Institute, and her colleagues analyzed information from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Their goal was to update the classification of lung cancer subtypes and to determine the rates of lung cancer overall as well as the rates of squamous cell, small cell, adenocarcinoma, large cell, other, and unspecified carcinomas among US whites and blacks diagnosed from 1977 to 2010 and white non-Hispanics, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and white Hispanics diagnosed from 1992 to 2010. The researchers found that squamous and small cell carcinoma rates declined since the 1990s, although less rapidly among females than males…

New way to more accurately detect cervical cancer in women

The American Cancer Society predicts that this year in the United States, more than 12,100 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer, and roughly 4,220 women will die of the disease. Newer Pap tests and HPV screening more accurately identify pre-cancerous cellular changes that potentially develop into cervical cancer…

Many cancer survivors smoke years after diagnosis

“We need to follow up with cancer survivors long after their diagnoses to see whether they are still smoking and offer appropriate counseling, interventions, and possible medications to help them quit,” said Lee Westmaas, PhD, director of tobacco research at the American Cancer Society (ACS) and lead author of the study. Roy Herbst, MD, PhD, chief of medical oncology at Yale University and chair of the AACR Tobacco and Cancer Subcommittee, who was not involved with the study, said in an interview that the findings illustrate the scope of the problem. “Smoking can cause new mutations among cancer survivors that can lead to secondary and additional primary cancers. …

3-in-1 optical skin cancer probe

Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering have now developed a probe that combines into one device three unique ways of using light to measure the properties of skin tissue and detect cancer. The researchers have begun testing their 3-in-1 device in pilot clinical trials and are partnering with funding agencies and start-up companies to help bring the device to dermatologists’ offices. The researchers describe the skin cancer probe in a new paper published in the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, from AIP Publishing. Skin cancers of all types are the most common forms of cancer in North America, and melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, is one of the leading causes of cancer death, killing nearly 10,000 people every year in the United States. …

Tumor suppressor mutations alone don’t explain deadly cancer: Biomarker for head and neck cancers identified

The study, published online August 3 in the journal Nature Genetics, shows that high mortality rates among head and neck cancer patients tend to occur only when mutations in the tumor suppressor gene coincide with missing segments of genetic material on the cancer genome’s third chromosome. The link between the two had not been observed before because the mutations co-occur in about 70 percent of head and neck tumors and because full genetic fingerprints of large numbers of cancer tumors have become available only recently…

Expressive writing may help breast cancer survivors — ScienceDaily

“The key to developing an expressive writing intervention is the writing instruction. Otherwise, writing is just like a journal recording facts and events. Writing a journal can be therapeutic, but oftentimes we don’t get the empirical evidence to determine whether it’s effective or not,” said Qian Lu, assistant professor and director of the Culture and Health Research Center at UH…