Tag Archives: brazil

Can celebrity cancer diagnoses prompt quitting smoking?

In a study published this week in Preventive Medicine, researchers from San Diego State University, the Santa Fe Institute, the University of North Carolina and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that when celebrities publicly discuss their struggles with cancer diagnoses, the resulting media coverage prompts more smokers to search for information on quitting than events like New Year’s Day or World No Tobacco Day. Public health experts have long known these discussions spur others to get screened for cancer or consider the same treatments, but it was unclear whether these discussions also promoted cancer prevention behaviors, like quitting smoking. This question has evaded study because the method most commonly used to assess cancer-related behaviors — annual telephone surveys — isn’t fine-grained enough to tell researchers which events are influencing respondents’ answers. …

Shining the soothing light to reduce canker sores in patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

No effective preventative strategy is currently available for canker sore, but prospective trials of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) done in HNSCC patients undergoing chemoradiotherapy showed promising results. However, additional trials detected a high incidence of canker sore among patients, leaving the question of whether LLLT can effectively prevent canker sore still open. Now, a group of scientists led by Dr. Heliton Spindola Antunes at the National Cancer Institute (INCA) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, has successfully performed a definitive trial showing that LLLT reduces the occurrence of canker sore in HNSCC patients undergoing concurrent chemoradiotherapy and improves patient’s quality of life…