It’s an emerging topic in health, one that UConn Health (University of Connecticut, Farmington, Conn.) cancer epidemiologist Richard Stevens has been studying for three decades. “It’s become clear that typical lighting is affecting our physiology,” Stevens says. “But lighting can be improved…
Being able to reliably identify those patients with the most aggressive cancers early via urine tests, and expediting aggressive therapeutic strategies, may significantly improve outcomes. The scientists believe that the validation of two urinary biomarkers could spell a new way of tailoring treatment…
More than 30 years ago, a groundbreaking analysis by famed British researchers, Richard Doll and Richard Peto, calculated that 30 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States were caused by smoking. Since that time, no new estimate of this percentage has been published in the scientific literature. …
In one of the first studies of its kind to examine British perceptions of obesity, fewer than 10 per cent of those who are clinically obese accept they have a serious weight problem. In a 2012 survey of around 2000 adults, only 11 per cent of obese women accurately acknowledged they were “obese,” with most describing themselves as “very overweight” or “just right.” And among men, only seven per cent correctly described themselves as being “obese” and another 16 per cent as “very overweight.” Approximately 10 per cent of people in the survey knew the BMI threshold for obesity and those who did were more likely to define themselves as “obese.” Researchers suggest that as bigger sizes become the new “normal,” people are less likely to recognise the health problems associated with their weight. Professor Jane Wardle, co-author and director of the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Centre at UCL, said: “It’s a real worry that people don’t recognise that their weight places them in the obese category, because it means they aren’t aware they are at increased risk of a number of health problems including cancer. …
“Colorectal cancer is still one of the most frequent and deadliest cancers worldwide. But diagnosed in time it can be cured in 9 out of 10 cases,” said Professor Serge Haan from the Life Science Research Unit at the University of Luxembourg…
The researchers base their findings on almost 93,000 women taking part in the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) in England. The women were all aged over 50, had gone through the menopause, and had no known breast cancer when they entered the study between 2005 and 2010. At enrolment they provided detailed information on height and weight (BMI); reproductive health; fertility; family history of breast and ovarian cancer; and use of hormonal contraceptives and HRT, all of which influence breast cancer risk. They were also asked about their current skirt size, and what this had been in their 20s. …
A simple blood test could identify those with hypercalcaemia, prompting doctors to investigate further. The research, published in the British Journal of Cancer, analysed the electronic records of 54,000 patients who had elevated levels of calcium and looked at how many of them went on to receive a cancer diagnosis. Dr Fergus Hamilton, who led the research from the Centre for Academic Primary Care at the University of Bristol, said: “All previous studies on hypercalcaemia and cancer had been carried out with patients who had already been diagnosed with cancer — hypercalcaemia was seen as a late effect of the cancer. “We wanted to look at the issue from a different perspective and find out if high calcium levels in blood could be used as an early indicator of cancer and therefore in the diagnosis of cancer.” Analysis of the data from 54,000 patients found that in men, even mild hypercalcaemia (2.6-2.8 mmol l−1) conferred a risk of cancer in one year of 11.5 per cent. …
Authors of the study are Dr. Chery A. Whipple, research associate at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and Dr. Constance Brinckerhoff, professor of Medicine and of Biochemistry at Geisel and member of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center. …
According to Miguel Ángel Quintela, head of the Unit: “The drug combination of paclitaxel and nintedanib has turned out to be a complete success, given that it is proved to be safe and that the pathologic complete response [rate of complete recovery] was 50%, which doubles the response compared to patients treated with standard therapy with paclitaxel.” The trial has also included 10 HER-2-negative breast cancer patients, all of them in early stages of the disease. In light of the results, the CNIO Breast Cancer Clinical Research Unit has already launched a large-scale Phase II Clinical Trial to validate the results in a large group of patients. These results, including biomarker studies that will facilitate advances in personalised medicine, will be released by early 2015. …
According to Miguel Ángel Quintela, head of the Unit: “The drug combination of paclitaxel and nintedanib has turned out to be a complete success, given that it is proved to be safe and that the pathologic complete response [rate of complete recovery] was 50%, which doubles the response compared to patients treated with standard therapy with paclitaxel.” The trial has also included 10 HER-2-negative breast cancer patients, all of them in early stages of the disease. In light of the results, the CNIO Breast Cancer Clinical Research Unit has already launched a large-scale Phase II Clinical Trial to validate the results in a large group of patients. These results, including biomarker studies that will facilitate advances in personalised medicine, will be released by early 2015…