Tag Archives: prevention

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. …

Version 2.0 of Prostate Cancer Risk Calculator now online, complete with emojis — ScienceDaily

“The prostate cancer risk calculator has been updated using current risk factors and a better interface; the current version gives a more nuanced result that helps understand a man’s risk of prostate cancer,” said Ian M. Thompson Jr., M.D., director of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at the UT Health Science Center, who helped develop the risk calculator and co-authored a commentary published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The free calculator on the Health Science Center website takes just minutes to use and gives a man more information about his risk for both low-grade prostate cancer, which may never require treatment, and high-grade prostate cancer. It provides an “emoji” graphic readout that puts the numeric percentages into a visual perspective. …

Hepatitis C will become a rare disease in 22 years, study predicts

“Hepatitis C (HCV) is the leading cause of liver cancer and accounts for more than 15,000 deaths in the U.S. each year,” said Jagpreet Chhatwal, Ph.D., assistant professor of Health Services Research at MD Anderson, and corresponding author on the study. “If we can improve access to treatment and incorporate more aggressive screening guidelines, we can reduce the number of chronic HCV cases, prevent more cases of liver cancer and reduce liver-related deaths,” Chhatwal said…

Making an IMPACT: Donation keeps innovative trials going

The effort is known as the Institutional Multidisciplinary Paradigm to Accelerate Collaboration and Translation (IMPACT). The aim — as illustrated in the acronym — is to enhance the way cancer discoveries are translated from the laboratory bench to patient bedside and back again. …

Precursor of multiple myeloma more common in blacks than whites

The findings, which appear in the journal Leukemia, are from the first nationwide study to look at the precursor of multiple myeloma in blacks, whites, and Hispanics and could point the way toward tailored screening and preventive strategies for different racial groups. The study also uncovered different rates of the condition in different parts of the country, suggesting an environmental component to the racial disparities. “We have known for a long time that there is a marked racial disparity in multiple myeloma, but the big question has been why that disparity exists,” says the study’s senior author, Vincent Rajkumar, M.D., a hematologist/oncologist at Mayo Clinic…

U.S. cervical cancer rates higher than previously reported, especially among older women, African-American women

Previous research finds an age-standardized rate of about 12 cases of cervical cancer per 100,000 women in the United States, with the incidence reaching a peak at age 40-44 and then leveling off. However, these estimates included women who had hysterectomies in which the lower part of the uterus, the cervix, was removed. By excluding these women, who are no longer at risk of developing this cancer, from their analysis, the researchers calculated a rate of 18.6 cases of cervical cancer per 100,000 women. They found the incidence increased steadily with age and peaked at a higher rate and at an older age, specifically in women 65-69 years old…