Tag Archives: public

U. S. citizenship linked to whether foreign-born non-citizens receive mammograms, cancer tests

According to the research, foreign-born female non-citizens living in the U.S. for less than five years have 69 percent lower odds of being screened for colorectal cancer within the previous five years and foreign-born non-citizens who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years have 24 percent lower odds, compared to U.S born citizens. Additionally, foreign-born non-citizens have significantly lower odds of receiving breast and cervical cancer screening…

Leadership void, not lack of money, slows efforts to address cervical cancer

"We focus on cervical cancer because it is likely the ‘low-hanging fruit’ opportunity to beat a cancer in this generation," said Beth Meyerson, a health policy expert at the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington. "We have the tools of HPV vaccination, screening and treatment; but uninsured women and women of color experience huge health disparities. This is the signal that we have a health system problem." Meyerson and her research colleagues conducted interviews with 15 professionals working in programs involving cervical cancer. …

Sedentary behavior linked to recurrence of precancerous colorectal tumors

The majority of colorectal cancers arise from precursors called colorectal adenomatous polyps, or colorectal adenomas, which can be removed during a colonoscopy. Although there is extensive evidence supporting an association between higher overall levels of physical activity and reduced risk of colorectal cancer, few studies have focused on the impact of sedentary behavior on colorectal cancer risk. "Sedentary behavior is emerging as a risk factor for poor health," said Christine L…

Social service barriers delay care among women with abnormal cancer screening

The study, which appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, was led by Sarah Primeau, MSW, research assistant in the department of general internal medicine at BUSM. Previous studies on healthcare barriers have shown that training individuals from the community, known as patient navigators, to provide emotional and logistical support to patients is an effective way to care for patients in a culturally sensitive way. However, these studies have not addressed whether patient navigators are also effective in addressing social service barriers such as financial problems, employment issues, health insurance, housing constraints and adult and child care. "Social barriers are more complex than other obstacles to healthcare such as transportation or language and will likely require interventions that healthcare providers and patient navigators aren’t traditionally trained to provide," said Primeau…

Review of daily aspirin dosage highlights concerns about side effects

The possible benefits of a daily dose have been promoted as a primary prevention for people who are currently free of, but at risk of developing, cardiovascular disease or colorectal cancer. However, any such benefit needs to be balanced alongside a fuller understanding of the potentially harmful side effects such as bleeding and gastrointestinal problems. The paper, published by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) Programme, reviews the wealth of available randomised controlled trials (RCTs), systematic reviews and meta-analyses, allowing the team from Warwick Evidence to quantify those relative benefits and risks. The reported benefits of taking aspirin each day ranged from 10% reduction in major cardiovascular events to a 15% drop in total coronary heart disease. …

Skid row cancer study has implications for treatment

In papers published in the American Journal of Public Health and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Aronowitz, professor and chair of Penn’s Department of History and Sociology of Science, characterizes the events then and screenings for prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in more recent years as "part of one continuous story of how medical and lay people came to believe in the efficacy of population screening followed by aggressive treatment without solid supporting scientific evidence." "This is a call to reflection about how we deal with medical knowledge production and medical technological innovation," Aronowitz said. …

Vitamin D does not contribute to kidney stones

However, a study of 2,012 participants — published in the American Journal of Public Health -found no statistically relevant association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25 (OH)D) serum level in the range of 20 to 100 ng/mL and the incidence of kidney stones. This study — led by Cedric F. Garland, DrPH, adjunct professor in the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine — used data from the nonprofit public health promotion organization GrassrootsHealth to follow more than 2,000 men and women of all ages for 19 months. …

Four genetic variants linked to esophageal cancer and its precursor, Barrett’s esophagus

The findings, by corresponding author Thomas L. Vaughan, M.D., M.P.H., a member of the Epidemiology Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutch, are published online ahead of the December print issue of Nature Genetics. Vaughan co-led the project with co-author David Whiteman, Ph.D., head of the Cancer Control Group at QIMR (formerly known as the Queensland Institute for Medical Research). …

In prostate cancer prognosis, telomere length may matter

"Doctors are looking for new ways to accurately predict prostate cancer patients’ prognoses, because the current methods that use disease stage, Gleason score, and PSA are not perfect," says Alan Meeker, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Kimmel Cancer Center. "Telomere shortening is common in cancer, but the degree of shortening varies from one cancer cell to another within each patient, and this variability may give us a better idea of how prostate cancers behave." In the study, described in the October issue of Cancer Discovery, the scientists studied tissue samples from 596 men surgically treated for prostate cancer thought to be confined to the prostate and who were participants in a long-term follow-up study on men’s health. …

Genomic differences found in types of cervical cancer

The study, published August 23, 2013 in the online version of the journal Cancer by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), is the first to compare the spectrum of cancer-related gene mutations in the two main subtypes of cervical cancer — adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. In tests on 80 cervical tumor samples, the investigators found high rates of mutations in two genes: PIK3CA and KRAS. While PIK3CA mutations appeared in both subtypes, KRAS mutations were found only in adenocarcinomas. By linking their findings to data on patients’ treatment and survival, researchers found that PIK3CA mutations are associated with a shorter survival period: patients whose tumors carried these mutations lived a median of 67 months after diagnosis compared with 90 months for patients whose tumors lacked the mutations…