| A receding hairline can be a good thing, according to US scientists, who say men who go bald by 30 appear to be less likely to develop prostate cancer. |
Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine studied 2,000 men aged between 40 and 47. They were able to link high levels of the male hormone testosterone in those who lose their hair earlier with a lower risk of tumours. The findings are published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology. Half of the men in this study had suffered prostate cancer. Researchers compared the rate of tumours in those who said their hair had thinned by the age of 30 with those who did not suffer hair loss. |
Men who had started to develop bald spots on the top of their heads as well as receding hairlines had a 29% to 45% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer. |
Roots of baldness By age 30, approximately 25-30% of men will have some baldness, researchers believe. Half of all men suffer significant hair loss by the age of 50. Read more at news.bbc.co.uk |
| Personalised blood tests which could track whether cancer treatment is working or if the disease has come back have been developed by US researchers. |
The test identifies tumour DNA “rearrangements” which are specific to the individual patient. In the future, this “genetic fingerprint” could be used to pick out tiny remnants of a tumour, Science Translational Medicine reports. Such techniques are currently very expensive but costs are falling. The researchers hope that one day the technology could be used to spot cancer recurrence before they would be picked up by scans. DNA from volunteer patients was scanned for rearrangements of large chunks of genetic information which occur in cancer cells but not normal cells. |
Known as personalised analysis of rearranged ends (Pare), the technique was developed using six sets of cancerous and normal tissue samples taken from four patients with bowel cancer and two with breast tumours. Read more at news.bbc.co.uk |
| Fizzy drinks ‘increase cancer risk’ |
As little as two soft drinks consumed a week can almost double the chances of developing the disease, one of the most deadly forms of cancer, a study found. Scientists believe the high sugar content of many soft drinks may explain the trend. Since pancreatic cancer is relatively rare - affecting around 7,600 people each year in the UK - the absolute risk from soft drinks is small. However those diagnosed with the disease have a poor prognosis. Only 2% to 3% of patients in the UK survive as long as five years. Researchers based their findings on more than 60,500 participants recruited for a large-scale health study in Singapore. Read more at uk.news.yahoo.com |
Cancer is not a problem or an illness – it’s a gift. Or so Barbara Ehrenreich was told repeatedly after her diagnosis. But the positive thinkers are wrong, she says: sugar-coating illnesses can exact a dreadful cost |
If you had asked me, just before the diagnosis of cancer, whether I was an optimist or a pessimist, I would have been hard-pressed to answer. But on health-related matters, as it turned out, I was optimistic to the point of delusion. Nothing had so far come along that could not be controlled by diet, stretching, painkillers or, at worst, a prescription. So I was not at all alarmed when a routine mammogram aroused some “concern” on the part of my gynaecologist. How could I have breast cancer? I had no known risk factors, there was no breast cancer in the family, I’d had my babies relatively young and nursed them both. I ate right, drank sparingly and worked out. When the gynaecologist suggested a follow-up mammogram four months later, I agreed only to placate her. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
Obituaries routinely inform us that so-and-so has died “after a brave battle against cancer”. Of course, we will never read that so-and-so has died “after a pathetically feeble battle against cancer”. But one thing that I have come to appreciate since being diagnosed with multiple myeloma (a cancer of the blood) two years ago is how unreal both notions are. It’s just not like that. The stress on cancer patients’ “bravery” and “courage” implies that if you can’t “conquer” your cancer, there’s something wrong with you, some weakness or flaw. If your cancer progresses rapidly, is it your fault? Does it reflect some failure of willpower? In blaming the victim, the ideology attached to cancer mirrors the bootstrap individualism of the neoliberal order, in which the poor are poor because of their own weaknesses – and “failure” and “success” become the ultimate duality, dished out according to individual merit. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
The pattern of mutations in cancer could eventually be used to tailor treatments to particular patients |
Scientists have reconstructed the biological history of two types of cancer in a genetic tour de force that promises to transform medical treatment of the disease. |
The procedure gives doctors a profound insight into the biological causes of a patient’s cancer and marks a major milestone in progress towards personalised anticancer therapies and strategies to prevent the disease. Read more at www.guardian.co.uk |
A new report suggesting that loneliness trebles the odds of developing breast cancer is the latest addition to a long list of recognised risk factors — such as being tall or having one breast bigger than the other — that cause widespread anxiety but do precious little to help in the fight against the disease. My advice to the millions of British women who are single, separated, divorced or widowed is to take this news with a pinch of salt, not least because the link between loneliness and breast cancer is an overenthusiastic extrapolation of a study on laboratory rats. Researchers from the University of Chicago found that rats kept in solitary confinement and subjected to stressors, such as being held down or exposed to the scent of a cat, were more likely to develop breast tumours than those living together. Ergo, loneliness in human beings must have the same effect. Er, no. Read more at www.timesonline.co.uk |
|
