Oncology

It is a known fact that high dietary calcium is linked to prostate cancer. However, the reason behind this association was not known until now. A new study, published in the online issue of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, has discovered that people of certain ethnicities, like African American men are genetically good absorbers of calcium. This makes them more prone to develop prostate cancer. Dr. Gary Schwartz from Wake Forest Baptist, along with other epidemiologists from the Keck...

Smoking is a known risk factor for lung cancer as well as the cancers of the head and neck region. A new fact that has been recently uncovered regarding the relationship of smoking to the development of these cancers is that people who reach out to smoke the first thing in the morning after they wake up are at an increased likelihood of developing cancer. The question, that why some people are more prone to develop cancer after smoking than others, has bothered the scientists for a long time. A...

Almost 6% of all breast cancer patients are diagnosed when the disease has already metastasized to distant body parts like the lungs, liver, brain and bones. About 30% of node-negative and 70 percent of node-positive breast cancers relapse. There are constant efforts to unravel the means by which a cancer spreads so that novel methods of treatment are devised for patients who become resistant to existing therapies. In a scientific meeting hosted by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer...

A trend analysis of the database of mortality of the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that there has been a decrease in the rate of mortality associated with breast cancer. However, this falling rate of breast cancer deaths cannot be attributed to the screening tests used to detect breast cancer. This was the result of a study recently published in the British Medical Journal. The study led by an international team of researchers from France, the UK and Norway found that breast cancer...

Certain types of cancer like those of stomach, liver and colon are far more common in men as compared to women. A rich diet and lifestyle habits like smoking and drinking which are more common in men were usually held responsible for this gender bias. However, a study has found that it is the hormones present in the females that give them some degree of protection against these cancers. The new study from MIT which has been published online in the journal Cancer Prevention Research has found...