Cancer

Breast cancer survivors: Time to pump it up

Breast cancer surgeons have long wagged their fingers at patients warning them never to lift anything over 15 pounds, especially if lymph nodes were taken during surgery. Well, for any woman with a child (or groceries for that matter) the limitation is annoying at best, disempowering at worst. That advice was rooted in the fear [...]

Emotional scars linger for childhood cancer survivors

Approximately 270,000 of the 10 million cancer survivors alive in the U.S. were diagnosed and treated before they were old enough to buy themselves a drink, according to the National Cancer Institute. Thanks to scientific advances, as many as 80 percent of children treated for cancer go on to live full lives, but the shadow [...]

Early Trauma, Diet and Cancer: Holocaust study probes links

A link between exposure to traumatic stress and cancer has long been suspected—but researchers don’t yet fully understand how severe stress could produce this insidious effect or which types of cancer might be most affected. A new study of cancer risk amongst Holocaust survivors offers some clues. The research also suggests that very low calorie [...]

Weighing pain relief and cancer risk: A new study may ease some fears about TNF inhibitors

During the past decade, a new class of drugs, called TNF inhibitors, has improved the lives of tens of thousands of people who suffer from painful autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and Crohn’s disease. But there is a catch: the same drugs that offer unmatched pain relief today might trigger a serious cancer [...]

Newer Isn’t Always Better: Pap Smear Version

Over the last 15 years, the vast majority of American gynecologists have switched from using the traditional “pap” smear to screen for cervical cancer to another screening method called “liquid based cytology” (women may know the test by the popular brand name, ThinPrep).  But a new study of nearly 90,000 women in Holland finds that [...]

American Cancer Society calls for better monitoring of exposure to carcinogens

A new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) calls for honing strategies to monitor people’s exposure to cancer-causing chemicals in the environment, including enhancing toxicity testing, enforcing regulatory standards, and lowering the public’s exposure when possible. Authors of the report put minimizing exposure to cancer-causing pollutants on the same cancer-prevention playing field as eating [...]

Rethinking the benefits of breast and prostate cancer screening

For two decades, the public-health message has been that cancer screening saves lives. In some cases, especially with cancers of the cervix and colon, screening does, in fact, work as it should: sniffing out disease at its earliest and most curable stages. But for breast and prostate cancers—two of the most widespread in the U.S.—the [...]

An oncologist’s dream: Protecting healthy cells from radiation

Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine say they may be hot on the heels of the Holy Grail of cancer therapy: a means to protect healthy tissue from the harmful effects of radiation treatment while speeding tumor death. The study, published this week in Science Translational Medicine, could one day be a [...]

Breast cancer diagnosis hits well-educated women hardest

For any woman, a breast cancer diagnosis is a sucker punch to the gut, but a new Australian study finds that more well-educated women fare worse psychologically than their less-educated peers. For the cohort study, 1,684 women were recruited within 12 months of being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Each woman completed a standard, 22-item [...]

Think before you drink for your health

In our science-via-soundbite culture, it’s easy to glom onto health news that validates the things we love—what? coffee might prevent Alzheimer’s? pass the triple Americano—and ignore headlines that threatens to dampen the fun, such as the drawbacks of drinking. Everyone’s heard the news that moderate drinking may thwart heart disease. But, as a new HealthDay [...]