A recent study carried out by Penn state food scientists has shed even more light on green tea’s anti-cancer effects, finding that a compound within the antioxidant-rich beverage may be capable of destroying oral cancer cells while leaving healthy cells completely unharmed.

The compound responsible for many of green tea’s benefits and one which is known to protect against cancer is known as epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). The compound has been studied extensively for its ability to not only prevent and beat cancer, but also increase metabolism, protect the brain, and slow the aging process. Continue reading →

Scientists believe the gases in our body can reveal a range of diseases such as colon cancer and irritable bowel syndrome.

But attempting to ‘scientifically analyse people’s farts’ – either by using a breathalyser or looking at feces – can prove tricky.

Now one engineer claims he has come up with two methods to do this that are far more effective; fecal fermentation and gas-sensing capsules.

Fecal fermentation involves incubating feces in conditions similar to those found in the large intestine.

To do this scientists place a spoonful of feces in a jar, and place a lid on it. Continue reading →

Debrah Reid, who has breast cancer, at home in Memphis, where mortality risk is greater for blacks. Credit Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A troubling racial divide in breast cancer mortality continues to widen in most major cities around the country, suggesting that advances in diagnosis and treatment continue to bypass African-American women, according to new research.

An analysis of breast cancer mortality trends in 41 of the largest cities in the United States shows that the chance of surviving breast cancer correlates strongly with the color of a woman’s skin. Black women with breast cancer — whether they hail from Phoenix or Denver, Boston or Wichita, Kan. — are on average about 40 percent more likely to die of the disease than white women with breast cancer. Continue reading →

Archaeologists have found a complete 3,200-year-old skeleton, pictured, with cancer. The find could help show how the disease has evolved

Wealthy young man’s bones could help show how the disease evolved.

Archaeologists have found a complete 3,200-year-old skeleton with cancer and say the discovery could help show how the disease has evolved.

The remains of the wealthy man, believed to have been between 25 and 35 when he died, were found in a tomb close to the River Nile in Sudan last year.

The bones showed evidence of metastatic carcinoma – cancer which has spread from where it started.

Analysis proved it came from a malignant soft-tissue tumour and spread across large parts of the body, making it the oldest ‘convincing’ example of metastatic cancer ever found, the authors of the study said. Continue reading →

A dog has been used to sniff out thyroid cancer in people who had not yet been diagnosed, US researchers say.

Dogs have 10 times the number of smell receptors as people

Tests on 34 patients showed an 88% success rate in finding tumours.

The team, presenting their findings at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society, said the animal had an “unbelievable” sense of smell. Continue reading →

Images track hotspots in tumours where the immune system attacks disease cells

A new test can predict the survival chances of women with breast cancer by analysing images of ‘hotspots’ where the immune system is attacking the tumour.

Scientists have employed techniques previously used in detecting crime hotspots to track how strongly the immune system is working.

The test identified women’s chances of treatment keeping the disease under control – those at low risk survived 50 per cent longer before the cancer spread.

So far the test is being trialled only on women with a type of breast cancer called oestrogen receptor negative (ER negative), which affects up to one in three patients and is particularly hard to treat. Continue reading →

Scientists have discovered what triggers one of the most deadly types of breast cancer, raising hopes of new treatments for it.

They have pinpointed a gene that drives triple-negative breast cancer – an especially fast-growing and hard-to-treat form of the disease.

It accounts for up to one in five cases of breast cancer and is particularly likely to strike women when they are still in their 20s and 30s.

Scientists have discovered a gene which drives a fast-growing, aggressive form of breast cancer.

Breast cancer drugs from the gold-standard treatment tamoxifen to ‘wonder drug’ Herceptin are useless against it and it has a worse prognosis than other forms of the disease. Continue reading →

Socialized Medicine Doctor: ‘We should stop trying to cure cancer it is ‘best option for an aging population’

If only old people would just hurry up and die — that’s the point of view for most proponents of socialized medicine around the world. Case in point is British doctor Richard Smith, who says we should stop trying to cure cancer because it’s best for elderly people to just go ahead and die.

Cancer is the best way to die because it gives people the chance to come to terms with their own mortality, the former editor of the British Medical Journal has claimed. Continue reading →

The system for researching new cancer treatments is ‘broken’, one of Britain’s top academics has claimed.

Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, accused ‘risk averse’ pharmaceutical firms of only developing drugs they know will turn a profit.

Speaking at the World Oncology Forum in Switzerland, the professor said the war against cancer has lost momentum, despite huge theoretical advances in the laboratory.

‘There have been some impressive advances in the personalised treatment of cancer,’ Professor Workman said.

‘But overall progress has failed to keep pace with the dramatic advances over the last 20 years in our knowledge about cancer biology and genetics.

‘We could, and should, be doing much better. Continue reading →

A new report shows that three of the top preventable risk factors for cancer have to do with what we eat and how often we move.

In the American Association for Cancer Research’s mammoth new cancer progress report lies the sad fact that about half of the 585,720 cancer deaths expected to occur in the United States this year are related to preventable behaviors. For a disease that often seems (and is) so senseless, it turns out that many cases can be avoided with lifestyle tweaks. Continue reading →

Last night (July 1st), Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of banking giant JPMorgan, told employees that he is being treated for throat cancer. In a memo, he said that he would begin eight weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

He wrote:

The good news is that the prognosis from my doctors is excellent, the cancer was caught quickly, and my condition is curable. Following thorough tests that included a CAT scan, PET scan and a biopsy, the cancer is confined to the original site and the adjacent lymph nodes on the right side of my neck. Importantly, there is no evidence of cancer elsewhere in my body.

It’s impossible to speculate on Dimon’s cancer beyond what he put in his memo. I contacted JPMorgan and the company could not confirm any other details about his conditions. But it’s very possible that Dimon has been swept up, along with thousands of other men, by an increasingly common disease: throat cancer caused by infection with the human papilloma virus, or HPV. Continue reading →

The owners of an Elizabethtown, Kentucky cancer clinic have paid $3.7 million to settle claims that they extended the period of chemotherapy for their patients to pad their bills to the government.

“To subject cancer patients to unnecessary treatments that are physically draining and emotionally stressful is utterly unconscionable,” said Patrick McFarland, inspector general of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Continue reading →

Swiss panel suggests that screening by mammography should be stopped forthwith.

Internet discussions usually descend into abuse within a few postings. Whether this is because people these days are less polite and restrained than they used to be, or because the internet allows them to publish their first reactions without the time to cool off that older means of communication entailed, I do not know; but the fact is that those who take part in such discussions seem to confuse insult with argument and are seldom able to keep to the point for very long.

Doctors, if the internet discussions that follow articles that appear in the New England Journal of Medicine are anything to go by, are better than average. Often, indeed, though not always, they employ rational argument. Perhaps there is something to be said after all for a long and rigorous education. Continue reading →