I am still a woman - Confessions of a twice cancer survivor - my journey by Nina Ann McCurley

Study confirms cancers-family link By Helen Briggs BBC News Cancer risk depends on genes, lifestyles and environment Continue reading the main story Having cancer in the family can increase your chances of developing not only the same cancer but other types too, research suggests. A study of 23,000 people in Italy and Switzerland found that for each of 13 cancers, close relatives had an increased risk of the same disease. But there was also evidence that a family history of one cancer could significantly raise the risk of others. Cancer charities say risk depends on genes, lifestyle and environment. The research, published in the journal  Annals of Oncology , followed 12,000 patients with cancer at different sites in the body. Continue reading the main story Cancers studied Mouth and pharynx Nasopharynx Oesophagus Stomach Bowel Liver Pancreas Larynx Breast Womb Ovaries Prostate Kidney They were compared with 11,000 people without cancer. The...

A rodent that never gets cancer could hold the key to preventing or treating malignant tumours, say scientists. Lab studies show the skin cells of the naked mole-rat are high in a natural sugary substance that stops tumours developing. The findings could lead to new human cancer therapies in the long term, researchers report in Nature journal. A similar version of the chemical is used as a medicine to treat arthritis and in anti-wrinkle jabs. A team led by researchers from the University of Rochester, New York, US, investigated the anti-cancer properties of the naked mole-rat. Unlike other small rodents, such as rats and mice, the curious creature does not get cancer in later life. Tissue repair Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote This fascinating research builds on previous work revealing the biological tricks mole rats have evolved to prevent cancer” Oliver Childs Cancer Research UK The US team, led by Andrei Seluanov and Vera Gorbunova, cultur...

Decrease Text Size Print Emai l Researchers say they hope the new drug could help to turn cervical cancer into a chronic disease. A NEW cervical cancer drug offers the first good hope of extending life for women with advanced stages of the disease, a study has found. Existing chemotherapy regimes are largely ineffective against advanced stages of cervical cancer, which kills 250,000 women worldwide every year. That's why early screening is so critical - regular Pap smears have managed to reduce deaths in wealthy countries by 80 per cent. "Women with advanced cervical cancer don't have many options," said lead study author Krishnansu Sujata Tewari, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California Irvine. "We finally have a drug that helps women live longer." The study found that women who were given the drug bevacizumab (Avastin) along with their chemotherapy prolonged survival to an ave...

Early results of a trial for a new personalized ovarian cancer vaccine offers hope for the large number of patients who relapse after treatment, Medical News Today reported. Three-quarters of trial patients who received the new two-step immunotherapy appeared to respond to the treatment – one patient achieved complete remission, said researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Lead study author Lana Kandalaft, a research assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and director of clinical development and operations in Penn Medicine's Ovarian Cancer Research Center, is presenting the findings on Wednesday at the AACR 2013 Annual Meeting in Washington DC, according to Medical News Today. "This immunotherapeutic strategy has two steps - dendritic cell vaccination and adoptive T-cell therapy. This is the first time such a combination immunotherapy approach has been used for patients with ovarian cancer,” said Kandalaft, in...

Women with breast cancer who had a few alcoholic drinks per week before their diagnosis were slightly less likely to die from their cancer, according to a study that followed newly-diagnosed patients for 11 years, on average. Moderate drinking before and after a breast cancer diagnosis was also tied to better heart health and fewer deaths from non-cancer causes, the study team found. "This is a lifestyle choice," said Dr. Pamela Goodwin from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, who wrote a commentary published with the new study. "With alcohol, what we're saying is, if you are someone who would like to have the odd drink, it's probably safe," she told Reuters Health. "We're not telling women to go out and start drinking." Researchers asked close to 23,000 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 through 2006 about their drinking habits, exercise and use of hormones before their diagnosis. About 5,000 of those women were...

"The court decided to impose the death sentence on Lin Chi-hsiung because of the large number of casualties he caused and because he showed no remorse for his crime," a spokeswoman for the Tainan district court in south Taiwan said. Lin, 67, a patient at the nursing facility in Tainan city, was found guilty of last year triggering the fire by lighting tissue paper and throwing it into a storage room full of clothes. He was arrested hours after the incident and has claimed he started the blaze because he was upset about suffering from cancer and other chronic illness. The fire erupted before dawn at the nursing facility, whose 115 patients included people in their 90s, with several left on their own to escape dense smoke that filled the building. Closed-circuit TV footage taken moments after the blaze broke out showed hospital staff scrambling to put out the fire, while some elderly patients struggled to escape in their wheelchairs. The government ...

By Maggie Fox NBC News The Pap test, which has saved tens of thousands of women from cervical cancer, might be able to help fight two other deadly cancers – ovarian cancer and cancer of the uterus, doctors reported Wednesday. Ovarian cancer is the deadliest women’s cancer, killing 15,000 women a year in the United States – in part because it’s usually detected too late. Only 46 percent of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive for five years or longer. But the new test could detect little cells dropped by the tumors as they grow in a woman’s body. Even better, the test could be done as part of a woman’s routine Pap test at her gynecologist’s office, the researchers report in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The findings come as the result of a little serendipity – some water-cooler talk, a decades-long government project to sequence the human genome, and a fundraising effort by volunteers leaping into the Ches...

In the news today: A new multi million pound laboratory in west London is to be the first institute in Europe to sequence patients genomes in a matter of days for personalised cancer treatment. The Tumour Profiling Unit run by The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in Chelsea will use state-of-the-art techniques such as genome sequencing, epigenetics and imaging to identify a patient’s cancer at the start of diagnosis then track the cancer as it progresses, mutates and develops resistance to drugs throughout a patient’s course of treatment, writes our science reporter  Asha Tanna . In the next five to ten years tumour molecular profiling for cancer therapies should be "absolute routine practice" for every patient. The comment from ICR’s chief executive Alan Ashworth, professor of molecular biology went on: “Every cancer is different to every patient. But they are built from the same principles that they have to do certain things to clarify them as a cancer. “...