The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued an updated recommendation statement on the use of medication to reduce the risk of breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most frequently occurring nonskin cancer and the second most common cause of cancer-related death among women, but for whom is the reduction in cancer risk worth the potential adverse effects of the medications? The guidelines, published in JAMA , recommend the use of risk-reducing medications for asymptomatic ...
Methods for early cancer detection have now expanded to include liquid biopsies—small amounts of body fluids collected for laboratory examination. According to a recent review of current and emerging liquid biopsy strategies, published in Biomicrofluidics, researchers have developed a strategy for cancer detection: a microfluidic device that mounts pathology labs on chips to capture cancer cells in blood, saliva, or urine samples. This method of detecting cancer has many advantages over collecti...
Researchers discovered that in mouse models, low doses of radiation increase p53 mutations in cells, which is a genetic change associated with cancer. To combat this negative effect, the investigators found that giving mice an antioxidant prior to radiation stimulated proliferation of healthy cells that replaced the p53-mutant cells. For this study, published in Cell Stem Cell , the scientists tracked mouse cells during low-dose ionizing radiation (LDIR) and discovered that this procedure promot...
The extended follow-up of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) confirms the study's previous finding: low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scans reduce mortality from lung cancer to a greater extent than do chest radiographs. The NLST randomly assigned 53,452 high-risk current and former smokers at 33 medical institutions in the United States to receive three annual screenings, done using either LDCT or chest radiographs. Results reported in 2011 after a median of 6.5 years of follow-up dem...
Obesity rates are on the rise in the United States, with almost every 4 in 10 adults affected. This condition puts people at an increased risk for developing 13 different types of cancers, including breast, colon and rectum, endometrium, esophagus, kidney, and pancreas, among others. Added sugars are deemed to be one of the culprits of obesity. In an effort to address the obesity epidemic, the FDA mandated in 2016 the use of sugar labeling, such as sugar content, on packaged foods. In order to d...