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Domain: cancer.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to cancer.org.
Stories · 2
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Experimental Spit Test Could Identify Men Most At Risk of Prostate Cancer (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A test developed by scientists in the U.K. and U.S. might someday be able to pinpoint the men most likely to get prostate cancer. A new study published Monday in Nature Genetics suggests the test can detect the one percent of men who are genetically most vulnerable to developing prostate cancer, a leading cause of cancer deaths among American men. The international research team used a new DNA analysis technique to peer into the genes of more than 70,000 people enrolled in previous studies. Some 45,000 of the subjects had already developed prostate cancer, while 25,000 hadn't. So the researchers compared the two groups, singling out any inherited genetic variations that might have contributed to their cancer risk. According to the authors, they managed to find 63 new variants never before associated with prostate cancer.
These results were then integrated with nearly a hundred genetic variants linked to prostate cancer previously found among 60,000 people to create a total genetic risk score. And finally, the researchers devised a test that uses a person's saliva to detect these more than 150 variants. In the U.S., people over the age of 50 are generally screened for prostate cancer via the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test. Those with a certain high level of PSA should be screened annually, while everyone else is advised to be screened every two years. But the saliva test could reveal especially high-risk people who need annual screening regardless of their PSA level, while ruling out low-risk people who don't need annual screening based on their genetic risk and PSA scores. Those people would only need screenings every two, five, and maybe even 10 years. -
Fewer People Are Dying of Cancer Than Ever Before (theoutline.com)
The number of Americans dying of cancer has dropped to a 25-year low, equaling an estimated 2,143,200 fewer deaths in that period, says the new annual report from the American Cancer Society. In that time, the racial and gender disparities that exist in cancer rates have also narrowed somewhat, but they remain wide in many places. From a report on The Outline: Though the incidence of cancer remained stable for women and dropped slightly -- by 2 percent -- in men, rates remain overall 20 percent higher in men while rate of death for men is 40 percent higher than in women. The rates of both incidence and death vary wildly based on the type of cancer. The data that the ACS is using run through the end of 2014 for incidents of cancer and through 2013 for deaths. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States for both men and women..