A growing body of evidence has found a link between early puberty and increased risk of breast cancer later in life. A study published today in the Journal of Adolescent Health has given new insights as to how this association occurs. In 2004, the longitudinal study recruited 183 girls, aged six to seven years old, and followed their pubertal maturation through 2018, measuring age at onset of puberty, adult height, peak height velocity, and hormonal factors that have been associated with increas...

A cellular abnormality called cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) is a precursor for cervical cancer. However, scientists have now found that women who are positive for human papillomavirus (HPV) and negative for CIN are still at a very high risk for developing cervical cancer. In a study published in the journal Cancer, researchers identified 576 healthy women through the National Cervical Screening Registry who were screened between 2005 to 2007 and tested negative for CIN. During a follo...

In a new study, investigators discovered that younger women diagnosed with breast cancer have poorer prognoses compared with their older counterparts. This link is specific to patients with hormone-receptor positive luminal A breast cancer, the most common subtype. The study classified patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer into three groups according to age: 40 and under, 41 to 60, and over 60. In the 40 and under age group, patients with hormone-receptor positive luminal A breast cance...

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have found that larger brain size, as measured by intracranial volume, puts individuals at increased risk of glioma, the most common type of primary brain tumor. Gliomas, which occur in the brain and spinal cord, originate in glial stem cells. Their cause is unknown. Epidemiological studies have identified several risk factors, including age (gliomas are most commonly seen in adults), male sex, ionizing radiation, whit...

​United States Dietary Guidelines recommend that adults and children aged 9 or older consume three cups per day of low-fat or fat-free milk and dairy foods, or alternatively, three cups of calcium-fortified soymilk. However, a large observational study recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology reports that consuming three cups of dairy milk per day is associated with a risk of breast cancer that is increased by as much as 80%, regardless of the fat content of the milk,...

Researchers at Yale University have found that county-wide cancer death rates vary substantially according to income, owing largely to factors related to socioeconomic status, health care, lifestyle, and government policies. This knowledge could be used to target the causes of the disparity in the hopes of reducing cancer deaths in lower-income areas. The cross-sectional study analyzed data from 3,135 US counties whose cancer death rates from the year 2014 were made available in a database publi...

Researchers have found that levels of two inflammation-inducing proteins in the colon rise incrementally with weight, increasing an individual's risk of colon cancer. The third most common cancer in the United States, colon cancer is the second most frequent cause of death of the cancers that impact both men and women. Obesity contributes to colon cancer risk by raising systemic levels of substances that cause inflammation, a complex biological response that can promote a variety of cancers and ...

Researchers have found that childhood inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) puts individuals at increased risk of early death in both childhood and adulthood, with cancer playing a predominant role. For the study, published online in Gastroenterology, researchers from the Karolinska Institutet used data from the Swedish nationwide health registers to identify 9,442 children under the age of 18 diagnosed with IBD between 1964 and 2014. These were compared to 93,180 controls from the general population...

​Using a new statistical method, researchers have provided the first population-based summaries of the risk of breast cancer recurrence among women in the United States. Because cancer registries do not collect data regarding population-representative risks of metastatic disease recurrence, there is a dearth of available data on this topic. In a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers designed a new method to estimate the risk of cancer recurren...

Angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors are effective at controlling high blood pressure, but according to a recent study, they also increase the risk for lung cancer. A research team headed by Laurent Azoulay, PhD, Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute and Associate Professor of Oncology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, analyzed data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) on 992,061 British patients newly treated with antihypertensive drugs between Janu...

In the culmination of 10 years of research, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) has now released its final reports concerning the effects on rats and mice of radiofrequency radiation (RFR) with modulations used in 2G and 3G cell phone networks. In conjunction with a panel of external scientific experts who reviewed the reports, the NTP determined that there is clear evidence that high levels of RFR like that of 2G and 3G cell technologies caused cancerous heart tumors in male rats. They conclu...

​In recent years, a number of lawsuits have highlighted concerns regarding a possible link between ovarian cancer risk and the use of talc-containing cosmetic powders in the genital area. However, a large pooled analysis now published in JAMA reports no statistically significant association between genital powder use and ovarian cancer. The potential connection between genital powder use and ovarian cancer risk was first investigated because of the relationship between talcum powder and asbestos...

Tamoxifen has been known to be an effective drug to reduce risk of breast cancer in high-risk women. Another drug, anastrozole, an aromatase inhibitor that decreases the amount of estrogen the body produces, has been shown in the IBIS-II trial to also reduce the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women during the five-year treatment. Anastrozole has fewer long-term side effects than tamoxifen; however, does anastrozole protect women past the five-year treatment completion? Researchers continued ...

Investigators at the National Institutes of Health recently discovered that women who use permanent hair dye and chemical straighteners are at a higher risk for developing breast cancer compared to those who don't use these products. "Researchers have been studying the possible link between hair dye and cancer for a long time, but results have been inconsistent," commented one of the study authors, Alexandra White, PhD, and head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NI...

Nearly half of adults have used marijuana at some point in their lives, and rates are increasing; among young adults, marijuana usage doubled from 10.5% in 2002 to 21.2% in 2014. Given this widespread usage, the question of marijuana-associated cancer risk is an important one, and it is the subject of a systematic review and meta-analysis now published in JAMA Network Open. Marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke share a number of carcinogens. In addition, tetrahydrocannabinol, marijuana's primary psy...

A new study finds an association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution and deaths from nine different causes, including cardiovascular disease, cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, dementia, and lung cancer, among others. Furthermore, 99% of PM2.5-associated deaths were linked to levels of PM2.5 exposure currently deemed acceptable by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommendations. Atmospheric particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, PM2.5, is ...

​A new study has utilized data to determine the ages at which women with various degrees of familial history of breast cancer should begin screening.  Breast cancer is a serious public health concern that accounts for 15% of all cancer deaths in women. The earlier it is caught, the more effectively it can be treated. But when should screening begin? Different guidelines offer varying opinions. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the US Preventive Services Task Force (...

California's early adoption of aggressive measures to reduce and prevent smoking has dramatically decreased deaths from lung cancer compared with the rest of the United States, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center. Tobacco smoke contains at least 70 known carcinogens, and up to 90% of US lung cancer cases have been linked to cigarette smoking. Lung cancer rates, note the authors of the study published in Can...

A new study has found that by dramatically reducing the risk of lymphomas and decreasing the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, a diet that consists primarily of organic foods can lower an individual's overall risk of cancer. Cancer development has been linked to pesticide exposure, and strict regulations mean that organic foods have a much lower occurrence of pesticide residues than conventionally produced foods do. However, research concerning whether organic foods actually reduce cancer ri...