Stand Up To Cancer

The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently reported that women who know they're at high risk for developing ovarian or breast cancer can dramatically lower their risks of developing the diseases if they get their healthy ovaries or breasts surgically removed. The researchers found that the women with the BRCA mutation who had the operations decreased their risk of dying of both types of cancer by 70-to-80 percent. CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said, "This study was groundbreaking because it was the first one that showed that (such surgeries) saved lives." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/01/earlyshow/health/main6826017.shtml

According to a recent study in the September issue of Cancer Prevention Research, metformin, a generic diabetes drug derived from an ancient herbal remedy, may soon play a new role in combating cancer. The drug helps to stabilize blood sugar by decreasing the liver's glucose output and increasing the sugar's use by muscle tissue. After one month, nine patients receiving metformin who returned for a follow-up colonoscopy had substantially fewer lesions in the bowel than they had when they started on the drug, whereas 14 patients receiving a placebo had no change.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/62935/title/Diabetes_drug_might_fight_cancer

Testicular cancer may be linked with abnormal fetal development, according to scientists who have developed a model to investigate how human testes develop in baby boys while they are in the womb. Until now, it has been impossible to study testicular development during pregnancy in humans. This discovery will enable researchers to understand the processes that can lead to the onset of testicular germ cell cancer in young adult life, and how factors, such as common environmental chemicals, might play a role.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-30/testicular-cancer-linked-to-abnormal-development-in-the-womb-doctors-find.html

"There's no evidence that popular cholesterol-lowering statins cause cancer, says a review that challenges earlier research raising concerns that the drugs may be associated with an increase in cancer and cancer-related deaths. The findings should reassure the millions of people worldwide who take the drugs, said the researchers at the University of Oxford in the U.K. and the University of Sydney in Australia. They examined data from 170,000 people who took part in 26 randomized and controlled clinical trials. The analysis showed that the cancer death rates were the same in people taking statins and in those who took a placebo."
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/642617.html