It’s that time of year again where sunny days are few and far between for many parts of America. Winter strikes down victim after victim with seasonal affective disorder, leaving thousands of people desperate for a glimpse of sunshine. Other people may spend their winters fighting a vitamin D deficiency. During these dark months of the year, many people don’t see the sunshine and don’t protect themselves against it. In fact, on sunny days in snow-filled cities, many people try to absorb as much sunlight as they can by standing outside unprotected. These behaviors spark the debate: is it more important…
Author: Brett Johnson
Scientists at the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in the United Kingdom have developed a prostate cancer screening test that uses urine and can be completed at home. This new method, called the PUR test (Prostate Urine Risk), is designed to be used first thing in the morning and shows biomarkers associated with prostate cancer far more clearly than after a digital rectal exam. PUR can help doctors determine treatment. As in the United States, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, but doctors nevertheless find it difficult to differentiate those…
“Can I get a second opinion?” is part of the popular lexicon; having branched out from a doctor-patient query, the phrase can now be used in just about any situation involving a potentially bad outcome. But if we get back to the saying’s origin, and when a diagnosis of cancer is involved, when should a patient seek a second opinion? How should people go about it? The When In most instances of cancer, there is a lag-time between diagnosis and treatment. This gives the patient a window to seek out a second opinion, and to think about and research available…
When it hit the market in 2004, vaping (e-cigarettes) was marketed as a hip, sexy, and even healthier alternative to smoking. Millennials, just coming of age, took the bait and ran with it; one study of the youth population shows, 27.5% vape on a regular basis, a number approximately 22 percentage points greater than high schoolers smoking conventional cigarettes. However, as a wave of high-profile vaping-related lung ailments, since dubbed EVALI — E-cigarette, or Vaping, product use-Associated Lung Injury — began to hit the headlines, the medical community quickly issued a unanimous watch-cry: Like smoking, vaping is injurious at best and deadly at worst. Vaping…
Cervical cancer may be the fourth most common type of cancer for women worldwide, but luckily it is amongst the most preventable types of cancers. This particular type of cancer is so common because of its association with a very common sexually transmitted infection: the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is found in 99% of cervical cancer diagnoses. With this knowledge, and understanding that cervical cancer is a slow progressing disease, there have been many advancements in preventing HPV infections and monitoring for potentially cancerous cells. As January is National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, it is important to be familiar with how best to protect…
Holidays, parties, and snowbirds — who said winter was insufferable? Unfortunately, not everyone can be so in winter’s wonders; with the cold comes a set of threats to which cancer patients are particularly sensitive. Cancer can make otherwise ordinary situations difficult, and winter is no different. Patients need to be acutely aware of winter’s inherent health risks, risks that healthier people often shrug off with little thought. Flus & Colds Winter is flu season, and something to take very seriously: 2019 figures are still being tallied, but since October of last year, the CDC reports 20.4 million cases of influenza,…
The patient had run out of treatment options. Her cancer, a rare form of sarcoma, had metastasized and was no longer responding to therapies. As a next step, doctors at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis began to treat her largest tumor with proton beam radiation. The goals were to slow the tumor’s growth and keep the 67-year-old patient as comfortable as possible, recalled one of her doctors, Brian Baumann, M.D., a radiation oncologist. But after one course of proton radiation, the doctors noticed a surprising change in her scans: Not only had the irradiated tumor shrunk, but so had untreated…
Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, can be treated effectively through surgery when it’s caught early. But once it has spread from the original site of the tumor to other organs in the body, it can become highly lethal. A new NCI-supported study may provide important insights into why some melanomas are more likely to spread, or metastasize, than others. The researchers showed that melanoma cells are more likely to metastasize if they produce high levels of a transporter protein called MCT1. This protein enhances the cells’ ability to take up an extracellular nutrient called lactate, which increases their ability to…