In what could be called a major breakthrough, scientists claim to have developed a “screening test” which takes just five minutes to detect bowel cancer and also reduces the risk of developing the disease substantially.
The new test, which involves the quick removal of growths with the potential to turn cancerous, has been devised following a 16-year-old study, ‘The Lancet’ reported.
The study of more than 170,000 volunteers aged between 55 and 64 suggested that the examination of the lower colon and rectum reduced deaths by 43 per cent.
In the study group examined, incidence of bowel cancer fell by a third. A quarter of the volunteers in the study underwent a sigmoidoscopy, where a camera mounted on a thin, flexible tube, known as a FlexiScope, was inserted about a third of the way into the bowel.
According to the scientists, most bowel cancers stem from polyps or symptomless growths in the rectum and colon and where these were found, they were removed in a safe and pain- free procedure.
“Our study shows for the first time that we could dramatically reduce incidence of bowel cancer and the number of people dying from the disease by using this one-off test. “No other bowel cancer screening technique has ever been shown to prevent the disease,” ‘The Times’ quoted Wendy Atkin of Imperial College London, who led the study, as saying.
Going on a diet could increase the risk of developing potentially deadly conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, a study has found.
The study revealed that those who controlled their calorie intake produced higher levels of the harmful stress hormone cortisol and exposure to the hormone actually made some dieters put on weight, reports dailymail.co.uk.
Dieting could actually damage mental health too as many suffered increased psychological stress when they were constantly forced to count calories and monitor what they ate.
“Regardless of their success or failure (in losing weight), if future studies show that dieting increases stress and cortisol, doctors may need to rethink recommending it to their patients to improve health,” the researchers said.
“Chronic stress, in addition to promoting weight gain, has been linked with coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Dieting might potentially add to this stress burden and its consequences would best not be ignored,” they added.
The study, by California University in San Francisco and Minnesota University, looked at 121 women who were put on a standard three-week diet of 1,200 calories a day – around half a woman’s recommended daily amount of 2,000 calories.
Each patient was asked to provide a saliva sample before and after the study to test for cortisol levels. The results showed a significant increase in the amount of the hormone after three weeks on the programme
Eating lots of fruit and vegetables has only a small effect on warding off cancer, a study published on Wednesday says, although its authors insist that tucking into the recommended “five-a-day” is still good for general health.
Doctors led by Paolo Boffetta at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York, pored over eight years of data from a major European investigation into the relationship between cancer risk and food.
The investigation, which is continuing, covers nearly 470,000 volunteers recruited in 10 Western European countries.
Between 1992 and 2000, more than 30,000 of the participants were diagnosed with cancer.
Boffetta’s team found that high consumption of fruit and vegetables gave only a modest protective effect against cancer.
An increase of 200 grammes (about seven ounces) a day resulted in a reduction of cancer risk in the order of some three percent.
Vegetable consumption by itself also gave a small benefit, although this was restricted to women, while heavy drinkers who ate many fruit and veggies had a somewhat reduced risk, but only for cancers linked to alcohol and smoking.
“The bottom line here is that, yes, we did find a protective effect of fruit and vegetable intake against cancer, but it is a smaller connection than previously thought,” Boffetta said in a press release issued by Mount Sinai.
“Any cancer protective effect of these foods is likely to be modest, at best. However, eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial for health in general and the results of this study do not justify changing current recommendations aiming at increasing intake of these foods.”
The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) issued a recommendation in 1990 suggesting that five servings of fruit and vegetables per day helped prevent cancer and other diseases.
“Worldwide, low intake of fruits and vegetables is estimated to cause about 19 percent of gastrointestinal cancer, about 31 percent of ischaemic heart disease and 11 percent stroke,” the WHO says on its website.
Ischaemic heart disease is caused by lack of blood supply to the cardiac muscles, typically as a result of artery disease, hypertension, smoking or high cholesterol levels.
The new study appears online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, published by Britain’s Oxford University Press.
An Indian scientist has developed a blood-based cancer biomarker which can potentially work as a low-cost diagnostic tool to detect different human cancers. It is perhaps the world’s first low-cost diagnostic tool for detection of cancer in the human body. Early cancer detection can significantly enhance chances of a patient’s recovery.
“It is a simple blood-test kit, much like a pregnancy or diabetes test. I have developed a bio-molecular marker of cancer in blood, which can easily track cancer through blood test,” Professor R.N. Sharan of the North-Eastern Hills University, said. The bio-molecular tool has passed preliminary trials and is now being vetted through multi-centre tests in the US and Japan. The kit may be ready for mass production in about two to three years’ time, he said. “The test can be performed by any individual at home and it should not cost more than Rs 100-150. What it requires is a small amount of blood, which can be drawn from a finger tip,” he said.
Professor Sharan, a leading biochemist said it took him and his team of PhD students over two decades to develop the bio-molecular marker of cancer.
“Numerous scientific aspects need to be looked into and understood in mouse and cell culture models before a sound hypothesis can be put forward,” he informed. “We have now developed and standardised a minimally-invasive, non-radioactive and highly sensitive immunoassay to quantify the bio-marker in blood samples of patients“, the biochemist said. He added that the phase 1 clinical studies have been concluded.
These involved study of 112 human cancer patients along with 68 normal individuals. “Eighteen different types of cancer were covered in this study and the results support the hypothesis fully,” he informed. As per procedures, clinical phase 2, a multi-centric study, is being initiated in India in collaboration with the Global Discovery Centre of a US-based multinational company covering cancer patients from 3-4 cancer and general hospitals in Delhi.
It is proposed that over 350 human samples from patients with almost all types of cancer will be analysed in this phase. Potentially,the whole test can be packaged in a simple kit. The test can be conducted by following simple procedures by anyone in primary health centres or even at home. The diagnostic kit can be used for regular screening of population for cancer, who are visiting a hospital,health clinic, or a primary health centre for any other medical conditions.
Professor Sharan has already secured an Indian patent. It is planned that appropriate patents for the same will be filed with other countries as well.