Health, Cancer | featured news

More than 100 cancer specialists have banded together to persuade pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down, suggesting that the high prices for medicine needed to keep someone alive is profiteering.

Major academic medical centers in New York and around the country are spending and recruiting heavily in what has become an arms race within the war on cancer. The investments are based on the belief that the medical establishment is moving toward the routine sequencing of every patient’s genome in the quest for “precision medicine,” a course for prevention and treatment based on the special, even unique characteristics of the patient’s genes.

You would think that people who were diagnosed with melanoma -- the most deadly form of skin cancer -- would be meticulously careful about using sunscreen, avoiding tanning salons and generally protecting their skin.

Researchers might have found the Holy Grail in the war against cancer, a miracle drug that has killed every kind of cancer tumor it has come in contact with, the New York Post reported. The drug works by blocking a protein called CD47 that is essentially a "do not eat" signal to the body's immune system, according to Science Magazine.

Researchers have found that the benefits to women of treating breast cancer with radiation outweigh the risks of heart disease.

Cambridge University scientists say they have seen four-stranded DNA at work in human cells for the first time and wonder if it might provide a target for the development of novel anti-cancer treatments.

Worldwide, tea is the second-most-popular drink, after water. But in this coffee-crazed nation, it's long been a subordinate brew. Until now. Tea's popularity is growing across America as scientists and the public learn more about its bountiful health benefits. An ever-growing body of research that includes more than 5,000 studies says tea can help block cholesterol, prevents cardiovascular disease and cancer and burns calories.

Shortages of a chemotherapy drug probably led to higher rates of cancer relapse among young patients, hospital records show. The finding raises questions about the impacts of recurring drug shortages.

Rather strange news was bouncing around Reddit recently, and it all started with a man relieving himself on a pregnancy test stick. In case you don’t know how a pregnancy stick works, here’s a quick tutorial: remove stick from box, pee on stick, watch to see if a pink line, blue line, plus or minus symbol, or whatever symbol the instructions tell you to look for appears. If the symbol appears, you are probably pregnant — that is, if you’re a woman.

A study on mice suggests that pheomelanin pigment, which gives rise to red hair, is itself a potential trigger for melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Doctors have long urged people with red hair, fair skin and freckles to avoid the sun and its damaging ultraviolet rays.