Health, Cancer | featured news

Breast cancer screening for women over 50 saves lives, an independent panel in Britain has concluded, confirming findings in U.S. and other studies. But, the review found that for every life saved, roughly three other women were overdiagnosed.

The most common and aggressive brain tumor grows by turning normal brain cells into stem cells, which can continuously replicate and regrow a tumor with only a handful of cells left behind, new research finds.

Cancer has surpassed heart disease to become the leading cause of death among Hispanics in the United States, according to an American Cancer Society report released Monday.

A comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer finds that more than half the tumors have mutations that might be treated by drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be developed.

The long search for a male birth control pill is not over -- but researchers say they have a promising new lead. The researchers were testing a cancer drug in mice when they found it was able to temporarily stop sperm production.

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that is most commonly passed between people during vaginal or anal intercourse. But it can also be transmitted through genital-to-genital, or hand-to-genital contact, which is how the participants in the study likely got the virus, the researchers said. Out of the more than 40 sexually transmitted HPV strains, more than a dozen have been identified as cancer-causing, according to the National Cancer Institute.

How can a cancer come back after it’s apparently been eradicated? Three new studies are bolstering a long-debated idea: that tumors contain their own pool of stem cells that can multiply and keep fueling the cancer, seeding regrowth.

Nobody loves a party pooper. And it seems nobody these days loves the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. Few Americans had even heard of it until three years ago, when the advisory board with the 10-syllable name challenged convention by saying women under 50 might not benefit from mammograms, just as the debate over health care was coming to a boil.

A novel method known as whole genome sequencing focuses on the genes that drive a cancer, not the tissues or organ.

Could the World Health Organization's ruling make exhaust as important a public health issue as secondhand smoke?