Ireland: Breast cancer initiative will speed up new treatments

A BREAST cancer initiative which matches the latest treatments with suitable patients will improve life expectations significantly, Minister for Health Mary Harney has said.

The National Breast Cancer Bio Resource centre will be available on a voluntary basis at the breast cancer centres in Galway, Cork, Limerick and Dublin.

The resource is a joint initiative by Aviva Health Insurance and the charity Breast Cancer Ireland. Specialist breast research nurses will facilitate the collection of serum and tissue samples, which will be used to determine the best treatment for patients.

How does race affect breast cancer risk?

It's been long known that Hispanic women are less likely to get breast cancer than white women but now a new study examines why.

Researchers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs studied women with breast cancer. Among the white women, between 62 percent and 75 percent had known risk factors for breast cancer – behaviors or traits that have been found to increase one’s chances of getting the disease, for example, use of hormone replacement therapy.

Why won't women prevent breast cancer?

The results are in and clear -- taking a pill a day for five years can slash the risk of breast cancer. But high-risk women are still reluctant to do it.

The cancer specialists who have been comparing the drugs raloxifene and tamoxifen rushed out updated findings to a meeting on Monday, showing that tamoxifen lowers the risk of breast cancer in high-risk women by 50 per cent, compared with 38 per cent for raloxifene. Overall, both drugs saved lives, they told the American Association for Cancer Research meeting.

Women who put on weight as they age increase breast cancer risk: research

Researchers have found that a woman who is 5'4 tall who puts on just over two stone between the age of 20 and 50 is almost twice as likely to develop breast cancer after the menopause.
The findings back up earlier research which has linked obesity to breast cancer.

Fat stored in the body produces hormones and chemicals which may fuel the development of abnormal cells and lead to cancer, it is thought.

Technology expands breast cancer screening options

Breast-cancer-screening isn't like looking for a needle in a haystack. It's harder. It's like looking for needles in a big field of haystacks, where some of the haystacks have needles, while most don't, but you don't know which are which, so you have to look in all of them.

Mammography is the best technique available right now to look for breast cancers in women who don't have any symptoms. On average, screening mammograms correctly identify 80% to 85% of women who have cancer and about 90% of women who don't.

Technologies featured:

Digital mammography
Computer-aided detection
Stochastic resonance
Digital tomosynthesis
Stereoscopic mammography
Ultrasound (sonography)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
Electrical impedance scanning (EIS)
Scintimammography (molecular breast imaging)

Clinic denies man breast cancer screening because he's not a woman

A man whose parents both had breast cancer and who developed the same worrisome symptoms as his dad was denied a mammogram at a local health clinic - because he’s a man, according to ABCNews.com.

Whale Helps Support Breast Cancer Awareness

Although Jodie did the paddling on her own, she wasn’t exactly alone; a 30-foot minke whale followed her for about an hour and a half, blowing bubbles and showing her his belly. "It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life," she said.

Despite Recent Arguments, Breast Cancer Screening Saves Lives

British researchers have taken on recent critics of regular screening for breast cancer and found that mammograms save the lives of two women for every one that is given unnecessary treatment and that the benefits clearly outweigh the harm.