Men who have developed castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) may be able to slow the growth of prostate tumours by reducing their cholesterol levels according to the results of a recent article published in the open access journal PLoS ONE last month.

While the research was conducted in mice, if the results are replicated in human studies, it could open new treatments for castration-resistant prostate cancer, which is notoriously difficult to treat.

Simvastatin, a popular statin, may cut the rate of breast cancer recurrence by as much as 30% according to the results of a recent study conducted by American and Danish researchers.

The study, published in October, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, involved almost 18,769 Danish women who were diagnosed with stage 1-3 breast cancer between 1996 and 2003. The women were followed up for an average of 6.8 years. Slightly under 20% of breast cancer patients were prescribed statins following their diagnosis.

Did you know that your chances of beating cancer depend on the season you are diagnosed in? It may seem bizarre but a large number of studies have found that individuals who are diagnosed with cancer in the summer have a better cancer prognosis than those diagnosed in the winter, apparently due to increased production of vitamin D by the body over the summer months.

A 2004 study, published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control, looked at the effect of sunlight on the prognosis of colon, breast, and prostate cancer in Norway. The researchers found that the case-fatality rate was higher in winter than in other seasons for all three forms of cancer.

A quick look at the latest figures from SEER, the statistical database provided by the National Cancer Institute, shows that survival rates for most forms of cancer have increased dramatically over the past 30 years or so. Overall, 5 year cancer survival rates have increased from 48.9% in 1975 to 66.7% in 2003. The following graph shows 5-year survival rates for some of the most common forms of cancer.

Fish oil supplementation has been shown to improve the response rate to chemotherapy and prevent weight loss in the treatment of the most common form of lung cancer according to the results of a study published in the journal Cancer in February.

The study, conducted by Canadian researchers at the University of Alberta, followed 46 patients who were receiving treatment for non small cell lung cancer. All patients underwent a common chemotherapy regime (carboplatin combined with vinorelbine or gemcitabine). A fish oil supplement containing 2.5g of EPA and DHA was given daily to 15 of the patients while the remaining 31 received the chemotherapy treatment only.

A recent Japanese study, published by the British Journal of Cancer in September this year, has found that women who get six or less hours sleep a night are much more likely to develop breast cancer than the rest of the population.

The study involved 23,995 Japanese women aged between 40 and 79 who were followed for an eight year period. Over the course of the study, 143 women developed breast cancer. The researchers found that women who slept for 6 or less hours a night were 62% more likely to develop breast cancer compared to women who slept for an average of 7 hours a night.

Those diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma are living much longer now than they did ten years according to a recent study published in the March 10 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

German researchers examined data from the 5 and 10 year survival rates of patients aged 15 or older diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The researchers found both 5-year and 1-year survival rates for those living with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma have improved significantly from 1990-1992 to 2002-2004.

A new study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has suggested that a session of hypnosis prior to breast cancer surgery can reduces the overall cost of the procedure by over $750.

The study, conducted by researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York found that patients who received hypnosis prior to undergoing breast cancer surgery recovered much faster from the procedure, required less medication, and experienced less anxiety, discomfort, and pain than patients who did not undergo hypnosis.

Usage of vitamin and minerals supplements is much higher amongst cancer survivors than it is in the general population according to a recent research review funded by the National Cancer Institute.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that between 64 and 81 percent of cancer survivors had reported using some form of vitamin or mineral supplement while between 26 and 77 percent reported taking some form of multivitamin.

Radiotherapy has proved to be more effective than surgery for treating muscle-invasive bladder cancer according to a recent study from the United Kingdom.

Researchers from the Pyrah Department of Urology at the St. James’s University Hospital, Leeds, UK, compared the survival rates of 169 patients over a five year period from 1996 to 2000. 97 of the patients received radiotherapy while 89 had surgery to completely remove the bladder (known as a radical cystectomy).