Taiwan recorded 73,293 new cancer cases in 2006, with the largest number being colorectal cases, according to the latest cancer incidence report released yesterday by the Department of Health=.
The figures mean that on average, a new cancer patient was being diagnosed in the country every 7 minutes, 10 seconds in 2006, up slightly from the average of 7 minutes, 38 seconds in 2005, when 68,907 new cases were recorded, according to Chao Kun-yu, deputy chief of the DOH’s Bureau of Health Promotion.
The report showed that for the first time, colorectal cancer replaced liver cancer as the most common type among new cases recorded in a single year.
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Whether you drive, take the bus, or bicycle, being in heavy traffic triples your risk of heart attack within one hour.
Air pollution from car fumes is the likely culprit, suggest Annette Peters, PhD, and colleagues at the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Center, Munich, Germany.
In a previous study, Peters and colleagues found that a sizeable proportion of heart attacks — about 8% — could be attributed to being in traffic.
To follow up, the researchers interviewed 1,454 people who survived heart attacks. In the hour before their heart attack, many of the survivors had been in heavy traffic.
A late-stage clinical study of Pfizer Inc’s (PFE) Sutent was halted early after the drug showed significant benefit in patients with a rare form of cancer, the drugmaker said on Thursday, sending its shares up 3.5%.
An independent committee monitoring the study recommended halting it after concluding that patients on Sutent stayed free of disease progression for longer than those on placebo plus best supportive care.
The patients in the study had advanced pancreatic islet cell tumors, a rare cancer with limited treatment options, according to Pfizer.
Nanotechnology has been used for the first time to destroy cancer cells with a highly targeted package of “tumour busting” genes.
The technique, which leaves healthy cells unaffected, could potentially offer hope to people with hard-to-treat cancers where surgery is not possible.
Although it has only been tested in mice so far, the researchers hope for human trials in two years.
The UK study is published online by the journal Cancer Research.
Scientists say for the first time they have understood someone’s thoughts by looking at what their brain is doing.
The hippocampus is widely known to be integral to memory, but researchers say they now see just how images are stored and recalled in this part of the brain.
Wellcome Trust scientists trained four participants to recognise several virtual reality environments.
Discernible patterns in brain activity then signalled where they were, they wrote in the journal Current Biology.
Neurons in the hippocampus, also known as “place cells”, activate when we move around to tell us where we are.
Robin Williams has postponed the remainder of his comedy tour so he can undergo heart surgery.
Concerns were raised about Williams’ health on Wednesday when he was ordered by doctors to take a week of rest after complaining of shortness of breath.
Reports on today suggested the comedy actor has been admitted to a Miami hospital to undergo tests, prompting his spokesperson to confirm Williams is putting work on hold to be treated for a heart condition.
In seeming contradiction to previous studies where findings supported the benign or beneficial effects of alcohol consumption, a current study by researchers at the University of Oxford in Great Britain has linked even minimal alcohol use and cancer in women. The type of alcohol consumed was irrelevant.
The so-called Million Women Study of middle-aged women in the United Kingdom found that low to moderate consumption of alcohol increased the risk of and might be responsible for 13 percent of breast, liver, rectal and certain digestive tract cancers.
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China on Saturday approved a long-awaited food safety law, state media reported, in a bid to end repeated scandals involving dangerous food products in the country.
The law has been in the works since October last year after a huge scandal erupted over contaminated milk which killed at least six children and sickened nearly 300,000 others in China.
“The law will see the establishment of a monitoring and supervision system, a set of national standards on food safety, a recall system, and severe punishment for offenders,” the official Xinhua news agency said.
HIV is evolving rapidly to escape the human immune system, an international study has shown.
The Nature study highlights just how tough it could be to develop a vaccine that keeps pace with the changing nature of the virus.
The researchers showed HIV was able to adapt rapidly to counter human genes controlling immune system molecules that can target it for destruction.
However, they stressed this would not affect the impact of anti-HIV drugs.
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A man who may be the biological father of Nadya Suleman’s octuplets says he is willing to help the single mother of 14, even though he is not certain it was his donated sperm that she used to become pregnant.
In an exclusive interview airing this Monday on “Good Morning America,” the possible father said Suleman brought him to the clinic at which she received in vitro fertilization to donate sperm, and that he made donations on two other occasions. He now believes Suleman was married at the time.
Tune in to ABC News’ “Good Morning America” Monday, Feb. 23 to learn the identity of the man who possibly fathered the Suleman octuplets.
