America’s First Therapeutic Cancer Vaccine
Last Thursday the Food and Drug Administration approved Provenge for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Provenge is the first therapeutic vaccine to be approved in the U.S. for cancer treatment, ushering in what may be a new era in immune-based cancer treatments. Approval marks the successful conclusion of a 20-year odyssey with some remarkable twists and turns. My part of the story …
Read more on The Atlantic
Nobody wants to get cancer. That being said, we should all be aware of what the risk factors are for certain cancers. If you think you are at a higher risk for a specific type of cancer you should become familiar with what factors tend to increase the likelihood that you will develop the disease. Say, for instance, that prostate cancer runs in your family. You should know that there are many different factors that increase your risk, especially since there are some factors that you have control over.
There are several main factors that you do not have control over. One of those factors is your age. Men over the age of 50 have a higher chance of being diagnosed with this cancer. More than 70 percent of men with prostate cancer are over the age of 65. Race is another factor that you cannot control. Prostate cancer is 60 percent more common among African-American men than among Caucasian men. If you have a family history of this disease, you definitely have an increased risk of developing the disease yourself. A man’s risk of developing it is more than doubled if he has a father or brother that has the disease. Although, just because a relative has prostate cancer, it doesn’t mean that you necessarily will get it as well. Sometimes the cancer is simply sporadic, meaning that it can develop in one male relative, but not another. Only five to ten percent of those cases are determined to be hereditary. This would be a family with three or more affected relatives within the immediate family or a family where each of three generations are affected.
» Read more: The Many Risk Factors of Prostate Cancer
U.S. to WellPoint: Stop dropping breast cancer patients
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has called on health insurer WellPoint to stop dropping coverage for patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer, calling the practice “deplorable.”
Read more on Reuters via Yahoo! News