On-the-Job Stress Won't Raise Your Risk for Cancer, Study Finds But it could lead to behaviors that increase the chances of disease, one expert says THURSDAY, Feb. 7 (HealthDay News) -- The hassles and deadlines at work may leave you frazzled, but they won't raise your risk for cancer, new research suggests. Despite earlier studies suggesting an association between work stress and cancer, an international team of researchers found that it wasn't linked to colorectal, lung, breast or prostate cancers. "We already know from other studies that work-related stress is associated with many adverse health outcomes, such as heart disease and depression," said lead researcher Katriina Heikkila, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki. "Our findings suggest that stress at work is unlikely to be an important cancer risk factor. Though reducing work stress would undoubtedly improve the psychological and physical well-being of the working people, it is unlikely to have a marked impact on cancer," Heikkila said. Commenting on the new report, Dr. Lidia Schapira, associate editor for psychosocial oncology at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Cancer.Net, said, "I am encouraged that there is now some evidence that uncouples job strain and life stresses from cancer." People worry a lot when they are under stress, and they then worry that their worrying is going to impact their health, she noted. "We know stress can affect the body's reactions [and] increase inflammation, which is associated with an increased risk of cancer, so there is good reason to worry," said Schapira, who is also an assistant professor in the department of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "I think people should address stress just because stress is uncomfortable and impacts on one's wellness and well-being and quality of life," Schapira said. "But good scientists have given it a hard look, and we really can't connect the dots [between] being stressed at work to getting cancer." The analysis was published online Feb. 7 in the BMJ. To see what role job stress might play in the risk of developing cancer, Heikkila's group collected data on 116,000 men and women, aged 17 to 70, from Finland, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. All of these people had taken part in one of 12 studies where they were asked about the amount of stress on their job. The researchers defined several types of job stress: high-stress jobs, with high work demands and low control over work; active jobs, with high demands and high control; passive jobs, with low demands and low control; and low stress jobs, with low demands and high control. The investigators then turned to cancer death registries and hospital records to see how many people developed or died from cancer. They further refined their search by taking age, sex, socioeconomic factors, smoking and alcohol use into account. In addition, the researchers excluded anyone who was extremely overweight or underweight. Over an average 12 years of follow-up, more than 5,700 people developed some type of cancer. Heikkila's team didn't find any connection, however, between cancer and job stress. It is possible that other studies that found a connection between job stress and cancer found the association by chance or included other work-related factors that went beyond work, the Finnish researchers said. For this type of study, called a meta-analysis, researchers comb through already published studies looking for patterns in the data. Often, the patterns they find go beyond the original intent of the studies they are examining. The downside of a meta-analysis is that the data the researchers choose is only as good as the data in the studies they use, and their conclusions can't always take into account problems with the original research. Elizabeth Ward, national vice president of intramural research at the American Cancer Society, said it is hard to conclude from this analysis that work stress doesn't play a role in cancer. "One way job stress could impact cancer is if people who have stress are more prone to be smokers or drink more alcohol, or be obese," she explained. When the researchers tried to eliminate these factors from their data, they could be hiding a substantial number of people for whom stress leads directly to behaviors known to increase the risk for cancer, Ward noted. More information For more on stress and cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
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Fried Foods May Boost Prostate Cancer Risk, Study Says But the research doesn't prove a link between the disease and French fries, donuts and the like MONDAY, Jan. 28 (HealthDay News) -- Eating deep-fried foods, such as French fries and fried chicken, on a regular basis may be tied to an increased risk of prostate cancer, a new study suggests. Previous research has suggested that eating foods prepared with high-heat cooking methods, such as grilled meat, may increase the risk of prostate cancer. But this is the first study to look at how deep-fried foods may affect that risk, the study authors said. Researchers examined data from about 1,500 men diagnosed with prostate cancer and about 1,500 men who did not have the disease. The men, who ranged in age from 35 to 74, provided details about their eating habits. Men who said they ate French fries, fried chicken, fried fish and/or doughnuts at least once a week were 30 percent to 37 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than those who ate such foods less than once a month. Men who ate these foods at least once a week also had a slightly greater risk of more aggressive prostate cancer, according to the study, which found an association between deep-fried foods and prostate cancer risk but didn't prove cause-and-effect. The study was published online recently in the journal The Prostate. The study was supported by the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle. "The link between prostate cancer and select deep-fried foods appeared to be limited to the highest level of consumption -- defined in our study as more than once a week -- which suggests that regular consumption of deep-fried foods confers particular risk for developing prostate cancer," study corresponding author Janet Stanford, co-director of Hutchinson's prostate cancer research program, said in a center news release. This increased prostate cancer risk may be due to the fact that when oil is heated to temperatures used for deep frying, potentially cancer-causing compounds can form in the fried food, she said. The more the oil is re-used and the longer the frying time, the greater the amounts of these toxic compounds, Stanford said. One expert said he wasn't surprised by the findings. "This study begins to confirm in people what has been seen in animal models over the past decade," said Dr. Warren Bromberg, chief of urology, Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y. He said that high fat diets have been shown in those studies to be tied to "changes at the cellular level [that] are associated with cancer," especially in the prostate. "Diet has been postulated to be a significant risk factor for inflammatory conditions and cancer, although more studies in people need to be done," Bromberg added. Previous studies have linked fried foods to cancers of the breast, lung, pancreas, head and neck, and esophagus, the researchers noted. More information The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about diet and cancer.
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U.S. Cancer Death Rates Continue to Fall: Report But, for some hard-to-treat cancers, deaths are increasing MONDAY, Jan. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Deaths from cancer continue to drop for American men and women from most racial and ethnic groups, according to a new report, with significant declines seen for lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and other forms of cancer. "This is good news in that there is continuation of the decline in the overall cancer death rate," said Edgar Simard, a senior epidemiologist in the surveillance research program at the American Cancer Society. "The progress we are making in the fight against cancer is largely driven by the most common cancers in America." Simard noted that the drop in deaths from lung cancer was in great part the result of fewer people smoking and better treatment. For colorectal and breast cancers, the decline in deaths also resulted from improved screening and treatment. Not all the news from the report was good. Among men, death rates from melanoma skin cancer are on the rise and uterine cancer death rates are up for women. Death rates for liver and pancreatic cancer are also increasing. For these diseases, treatment needs to get better if deaths are going to be reduced, Simard said. "We would like to have more research and more public attention to these cancers," he said. The annual report was produced by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Cancer Society, the U.S. National Cancer Institute and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. "Our efforts in cancer prevention and control are working," said Jane Henley, an epidemiologist in the division of cancer prevention and control at the CDC. Henley said cancer diagnosis and deaths could be further reduced if people would live up to their New Year's resolutions to quit smoking, lose weight, eat healthy, exercise and cut down on drinking. The drop in cancer deaths began in the 1990s and continued as screening and treatments improved. From 2000 through 2009, cancer deaths dropped 1.8 percent per year among men and 1.4 percent per year among women. Deaths among children also dropped by 1.8 percent per year, according to the report. During that time period, cancer deaths for men dropped for 10 of the 17 most common cancers: lung, prostate, colorectal, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney, stomach, myeloma (a type of blood cancer), oral and tracheal cancer. Among women, cancer deaths dropped for these common cancers: lung, breast, colorectal, ovarian, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, brain and other nervous system cancers, myeloma, kidney, stomach, cervix, bladder, esophagus, oral, tracheal and gallbladder cancer. In addition, from 2000 to 2009, diagnoses of new cancers dropped 0.6 percent among men and were unchanged among women. For children, however, cancer diagnosis rose 0.6 percent, the researchers say. For men, the drop in cancer diagnosis was seen for prostate, lung, colorectal, stomach and larynx cancers, but increased for kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid, melanoma and myeloma. Among women, the reduction in cancer diagnosis was seen for lung, colorectal, bladder, cervical, pharynx, ovarian, and stomach cancers, but rose for thyroid, melanoma, kidney, pancreas, leukemia, liver and uterine cancer. For breast cancer in women and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men and women, the rates of new diagnosis remained the same, the researchers noted. Simard believes more progress will be made. "The future is bright as long as we continue to apply what we know about cancer prevention, control and treatment," he said. CDC's Henley added that people can help prevent cervical cancer and cancers of the mouth by making sure young girls and boys get vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV). Right now, only 32 percent of girls have gotten the full treatment for HPV. "The [Healthy People] 2020 goal is 80 percent, so we have a lot of work to do," Henley said. The report was published online Jan. 7 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. More information For more about cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.
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Blood Test Might Spot High-Risk Breast Cancer Genes Further study is needed, but screen may get around more cumbersome, costly methods, researchers say TUESDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- A new blood-based genetic test may predict the presence of dangerous BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations in women, a new study finds. These mutations significantly boost the risk for breast or ovarian cancer, which often develop at an early age in women with the mutations. The screen could provide a quick, affordable alternative to current genetic testing and may help women and their doctors make decisions about ways to reduce cancer risk, according to the authors of the study, published Jan. 22 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research. "The current tool for mutation detection is gene sequencing [mapping], which is expensive, time-consuming and, in many cases, lacking clear and decisive clinical decision-making information," study author Dr. Asher Salmon, a breast cancer specialist at the Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center in Israel, explained in a journal news release. "In many cases, the current sequencing tool identifies a mutation, but we do not know if the mutation is neutral or harmful," Salmon noted. The researchers developed the multiple gene expression profile test after analyzing mutated BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes from blood samples taken from otherwise healthy women. They said that the test is highly accurate, affordable and quick. "In wealthy societies, it can become a screening tool for identifying individuals with a very high susceptibility for carrying a mutation," so that they can be sent on to more rigorous, full DNA mapping, Salmon said. "In societies in which sequencing is not feasible, this test can substitute for it with a very high accuracy rate." The effectiveness of the test in different racial/ethnic groups will be assessed in a large study in Europe and North America, the researchers said. More information The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.
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