Weekly news digest – aspirin, breast screening, the Pill and more

Cancer hit the headlines this week

Some really interesting cancer stories were in the news this week. If you’ve been too busy to catch the headlines, then here’s our round-up:

● A high-quality study showed that aspirin cut bowel cancer risk by over half in people with a genetic predisposition to the disease. But it’s too early to widely recommend aspirin use.

● The UK’s breast screening programme is to be independently reviewed to resolve ongoing controversy over its benefits and risks.

● A Cancer Research UK study confirmed that the combined Pill isn’t just an effective contraceptive, but that it also gives women long-lasting protection against ovarian cancer. We discussed what this means for the ‘average’ women on the blog.

● Our Chief Executive Harpal Kumar warned that the NHS faces a “perfect storm” of rising cancer cases and squeezed finances over the next 20 years. (But the good news is that cancer survival is on the increase.) This graphic highlights the challenge facing the NHS:

● We opened a new Cancer Centre in Sheffield, in partnership with the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Yorkshire Cancer Research. It will focus on breast and lung cancers, and cancers that have spread to the bone.

● US researchers investigating lung cancer screening found that one method – a chest x-ray – didn’t seem to be effective at cutting death rates.

● And finally… it was widely reported that tanning ‘is safer in the morning’, but we explained on our blog that these headlines fundamentally misrepresent the research.

From what we’ve seen, it looks as if there’s going to be another batch of interesting stories in the media next week, so be sure to look out for our next news digest. And you can follow the news as it happens on our website, and read more in-depth analysis on this blog.