News digest – breast cancer blood test, eye cancer, Tasmanian Devils and more

The Tasmanian devil’s battle against cancer has been in the news this week

• Our top story this week is a little left-field, and concerns a marsupial called the Tasmanian devil, which is threatened by from unique infectious cancer spread by biting. This week, researchers in Cambridge have made a big step forward in understanding how the cancer spreads – it cloaks itself from the immune system. The BBC has this interview with the lead researcher, and there’s more at National Geographic’s Phenomena blog. Fingers crossed they find a vaccine before the poor creature becomes extinct.

• Great news – the Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against adverts put out by cigarette manufacturers earlier this year, which opposed plain, standardised tobacco packaging. Here’s our press release, and the Guardian covered the story here.

• In other smoking-related news, new research shows that the UK’s children are shown millions of tobacco-related images on telly every week. Here’s our news story.

• Writing in the Guardian, David Hockney thinks the “professional anti-smoking brigade” are ruining people’s lives. David Hockney should read this.

• Our researchers in Oxford have shown that the risk of heart problems following radiotherapy for breast cancer are lower than previous estimates. Our press release was widely picked up – here’s the New York Times’s take

• Our scientists in Cambridge have published exciting results looking at how monitoring tumour DNA in a woman’s blood could help monitor and tailor breast cancer treatment. We blogged about their findings, and what happens next. Nature covered the story here.

• Nearly a quarter of women diagnosed with breast cancer may be experiencing some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Oncology Nurse Advisor (there’s information and support via our website)

• The Telegraph, in collaboration with Breast Cancer Care and Breast Cancer Campaign, have produced an excellent series of Q&A videos about breast cancer

• This is one of the most heartfelt and moving pieces we’ve ever published – a parent’s journey through her daughter’s experience of cancer.

• Sheila Hancock in the Guardian writes about the need for more funding for brain tumour research.

• But a note of caution – there are pitfalls in taking too much of a ‘disease-specific’ approach to science funding, warns this excellent article in Nature Medicine.

• Hormone replacement therapy increases breast cancer risk, but are recent drops in breast cancer rates linked to fewer women taking HRT? ‘We don’t know,’ is the conclusion of research reported in the Telegraph.

• Could eating cheese after having breast cancer reduce your risk of dying from the disease? This was the spin put on research from a US Health Insurance company, that asked its patients what they ate. It found evidence of a link between high-fat dairy and an increased risk of death – but it’s not sufficient evidence to say for sure, and previous studies say otherwise. It’s worth reading our previous post – “What should you eat when you’re being treated for cancer?”, as well as our Healthy Living pages – but also this article we just published, about how the media talks about risks.

• Relative risks also featured in this story, widely covered (here’s the BBC’s version). A “49 per cent increased risk of ovarian cancer” was found among women in a study who worked night shifts. But only a small number of women on the study actually worked nights, so we’re not convinced by the finding (although there may be a link between night shifts and breast cancer).

• Composer Howard Goodall’s writing us some music. Follow his journey here.

• “Sensors the size of an eyelash could in future be implanted into tumours to help improve the treatment of cancer patients,” said the Scotsman, reporting on a new £5.2m research project starting at Edinburgh University

• We liked this US breast cancer infographic, looking at how much they spend on breast cancer prevention.

• Canadian researchers have found a new way that retinoblastoma – a rare childhood eye cancer – can develop. The results have implications for survivors, some of whom may not be at as high a risk of subsequent cancers as previously thought

• We thought this was a nifty analogy. Some cells – potentially including cancer cells – move in a Tortoise-like formation “like Roman soldiers in the Asterix comics“.

And finally

• Like a bad smell, the ‘dogs can sniff cancer’ story is back. Weoften get asked about the science behind these recurring stories, and it’s certainly interesting – cancers give off molecules that can be detected by highly-trained sniffer dogs. But it’s simply not practical to use dogs on a wide scale for cancer screening across the general population. Read this blog post for more information.

Henry

• Image via Wikipedia Commons