Drinking alcohol raises the risk of cancer by damaging DNA, scientists have discovered for the first time, leading health experts to call for people to cut down on their consumption. Alcohol is contributes to more than 12,000 cases of cancer each year in Britain, but nobody had shown why it was so harmful. Now a…
Thousands of cancer patients would prefer to die at home but are forced to suffer “traumatic” deaths in hospital, according to Macmillan. Taboos around talking about death are fuelling a “crisis of communication” in the UK that prevents people from planning their final days, warned the organisation in a new report. Research by the charity…
Corn biscuits for breakfast; veggie dogs for lunch; okra, tomato and black-eyed peas for tea. It’s probably not a diet to tempt most Americans into shedding a few pounds. But swapping westernised eating habits for the high-fibre diet of millions of people living in rural southern Africa could dramatically cut the risk of bowel cancer…
All patients will soon have their tumour’s DNA, its genetic code, sequenced, enabling doctors to ensure they give exactly the right drugs to keep the disease at bay. Doctors hope it will be an important step towards transforming some types of cancer into a chronic rather than fatal disease. The technique could enable terminally ill…
A daily dose of aspirin should be given to people at high risk of bowel cancer, say scientists. Two pills a day for two years reduced the incidence of bowel cancer by 63% in a group of 861 at-risk patients, a study reported in The Lancet said. Newcastle University’s Prof Sir John Burn, who led the study,…