Investing in some colorectal cancer screening programs could cut future, more expensive treatment costs in half, according to a new study published online September 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The only screening program found not to be cost-saving was colonoscopy.

There is clear evidence that lifestyle choices affect the incidence and treatment of cancer, according to a study published in the current issue of American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (AJLM).

At least 124,000 new cancers in 2008 in Europe may have been caused by excess body weight, according to estimates from a new modelling study. The proportion of cases of new cancers attributable to a body mass index of 25kg/m2 or more were highest among women and in central European countries such as the Czech Republic, Latvia, Slovenia and Bulgaria.

Cervical cancer could be eradicated within the next 50 years if countries implement national screening programmes based on detection of the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes the disease, together with vaccination programmes against the virus, according to a cervical cancer screening expert.

Currently, the standard induction therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a combination of anthracycline and cytarabine with complete remission rate of about 57% and overall survival of 15.7 months. The standard dose of anthracycline is 45-mg per square meter in patients under 60 years of age. Several studies have looked at efficacy of this drug at higher doses (up to 60-mg per square meter), resulting in improved remission rate with no significant change in overall survival.

The results of two lung cancer trials were published in the September 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The first trial involved 2105 western European patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer who were screened for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in order to determine eligibility for therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitor (erlotinib). The second study was conducted with an eastern Asian population that recruited a total of 1217 NSCLC patients to determine the relationship between first-line treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors and EGFR mutation status versus conventional chemotherapy (carboplatin-paclitaxel).

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at chromosome 18q has been associated with poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer. However, most of the studies supporting this finding did not take into account other factors with known prognostic value.