IBM and i3 Archive have created a database containing over one million mammography images. Developed under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, MyNDMA (National Digital Medical Archive) is accessible to both patients and healthcare providers. The project is federally funded and could provide rapid access to patient records for healthcare providers and researchers, which will hopefully facilitate diagnosis and treatment.

By having access to the database and their records, women can now have the necessary information available when they visit a new healthcare provider or consult with another provider for a second opinion.

The MyNDMA project is one of several efforts health-related efforts on the part of  IBM. The corporation is partnering with the National Cancer Institute on a grid project for managing biomedical research data and also is donating $3 million in technology and services to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City for an integrated information management system.

 According to an article in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, high soy consumption could actually increase breast cancer risk among U.S. women. Researchers said that, while the benefits of soy consumption for cardiovascular health have been confirmed, there is no evidence that soy foods improve breast health, particularly in non-Asian women.

They interviewed 452 women with family histories of breast cancer about how frequently they consumed soy and why. One third of women at high risk regularly consume soy-based foods. The most common reason, they reported, was to have a healthy diet. Forty-five percent said they believed soy foods reduced cancer risk.

Among the women who did not eat soy, 7 percent said it was because the plant estrogens in soy foods could promote breast cancer, and some said a clinician had instructed them not to eat soy foods for this reason.

 Results of a late-stage clinical trial indicate that Gardasil, an experimental Merck vaccine, prevented early-stage cervical cancer and precancerous cervical lesions caused by the two most common forms of a virus linked to those cancers.

Gardasil targets two forms of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, types 16 and 18, which are responsible for about 70 percent of cervical cancer. Such cancers kill about 300,000 women worldwide each year, including almost 4,000 in the United States.

The trial, which was sponsored by Merck, included more than 12,000 women from 13 countries, aged 16 to 26, who were not infected with either of the virus types when the trial began. The ability to prevent onset of cervical cancers, at least for the short term, was reported.

 People who are diagnosed with melanoma are at a high risk of having it come back after the initial lesion is treated and removed. That is according to research published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

Strong words of caution from one of the study’s authors, Dr. Daniel Coit of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, as quoted by Reuters: "If you've had a melanoma, you are at lifetime risk for developing a second or third primary melanoma, and it's absolutely incumbent on every single patient with melanoma to be rigorous in insisting on long-term contact with their dermatologist."

A primary melanoma is one that develops anew as compared to tumors that spread from an existing site.

Summary of the research available here.

 The annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer has been released, and the findings are that more U.S. women are being diagnosed with cancer, but rates among men are stable, and cancer is killing fewer people.

Every year the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries together compile the report on the 15 most common U.S. cancers.

This year’s report indicates that death rates from all cancers dropped by 1.1 percent per year from 1993 to 2002, most likely due to earlier detection and better treatments.

Key points and Q&A on the report available here.

 New research published in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition tries to separate the effect of smoking from that of alcohol on lung cancer risk. After reviewing pooled data from seven studies on diet and cancer, researchers feel that the data provides weak evidence of a link between alcohol consumption and lung cancer risk, at least in men who never smoked.

Although smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, not much is known about risk factors for nonsmokers. While mortality due to lung cancer is high in studies of alcoholics, the researchers feel that the greater risk may be explained, at least in part, by the fact that the people in these populations were also more likely to be smokers.

Among men who never smoked, consumption of 15 grams or more of alcohol per day was associated with a 6-fold increased risk of developing lung cancer. While this finding is "notable," the authors say the absolute risk of lung cancer in this group is small.

Summary of the study available here.

 Walking for transportation is part of an active lifestyle that can help lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and colon cancer and increase one's sense of well being.

That is according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which supports The International Walk to School Week. The effort, which starts today, is a global move to encourage children, parents, teachers, and community leaders to celebrate the benefits of walking and the need to create communities that are safe for pedestrians.

According to the CDC, last year an estimated 3 million walkers in 36 countries observed the event by walking to school. Low rates of walking and physical activity, coupled with a 300 percent increase in the number of overweight children since the early 1970s, helped fuel the initiative.

 According to new research published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pomegranate juice works against prostate cancer cells in lab dishes and in mice.Researchers found that prostate tumors shrank in mice infected with human prostate tumors, who were given pomegranate juice to drink. The juice is rich in antioxidants.

It is a reach from treating mice infected with human cancer to treating people, but other studies have also suggested that antioxidant-rich foods may help fight tumors. Researchers involved with this study feel that there is reason to continue to continue to study the use of pomegranate in humans.

Summary of the study available here.

 According to the Wall Street Journal, a clinical trial of Celgene Corporation's cancer drug, Revlimid, has been suspended because of concerns about blood clots. Celgene was expecting an answer from FDA next week on whether Revlimid would be approved.

Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the trial of 250 patients looked at Revlimid's effectiveness, in combination with a steroid, in patients with multiple myeloma.

 According to a new report published in the journal Cancer, people who've undergone a kidney transplant have an increased risk of developing melanoma. It seems that the immunosuppression regimen used after a kidney transplant affects the risk of melanoma. The melanoma rate in kidney recipients was found to be 3.6 times that in the general population.

Researchers hope that  the study will help physicians understand that the risk of melanoma is increased in kidney transplant recipients and that the physicians will in turn educate their patients in regard to routine self examination of the skin. Additionally, follow up care should be coordinated with a dermatologist.

Summary of the study available here.

 Breast cancers that are related to a BRCA gene mutation are known to increase the risk of ovarian cancer. However, new research indicates that this association does not apply to other types of hereditary breast cancer.

Researchers hope that the new findings will cause a decrease in the use of surgery to remove the ovaries among women with hereditary breast cancer. However, the researchers stress that larger studies with longer follow-up are needed to know for sure that BRCA mutation-negative breast cancer does not increase the risk of ovarian cancer, even slightly.

The research is published in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

 Left-handed women are more than twice as likely as right-handed women to suffer from breast cancer before reaching menopause.

Researchers at the University Medical Center in Utrecht in the Netherlands found the correlation in their study of 12,000 women who were part of a breast cancer screening program. The researchers think that there is a shared origin early in life for both left-handedness and developing breast cancer, possibly exposure to hormones in the womb.

 According to a presentation at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons Plastic Surgery 2005 conference in Chicago, examination of the excess breast tissue removed when women undergo breast-reduction surgery can sometimes reveal abnormal tissue that may indicate a cancer risk.

Researchers reviewed the records of 300 women who had undergone breast reduction surgery between 1991 and 1999 at BayState Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Tissue specimens were sent to a pathology lab for examination. Thirty-six (12 percent) of the patients, ages ranging from 16 to 73 years, had abnormal pathology results indicating increased risk of developing breast cancer. Twenty-six were low-risk lesions, but the other ten had lesions that were moderate or high risk. Two of these ten patients were younger than 40.

The society's announcement of the findings available here.

 The Supreme Court of Canada announced that it would rule later this week on tobacco companies' challenge of a British Columbia law allowing the provincial government to sue for damages for smoking-related diseases.

The provincial act was modeled on cases filed in the 1990s by more than 40 U.S. states against the tobacco industry, and is seen as a prototype for Canada's other nine provinces. British Columbia officials have estimated the provincial government spends more than C$500 million a year to treat diseases linked to tobacco.

 Even smoking a few cigarettes a day can significantly increase the risk of dying early from heart disease or lung cancer. That is according to new research conducted by Norwegian scientists.

The researchers found that even light smoking, defined as less than five cigarettes daily, triples the risk of dying of heart disease or lung cancer. Men who were light smokers were about three times more likely to die of lung cancer than non-smokers. In women the risk rose to five times higher.

The study was published in the journal Tobacco Control.