REMOVAL OF OVARIES, BREASTS MAY CUT RISK of breast cancer.Some, burdened with genes that mark them as profoundly high-risk, live with the feeling that it’s not a matter of if cancer will strike, but when.Women who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations face a 50 percent to 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 10 percent to 40 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer.About 10 percent of all breast cancers in women younger than 40 are found in those with the mutations.

Study Finds Quitting Smoking Helps Odds for Cancer Patients Stopping smoking even after lung cancer develops — can lengthen patient survival, a Canadian study has found. Patients who continued to smoke during treatment were more likely to die within five years than patients who quit smoking before beginning treatment for lung cancer, the study’s principal author, Dr. Gregory M. Videtic, said. Canadian study finds that stopping smoking–even after lung cancer develops–can lengthen patient survival; finds patients who continue to…

Early Detection The Goal / Ovarian cancer test in works For at least a half century, scientists pursued the early detection for ovarian cancer with dogged persistence but little payoff.No matter how scientists chased the goal, or what technology they tried, an effective test continually eluded them. Stealthy and silent, the cancer rarely makes itself known until its most difficult, and often, fatal stages.Now, two scientists are becoming emboldened as never before, and with a test nearly in hand, at least one has begun to softly but…

Breast cancer survivors: A rainy run is no sweat, Racing for a cure was the goal. Staying at home was not an option. Women get breast cancer in the rain.That pronouncement from District Attorney Lynne Abraham summed up the determination of an estimated 35,000 who congregated amid puddles at the Art Museum yesterday for the 12th Annual Komen Philadelphia Race for the Cure.