The charity’s figures show that breast cancer rates in the UK have increased by 3.5% in 10 years, from 42,400 new cases in 1999 to 47,700 in 2008.

Breast cancer rates are rising, figures show, but survival rates are also improving too

Women aged between 50 and 69 have seen the biggest rise in breast cancer rates of 6%.

Exercising and eating healthily can reduce the risk, cancer charities say.

Cancer Research UK figures suggest that breast cancer is by far the most common cancer in women, accounting for almost a third of cases.

Bowel cancer is the second most common, followed by lung.

Almost half of breast cancer cases in 2008 (48%) were in women aged between 50 and 69.

A third were in women aged over 70, with 19% in women aged 25-49.

Healthier habits

Previous research has shown that lifestyle factors and a family history of breast cancer increase a woman’s risk of developing the disease.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said that small changes in everyday habits can help to reduce cancer risk.

“Cutting back on alcohol by keeping within government recommended limits of no more than 14 units a week (a small drink a day) helps.

“Taking more exercise and eating a diet high in fibre but low in saturated fat can help maintain a healthy weight – which in turn reduces breast cancer risk.”

New figures from the World Cancer Research Fund suggest that making these simple changes in lifestyle could result in about 79,000 cases of all kinds of cancer being prevented in the UK each year.

The WCRF says breast cancer cases specifically could be reduced by 42%.

Obesity most likely increases the risk of cancer by raising levels of hormones such as oestrogen and insulin in the body. High levels of these hormones, produced by the fat tissues, are common features of many cancers.

Excess body fat may also affect how the body processes fats and sugars and how the immune system functions.

Almost two out of every three women with breast cancer survive for more than 20 years and more than three-quarters of women with breast cancer survive for at least 10 years, says Cancer Research UK.

Sara Hiom, from Cancer Research UK, urged women to get tested at the earliest possible stage.

“Mammograms will pick up breast cancers early on before they can be felt as a lump or spotted through other visible changes and we know that the earlier a cancer is detected the more successful treatment is likely to be, so women can benefit by taking up invitations to breast screening,” she said.

Dr Rachel Greig, senior policy officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said the figures were a wake-up call and should not be ignored.

“More women are developing breast cancer and, although survival is improving thanks to breakthroughs in breast awareness, screening and treatment, we clearly have much further to go.

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In a new report, the Food and Drug Administration said the risks were well enough understood that prospective patients could make informed decisions.

The FDA removed silicone implants from the market from 1992-2006 over safety concerns

But it found as many as one in five breast augmentation patients had the implants removed within 10 years.

The US approved the implants in 2006 after a long absence from the market.

Market removal

On Wednesday, the FDA released a 63-page report on the safety of the silicone gel-filled implants that compiled studies performed by the two companies approved to manufacture the the products.

Approximately five to 10 million women across the world have breast implants, the FDA said.

In 2006, the FDA approved two brands of silicone gel implants for women over 22, Allergan’s Natrelle implants and MemoryGel implants from manufacturer Johnson and Johnson’s Mentor division.

Silicone implants had been off the market since 1992, when the FDA removed them amid concerns about implant rupture and silicone leakage.

The agency allowed saline-filled implants to remain on the market, and allowed limited distribution of silicone implants for mastectomy patients and other cases of medical necessity.

Increased risk

According to the new report, as many as one in five breast augmentation patients and half of breast reconstruction patients had to have the implants removed within 10 years.

Studies found no association between the silicone implants and connective tissue disease, breast cancer, or reproductive problems, the FDA reported.

But they did find a “very small” increased risk of anaplastic large cell lymphoma.

The most frequent complications from the implants included implant rupture, wrinkling, asymmetry, scarring, pain, and infection.

‘Shape and size’

The report found that the risk of those local complications increases with time.

“Breast implants are not lifetime devices,” the FDA cautioned women. “The longer you have your implants, the more likely it will be for you to have them removed.”

But the agency also found that most women who had breast implants “report high levels of satisfaction with their body image and the shape, feel and size of their implants”.

“Despite frequent local complications and adverse outcomes, the benefits and risks of breast implants are sufficiently well understood for women to make informed decisions about their use,” the FDA concluded.

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The US team found people who increased their intake of more high-fibre food like nuts, fruit, yoghurt and vegetables actually lost weight.

No more burgers – topping up on nuts and yogurt is a better option.

The Harvard School of Public Health researchers believe consumption of these products left less room for fatty foods.

The study of 120,000 people appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The participants were monitored over 20 years.

Unsurprisingly, the food linked to the greatest amount of weight gain was chips. An extra daily portion led to an increase in weight of over 3lbs in four years.

Similar results were seen among people who consumed extra portions of crisps, sugary drinks and meats.

Go nuts

However, there was less weight gain as time went on among people who ate more of certain foods, such as yoghurt, vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

For example, an extra helping of yoghurt led to a fall in weight of 0.37 kilos (0.82lbs) and for vegetables it was 0.1 kilos (0.22lbs).

Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor at Harvard and lead author of the study, said the fibre content of these foods could explain their effect.

“Their inverse associations with weight gain suggest that the increase in their consumption reduced the intake of other foods to a greater (caloric) extent, decreasing the overall amount of energy consumed.

“Higher fibre content and slower digestion of these foods would augment satiety, and their increased consumption would also displace other, more highly processed foods in the diet.”

Colon cleanse diet

What is kidney cancer?

There are several types of kidney cancer. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common type in adults, responsible for approximately 80 per cent of cases.

Kidney cancer symptoms

Many people with kidney cancer have no symptoms at first, especially when the cancer is small. The affected kidney will become larger and in time, the tumour may grow through the wall of the kidney and invade nearby tissues and organs, such as the muscles around the spine, liver and nearby large blood vessels.

As the cancer develops, the following may occur:

• Blood in the urine, which is usually painless and may ‘come and go’ as the tumour bleeds (the first symptom in 60 per cent of cases)
• Pain in the back or side
• Swelling in the abdomen
• High blood pressure
• Feeling generally unwell or tired
• Loss of appetite
• Polycythaemia (too much blood in body) or anaemia (too little)
• Varicocele (tangled network of veins in the scrotum)
• Hip fracture, owing to spread of the cancer to bone
• Excessive hair growth in females
• Feeling thirsty
• Night sweats
• Severe weight loss

Kidney cancer causes

Although kidney cancer is more common in men over the age of 60, many people develop it for no apparent reason. However, certain risk factors increase the chance of it developing, including:

• Smoking
• Obesity
• High blood pressure
• Family history of the disease
• Dialysis patients with cysts in their kidneys
• Inherited disorders such as Von Hippel-Lindau disease Read more…

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Hormone treatments like tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitors are ineffective against up to 30% of breast cancers.

Breast cancers can be driven by oestrogen

But laboratory research in Cambridge, reported in The EMBO Journal, suggests some of these tumours may respond to drugs for male cancers.

Cancer Research UK said the findings were a “great surprise”.

Hormones can switch on genes which lead to cells dividing uncontrollably and developing into tumours.

In women, breast cancers can be driven by the female sex hormone oestrogen. In men, prostate cancer can be driven by male sex hormones – androgens.

Breakthroughs have been made in treatments for breast cancer by developing drugs which interfere with the oestrogen’s action, halting the tumour’s progress.

However, tumours which are not driven by the hormone have been harder to treat.

Prostate to breast

Researchers at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Research Institute found that some of these oestrogen negative tumours were instead influenced by male hormones.

The same genes which were switched on by female sex hormones in oestrogen responsive tumours were activated by the male sex hormones.

It raises the prospect that drugs already developed for prostate cancer could help some women.

While androgens, such as testosterone, are typically associated with male development, they are also present in women.

The lead researcher Dr Ian Mills said: “This important discovery suggests that patients with a type of oestrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer may potentially benefit from therapies given to prostate cancer patients, which could transform treatment for this patient group in the future.

“But at the moment this laboratory research is still at an early stage.”

Researchers said this could apply to up to 5% of all breast cancers.

Dr Lesley Walker, from Cancer Research UK, said: “Prostate cancer depends on the androgen receptor for growth so it’s a great surprise that a type of breast cancer might also be fuelled by this protein.”

Dr Caitlin Palframan, policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “This fascinating research opens the door to personalised treatment for a small group of breast cancer patients.

“Women with oestrogen receptor negative disease have fewer treatment options and new ways to tackle it are urgently needed.”

Natural body cleansing

News agency AFP said 10 people have been affected by E. coli in Bordeaux.

It is thought a number of them had eaten rocket and mustard vegetable sprouts, believed to have been grown from seeds sold by Thompson and Morgan.

Sales of mustard, rocket and fenugreek seeds from Thompson and Morgan have been halted in France

The Ipswich-based company told the BBC it had no evidence of a link. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) said no E. coli cases had been reported in the UK.

However, it has revised its guidance and is advising people not to eat raw sprouted seeds, including alfalfa, mung beans (or beansprouts) and fenugreek.

The agency said these should only be eaten if cooked until steaming hot throughout.

A spokeswoman for Thompson and Morgan said the company sold “hundreds of thousands of packets of these seeds” throughout France, the UK and other parts of Europe every year.

“We are very confident the problem is not with our seeds. People can still grow these seeds and use these seeds with absolute confidence,” she said.

“For such a small number of people to have been affected, it does suggest that the problem is perhaps in the local area, how the seeds have been handled or how they have been grown, rather than the actual seeds themselves.”

The company was co-operating fully with investigations, she added.

Paul Hansord, the company’s managing director, said: “We make sure that everything we do is to a high standard.”

He said the firm bought its seeds in bulk from suppliers around the world. The affected seeds may have been sourced from Italy.

Thompson and Morgan also said they did not raise any seeds, instead selling packets via mail order to gardeners.

Seven of those affected by the E. coli outbreak, who ate the sprouts at a country fair at Begres near Bordeaux, needed hospital treatment.

Immunice for Immune Support

Faults include rough edges, steel burrs that can splinter during operations and corroded metals.

All surgical instruments have to meet regulatory standards but only one of the more than 180 NHS trusts and boards conducts rigorous tests on every tool.

Microscopic shards of steel can puncture surgical gloves or become dislodged inside patients

Barts and the London NHS Trust reject almost 20% of tools as unsafe for use.

Tom Brophy, the dedicated technologist at Barts, said the prevalence of faulty equipment that could endanger patients’ lives or cause serious injuries is so worrying that he has started documenting the faults.

While he is able to return unsuitable or faulty tools to suppliers, he said there is nothing to stop those same instruments from being sold on to another UK hospital, either within the NHS or private.

“On more than one occasion a supplier has rung me up and said that the instrument you rejected, I passed it onto another hospital and they accepted it,” he said. “Of course they’re going to accept it, because they haven’t checked it.”

While most hospitals carry out some degree of visual checks on instruments, only Barts employs a dedicated technologist.

Blood traces

Poor quality surgical implements have been identified as a likely cause of MRSA infections because shards of steel have caused microscopic holes in surgical gloves.

Badly made instruments that have unwanted grooves or trenches can trap body tissue and fluids – another possible source of infection.

All of the 916 companies making or supplying surgical instruments in the UK must be registered with the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), but responsibility for quality rests with suppliers and manufacturers.

Neither the NHS or the MHRA requires suppliers to inspect manufacturers.

In a statement, the MHRA said “it has no evidence that non-compliant instruments are being supplied to the NHS”, but added that if there were such evidence, it had “a range of powers and sanctions available to deal with the problem”.

In addition to rejecting poor quality equipment that is sold to Barts, Mr Brophy said he has been sent used equipment – with traces of blood still on the instruments – being passed off as new.

No hygiene

Two-thirds of the world’s surgical instruments are made in the city of Sialkot in northern Pakistan and 70% of the UK’s registered manufacturers are based in the city.

While some of the larger companies operate state-of-the art facilities and have rigorous quality-control procedures in place, Panorama found evidence of smaller firms that do not use magnifying glasses to inspect finished instruments before putting the required quality stamp on them.

Others outsourced manufacturing to some of the 3,000 back-street workshops in the city where undercover filming revealed a complete lack of hygiene or quality control.

Professor Brian Toft, a government adviser on patient safety, said if procurement officers in both the NHS and private hospitals in the UK knew of the conditions in which the surgical instruments were being made, they would “faint at the thought of it”.

“I cannot believe that anybody in the NHS knows this is going on,” he said.

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What is endometriosis?

Endometriosis is said to be present when cells that normally line the womb are found elsewhere in the body, such as the outside of the fallopian tubes, the ovaries and the bladder.

These cells behave in the same way as those lining the womb so, in response to the female hormones, they grow during the menstrual cycle and bleed during a period.

Causes of endometriosis

It’s not known exactly what causes endometriosis, but there are a number of theories.

It may arise because of retrograde menstruation when, during a period, blood flows back towards the fallopian tubes rather than leaving the body in the usual way.

Immune dysfunction may allow endometriosis to develop in those women unable to fight off the endometriosis cells, or metaplasia (the process of one cell type changing into another) may enable endometriosis cells to appear in parts of the body where they wouldn’t normally be found.

It can also run in families.

Symptoms of endometriosis

Symptoms of endometriosis may include painful and/or heavy periods, pain during intercourse, pelvic pain, infertility and low backache. But many women with endometriosis don’t get any symptoms at all and are not aware that they have it.

Around 2 million women in the UK are thought to have endometriosis. It’s most common between the ages of 25 to 40. There’s no proven way of preventing it, but some women find that, following pregnancy, they no longer experience any problems. Read more…

Women’s Health

Researchers from Imperial College London and Harvard University analysed data from 2.7m people across every continent, using statistical techniques to project a worldwide figure.

Obesity is a major risk factor for Type 2 diabetes

They claim the total number of people with diabetes – which can be fatal – has risen from 153m to 347m.

The authors called for better detection and treatment to combat the rise.

The study was published in The Lancet medical journal.

Its authors said 70% of the rise was down to people living longer.

The rise has been most pronounced in the Pacific Islands. In the Marshall Islands a third of all women have the condition.

Majid Ezzati, of Imperial College London, said: “Diabetes is becoming more common almost everywhere in the world.

“Unless we develop better programs for detecting people with elevated blood sugar and helping them to control their weight, diabetes will continue to impose a major burden on health systems around the world.”

Diabetes leads to inadequate blood sugar control, which can damage the kidneys and cause blindness. It can also cause heart disease and strokes.

The condition is closely linked with obesity. Patients have to inject themselves with insulin.

Of developed nations, the US had the highest prevalence. The diabetes rate was relatively low in western Europe.

Drug market booming

The study, carried out in conjunction with the World Health Organisation, found that the diabetes rate had either risen or stayed the same in virtually every country.

Spending on diabetes medicines – already worth £22bn annually – could hit £30bn by 2015, according to drug research firm IMS Health.

Dennis Urbaniak, of pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, said: “This is a chronic, progressive condition.

“What we are most worried about is the number of people out there with diabetes that is not optimally controlled.”

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