Low doses of ionizing radiation may not carry as much cancer risk as we’ve thought, according to researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California.

Breast-cancer researcher Mina Bissell, PhD, explained:
Our data show that at lower doses of ionizing radiation, DNA repair mechanisms work better than at higher doses. This nonlinear DNA damage response casts … read more »

For an older woman, there’s a good chance that any breast cancer detected by mammography will be a low-risk type, according to a new study by researchers at The University of California, San Francisco, and the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam.

The researchers also found that the advent of mammography seems to have led to an increase in the detection of … read more »

A new study finds that half of women age 80 or older receive screening mammograms for cancer at least every two years.

Should they?

The study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, examines rates of screening for breast, colorectal, cervical, and prostate cancer among the elderly in light of what the study calls “ambiguity of recommendations” regarding whether such screening … read more »

Partly because they don’t want to be a bother, 36 percent of postmenopausal women who are treated for estrogen-sensitive breast cancer stop using drugs that help prevent the disease from coming back.

So concludes a Northwestern University study that was presented Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The drugs in question are aromatase inhibitors, which stop the production of estrogen. … read more »

Women who undergo screening mammograms have a 49 percent lower risk of dying of breast cancer, according to a study published online this week in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

Lead author Suzie J. Otto, PhD, expressed no doubt about the implications:
Our study adds further evidence that mammography screening unambiguously reduces breast cancer mortality.
Dr. Otto is a senior researcher in the … read more »

The delicacy of some crystalline molecules has led to a new X-ray technique that may eventually reduce radiation doses for human patients.

B.C. Wang, PhD, studies molecules. (He’s Ramsey-Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Structural Biology at the University of Georgia in Athens). X-ray crystallography—bombarding molecules’ crystalline forms with X-rays—reveals the position of chemical bonds and other important properties.

However, large molecules, … read more »

“I’m confused.”

That’s what Canadian breast cancer survivor Sherri Leclair said about the new recommendations by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care against routine mammography screening for women in their 40s and for screening every two to three years for women 50-74.

The American College of Radiology left no room for confusion regarding its opinion. On its Web site, the … read more »

A woman from Victoria, British Columbia, is suing a mammography technician and a clinic for an injury that occurred during a mammogram. She says the injury accelerated the growth of her breast cancer.

Joy Ann McKerr said in her lawsuit that she visited the B.C. Mammography Screening Clinic in Victoria on October 3, 2008, according to the Times Colonist newspaper of … read more »

The Lancet kicks off a series of articles on breast cancer with a study that questions the usefulness of MRI in helping doctors decide on treatment options for breast cancer.

Researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York examined peer-reviewed articles published over the past decade for the study, published last week.

They concluded that MRI is a valuable screening tool … read more »

Here’s a surprising contention: Medicare has already cut spending on imaging too much.

It comes from the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), a trade group for makers of medical imaging equipment. So perhaps it’s not so surprising.

MITA said in a Wednesday news release that, according to its own analysis of Medicare data, spending on imaging for each Medicare beneficiary has … read more »