Benny can smell lung cancer in human breath samples.

The two-year-old Australian shepherd dog is among four sniffer dogs in Germany trained to detect lung cancer in breath samples of patients, their predictions of the disease matching standard medical diagnosis seven out of 10 times.

A team of doctors and dog trainers has trained sniffer dogs to distinguish between breath samples of healthy persons and lung cancer patients. Their experiments are described in today’s issue of the European Respiratory Journal. [Read more...]

Research has discovered that obese men are three times more likely to see the cancer spread beyond the prostate than those of a healthy weight.

The study suggests rising levels of obesity in recent decades could be an important factor behind higher rates of prostate cancer, although the fact the population is aging is thought to be even more important.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Centre in Durham, North Carolina, made their conclusions after looking at 287 men whose diseased prostates had been removed, who had then seen cancer return.

All had been given chemicals called androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to limit levels of natural testosterone, which is thought to trigger prostate cancer in some cases.

Those who were obese were three times more likely to have seen the returning cancer spread beyond the prostate after five years as those of a healthy weight, a process known as progression.

Dr Christopher Keto, lead author of the study, presented to the American Urological Association’s annual conference on Sunday, said: “Over the past decades, there has been increasing prevalence of obesity in the U.S. and Europe, and a high rate of prostate cancer that is the second-most lethal cancer for men.” [Read more...]

Childhood obesity is on the rise and along with it a host of health consequences previously unheard of in children, including Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Though laudable policies and regulations for school meals are springing into place to counteract this alarming trend, they may be overlooking the most obvious solution — water.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicated that almost one in five children is obese. A study by Connecticut’s Department of Public Health found that over one-quarter of the state’s high school students are overweight or obese. And it isn’t that these children are oblivious to their plight; around a third of Connecticut’s high school students consider themselves to be overweight and nearly half expressed a desire to lose weight.

The consequences are troubling: the state health department says that 60 percent of overweight children have at least one risk factor for heart disease. Furthermore, Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers, the director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, expressed concern about the increasing prevalence of Type II diabetes in children that was “formerly considered a disease in adults.” Almost half of the newly diagnosed pediatric cases of diabetes are now Type II, a significant increase from 4 percent in 1997. [Read more...]