Angelina Jolie the Oscar winning actress and movie director made a life changing decision. The 37-year old revealed in an article in the New York Times that she had a double mastectomy in order to lower her risk of one day developing breast cancer. Her article was published in the Tuesday edition of the newspaper and Jolie said she went through the surgery in February that was followed by nearly three months of follow up treatment. Jolie opted for surgery due to her high risk of developing the... 

High fat dairy products may be dangerous for women that have survived breast cancer. According to a recent study, survivors of breast cancer who ate as little as one serving per day of high-fat dairy foods had a risk of dying from breast cancer that was 49 percent higher than those who ate little or no high-fat dairy. Survivors who consumed the most high-fat dairy had a nearly 12 percent risk of dying of breast cancer. Lead author Candyce Kroenke, a staff scientist at Kaiser Permanente said the elevated... 

Over the last few decades, the number of advanced breast cancer cases found among women ages 25 to 39 may have increased slightly, according to a study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers collected cancer statistics on 28 percent of the population of the United States by analyzing data from SEER, a program run by the National Cancer Institute. The study’s authors said the finding was based on an analysis of statistics but more research is needed to verify... 

According to a new report from a group of scientists, government officials, and patient advocates, the federal government is spending too little of the money that goes toward breast cancer research on finding environmental causes for the conditions and ways to prevent the disease from occurring. The group was established by Congress to examine the research associated with the funding. The report is titled “Breast Cancer and the Environment — Prioritizing Prevention.” The report focuses on the... 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave its seal of approval to Lymphoseek the radioactive tracer to be used with patients suffering from melanoma or breast cancer and who are undergoing removal surgery of tumor draining lymph nodes. The approval is the first for a new drug used in lymph node mapping in over 30 years. In 1971, sulfur colloid was approved by the FDA and in 1981, the government approved the use of isosulfan blue. Mapping lymph nodes helps medical experts to detect if the nodes contain... 

While the U.S. makes progress against cancer overall, a new study has medical experts worried over the rise in diagnoses of advanced, incurable cancer of the breast in young women. The diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer in women between the age of 25 and 39 in the U.S. increased by 3.5% per year between 2000 and 2009, according to the new study published this week online. Metastatic cancer is cancer that has spread to other organs in the body before being found. That trend started during the 1970s,... 

Women who find breast cancers early might have a much better chance of surviving the cancer if they have a lumpectomy performed plus radiation therapy than if a mastectomy is performed, according to a recent analysis that will be published this week in the Cancer online journal. Although the reason is not determined as to why those having a mastectomy are at a higher risk of death, researchers from the Duke Cancer Institute suggest their research provides confidence in how effective breast conserving... 

Research from Spain and the United States said that vitamin D might be involved in a possible new therapy for breast cancer. Researchers from Saint Louis University under the tutelage of Susana Gonzalo a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry identified a pathway activated in cancers of the breast that have the poorest prognosis, like those that have been classified as being triple-negative. Those cancers often attack young women and tend to be harder to treat than any other form of cancer... 

The drug tamoxifen has been widely prescribed to reduce the risk of death from breast cancer.  However, a new study has suggested that women should be taking the drug for twice as long, upending the standard in place for 15 years.  Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, said, “Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand.” The current length of treatment is typically five years.  However, patients who continued taking... 

A recent study has now given women yet another reason to eat their veggies and fruit. The study, published this week, shows that women who have high levels of carotenoids, nutrients found in vegetables and fruits, have a lower risk of breast cancer, especially the cancers that are the most difficult to treat and have poor prognoses. Researchers from Harvard Medical School pooled the results of different studies that had measured carotenoid levels in the blood of women. They were able to determine...