Taller women are at a greater risk of ovarian cancer, a research led by scientists at the University of Oxford has found after bringing together all the evidence from clinical studies carried out worldwide. The analysis found that larger body size sees a rising risk of ovarian cancer, though this effect depends on whether women have used hormone replacement therapy (HRT) or not, a university release said. The study published in the journal PLoS Medicine tried to find some of the factors which may influence the development of ovarian cancer.

The international collaborative group, coordinated by researchers based at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford, analysed individual patient data from 47 epidemiological studies including over 25,000 women with ovarian cancer and more than 80,000 women without.

These studies, both published and unpublished, provide virtually all the relevant data on the topic worldwide, the release added.

The researchers found a 7% increase in the risk of developing ovarian cancer for every 5 cm increase in height. For example, 165 cm–tall women have a 14% greater risk of ovarian cancer than those who are 155 cm. “The fact that height is clearly associated with risk may well be important for understanding how ovarian cancer develops,” explained Dr Gillian Reeves of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University. She added: “Although we do not yet know why height is related to ovarian cancer risk, there are a number of possible explanations.” PTI

Always try to grab a cup of hot coffee after exercise, for a new study says that caffeine and workouts work together in staving off skin cancer. Researchers at Rutgers Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy in New Jersey have found that the combination reduced the number of skin tumours in cancer–prone mice by 62% . Tumours also shrank by 85%. Lead author Dr Yao–Ping Lu said: “We found that this combination treatment can decrease sunlight–caused skin cancer formation in a mouse model. I believe we may extrapolate these findings to humans and anticipate that we would benefit from these combination treatments as well.” In their study, rodents exercised on a running wheel after being given a dose of caffeine. Both caffeine and exercise alone produced positive effects, but benefit was greater when the two combined. PTI Veggies may help boost breast cancer survival

Chinese women who ate cabbage, broccoli and leafy greens saw improved survival rates after breast cancer than women who did not eat these cruciferous vegetables, said a US study presented on Tuesday. The findings came from data on 4,886 Chinese breast cancer survivors age 20–75 who were diagnosed with stage one to stage four breast cancer from 2002 to 2006 and who were part of the Shanghai Breast Cancer Survival study. Women who ate more cruciferous vegetables over the 36 months following their diagnosis saw their risk of dying from any cause decrease by 27% to 62% compared to women who reporting eating little or none of these veggies. The risk of dying of breast cancer decreased by 22 to 62% for the cruciferous veggie eaters, and their chance of experiencing a recurrence of breast cancer dropped by 21 to 35%. The findings suggest breast cancer survivors “may consider increasing intake of cruciferous vegetables as part of a healthy diet”. AFP