Recently in Skin Cancer Category

(CBS) CHICAGO Drugs used to treat skin conditions were prescribed to millions of users for years before federal authorities warned that the medicines might cause cancer. CBS station WBBM-TV In Chicago's Dave Savini reports on the risks that some say should have been made known from the start.

“I would never have put this in my body had I known how toxic and potent this drug was,” says Traci Reilly of Naperville, who believes two widely prescribed medications may be responsible for her breast cancer. “I noticed a lump in my right breast which is the exact area where I was using the drug.”

The risk of sunbed users developing skin cancer may have trebled over the last decade as sunbeds get stronger, claims a new report.

Sunbeds emit stronger radiation than ever before, and 83 per cent of them exceed the recommended limits. It is estimated that cancer caused by sunbeds could be killing up to 100 people a year.

In the UK, 5,990 people are diagnosed with skin cancer every year, and there are 1,600 deaths from the disease.

Melanoma skin cancers that are growing rapidly exhibit a number of identifying characteristics. According to Australian researchers, rapidly growing melanomas are thicker, symmetrical, or elevated, have regular borders, and often itch or bleed. They do not fit the ABCD rule for melanoma, which stands for asymmetry, border irregularity, color irregularity, large diameter, the team notes.

"Because of their rapid growth," lead investigator Dr. Wendy Liu told Reuters Health, "there is only a small window of opportunity to capture these melanomas in their early stage of development."

"Rapidly growing melanomas can occur in anyone," she added, "not necessarily those with large numbers of moles and freckles. In fact, they more often occur in those without large numbers of moles and freckles, and elderly men. Morphologically, they are more often red -- rather than brown and black -- symmetrical, elevated and symptomatic."

Healthday comes with another incompetent article which is instantly being spread over other news websites.

What their article proposes is to absolutely minimize your exposure to the sunlight. This kind of advice is worth absolutely nothing. The American Cancer Society experts are forgetting the vitalizing and healing properties of the sunlight. However, abuse of everything good and useful will result in negative reaction. Laying on the beach for hours, visiting tanning salon every two days, etc - all this is too much.

The list of advices provided by Healthday should not be applied to everyone. People with sensitive skin, with sunlight allergy, with pigment spots, over certain age - they may benefit from such information. However, this info should be already known by them.

Anyways, off to read the Health Tip: Keep Deadly Skin Cancer Away on Yahoo News.

Laura Bush's skin cancer came with a classic symptom, a slow-healing sore.

That made it hard to ignore, a good thing: Remove skin cancer early, and it's easy to cure.

Better is preventing skin cancer, and key is protecting yourself - and your children, starting when they're tots - from the sun. Sunburns early in life are considered the most dangerous.

Too few heed that advice. Skin cancer strikes over 1 million Americans annually, and is on the rise.

A researcher from Toowoomba, in southern Queensland, is hoping his research into vitamin D could reduce the high rate of skin cancers in Queensland.

A vitamin D deficiency can lead to problems like osteoporosis, rickets and has been linked to diabetes and bacterial infections.

The University of Southern Queensland's Dr David Turnbull is trying to prove that people do not need direct sunlight to receive their vitamin intake.

He says exposure to good ultraviolet B rays under the shade could do the trick.

Skin cancer survivors could halve their chance of relapse by eating generous helpings of leafy green vegetables, new Australian research suggests.

Queensland scientists have investigated the impact of healthy dietary habits on skin cancer and discovered that green vegies can help guard against the disease.

They showed that spinach and silverbeet were linked with a reduction in the risk of skin cancer, particularly among those with a previous history of the disease.

Dr Jolieke van der Pols, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, said these vegetables contain a variety of vitamins, minerals and other bioactive substances that are known to have anti-cancer properties.

According to a report in the Archives of Dermatology, 3.7-million doctor visits occur each year in the United States for the management of actinic keratoses. Actinic keratosis results from sun damage of the skin and is considered precancerous for nonmelanoma skin cancers.

Among patients older than 40 years old, 331 squamous cell cancers will evolve for every 100,000 lesions of actinic keratoses.

For those who have multiple lesions, nearly 60 percent of these lesions will progress into squamous cell cancer.

AUSTRALIA - The Cancer Council is alarmed by a survey showing Tasmanian students are ignoring sun smart messages and becoming complacent about skin cancer.

The 2005 survey found most students suffered sunburn the previous summer and were resistant to protective measures such as wearing hats, clothes which cover the body, sunscreen and sunglasses.

It also found 80 per cent of young Tasmanians desire a light tan and increasing numbers of girls wear less clothing to expose their skin to the sun.

LONDON - The body’s own immune system can fight the deadly cancer melanoma if scientists can flip the system’s “off” switch to “on,” two preliminary studies suggest.

Scientists have long sought to rev up the disease-fighting cells of the immune system to fight melanoma. The new work addresses the other side of the coin, the regulatory cells that normally keep disease-fighting cells in check.

By shutting those inhibiting cells off, scientists hope to enable the disease-fighting cells to mount a continuous attack on the cancer. Two new studies of that strategy were reported this week in Prague at a European cancer research meeting.