One Health Planet

The number of cases and deaths from breast and cervical cancer is rising in most countries across the world, especially in poorer nations where more women are dying at younger ages, according to a global study of the diseases. Researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington found breast cancer cases more than doubled around the world in just three decades, from 641,000 cases in 1980 to 1.6 million cases in 2010 — a pace that far exceeds global population growth.

During the same period, deaths from breast cancer rose from 250,000 a year to 425,000 a year — a much slower increase, suggesting that screening and treatment programs now common in wealthier countries are having a positive impact. The number of cervical cancer cases rose from 378,000 cases in 1980 to 454,000 in 2010, and deaths from cervical cancer rose at almost the same pace as cases, according to the study published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday.
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People who eat plenty of folate had a lower risk of colon and rectal cancers in a new study that examined the effects of folic acid fortification in the United States. In addition, the study did not find any extra cancer-related danger at very high levels of folate — as some researchers have worried — over close to a decade.

The benefit and possible harm of folate is “definitely still an open question,” said study author Todd Gibson, from the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland. But, he said, “there seems to be an association between people who report higher folate with those people who have a lower risk of colorectal cancer.”
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