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Studies Make Case for Finasteride to Prevent Prostate Cancer
The initial results from the largest completed prostate cancer prevention trial appear to have underestimated the benefits and overestimated the potential risks of finasteride, according to three new analyses of data from the trial. These results bolster the case for finasteride as a preventive agent against prostate cancer, say the studies' leaders.
Results from two of the analyses were presented on May 18 at the American Urology Association annual meeting in Orlando, FL, and all three appeared online May 18 in Cancer Prevention Research.
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Potent Social Forces Influence Smoking Behavior
Friends and family have a powerful influence on whether a person quits smoking, and the decision to stop smoking can "spread" from one person to another in a social network, new research suggests. The findings are from a detailed analysis of smoking behavior in more than 12,000 individuals who were followed for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003, as part of the Framingham Heart Study.
In 1971, the places smokers and nonsmokers held in the social network were indistinguishable. But three decades later, societal views of smoking have changed, and smokers are increasingly at the periphery of social networks and aligned largely with other smokers, according to results published in the May 22 New England Journal of Medicine. Read more
The NCI Cancer Bulletin is produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI, which was established in 1937, leads the national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer. Through basic, clinical, and population-based biomedical research and training, NCI conducts and supports research that will lead to a future in which we can identify the environmental and genetic causes of cancer, prevent cancer before it starts, identify cancers that do develop at the earliest stage, eliminate cancers through innovative treatment interventions, and biologically control those cancers that we cannot eliminate so they become manageable, chronic diseases.
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NCI Cancer Bulletin staff can be reached at ncicancerbulletin@mail.nih.gov. |
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