A new study which involved a review of more than 500 reports by an international panel from 10 universities and medical schools states that aspartame is safe. According to the study, there is no evidence that the sweetener causes cancer, neurological damage or other health problems in humans. Aspartame is sold under various brand names including Equal and NutraSweet and has few calories.

The panel used data from NHANES to determine the most current levels of aspartame consumption and found that at those levels, aspartame is safe for consumption, is not cancer-causing or capable of causing neurological damage.

I don't consume any aspartame because I don't like the taste, but this is good news for people who do use aspartame for various reasons.

A new study from Yale shows that 75 percent of physicians in training surveyed do not understand the statistics used in medical literature. The study surveyed internal medicine residents at 11 programs across the country.

The residents scored an average of 41% correct on the test and the senior residents scored worse than the junior residents, possibly reflecting a loss of knowledge over time.

Practically all of the residents surveyed agreed that it is necessary to know something about statistics in order to be able to read medical literature and 77 percent expressed an interest in learning more about the field.

According to the corresponding author, Dr. Donna M. Windish, "If physicians cannot detect appropriate statistical analyses and accurately understand their results, the risk of incorrect interpretation may lead to erroneous applications of clinical research."

It's pretty well known that many natural foods make for great defenses against cancer, regardless of the opposition to this by the medical community. If you're into spicy foods like I am, it may be neat to hear that curry could be added to that battle list.

Indian foods are, in many cases, spicy (and delicious), and that curry powder's curcumin has been found to kill and stops the growth of melanoma skin cancer cells. Although these results were only found in the lab, they are still encouraging.

Cancer prevention foods are incredibly neat to learn about, and with the Internet, the effort is simple and easy. Even if curry is not your thing, there are plenty of other cancer-fighting foods.

You should think about protecting your pets from secondhand smoke. According to researchers at Oklahoma State University, secondhand smoke has been determined cancer-causing for household pets, such as dogs, cats, and birds

"There have been a number of scientific papers recently that have reported the significant health threat secondhand smoke poses to pets," says Dr. Carolynn MacAllister, an Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Service veterinarian. "Secondhand smoke has been associated with oral cancer and lymphoma in cats, lung and nasal cancer in dogs, as well as lung cancer in birds."

The news about smoking just keeps getting worse and worse. When we will get the hint?

According to a study by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, only eight percent of cancer drugs that entered clinical development and testing in humans made it through to final approval.

In comparison, during the same time period, 1993-1997, the U.S. has an approval rate of 20% for all new drugs.

The number of overall cancer drug candidates that entered clinical trials increased during the same time period.

Also, cancer drugs took an average of seven years to get through the clinical development and approval process compared with six years for all new drugs during the same time period.

Although Vitamin C is a great thing to have in your system at regular daily intervals, it can be used to actually promote the formation of cancer-causing chemicals when there is too much fat in the stomach, according to a recent article in the journal Gut.

The interaction of vitamins and minerals in the body (synergy) can have a strong impact on the effectiveness of many of them, but this seems like an odd one to me. Nevertheless, lipid and ascorbic acid interaction was studied in terms of possible cancer contributions to the upper stomach area (which is sensitive to cancerous issues and tumor development).

The problems revolved around nitrites, which could be converted into cancer-causing compounds called nitrosamines if there was too much fat in the gut when ascorbic acid was present. The term "nitrite" may be familiar to you -- it's what makes processed meats look red when they're really "dead."

Studies are showing that low-dose radiation treatments may increase the risk of breast cancer. This may include diagnostic chest x-rays, as well as other treatments like radiotherapy for skin conditions. The findings aren't conclusive thus far but they warrant further investigation, according to this article.

Considering the prevalence of X-rays, I think this is fairly alarming. What do you think? Are these findings worrisome, or are the studies making a big deal out of something that's probably nothing?

An asbestos-related cancer called mesothelioma is a particularly deadly cancer that has little help these days from the global medical community (probably due to not being a highly popular cancer).

That doesn't mean a possible treatment should be put on hold, but that is the way some Northern Ireland cancer sufferers are probably feeling right now. A new mesothlioma drug called Alimta will make it to Northern Ireland sometime in the near future (just no this year), as it'll be the last UK region to receive access to the drug.

What's worrisome is that Ireland has a high rate of incurable lung cancer due to its history as a shipbuilding country where workers were regularly exposed to dangerous airborne particles, with some causing mesothelioma cases.

If you used to smoke but do no any longer, did you know that genes that have been 'activated' by your past smoking habit remain on even long after you quit?

This conclusion comes from a new study that is being published today. Researchers analyzed gene activity in the respiratory tracts of 24 smokers, non-smokers and ex-smokers and came up with the suggestion that cancer-related genes just don't "reset" once a smoker stops smoking.

Although those quitters can breathe a sigh of relief (literally and figuratively), the propensity for lung cancer does not automatically diminish once you stop smoking, although it may decrease over time (years and years).

There are so many reasons to quit smoking these days, and this this is yet another good one, even though it may suggest otherwise.

According to a study of Swedish workers, working the night shift does not increase the risk of cancer. This study was led by Judith Schwartzbaum at Ohio State. Schwartzbaum and her team analyzed over twenty years of data.

Recent studies had found the opposite, that working the night shift may increase the risk of developing breast, prostate and colon cancers. Some researchers hypothesized that this may be due to a decrease in the hormone melatonin.

Schwartbaum addresses the fact that these results don't agree with a number of previous studies, however, she explains that those studies addressed specific groups of workers such as flight attendants and therefore it may have been difficult to decipher exactly what caused the elevated cancer risk in such groups.

Liver cancer -- the fifth most common cancer type worldwide -- may have do do more with a patient's DNA rather than any specific environmental variable, according to new research.

Liver cancer was found to be affected by the genome of a particular patient after the process of methylation (the extent can vary widely), which then could be tied to a particular liver cancer patient's outcome.

This really does not suggest anything surprising, since most cancers tend to be sunk deeply into a person's DNA, then expressed in various ways based on the witch's brew of lifestyle variables unique to every patient.

I honestly think we're just now starting to scratch the surface on the understanding of how cancer develops, even after decades of specific, billion-dollar research.

Triple-negative breast cancer means that the pathology report has shown the cancer to be estrogen receptor negative, progesterone receptor negative, and HER2 negative.

Results published in Clinical Cancer Research found that women with triple negative breast cancer have an increased risk of metastatic disease and death during the first few years after diagnoses, but not after that time period.

A study was conducted among 1,601 breast cancer patients. One hundred and eighty women (11.2%) had triple negative breast cancer.

The results of the study:

Antisoma, a biotechnology company specializing in the development of novel drugs for the treatment of cancer, released a statement that the vaccine ASA404 improves anticancer responses and survival for patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

ASA404 is known as a vascular disrupting agent (VDA). ASA404 is different from angiogenenesis inhibitors that disrupt the new formation of blood vessels. This vaccine disrupts established blood vessels that feed cancer cells.

The researchers concluded that ASA404 appears promising in the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer. A Phase III clinical trial is expected to begin in 2008. This is the last step prior to FDA review.

Researchers who have developed a new research method that reduces the use of animals in the laboratory have been awarded this year's esteemed Voiceless Eureka Prize.

Maria Kavallaris and colleagues at Sydney's Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research (CCIA) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) used molecular biology and cell culture techniques to develop a method for identifying mechanisms of drug resistance in cancer cells, without the need for animal testing.

Drug resistance in cancer is a major clinical problem. Kavallaris and her team dissected protein pathways involved in response to chemotherapy by developing and using cancer cells lines in culture. This work led to the identification of a new protein involved in drug resistance in leukemia.

Mixing antioxidants and sun exposure can be dangerous to your health. A new study, published in the September issue of The Journal of Nutrition, details a French study revealing that antioxidant supplements won't protect women against skin cancer -- and they may actually increase the risk of developing the disease.

A team of French researchers assigned almost 7,900 women and more than 5,100 men to take either an oral daily capsule of antioxidant or a placebo that looked the same. The antioxidants included low levels of vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, selenium, and zinc. What they found: the incidence of all skin cancers was higher in the group of women who took the antioxidant.

While there is one limitation to this study -- it did not take into account sunscreen use and its effect on the use of both antioxidants and the sun -- it does serve as another reason to stay out of the sun.