A study from Lund University in Sweden concludes that family history is a greater risk factor than lifestyle for breast, prostate and colorectal cancer.

Published in the European Journal of Cancer, the study reviewed 71,000 adopted people born between 1932 and 1969, looking at both their biological and adoptive parents. This way, researchers could see how genetics played a role even when a person was raised in a different hereditary environment, thus differentiating nature and nurture.

The results showed the adopted parents’ histories had no effect on whether their adopted children developed cancer. However, if a biological parent had cancer, the cancer risk for their children increased by 80 to 100 percent. It also increased the risk of the children developing cancer at a younger age.

Age, time period, gender, geography and education were all taken into consideration. The number of prostate cancer cases was 798, breast cancer cases were 1,230, and colorectal cancer cases were 512. All cancer diagnoses occurred between 1958 and 2010.

The researchers noted that the results reinforce the importance of physicians asking about a patient’s family history when screening for cancers.

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Sourced from: medicalnewstoday.com, Family history is ‘a bigger risk factor than lifestyle’ for some cancers

The American College of Physicians has released new guidelines for gynecologic checkups that recommend against performing the routine pelvic exam. The report, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, says these exams may be more harmful than beneficial.

After analyzing 52 published studies, the group believes the exam isn’t a good practice for detecting diseases, has not been proven to reduce mortality or risk, and actually leads to false positives and high costs. However, it acknowledged that a pelvic exam is necessary in women who exhibit symptoms, such as abnormal bleeding, pain, and urinary issues. But it found no evidence that the pelvic exam is needed in asymptomatic, average-risk women.

Furthermore, one researcher noted that the exam can trigger anxiety, embarrassment, discomfort, and stops some women from receiving proper care. Some researchers have suggested the pelvic exam is more rooted in ritual than evidence.

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Sourced from: medicalnewstoday.com, Routine pelvic exams ‘more harm than good’ for healthy women, says doctors’ group

A new study has found that human ancestors’ searching for and eating insects may have played an important part in the evolution of the brain and cognitive abilities.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis conducted an observational study on capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica over the course of five years. The monkeys were found to eat well-hidden insects year-round. But their foraging patterns changed throughout the seasons as different types of foods—such as ripe fruit—became more or less abundant. The researchers said that the monkeys’ seasonal foraging pattern suggests that the insects are an important fallback food.

Experts said that the study’s findings, published in the Journal of Human Evolution, are significant in that fallback foods seemed to have influenced brain evolution in primates for which it included  insects. They also added that primates who extract foods seasonally have greater “sensorimotor intelligence,” which includes cognition related to handling tools and other objects.

The researchers related their findings to the foraging patterns of early humans, who are believed to have used tools to extract foods like termites and other embedded insects on a seasonal basis. They concluded that the survival needs of human ancestors may have played a role in evolution similar to that of primates.

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Sourced from: Medical News Today, Did our early ancestors get smarter from eating bugs?