SciTechBits – Interesting Bits of Science & Technoglogy Served For You!

Feb 4, 2010 marked the World Cancer Day. The message got out to the world was all in sync – a good percentage of cancers are preventable.


Cancer is a leading cause of death, contributing to about one in every eight deaths worldwide and that is HIV, malaria and TB combined. While the fear for this killer is omnipresent, awareness about prevention is not. While cancer by itself is noncommunicable, about twenty-one percent of cancers are due to infections. Cervical and liver cancers are mainly due to such infections.

Researchers have found that, people with Alzheimer’s are least likely to develop cancer and people with cancer are least likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Though the reason is unknown, this finding coupled with an earlier research focused on cancer and Parkinson’s disease, shows a clear trend – cancer is linked to neurodegeneration.


A group of researchers recruited 3,020 people aged 65 and older, of which 164 people (5.4%) already had Alzheimer’s disease and 522 people (17.3%) already had a cancer diagnosis. All of them followed up for an average of 5 years to see whether they developed dementia and an average of 8 years to see whether they developed cancer. During the study, 478 people developed dementia and 376 people developed invasive cancer. Surprisingly, for people who had Alzheimer’s disease at the start of the study, the risk of future cancer hospitalization was reduced by 69% compared to those who did not have Alzheimer’s disease when the study started. For Caucasian people who had cancer when the study started, their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease was reduced by 43% compared to people who did not have cancer at the start of the study.