December 27, 2007
Preventing cancer a New Year’s resolution to keep in 2008
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -
 |
Tim Ratliff, director of the Purdue Cancer Center, says the link between prevention and survival is critical in winning battles against the second leading cause of death in the United States.
In the past three years in which cancer statistics have been available, cancer rates have dropped an average of 2.1 percent annually. That is twice the decrease the nation experienced annually from 1993 to 2002.
Perhaps even more encouraging news is that cancer death rates declined for both sexes and all races between 1992 and 2004. The incidence of breast cancer also has dropped from 2001 to 2004, according to American Cancer Society statistics.
One of the keys in continuing those trends is to commit to personal and family cancer prevention. For men, a prostate specific antigen test, more commonly known as the PSA, is a step that can allow men to seek treatment early in the progression of cancer. When cancer is identified at its earliest stages, survival rates are highest.
“The further out in front of cancer we can be in preventing it, the higher survival rates will be,” Ratliff said. “One of the best weapons in fighting cancer is fighting it at its earliest stages.”
Ratliff, who lost his own father and father-in-law to forms of cancer, was among researchers at Washington University in St. Louis who developed the PSA test, the most-used test in diagnosing prostate cancer. Prostate cancer represented 9 percent of all cancer-related deaths for American men in 2006, according to the American Cancer Society.
Writer: Dave Kitchell, (765) 496-9711, dkitchell@purdue.edu
Sources: Tim Ratliff, Purdue Cancer Center, (765) 494-9129, tlratliff@purdue.edu
Marietta Harrison, Purdue Oncological Sciences Center, (765) 494-1442,, Harrison@purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
To the News Service home page