Health Xperts

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Suicidal feelings in children and teenagers

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From BBC Health

About this data

Source: Cancer Research/NHS

One in three of us will be diagnosed with cancer during our life.

The disease tends to affect older people – but can strike at any time.

Excluding certain skin cancers, there were almost 290,000 new cases of the disease in 2005.

Some cancer, such as breast, are becoming more common, while new cases of lung cancer are expected to fall away due to the drop in the number of smokers.

However, while the overall number of new cancers is not falling, the good news is that successful treatment rates for many of the most common types are improving rapidly.

BBC News has produced, in conjunction with Cancer Research UK, a guide to some of the most common forms of cancer and the treatments used to tackle them.

To learn more about different types of cancer, and to read the experiences of patients, click on the links to the right.

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Cancer: The facts

A timeline of some of the key changes to mother and baby during pregnancy.

WEEKS 10-19WEEKS 20-29WEEKS 30-birth

WEEKS 1-9

In the UK pregnancy is calculated from the first day of the woman’s last period so for as much as three weeks of this first month she might not be actually pregnant.

The fertilized egg begins as a single cell which quickly multiplies to form an embryo as it travels towards the womb. The embryo attaches itself to the womb lining, which is already thickening to support it. For many women the first sign of pregnancy is a missed period in week five.

Shop-bought tests are considered largely reliable so the mother-to-be does not have to have her pregnancy confirmed by her GP. If a first test is negative a second one a few days later may prove positive as hormone levels in the urine rise.

The embryo is now about the size of a baked bean and its spine and nervous system begin to form.

It already has its own blood system and may be a different blood group from its mother. Blood vessels are forming in what will become the umbilical cord and tiny buds which will become limbs

The baby

A team of 30 Spanish doctors say they have successfully performed the world’s first full face transplant.

A man injured in a shooting accident received the entire facial skin and muscles – including cheekbones, nose, lips and teeth – of a donor.

The man is recovering well after the 22-hour operation, said a spokesperson from Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.

Another 10 face transplants have been carried out around the world, but this is believed to be the most complex.

Hospital spokesperson Bianca Bont told the BBC: “This is the first total face transplant.

“There have been 10 operations of this kind in the world – this is the first to transplant all of the face and some bones of the face.”

The man was operated on in March, but details of the operation have only just been revealed.

He had been left unable to breathe, swallow, or talk properly after an accident five years ago.

He was considered for a full face transplant after nine previous operations failed.

A team of 30 experts carried out the operation on 20 March at the hospital in Barcelona.

The man has since seen himself in the mirror and was calm and satisfied, the leader of the medical team, Joan Pere Barret, told a news conference.

‘Achievement’

The first partial face transplant was carried out by doctors in Amiens, France, in 2005.

Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old woman who had been mauled by her dog, received a new nose, chin and lips.

Since then partial face transplants have been carried out in China and the US.

British experts say the Spanish operation may be the most complex yet.

It appears to include more bone and much more of the lower part of the face.

A spokesperson for the UK’s Facial Transplantation Research Team, which has ethical permission to carry out a full face transplant, said it was “a tremendous achievement”.

“This appears to be the most complex facial transplant operation carried out so far worldwide,” he said.

“It once again shows how facial transplantation can help a small number of people who are the most severely facially injured and for whom reconstructive surgery cannot and has not worked.”

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Full face transplant ‘a success’

A nasal spray can make men more in tune with other people’s feelings and boosts their ability to learn, say researchers.

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Can the ‘cuddle hormone’ help men tune in to feelings?

A “vaccine” which harnesses the body’s own immune system to fight prostate cancer has been approved for use by US drug regulators.

Provenge – which is designed to be used in men with advanced disease – is the first of its kind to be accepted by the Food and Drug Administration.

Each dose has to be individually tailored and it is an expensive treatment at $93,000 per patient.

It will add to, rather than replace, existing treatments, said experts.

Doctors have been working on therapies that prompt the immune system to fight tumours for decades.

Potential success stories include an experimental vaccine for melanoma which is in the late stages of development.

This latest therapy is made by collecting special blood cells from each patient that help the immune system recognise cancer as a threat.

These are then mixed with a protein found on most prostate cancer cells and a substance which kick-starts the immune response.

Advanced disease

The drug is not a “cure” but is used in advanced prostate cancer that has spread to other sites in the body and is no longer responding to standard hormone treatment.

Clinical trials showed that the treatment extended the lives of patients by four months.

This compares with an average of three months with chemotherapy.

Dr Phil Kantoff, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who helped run the studies of Provenge said: “The big news here is that this is the first immunotherapy to win approval, and I suspect within five to ten years immunotherapies will be a big part of cancer therapy in general.”

Prostate cancer accounts for about 12% of male deaths from cancer in the UK and is the second most common cause of cancer death in men.

In older men aged 85 and over, the disease is the most common cause of all deaths from cancer.

John Neate, chief executive of The Prostate Cancer Charity, said: “The news that this type of immunotherapy may offer additional survival benefit is promising.”

But he added: “There are still questions to answer, even if the treatment fulfils its early promise.

“At present, we believe there are currently no laboratories in Europe equipped to undertake this treatment.

“Furthermore, this treatment is not currently approved in the UK and it will still be some years before doctors know enough about its long term effectiveness and side effects to be confident about its potential place in the armoury against advanced prostate cancer.”

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Prostate cancer vaccine approved

The twists of a roller coaster ride can leave you breathless – but US doctors warn it could also cause temporary hearing loss.

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Roller coaster ear damage warning

The former head of children’s services at Haringey Council who claims she was unfairly sacked after the death of Baby Peter has lost her case.

Sharon Shoesmith claimed she was the victim of a “flagrant breach of natural justice” when she was fired after a damning report by Ofsted inspectors.

She took action against Ofsted, Haringey Council and Children’s Secretary Ed Balls.

But the High Court has ruled that she had been lawfully sacked.

The ruling was given by Mr Justice Foskett QC.

The former head of children’s services at the north London council claims she was unlawfully removed from her job.

She says she was made a scapegoat after the death of 17-month-old Peter Connelly at the hands of his mother and her boyfriend.

Social workers, health teams and the police had all known he was at risk.

Peter Connelly died after enduring months of abuse, despite being seen by health and social services professionals 60 times in the last eight months of his life.

Ms Shoesmith lost her job in December 2008, a week after Ofsted published an emergency report (called a Joint Area Review) into child protection in Haringey.

Ed Balls had sent the inspectors into the local authority after Peter’s mother and boyfriend were convicted over his death.

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Baby Peter sacking ruled lawful

Scientists behind one of the largest health projects in history say they are close to reaching their target of recruiting half a million participants.

UK Biobank hopes to find out how to prevent serious diseases, from cancer to arthritis, by establishing why some people develop them and others do not.

It will study the genes, lifestyles and health of volunteers over 30 years.

But critics fear the project will end up with healthy people being treated for illnesses they do not have.

The biobank is part of the largest and most detailed project ever to look into people’s health, genes and lifestyles and how they interact to keep people healthy or make them ill.

People aged 40 to 69 are being invited to take part.

Participants provide information on their current situation and have a number of measurements taken, such as blood pressure, weight, lung function and bone density, as well as giving blood, urine and saliva samples.

The results will be analysed and the volunteers monitored to try to improve the health of future generations.

‘Marketing of fear’

Dr Tim Sprosen, chief scientist at UK Biobank: “We are going to really try and understand why it is that when some of us get to 40 and beyond we develop diseases like cancer, like heart disease, like joint disease, like dementia and really understand new risk factors so that we can prevent those diseases in the first place.”

Samples are kept in a huge, purpose-built storage bank and will be checked against the volunteers’ health conditions in the coming years and decades.

Researchers can apply to use the information as long as they put their findings back into the project.

But the biobank’s critics say the information may not be safe and even anonymous information might be exploited by drugs companies.

Dr Helen Wallace, of GeneWatch UK, said: “It’s a bad idea for health.

“Predicting people’s diseases from the genetic make-up that they have is not going to be a useful strategy for health and it’s going to lead to the marketing of fear.”

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Biobank ‘nearing 500,000 target’