About 16 percent of the 74 breast cancer patients studied by researchers at the Ohio State University Medical experienced PTSD 18 months after their cancer diagnosis. These same patients were three times more likely to have had anxiety disorders.

"What is unique about breast cancer patients with PTSD is that they have already had this double hit of both anxiety and mood disorders even before they got the diagnosis," study co-author Barbara Andersen, a professor of psychology at Ohio State University, said in a prepared statement. "So when they are in a new situation that is very anxiety-provoking -- cancer diagnosis and treatment -- it is not surprising that they are at risk for developing PTSD."

While the study suggests most cancer patients aren't at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder, Andersen said mood disorders are a concern.

"I think depression is the mental health condition that needs the most attention as far as treating breast cancer patients, even more so than PTSD," she said. "That's the direction our research is going, and we are working to develop an intervention to treat cancer patients with depression."

She said the findings, published in the April issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress, suggest screening newly diagnosed breast cancer patients for past mood disorders might help avoid their developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another 20 percent of those in the study had "subsyndromal" post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition in which they experienced significant symptoms of PTSD but not at the level of those with the full diagnosis.

About one-third of women with PTSD also had past problems with alcohol/substance abuse or dependence, compared to one-fifth of subsyndromal women and one-tenth of women with no PTSD.

Also, patients who developed PTSD tended to have a history of traumatic life events, the study reported. Half of the PTSD patients reported being physically attacked or abused previously, compared with less than 17 percent of the other women.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about post-traumatic stress disorder.

These findings may help in planning and evaluating screening programs, clinical trials and other studies, the researchers say.

Using a new mathematical model, the scientists were also able to estimate the numbers of breast cancers detectable by mammography. This is a new approach to estimating the growth rate of tumors and the ability of mammograms to find them.

"There are enormous implications for the sensitivity of breast cancer screening programs," lead researcher Harald Weedon-Fekjr, of the Department of Etiological Research, Cancer Registry of Norway, said in a statement.

"We found that mammography screen test sensitivity increases sharply with increased tumor size, as one might expect. Detection rates are just 26 percent for a 5 millimeter tumor but increase to 91 percent once a tumor is 10 millimeter in size," he added.

The report was published in the May 8 issue of the online journal Breast Cancer Research.

In the study, Weedon-Fekjr, and colleagues tested their model using mammography results from 395,188 women aged 50 to 69.

The researchers found that the growth rate of tumors varied significantly between patients. About one in 20 tumors doubled in size, from 10 to 20 millimeters in just over a month. However, a similar number of tumors took more than six years to double in size.

Based on this finding, Weedon-Fekjr's team estimated that it takes an average of 1.7 years for tumors to double in size. Moreover, tumor growth appeared to be faster among younger women and slowed as women aged, the researchers noted.

"Tumor growth and test sensitivity estimates can be directly linked to tumor size in a full population study, resulting in very useful growth estimates directly connected to a biologically relevant measure," the researchers wrote.

"Tumor growth seems to vary greatly between tumors, with higher growth rates among younger women. Most tumors become visible at screening when they reach a diameter of 5 millimeters to 10 millimeters," they concluded.

One expert thinks this study again confirms the need for women to have a mammogram every year.

"This study continues to prove why we need to screen women every year, starting at age 40," said Debbie Saslow, director of breast and gynecologic cancer at the American Cancer Society.

This is another study that shows that tumors grow faster in younger women, Saslow said. "It just doesn't make sense to have guidelines that say younger women should be screened every one to two years and every year as they get older," she said.

More information

For more on breast cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Then, again, the rest of the workforce isn't doing that good of a job either, according to the study published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Only 15 percent of all workers in the study had ever received a skin exam in their lifetime; however, the percentages were significantly lower for people whose jobs frequently subject them to the sun's harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. These occupations included farm operators and managers (10 percent), farm workers and other agricultural workers (7 percent), forestry and fishing occupations (3 percent), construction and mining (8 percent), and construction laborers (8 percent).

"When we analyzed the data by industry sectors, we concluded that agriculture, forestry, fishing and construction workers reported the lowest rate of skin exams in 2000," dermatologist Robert S. Kirsner, vice chairman of the department's of dermatology and cutaneous surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said in a prepared statement. "Although the number of agriculture, forestry and fishing workers reporting a skin exam increased from 2000 to 2005, from 4.2 percent to 13.6 percent, the prevalence of skin exams among construction workers stayed essentially the same, from 5.2 percent to 5.6 percent."

The findings were based on an analysis of 2000 and 2005 data taken from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), an annual, cross-sectional, in-person household survey of U.S. workers.

"As dermatologists, we know that the early detection of skin cancer by routine skin examinations is crucial in successfully treating this potentially life-threatening condition, particularly for workers routinely exposed to harmful ultraviolet light. This study shows that workers who need careful monitoring for skin cancer due to the nature of their jobs are less likely to receive skin exams than workers in low-risk occupations," Kirsner said.

He said the trend could be reversed by holding local community health fairs that include screening programs targeting high-risk workers.

More information

The American Academy of Dermatology has more about where you can receive a free skin cancer screening.

"This is the first paper that helps us understand what causes this childhood cancer," said lead researcher Dr. John M. Maris, director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We expected for decades that this cancer was a genetic disease, but we have had a hard time understanding what abnormalities in our genetic makeup lead to this cancer."

Neuroblastoma, a cancer of the peripheral nervous system that usually appears as a solid tumor in the chest or abdomen, is the most common solid tumor malignancy seen in early childhood. Among infants, it can disappear with minimal treatment, but in older children, it can be an aggressive cancer spreading throughout the body. Neuroblastoma accounts for 7 percent of all childhood cancers but causes 15 percent of all childhood cancer deaths. There are about 700 new cases diagnosed each year in the United States, the researchers said.

Maris' team found a common genetic variation of the gene 6p22 on chromosome 6, which doubles the risk of getting this disease. "This finding supports our assumption that there are a number of minor variations that work together -- in sort of a perfect storm -- to give a child this disease," he said. "This finding is the discovery of the first of these genetic variants."

Maris noted that this is the first time a childhood cancer has been found to be influenced by rather common genetic changes "that can be in you or me or anyone."

In addition, Maris said that having this particular genetic variation not only increases the risk of developing neuroblastoma, but also increases the risk of developing the more aggressive form of the disease. "This leads us to believe that the disease we call high-risk or low-risk neuroblastoma are really different diseases," he said.

The findings were published in the May 7 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

For the study, Maris' team analyzed blood samples from 1,032 children with neuroblastoma and 2,043 children without the disease. The researchers honed in on three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) -- which are variations in DNA -- that were more common in patients with neuroblastoma than in patients without the disease. The three SNPs were clustered in the 6p22 region of chromosome 6. There are two genes in this region, but exactly what they do is unknown, the researchers said.

To confirm their findings, Maris' group analyzed blood samples from additional neuroblastoma patients and children without the disease. Among these additional patients, the researchers also found that variants in the 6p22 region were associated with increased risk for neuroblastoma.

"This finding gives us the motivation to continue this line of research to discover all of the different genetic variations that work together," Maris said. "We have already discovered additional variations."

Knowing the complete genetic influences on neuroblastoma may eventually lead to new treatments, he said.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said that the new findings could one day lead to better diagnosis and treatment of the malignancy. "We still need to understand what these genes do, because little is known about these genes," he said.

Lichtenfeld added that, while the new research is important, it's still very preliminary. "Ultimately, what you want to do is to analyze the cancer and gain clues as to what the prognosis may be and what the appropriate treatment may be," he said. "This does not get us there, but it is one step along that pathway."

More information

For more on neuroblastoma, visit the American Cancer Society.

SUNDAY, May 4 (HealthDay News) -- New research shows that only half of American mothers intend to have their teenaged daughters vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) if the girls are under the age of 13, despite government guidelines that suggest the opposite.

HPV, which is sexually transmitted, is the primary cause of cervical cancer. The first vaccine against the virus, Gardasil, was approved in 2006. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends that 11- and 12-year-old girls be targeted for this vaccine, as most girls of this age are not yet sexually active, have not yet been exposed to HPV, and will therefore achieve maximum protection.

However, this study suggests that many mothers aren't willing to follow those recommendations.

"Mothers had a lower intention to vaccinate [younger] daughters," said study author Dr. Jessica Kahn, an associate professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "This presents a challenge, and provides us with an opportunity to educate mothers about the importance of vaccinating girls under 13 years of age because the vaccine will have a greater health impact if given before 13."

Kahn will present the findings Sunday at the Pediatric Academic Societies' annual meeting in Honolulu.

About 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed in the United States each year, with about 4,000 women dying of the disease annually.

Three-quarters of U.S. women will be exposed to HPV at some point in their lifetime and, at any one time, one-quarter have been infected.

According to one estimate, giving the vaccine universally would eliminate about 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. Gardasil protects against most, but not all, types of HPV that cause cervical cancer.

This study is the first national survey of its kind and also the first to measure attitudes towards the vaccine since it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2006.

Forty-nine percent of almost 10,000 respondents intended to vaccinate a daughter if she were 9 to 12 years old; 68 percent intended to vaccinate if the daughter was 13 to 15 years old; and 86 percent said they would vaccinate if the daughter was 16 to 18 years of age.

Specific beliefs about HPV vaccine were the most powerful predictor of one's intention to vaccinate one's 9-to-12-year-old daughter.

The belief that really stood out was that the vaccine would protect the daughter against cervical cancer. "That was not at all surprising to me," Kahn said. "[Other] studies have shown that the most powerful factor driving mothers' decisions is the desire to protect a child from harm."

The next most powerful predictor were beliefs that the vaccinations would not cause a child to engage in riskier sexual behaviors.

"That implies we need some studies to prove or disprove this concern," Kahn said. "It also is going to be important for clinicians to address that head on with parents."

If a clinician recommended the vaccine, the mom was more likely to decide to vaccinate her daughter.

Mothers were also more likely to go for the vaccine if they thought their daughter was at risk for HPV.

All of these factors could be incorporated into messages, including those seen in brochures and posters about HPV and the vaccine, Kahn said. She was also lead author of a paper appearing in the May issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology that found that interventions which address personal beliefs about the HPV vaccine as well as system-wide barriers to vaccination could lead to higher vaccination rates.

"This shows that there's a difficulty in having mothers recognize that their children will become sexually active at a relatively young age," said Dr. Jay Brooks, chairman of hematology/oncology at Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, La. "It's a process and it's an attitudinal change that has to occur."

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on HPV and cervical cancer.