Head and neck cancer is the most common cancer type in India, according to research reports. A staggering 29% of global deaths due to head and neck cancer occur in the country. "Tobacco is the main cause of this type of cancer. The habit of chewing tobacco makes many people in India vulnerable to oral as well as head and neck cancer," said Dr Radheshyam Naik, head of Oncology, Bangalore Institute of Oncology.

He was addressing mediapersons on the occasion of head and neck cancer awareness week observed between May 8 and 15.

"Head and neck cancer is common among people in 40s and 50s, and it is observed that women from rural areas are the most vulnerable. This type is commonly seen in people from lower economic strata," said Dr Naik.

Active anti-tobacco programmes were the only way out, said Dr Naik. "This type of cancer is the most preventable one. Educating people about the ill effects of tobacco will bring down the number of head and neck cancer incidences," said Dr Naik.

He said that despite improvements in diagnosis and improved treatment methods, the survival rate had not increased in the past two decades. "Over that past two decades there has been consistent development in cancer treatment. However, the survival rates did not show any improvement till recently.A third addition to the already used 2-drug chemotherapy has shown good results. It appears that patients live longer with the 3-drug regimen. It has also bettered their quality of life," he said.

"Diagnosis at the pre-cancerous stage is possible by examining the mouth. Early diagnosis can boost the chances of total cure," he said.

More gay men reported being cancer survivors than straight men in a new study from California.

That suggests they may need targeted interventions to prevent cancer, the researchers said, but more studies are needed to answer lingering questions. For example, are gay men more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than straight men? Or, are they just more likely to survive if they do get cancer?

"A lack of hard data" on how sexual orientation affects the risk of cancer is "one of the biggest problems we have," said Liz Margolies, executive director of The National LGBT Cancer Network. Margolies, who was not involved in the research, told Reuters Health, "It's critical that we know that for funding and for program planning."

As a step toward addressing the lack of data, researchers looked at three years of responses to the California Health Interview survey, which included more than 120,000 adults living in the state.

Among other health-related questions, participants were asked if they had ever been diagnosed with cancer and whether they identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight.

The findings are published in the journal Cancer.

Out of 51,000 men, about 3,700 said they had been diagnosed with cancer as an adult. While just over 8 percent of gay men reported a history of cancer, that figure was only 5 percent in straight men. The disparity could not be attributed to differences in race, age, or income between gay and straight men.

About 7,300 out of 71,000 women in the study had been diagnosed with cancer, but overall cancer rates did not differ among lesbian, bisexual, and straight women.

However, among women who were cancer survivors, lesbian and bisexual women were more likely to report fair or poor health than straight women.

Ulrike Boehmer, the study's lead author from the Boston University School of Public Health, said higher rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may be related to the increased risk of cancer in gay men, but the study couldn't address that question specifically.

Margolies thinks there is more going on. "Gay men as a group have a bunch of risk factors for cancer," she said.

For instance, gay men and lesbian women are more likely to smoke and abuse alcohol than straight men and women. They're also more likely to avoid going to see their doctor for routine physicals or cancer screening, Margolies added - since healthcare providers may not all be tolerant and accepting of their identity.

"I don't think that we're going to get people to have early screening or see doctors except in emergencies ... until they can be guaranteed a safe and welcoming experience" at the doctor's office, she said.

Margolies said that while the new findings are "very important," she cautions about generalizing them too far beyond this individual study. Partially that's because she suspects lesbian women may also have an increased risk of cancer compared to straight women, because they have some of the same risk factors as gay men.

But Margolies and Boehmer agree that there is still an important message to take away from the findings: gay, lesbian and bisexual people need more attention from the healthcare community, specifically when it comes to their cancer risks.

"Because more gay men report as cancer survivors, we need foremost programs for gay men that focus on primary cancer prevention and early cancer detection," Boehmer told Reuters Health in an email.

And, "Because more lesbian and bisexual women than heterosexual women with cancer report that they are in poor health, we need foremost programs and services that improve the well-being of lesbian and bisexual cancer survivors," she added.

"Health care facilities and social service agencies -- any organization that addresses the needs of cancer survivors -- must understand the extra challenges that lesbian and bisexual cancer survivors and gay men have," Margolies concluded.

Mothers who are depressed or severely stressed during their pregnancy face a far greater chance of having children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, new research has found.

Although ADHD is largely inheritable, scientists say antenatal anxiety could contribute to 15 per cent of cases of the behavioural condition.

The British study of thousands of children from before birth until they were at primary school discovered a strong link between antenatal stress, "mixed-handedness" -- using the left or right hand to perform different tasks -- and severe childhood behavioural problems, with ADHD the most common.

The neurologists who conducted the research said their findings suggested stress hormones in the womb disrupted the normal passage of neurons between the two hemispheres of the brain, resulting in the inability of one hand to become dominant, and a range of behavioural problems.

Although previous studies have discovered a link between stress and low birthweight and lower IQ, this is the first time a connection has been made between antenatal stress and ADHD. The research was presented at the annual meeting of the British Psychological Society by Alina Rodriguez from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London.

ADHD is one of the most common behavioural disorders of childhood. Children with ADHD often appear reckless and impulsive and have trouble paying attention. It can be treated with talking therapies and, in more extreme cases, with medication such as Ritalin.

However, the prevalence of ADHD is fiercely contested. There is no diagnostic test and some doctors and teachers claim that ADHD is simply an excuse for bad behaviour. They believe that far too many children are on medication when better discipline is required.

Dr Rodriguez said the research showed clearly that mixed-handedness could be an early sign of ADHD symptoms.

Her previous research has shown that mixed-handed children are twice as likely as right-handed children to have ADHD symptoms, but the connection with stress in pregnancy, which leads to twice as many mixed-handed children, is a new discovery. Dr Rodriguez said she hoped this new research would shift the debate towards prevention and lead to more work on supporting pregnant women.

A "happiness gene" which has a strong influence on how satisfied people are with their lives, has been discovered.

Those with two sets of the gene - one from each parent - are almost twice as likely to say they are satisfied with life, compared to those who lack a copy.

The gene, called 5-HTT, is responsible for how well nerve cells manage to distribute serotonin, a chemical produced by the pineal gland in the brain which helps control mood.

People with low levels of serotonin - itself nicknamed the 'happiness drug' - are known to be more prone to depression.

Now behavioural economists at the London School of Economic and Political Science have found evidence that people with the "functional" variant of the 5-HTT gene tend to lead happier lives.

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and colleagues asked more than 2,500 people in the US about how satisfied they were with life, and also analysed their DNA for presence of the gene.

The 5-HTT gene provides the "operating code" for transporting serotonin in neuron cell walls.

The 'long' version of the gene leads to more serotonin transporters in these walls, the 'short' version less of them.

As we inherit a set of genes from both parents, the possible combinations of this are 'long-long', 'long-short' or 'short-short'.

The researchers found that 69 per cent of people who had two copies of the gene said they were either satisfied (34) or very satisfied (35) with their life as a whole.

But among those who had no copy of the gene, the proportion who gave either of these answers was only 38 per cent (19 per cent 'very satisfied' and 19 per cent 'satisfied').

The study is published today (FRI) in the Journal of Human Genetics.

Mr De Neve, a former Fulbright scholar at Harvard who has published papers on subjects as varied as EU integration and prize-linked savings like Premium Bonds, said: "It has long been suspected that this gene plays a role in mental health but this is the first study to show that it is instrumental in shaping our individual happiness levels.

"The results of our study suggest a strong link between happiness and this functional variation in the 5-HTT gene.

"Of course, our well-being isn't determined by this one gene - other genes and especially experience throughout the course of life will continue to explain the majority of variation in individual happiness.

"But this finding helps to explain why we each have a unique baseline level of happiness and why some people tend to be naturally happier than others, and that's in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up."

Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight.

The US Johns Hopkins team made the breakthrough in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity.

Modifying the expression of a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition.

"Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports.

Brown fat is abundant in babies, which they use as a power source to generate body heat, expending calories at the same time.

But as we age our brown fat largely disappears and gets replaced by "bad" white fat, which typically sits as a spare tyre around the waist.

Experts have reasoned that stimulating the body to make more brown fat rather than white fat could be a helpful way to control weight and prevent obesity and its related health problems like type 2 diabetes.
Novel approach

Various teams have been searching for a way to do this, and Dr Sheng Bi and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine believe they may have cracked it.

They designed an experiment to see if suppressing an appetite-stimulating protein called NPY would decrease body weight in rats.

When they silenced NPY in the brains of the rodents they found their appetite and food intake decreased.

Even when the rats were fed a very rich, high-fat diet they still managed to keep more weight off than rats who had fully functioning NPY.

The scientists then checked the fat composition of the rats and found an interesting change had occurred.

In the rats with silenced NPY expression, some of the bad white fat had been replaced with good brown fat.

The researchers are hopeful that it may be possible to achieve the same effect in people by injecting brown fat stem cells under the skin to burn white fat and stimulate weight loss.

Dr Bi said: "If we could get the human body to turn bad fat into good fat that burns calories instead of storing them, we could add a serious new tool to tackle the obesity epidemic.

"Only future research will tell us if that is possible."

Dr Jeremy Tomlinson, an expert at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Obesity Research, said: "This is exciting, novel and interesting.

"We will need a lot more work to tease this out, but it could offer a feasible way to develop new treatments for obesity."