Trending News Today: Common Supplement May Prevent Cancer in Certain Individuals

The University of Chicago Pritzker medical school obstetrics-gynecology rotation offers an mandatory lunchtime seminar to hear from ovarian cancer survivors about the shock of diagnosis, painful treatments, and anxieties about their cancer coming back, the Washington Post reported. The goal of the program is to destigmatize and humanize the disease in the hopes that the rare cancer will be on the radar of new generation of doctors. Alongside such measures, researchers are also pushing for earlier detection through education and more accurate screening techniques, such as new genetic sequencing techniques in micro RNA.

Officials with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System report a 19% reduction in opioid prescriptions among 1.5 Californians, Kasier Health News reported. The data indicated that the number of new users who were prescribed large doses dropped 85% in the first half of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017, while new prescribed more than a week’s supply dropped 73%. The CDC advises doctors to prescribe new users no more than a 7-day supply and to keep doses under the equivalent of 50 morphine milligrams to prevent overdoses and new addictions.

An option for a rare genetic mutation in a gene called Pten, which increases one’s likelihood of developing cancers such as prostate and breast cancer by approximately 85% as well as autism and schizophrenia may be found in a drugstore, according to The New York Times. The compound known as indole-3-carbinol (i3c) blocks an enzyme that inhibits the activity of Pten, which helps to protect an individual from cancer. More information through a clinical trial is needed to determine whether or not the supplement works or if there needs to be a pharmaceutical-grade version of i3c.