The initial results from the largest completed prostate cancer prevention trial appear to have underestimated the benefits and overestimated the potential risks of finasteride, according to three new analyses of data from the trial. These results bolster the case for finasteride as a preventive agent against prostate cancer, say the studies' leaders.

Results from two of the analyses were presented on May 18 at the American Urology Association annual meeting in Orlando, FL, and all three appeared online May 18 in Cancer Prevention Research.   Read more  

Friends and family have a powerful influence on whether a person quits smoking, and the decision to stop smoking can "spread" from one person to another in a social network, new research suggests. The findings are from a detailed analysis of smoking behavior in more than 12,000 individuals who were followed for 32 years, from 1971 to 2003, as part of the Framingham Heart Study.

In 1971, the places smokers and nonsmokers held in the social network were indistinguishable. But three decades later, societal views of smoking have changed, and smokers are increasingly at the periphery of social networks and aligned largely with other smokers, according to results published in the May 22 New England Journal of Medicine.  Read more  

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