Health Discovery: Can Cancer Go Away on Its Own?

In our zeal to fight cancer early, are we treating some tumors that might simply vanish? It’s possible, according to a study of some 200,000 Norwegian women.

Researchers in Oslo and at the Dart­mouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Han­over, N.H., compared breast cancer rates in two groups of women. One group had three mammograms over six years; the other had one. All the women were matched in age and reproductive history, so tumor rates in each group were expected to even out at the study’s end. But the rate in the women who had one screen was 22 percent lower, leading researchers to speculate that some cancers had disappeared before they could be detected.

The findings, reported in the Nov. 24 Archives of Internal Medicine, are controversial and require more study, say some cancer experts.

Susan Morse, formerly with the Washington Post, writes about health and consumer issues.