(Press-News.org) A new study led by City College of New York psychologist Margaret Rosario found that youths of same-sex orientation are more likely to engage in behaviors associated with cancer risk than heterosexuals. The peer-reviewed findings appear in the February 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
Titled "Sexual Orientation Disparities in Cancer-Related Risk Behaviors of Tobacco, Alcohol, Sexual Behaviors, and Diet and Physical Activity: Pooled Youth Risk Behavior Surveys," the study pooled YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Survey) data from 2005 and 2007. The YRBS is a national survey of high school students conducted biennially.
Dr. Rosario, professor of psychology in CCNY's Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership and The Graduate Center, CUNY, and her research team then studied 12 cancer-risk behaviors in sexual minorities (youth with same-sex orientation) and heterosexuals in grades 9 through 12. Of an available sample of 65,871 youth, 7.6 percent were found to be a sexual minority.
The 12 cancer-risk behaviors included tobacco use, drinking alcohol, early sex, multiple sexual partners, higher body mass index (BMI) and lack of exercise. The report found that for all 12, sexual minorities were more likely than heterosexuals to engage in the risky behavior.
"Sexual minorities are at risk for cancer later in life, I suggest, from a host of behaviors that begin relatively early in life," said Professor Rosario. "No sex or ethnic racial group is at greater risk or protected for these behaviors. Overall, the study underscores the need for early interventions."
Her collaborators included researchers from Boston Children's Hospital, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Fenway Institute, and Northwestern University.
INFORMATION:
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. More than 16,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture; the School of Education; the Grove School of Engineering; the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, and the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. U.S. News, Princeton Review and Forbes all rank City College among the best colleges and universities in the United States.
LGBT youth face greater cancer risks, CCNY-led study
2014-02-19
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Using holograms to improve electronic devices
2014-02-19
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and Russian Academy of Science have demonstrated a new type of holographic memory device that could provide unprecedented data storage capacity and data processing capabilities in electronic devices.
The new type of memory device uses spin waves – a collective oscillation of spins in magnetic materials – instead of the optical beams. Spin waves are advantageous because spin wave devices are compatible with the conventional electronic ...
Statistics research could build consensus around climate predictions
2014-02-19
Philadelphia, PA—Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by research groups all over the world. Data from these many and various sources results in different climate projections; hence, the need arises to combine information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates.
In a paper published last December in the SIAM Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, authors Matthew Heaton, Tamara Greasby, and Stephan Sain propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information ...
Smellizing -- imagining a product's smell -- increases consumer desire, study finds
2014-02-19
Seeing is believing, but smellizing – a new term for prompting consumers to imagine the smell of a product – could be the next step toward more effective advertising.
Researchers came to this conclusion through four studies of products most of us would like to smellize: cookies and cake.
Professor of Marketing Maureen Morrin of Temple University's Fox School of Business co-authored Smellizing Cookies and Salivating: A Focus on Olfactory Imagery to examine the impact imagining what a food smells like would have on consumer behavior.
"Before we started this project, ...
Discovery by Baylor University researchers sheds new light on the habitat of early apes
2014-02-19
WACO, Texas (Feb. 18, 2014)-- Baylor University researchers, in collaboration with an international team of scientists, have discovered definitive evidence of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul on Rusinga Island, Kenya. The groundbreaking discovery provides additional information that will help scientists understand and interpret the connection between habitat preferences and the early diversification of the ape-human lineage.
Their research findings--published this month in Nature Communications--demonstrate that Proconsul and its primate relative Dendropithecus ...
Graduate student makes major discovery about seal evolution
2014-02-19
Ottawa, February, 19, 2014—In the world of science, one of the most exciting things a researcher can do is pin down an answer to a widely asked question. This experience came early for Carleton University graduate Thomas Cullen, who made a discovery about pinnipeds—the suborder that makes up seals, sea lions and walruses—while doing research for his Master's degree under the supervision of Canadian Museum of Nature palaeontologist Dr. Natalia Rybczynski.
His discovery, published the journal Evolution, relates to sexual dimorphism (a large variance in size between males ...
Huntington's disease: Hot on the trail of misfolded proteins' toxic modus operandi
2014-02-19
WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 19, 2014 -- Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, and their correctly folded three-dimensional structures are critical to cellular functions. Misfolded structures often fail to properly perform these vital jobs, leading to cellular stress and devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease.
In comparison with the mysteries of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease has a seemingly simple culprit: an expansion in the polyglutamine (polyQ) tract of a protein called "Huntingtin" (Htt). ...
Rutgers scientists identify structure of virus that could lead to hepatitis C vaccine
2014-02-19
Rutgers University scientists have determined the structure of a hepatitis C surface protein, a finding that could assist in the development of a vaccine to halt the spread of the the deadly disease that has infected 3.2 million Americans.
Joseph Marcotrigiano, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, says this new research – published online today in Nature – describes an outer region of hepatitis C that enables the virus to evade the body's natural immune system response, causing persistent, chronic infection.
Hepatitis C is constantly mutating, allowing ...
The ups and downs of early atmospheric oxygen
2014-02-19
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A team of biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside, give us a nontraditional way of thinking about the earliest accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere, arguably the most important biological event in Earth history.
A general consensus asserts that appreciable oxygen first accumulated in Earth's atmosphere around 2.3 billion years ago during the so-called Great Oxidation Event (GOE). However, a new picture is emerging: Oxygen production by photosynthetic cyanobacteria may have initiated as early as 3 billion years ago, with oxygen ...
NuSTAR telescope takes first peek into core of supernova
2014-02-19
Astronomers for the first time have peered into the heart of an exploding star in the final minutes of its existence.
The feat is one of the primary goals of NASA's NuSTAR mission, launched in June 2012 to measure high-energy X-ray emissions from exploding stars, or supernovae, and black holes, including the massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
The NuSTAR team reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature the first map of titanium thrown out from the core of a star that exploded in 1671. That explosion produced the beautiful supernova remnant ...
Managed honeybees linked to new diseases in wild bees
2014-02-19
Diseases that are common in managed honeybee colonies are now widespread in the UK's wild bumblebees, according to research published in Nature. The study suggests that some diseases are being driven into wild bumblebee populations from managed honeybees.
Dr Matthias Fürst and Professor Mark Brown from Royal Holloway University of London (who worked in collaboration with Dr Dino McMahon and Professor Robert Paxton at Queen's University Belfast, and Professor Juliet Osborne working at Rothamsted Research and the University of Exeter) say the research provides vital information ...