Scientists have learned a great deal about breast cancer in the last few
decades, but the disease still holds some surprises.

New research finds that some cases of breast cancer may spontaneously
disappear - or regress - and potentially may never need treatment. But with
no current way to tell which breast cancers might regress, doctors say it is still safest to treat them all.

Doctors from Norway have made an intriguing finding about breast cancer:
according to their research, it's possible that some breast tumors may
spontaneously regress and disappear.

The researchers studied Norwegian women ages 50 to 64 who had mammograms every 2 years as part of a national breast cancer screening program.

They compared them to similar women not receiving regular mammograms and discovered that - in every age group - women who had the mammograms were more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancers.

Overall, breast cancer rates were about 22 per cent higher among women who had multiple mammograms.

Since the women were similar in all ways, the authors conclude that the
mammograms were detecting some breast cancers that would regress and
disappear - as probably happened in the non mammogram group.

Indeed, they point to rare but documented cases in the medical literature
where women had their tumors spontaneously vanish.

Experts say we may never know for sure what the truth is behind these
tumors: to prove that breast cancers can disappear, doctors would have to
let some women go untreated a decision that could potentially be life-
threatening and unethical.

Source: published in the Archives of Internal Medicine