TUESDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have documented that the rare bone and soft tissue cancer Ewing's sarcoma disproportionately strikes white people.

What's more, among whites who have the disease, males are more likely to die from it than females, according to a study published online June 22 in Cancer.

Led by Dr. Sean Scully of the University of Miami, the researchers analyzed more data spanning more than 30 years from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program, the largest source for cancer statistics in the United States.

They found that whites had the highest risk of developing Ewing's sarcoma (155 cases per 100,000), followed by Asians/Pacific Islanders (82 cases per 100,000) and African Americans (17 cases per 100,000).

Incidence of the disease in whites has increased over the past three decades, the researchers also noted.

Ewing's tumors often show up in childhood or early adulthood, occurring anywhere in the body. Common sites are in the pelvis, chest and long bones of the legs and arms. Symptoms include noticeable lumps under the skin and bone pain.

According to the American Cancer Society, several treatments are used, including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. Five-year survival is good if the tumor is caught early, but poor if it has spread.

More work needs to be done to determine why whites have higher rates of Ewing's sarcoma, the researchers said.

Scully said he hopes the study will begin to shed light on the racial and gender disparities, perhaps leading to better therapies in the future.

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on Ewing's sarcoma  .

TUESDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer is the second leading cause of death for people with schizophrenia, a new French study reports.

Researchers from the University of Reims in France found that people with schizophrenia die from cancer at four times the rate of the general population, making it the leading cause of death in that group after suicide. The study, published online June 22 in Cancer, recommended that doctors pay closer attention to cancer prevention and early detection in people with that crippling psychiatric disorder.

Beginning in 1993, researchers at the university's Robert Debre Hospital began following more than 3,400 people with schizophrenia. In an 11-year span, 476 of them died, 74 from cancer.

Lung cancer was a leading killer among the men, perhaps reflecting the high rate of smoking in the group, the researchers noted. Among women, the risk of dying from breast cancer was significantly higher than in the general population.

The higher death rate might be due to several factors, including a delay in diagnosis and less compliance to treatment, the study suggested. The researchers said that future studies need to more closely examine cancer rates and better define the kinds of tumors that arise in people with schizophrenia, who are already prone to premature death in part because of the high suicide rate.

Schizophrenia is a chronic condition often characterized by hallucinations, delusions and disordered thinking, among other disabling symptoms. Scientists do not know the exact cause of the illness, which affects more than 1 percent of people in the United States older than 18.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more on schizophrenia.

TUESDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) -- A new biomarker that may help predict whether someone with a brain tumor will respond to a given treatment has been identified by U.S. researchers.

Looking to see who would respond to anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy, they used MRIs to scan the brains of people with recurrent glioblastoma, or malignant brain tumors, after they took an experimental drug called cediranib. By measuring vascular normalization, the researchers were able to identify, even after a single dose, people who benefitted from the drug and those who did not.

People with a greater degree of vascular normalization had longer overall survival and longer progression-free survival, according to the phase 2 study, which included 31 people.

"We found that results from an advanced MRI scan taken just a day after starting treatment correlated with survival," Dr. A. Gregory Sorensen, an associate professor of radiology and health sciences and technology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, said in a news release. "Combining MRI with blood biomarkers did an even better job of identifying patients who best responded to treatment."

"If this approach is validated in larger studies, we could use these tools to keep patients on therapies that their tumors respond to and shift non-responders to other therapies much earlier," he added.

The study appears in the journal Cancer Research.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about brain tumors.

MONDAY, June 22 (HealthDay News) -- Obesity is already linked to heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure, but new research finds those extra pounds can also significantly increase a woman's risk of developing endometrial cancer, especially if she experiences early menopause.

Published in the July issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the study found that women with a body-mass index (BMI) greater than 35 who were under 45 at the time of their last menstrual period had a 22 times higher risk of developing endometrial cancers than their normal-weight peers.

"In this young population, the risk of endometrial cancer increased dramatically if they had a BMI greater than 25," said study author Cheryll C. Thomas, an epidemiologist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Body-mass index is a measurement used to estimate one's body fat. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered normal, according to the CDC. Twenty-five to 29.9 is overweight, and anything 30 or over is considered obese.

Although obesity is a known risk factor for endometrial cancer in pre-menopausal and postmenopausal women, little research has focused on younger women, according to background information in the current study.

Thomas and her colleagues reviewed data from the CDC's Cancer and Steroid Hormone Study, a multi-center, population-based study done in the 1980s. They found 421 women between the ages of 20 and 54 who had been diagnosed with endometrial cancer, and they also recruited a randomly selected control group of 3,159 women from the same areas of the country.

Women who were younger than 45 when they had their last period and had a BMI above 35 had a 21.7 times greater risk of developing endometrial cancer than a woman of normal weight. In women older than 45 at their last menstrual period, those with BMIs above 35 had 3.7 times greater odds of developing endometrial cancer than their normal-weight peers.

Women who had BMIs of at least 25 who were also under 45 at the age of their last menstrual period had about a sixfold increase in risk vs. their normal-weight counterparts.

The researchers suspect that a hormonal imbalance, specifically a lack of progesterone, is likely to blame for the increased risk, Thomas said.

Dr. Diane Yamada, section chief for gynecologic oncology at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said she suspects the "unopposed estrogen" causes the increased risk. Fat tissue, she explained, plays a role in producing estrogen. "People think about estrogen as only coming from the ovaries, but if you have a lot of adipose tissue, you'll have more estrogen."

Whatever the cause, Thomas said these findings highlight the importance of maintaining a healthy weight.

Both doctors said that weight loss can help reduce the risk of endometrial cancer.

"People have to be very aware that obesity not only puts you at risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, but also for cancer," said Yamada. "Endometrial cancer is just one of multiple reasons to try to get healthier."

Any woman, overweight or not, who experiences significant changes in her menstrual periods -- such as a period that lasts longer or a heavier flow than usual -- should discuss these changes with her doctor. And, Yamada advised that any postmenopausal woman who develops bleeding should call her doctor right away, because these could be signs of cancer.

More information

To learn more about endometrial cancer, visit the National Cancer Institute.