PhotoPsychological distress may increase your chances of dying from cancer. After controlling for age, smoking, physical activity and other factors, they found that compared with those with the lowest scores on depression and anxiety, those with the highest had higher rates of cancer death. In instances of colorectal and prostate cancer, they found a “dose-response” effect: the greater the distress, the greater the likelihood of death from those cancers. The study, in BMJ, is observational so cannot determine cause and effect, and it depended in part on self-reports. “The extent to which these associations could be causal,” the authors write, “requires further testing with alternative study designs.”

Source: New York Times January 27, 2017 16:55 UTC