Researchers are still years from knowing why Iron Range miners have been disproportionately struck by a rare form of asbestos-related cancer, but the Minnesota Department of Health will release new details today about those who have been affected.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has awarded compensation to the family of a woman who died of lung cancer after deeming that asbestos at the factory where she worked caused her cancer.

Northern Ireland sufferers of an asbestos cancer that kills within one year could have to wait until late 2009 before the only treatment available gets the go-ahead from the NHS – if it is funded at all.

The deadly form of lung cancer, mesothelioma, comes from exposure to asbestos and the department had previously documented 17 deaths among miners. So when it found that 35 more miners had died of the disease, researchers prepared to release the information.

People who lived in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, from the 1950s through 1970s were 14 times more likely to die from asbestos-related mesothelioma than the national average, an Environment Ministry survey showed.

Almost 200,000 people in the UK could still get asbestos-related cancers, say scientists funded by Cancer Research UK.

Exposure to asbestos causes a form of cancer called mesothelioma – which affects the lining of the lungs – as well as lung cancer. The symptoms can take many decades to emerge.

According to results recently published in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, treatment with the chemotherapy agent Alimta® (pemetrexed) with or without the chemotherapy agent Platinol® (cisplatin) provides benefit for patients with malignant mesothelioma who have received prior therapies.

A lab mouse who was infected not once but twice with mesothelioma survived thanks to drugs made from compounds extracted from the fruit of devil’s apple.

All About Malignant Mesothelioma, an online resource for information about mesothelioma causes, symptoms and treatments, has recently published a revised section on mesothelioma drug treatments.

Statins reverse doxorubicin resistance in human malignant mesothelioma cells in culture, a finding that may lead to new clinical strategies to improve doxorubicin efficacy in this hard to treat cancer.