Patients with leukemia and other blood diseases who receive bone marrow transplants rich in stem cells, often saving their lives, may be more likely to develop cancer years later, a study says.

Canadian scientists say hematopoietic stem cell transplant recipients face a significant long-term risk of developing a second cancer. Researchers followed the progress of over 900 patients who received the transplants and found they had nearly twice (2.3 % to be exact) the risk of developing cancer in the next 10 years. And that risk says Drs. Genevieve Gallagher and Donna Forrest of the University of British Columbia is greater if the recipients were older at the time of transplant or received stem cells especially from a female donor.

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According to a new research, Women who smoke and also carry high levels of the virus associated with cervical cancer are up to 27 times more likely to develop the most common form of cervical cancer compared with uninfected women who also smoke.

Smoking and the human papilloma virus (HPV) have been linked to cervical cancer before. But the new study is the first to look at a possible interplay between heavy smoking and virus levels, said study author Anthony Gunnell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.

“The risk for developing pre-malignant cervical cancer increases as HPV load increases,” Gunnell said. “Importantly though, it increases more with increasing HPV (levels) if you smoke than if you don’t.”

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