As the nation focuses on Wall Street's troubles and how far they'll spill onto Main Street,  many American families  continue to struggle to pay their healthcare bills. And these are the folks that have insurance! While healthcare premiums  moderated in recent years, out of pocket expenses continue to rise causing many families to forego or postpone treatments, even for serious illnesses. You can read the article here in the New York Times.  (Access requires a free subscription to the NYT online. You can use the cancerpage login. User: cancerpage  PW: visitor.) Or read the whole report "Employer Health Benefits:2008 " yourself here (this is a pdf file and requires adobe acrobat to open.)

Hong Kong researchers have found that testing a patient's blood for DNA of the epstein bar virus (EBV) during treatment for nasopharyngeal cancer can help guide treatment decisions.  If there's no evidence of EBV, there's less likely to be a recurrence of cancer when treatment concludes. Even though there has been no causal relationship established between EBV and nasopharyngeal cancer, the virus is associated with the cancer. The findings were presented this week at a American Association for Cancer Research molecular diagnostics meeting in Philadelphia.