The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting in Chicago.

"This is the first large prospective trial to look at how diet impacts on colon cancer survivors, and while the results are preliminary, they are highly suggestive that diet may impact on the outcome of these patients," said Dana-Farber's Jeffrey Meyerhardt, MD, the study's lead author.

The research involved 1,009 patients with stage III colon cancer (cancer localized to the large bowel area with positive lymph nodes near the tumor) who were participating in a randomized, phase III clinical trial of adjuvant chemotherapy. They recorded their dietary intake on questionnaires for six months after chemotherapy, and researchers then tracked them for cancer recurrence or death.

The questionnaires indicated that participants, dietary patterns fell into two categories, dubbed ,prudent, and Western by researchers. The prudent pattern was characterized by high fruit, vegetable, poultry, and fish intakes; the Western pattern was marked by high intake of red meat, fat and desserts.

Researchers found that cancer tended to recur significantly faster in participants whose diets most closely followed the Western pattern. A Western diet was also associated with a lower overall survival rate. These findings remained consistent after researchers controlled for factors such as gender, age, body mass index, degree of cancer spread to lymph nodes, or physical activity level.

By contrast, researchers found that a prudent pattern diet did not significantly influence cancer recurrence or mortality.

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An estimated 20.8 million people in the United States ”7 percent of the population ”have diabetes. Most have type 2 diabetes, a condition in which the body does not properly use insulin. An estimated 5 percent to 10 percent of people with this chronic disease have type 1 diabetes, which results from the body's failure to produce insulin. People with type 1 diabetes must take insulin every day.

Diabetes can lead to wide fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Over time, abnormally high levels of glucose can damage the small and large blood vessels, leading to diabetic blindness, kidney disease, amputations of limbs, stroke, and heart disease.

While there is no known cure, studies have shown that patients who regularly monitor and regulate their blood glucose levels have lower incidences of complications associated with the disease.

FDA's approval of the STS-7 System was based on results of a study conducted by DexCom of 72 patients with diabetes at five clinical sites in the United States. The study demonstrated that the STS-7 System was safe and effective for detecting trends and tracking patterns in glucose levels in adults.

A three-day version of the device, the STS Continuous Glucose Monitoring System, was approved in March 2006.

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