India, Nov. 14 -- Growing old may make a person more vulnerable to various diseases, but a Stanford University study has suggested that after the age of 85, the chances of contracting cancer actually decrease significantly.

This phenomenon was not entirely unknown. The probability of a person developing cancer was known to increase during the middle ages and into older age. However, it was noticed that the risk of cancer plateaued or even decreased for people who were in advanced old age.

A group of researchers, led by Emily G. Shuldiner, Dmitri A. Petrov and Monte M. Winslow, conducted a study on genetically-engineered mice to figure out the cause of this behavior. Study Finds reported on this research after it was published in Nature ...