Maria Menounos: E! News host reveals brain tumour diagnosis at age 39

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Maria Menounos has revealed she is standing down as an anchor of E! News while she recovers from surgery to remove a brain tumour.

Menounos told a magazine interviewer, she had recently undergone seven hours of surgery to get rid of the tumour, which was said to be the size of a golf ball. The tumour was benign.

Menounos, 39, told People she had prepared for the surgery, even as her own mother was confronting advanced brain cancer.

“[The surgeon] said there’s a six to seven per cent chance that we’ll see it come back,” said Menounos, who is recovering at home. “But I’ll take those odds any day.”

Menounos joined E! in 2014 and began co-hosting its news programme the next year.

“Our thoughts and support go out to Maria and her family and we wish them all the best knowing that Maria will tackle this with the same fierce dedication she is known for,” said Adam Stotsky, president of E! Entertainment.

“We are grateful for Maria's many contributions to E! over the past three years.”

Menounos, who also hosts a Sirius XM radio show, said her decision to talk about her challenges was important on several levels. She said the diagnosis came after she began feeling lightheaded on set and suffering from headaches and slurred speech.

It came at the same time that her mother was being treated for stage four brain cancer.

“We’re caretakers as women and we put ourselves last,” said Menounos. “I tell people all the time, if your car is making a weird noise, you take it to the mechanic. How come when our body is making weird noises, we ignore it? I'm so lucky that I went to the doctor and raised the alarm.”