“Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek says “positive energy” from fans may have played a role in what doctors have called the “near remission” of his stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

The 78-year-old revealed the news in a cover story Wednesday.

“It’s kind of mind-boggling,” he said, adding that some of his tumours have shrunk “by more than 50 per cent.”

“I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed towards me and their prayers,” he told People. “I told the doctors, this has to be more than just the chemo, and they agreed it could very well be an important part of this.”

Pancreatic cancer has a low survival rate, but doctors told the longtime game show host that he has been responding extremely well to chemotherapy.

“The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory,” he said.

He will still undergo several more rounds of chemotherapy in hopes that he will enter full remission, according to the magazine. The “Jeopardy!” host has been candid in recent months about the “deep sadness” he felt after his diagnosis, but the recent good news left him emotionally upbeat.

“They were tears of joy, not tears of depression,” he told People.

In a sit-down interview with CTV National News’ Chief Anchor and Senior Editor Lisa LaFlamme earlier this month, Trebek expressed a determination to fight the disease. When he announced his diagnosis in March, he said he intended to keep working.

“This is what I've been dealt, and I will face it as best I can,” he told LaFlamme. “The outcome to a great extent is out of my hands, but to a certain extent, it's within my realm also, because by having a positive attitude, I can affect whether I will succeed in overcoming the statistics regarding pancreatic cancer.”