Category: Asbestos Exposure
International Epidemiology Panel Predicts Public Health Disaster of Asbestos-Related Disease
A committee of scientists from 13 epidemiology societies issued a statement this week calling for a global ban on mining, use and export of asbestos. The Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology put forward a position statement laying out clear evidence that all forms of asbestos cause mesothelioma, lung cancer and other diseases.
“Continued use of asbestos will lead to a public health disaster of asbestos-related illness and premature death for decades to come, repeating the epidemic we are witnessing today in industrialized countries that used asbestos in the past,” Dr. Stanley Weiss, chair of the Joint Policy Committee said in a statement.
The Joint Policy Committee coordinates policy actions among 13 U.S., Canadian and international epidemiology societies. The group’s 25-page statement details the latest scientific evidence about asbestos and expressed “grave concern” that the governments of Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam are putting their own citizens and others in peril by allowing asbestos mining.
Weiss said the committee considered it to be critically important to support the objective scientific evidence that all use of asbestos should stop. Most industrialized countries have ceased or sharply curtailed use of asbestos and more than 50 countries have passed laws banning its use. Consequently, the asbestos industry is working to establish new markets by promoting the use of asbestos in low to moderate income nations, which have weaker worker safety laws. Many of these countries are unaware of the health hazards posed by asbestos. The proportion of asbestos used in Asia has increased sharply.
“We call specifically on the major asbestos exporting countries—Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan and Russia to respect the right to health by ceasing the mining, use and export of asbestos, and providing transition assistance to their asbestos-mining communities,” said Dr. Robert Hiatt, representing the American College of Epidemiology.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 107,000 people die each year from mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis caused by workplace exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest cavity and abdominal cavity caused by inhaling asbestos. One in every three deaths from occupational cancer is estimated to be caused by asbestos.
In the United States, approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans who were exposed to asbestos in a workplace.
The symptoms of asbestos disease typically take 20 years to 50 years to appear. But once the disease develops, it advances aggressively. Mesothelioma is incurable, but there are treatments to control the disease if it is diagnosed at an early stage.
More information about mesothelioma treatments.
Gene Therapy Approaches Milestone; Potential To Cure Diseases Caused By Inherited Gene Defect
You can expect to hear a lot more about gene therapy as a treatment for serious diseases in the years head. Gene therapy is still an experimental treatment in the United States, but holds the potential to cure genetic disorders by replacing a defective gene with a corrected copy of the gene. As The New York Times noted, gene therapy neared a milestone this week.
The European Medicine Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products recommended approval of a gene therapy medicine to treat lipoprotein lipase (LPL), a rare inherited disorder that involves a defective gene, according to a press release posted Friday on its website. Patients with the disorder cannot produce enough of an enzyme that breaks down fat and may experience life-threatening pancreatitis attacks
If the European Medicine Agency follows the committee’s recommendation, as is typical, the medicine Glybera would be the first gene therapy medication approved for authorization in European countries. No gene therapy has been approved so far in the United States.
Jeffrey Ostrove, chief executive of Ceregene, a gene therapy company in San Diego told The New York Times, that pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to invest in developing gene therapy drugs because there are no approved medicines. Ostrove said that approval of a gene therapy medicine in western Europe has the potential to change the way gene therapy is viewed.
Researchers have been studying the effectiveness of gene therapy in treating various diseases in clinical trials since a breakthrough discovery in 1989 that an abnormality in one gene on a specific chromosome caused the disease cystic fibrosis. That was a huge discovery. It led to the premise that doctors could cure a patient’s disease by identifying an abnormal gene mutation and replacing the defective gene with a corrected copy. The concept isn’t hard to understand, but making it work is complex. The initial applications of gene therapy are likely to involve rare diseases that may be cured by replacing a single defective gene. Lipoprotein lipase is a good example of that.
Researchers are investigating the applications of gene therapy for treatment of cancer including mesothelioma, a cancer of the lining of the lung caused by asbestos exposure. The University of Pennsylvania has an ongoing gene therapy clinical trial for patients who are newly diagnosed with mesothelioma and patients whose cancer has not responded to other treatments. Patients receive a combination of chemotherapy and a new type of gene therapy called immuno-gene therapy that uses a modified common cold virus to trigger the patient’s immune system to destroy cancer cells. Penn doctors have been encouraged by the response of mesothelioma patients receiving the treatment, Dr. Daniel Sterman an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania said.
Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year with symptoms typically appearing 30 to 50 years after asbestos exposure. The disease is incurable, though there are treatments including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.
Most people diagnosed with mesothelioma are older workers, retired workers or veterans who were exposed to asbestos fibers in the workplace or military service. Microscopic asbestos fibers when inhaled can lodge in the lungs and remain there a lifetime causing inflammation that eventually leads to asbestos related disease.
Mesothelioma Cases in UK Due to Asbestos Exposure in Workplaces Rises
A recent article published in the British Journal of Cancer discusses occupational cancers that are prevalent in Britain including lung cancer and mesothelioma.
Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that develops in the protective lining of the body’s organs known as the mesothelium. It is associated with exposure to asbestos, a mineral fiber used in many industries in the 20th century. Mesothelioma tumors most commonly appear in the lining of the chest cavity, but also may appear in the lining of the abdominal cavity or the lining around the heart.
According to the article, the number of mesothelioma deaths has increased markedly each year in Great Britain since the 1960s. Mesothelioma accounted for 2,046 cancer deaths in Great Britain in 2005 compared to 153 deaths in 1968, the year that Great Britain began a registry of mesothelioma deaths. The British Mesothelioma Register is the most comprehensive source of data on mesothelioma in the country.
Mesothelioma is more common in men who tend to have jobs in industries that had occupational risk of asbestos exposure. Among the industries that used asbestos and presented a higher risk of mesothelioma are mining and milling, insulating, shipyard work, sheet metal fabrication, asbestos by-products manufacturing, and the asbestos cement industry. Males account for about 85 percent of mesothelioma deaths each year.
Mesothelioma symptoms typically appear 30 to 40 years after exposure to asbestos, meaning that most people who develop the disease are older. They are often retired workers or veterans. About two-thirds of the people diagnosed with mesothelioma are between the ages of 60 and 80 years old, according to the article.
In addition to mesothelioma, the researchers at the British Occupational Cancer Burden Study Group say that a large number of studies report increased lung cancer among workers exposed to asbestos. All forms of asbestos cause cancer, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Lung cancer ranks among the cancer with the highest number of cases associated with occupational exposures. The recent article cites a 1996 study from the American Journal of Occupational Medicine. The earlier article, by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States, estimated that 9,900 to 11.900 develop lung cancer from occupational exposure to carcinogens and approximately half of the cases involve asbestos.
In the United States, approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people a year are diagnosed with mesothelioma. Most people were exposed to asbestos decades ago in a workplace or during military service such as while serving in the Navy. Mesothelioma is an incurable disease, but there are treatment options to manage the cancer. Treatments are more effective if the cancer is detected before it has reached an advanced stage.
Protein Linked to Tissue Inflammation Suggests New Approach To Treating Mesothelioma, University of Hawaii Researchers Say
Asbestos was used extensively at the Pearl Harbor shipyards during World War II and the decades afterward. Today, Hawaii has some of the highest rates of mesothelioma in the nation, according to cancer researchers at the University of Hawaii.
For more than a decade, researchers at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center have been deciphering the molecular processes that cause normal cells to tranform into malignant mesothelioma cells. In a study in the July issue of the scientific journal Cancer Research, they report that malignant mesothelioma relies on a particular protein known as HMGB1 to fuel the growth of tumors. Suppressing the protein may be key to a new approach for treating mesothelioma, which is notoriously difficult for doctors to manage.
Mesothelioma is a cancer of the lining of the chest and abdominal cavities. It develops from inhaling microscopic asbestos fibers that lodge in the thin tissue lining the body cavity causing inflammation that leads to cancer. People in jobs in which asbestos exposure is an occupational hazard such as mining, shipbuilding, maintenance, plumbing and electrical work have a higher incidence of asbestos-related disease.
Medical researcher Haining Yang, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, and colleagues have studied asbestos-related disease for more than a decade. In a series of research papers, the Hawaii cancer researchers have detailed how asbestos damages and kills cells through a process called programmed cell necrosis that leads to the release of a protein molecule called HMGB1.
Patients with mesothelioma have elevated levels of the protein in their blood. The researchers suggest the protein may play a critical role in transforming healthy mesothelial cells into cancer cells and fueling the growth of malignant tumors.
In the most recently published study, the researchers treated mice with malignant mesothelioma with antibodies aimed at suppressing the protein HMGB1. They observed that inhibiting HMGB1 reduced the growth of cancer cells and extended the lives of the mice. Their findings suggest that mesothelioma cells rely on HMGB1 and that removal of the protein may produce a therapeutic response in mesothelioma patients, suggesting a new approach for malignant mesothelioma treatment.
Mesothelioma takes the lives of about 3,000 people a year in the U.S. People typically develop mesothelioma symptoms 20 years to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. The incidence of mesothelioma has risen steadily in the last decade in some parts of the world, including Europe and China.
Work at Shipyards Raises Risk of Mesothelioma
For decades, medical social worker Abby Shulman Palmer was perplexed by what caused the death of her father, a physicist who worked for many years at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Lester Shulman died of cancer in 1985 at age 69, but doctors never pinpointed where the cancer originated.
After Palmer took a job with the Mesothelioma Alliance as a social worker advocate providing information to mesothelioma patients about treatments and clinical trials, she educated herself about asbestos and gained new insights into her father’s illness.
Palmer, a native of Rockaway and graduate of Rutgers University, learned that the Brooklyn Navy Yard was a hotspot for asbestos exposure during World War II and afterward. Asbestos was widely used by the military in construction of ships because it was heat resistant, tough and inexpensive.
During World War II, Lester Shulman worked on a team that was developing degaussing procedures for U.S military ships to protect them from mines in the water. Degaussing is the process of eliminating unwanted magnetic fields. Asbestos dust was everywhere at Brooklyn Navy Yard, creating an occupational hazard to all workers. Shulman would have been regularly exposed to asbestos.
Inhaling asbestos causes serious respiratory disease including lung cancer and mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer of the lining of the lung. Navy veterans and workers in shipyards have an elevated risk of developing mesothelioma because of the prevalence of asbestos, though disease symptoms take decades to show.
“When my dad died, all we knew was it was cancer, and that it had spread, but the doctors never figured out the primary site,” said Palmer, who is profiled in June issue of the Rutgers alumni magazine. “When I talked with my mother and sister about the possibility that it might be mesothelioma, they said, ‘Wow, that certainly is a possibility.’”
Approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people are diagnosed with mesothelioma each year in the United States. Most are older workers, retired workers and veterans (primarily Navy veterans and yardbirds) who were exposed to asbestos in a workplace.
The symptoms of asbestos disease such as chest pain, fatigue and difficulty breathing typically take 20 years to 50 years to appear. But once the disease appears, it advances aggressively. Mesothelioma is incurable, but there are treatments to control the disease if it is diagnosed at an early stage.
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