Effects of Air Pollutants on Childhood Asthma

Epidemiologic studies have suggested the association between environmental exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and the increased risk of incurring asthma. Yet there is little data regarding the relationship between personal exposure to air pollution and the incidence of asthma in children. This study was designed to evaluate the effect of exposure to air pollution on children with asthma by using exposure biomarkers. We assessed the exposure level to VOCs by measuring urinary concentrations of hippuric acid and muconic acid, and PAHs by 1-OH pyrene and 2-naphthol in 30 children with asthma and 30 children without asthma (control). The mean level of hippuric acid was 0.158 ± 0.169 µmol/mol creatinine in the asthma group and 0.148 ± 0.249 µmol/mol creatinine in the control group, with no statistical significance noted (p=0.30). The mean concentration of muconic acid was higher in the asthma group than in the control group (7.630 ± 8.915 µmol/mol creatinine vs. 3.390 ± 4.526 µmol/mol creatinine p=0.01). The mean level of urinary 1-OHP was higher in the asthma group (0.430 ± 0.343 µmol/mol creatinine) than the control group (0.239 ± 0.175 µmol/mol creatinine), which was statistically significant (p=0.03). There was no difference in the mean concentration of 2-NAP between the two groups (9.864 ± 10.037 µmol/mol in the asthma group vs. 9.157 ± 9.640 µmol/mol in the control group, p=0.96). In conclusion, this study suggests that VOCs and PAHs have some role in asthma

Power and limits of modern cancer diagnostics: cancer of unknown primary

Background: Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is diagnosed at a metastatic stage but no diagnostic effort is spared to find the primary cancers because these will guide the treatment. Consequently, the diagnostic work-up for CUP is more comprehensive than for any other cancer, resulting in detection of second cancers unrelated to CUP. We want to use the detection rate of second cancers as a measure of efficacy of the diagnostic modalities in finding tumors, assuming that the detection rates have increased with modern technologies. Patients and methods: The number of CUP patients identified in the nation-wide Swedish Database was 28 574 and relative risks (RRs) for second cancers were recorded in three periods from 1980 through 2008. The first 5 months after CUP were considered critical for second cancers to be diagnosed during the intense work-up for CUP. Results: Among second cancers, diagnosable by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, there was a large 6.80-fold increase in RR immediately following CUP diagnosis from the period 1980-1989 to 2000-2008. Over the same periods, the increase in in situ tumors was 7.16-fold. Conclusion: These data suggest that improvements in the resolution and availability of powerful imaging techniques result in increasingly sensitive detection of tumors