Agent Orange tied to aggressive prostate cancer risk......

[c palmer]

Agent Orange tied to aggressive prostate cancer risk

By Genevra Pittman

Reuters/Reuters - Soldiers detect Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) and
defoliant Agent Orange during the launch of the "environmental
remediation of dioxin contamination" project, in Vietnam's central Da
Nang City …more  June 17, 2011. REUTERS/Kham  less 
By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men who were exposed to Agent Orange
chemicals used during the Vietnam War are at higher risk for
life-threatening prostate cancer than unexposed veterans, researchers
have found.

What's more, those who served where the herbicide was used were
diagnosed with cancer about five years earlier than other men, on
average, in the new study.
"This is a very, very strong predictor of lethal cancer," said urologist
Dr. Mark Garzotto, who worked on the study at the Portland Veterans
Affairs Medical Center in Oregon.

"If you're a person who's otherwise healthy and you've been exposed to
Agent Orange, that has important implications for whether you should be
screened or not screened," he told Reuters Health.
But one researcher not involved in the new study said it's hard to take
much away from it, given the imprecise way it measured exposure.

Agent Orange - named after the giant orange drums in which the chemicals
were stored - was used by the U.S. military to destroy foliage, mainly
in southern Vietnam. The herbicide was often contaminated with a type of
dioxin, a potently carcinogenic chemical.

The Vietnam Red Cross Society has estimated that up to one million
Vietnamese suffered disabilities or health problems as a result of Agent
Orange, including children born with birth defects years after their
parents were exposed.
Past research has also suggested that U.S. veterans who served where
Agent Orange was used are at an increased risk of lymphoma and certain
other cancers, including prostate cancer.

For the new study, researchers wanted to see whether exposure was more
closely linked to slow-growing prostate cancers or aggressive tumors.

They analyzed medical records belonging to 2,720 veterans who were
referred to the Portland VA for a prostate biopsy. About one in 13 of
those men had been exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War,
according to their VA intake interviews.

One third of all men in the study were diagnosed with prostate cancer,
about half of which were high-grade cancers - the more aggressive and
fast-growing type.
When the researchers took men's age, race, weight and family history of
cancer into account, they found those with Agent Orange exposure were 52
percent more likely than unexposed men to have any form of prostate
cancer.

Separating out different types of tumors showed the herbicide was not
linked to an increased risk of slower-growing, low-grade cancer. But it
was tied to a 75 percent higher risk of being diagnosed with aggressive
prostate cancer, the study team reported Monday in the journal Cancer.

"The increase in the rate of cancers was almost exclusively driven by
the potentially lethal cancers," said Garzotto, also from Oregon Health
& Science University.

More research is needed to figure out exactly why that is, he said. In
the meantime, Garzotto said veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange
should discuss that with their doctors.
But Dr. Arnold Schecter, from the University of Texas School of Public
Health's Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Program in
Dallas, said there's a "big problem" with just asking veterans if they
were exposed to Agent Orange or served in an area where it was sprayed.

"Of those most heavily exposed in the military as best we know, only a
relatively small percentage of them had elevated dioxin from Agent
Orange in their blood when tested by (the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention)," he told Reuters Health.

Schecter said that in Vietnam, people who have high levels of that type
of dioxin in their blood live in places where the chemical has become
integrated into the food supply - or were sprayed directly with Agent
Orange.

Another researcher who has studied the effects of Agent Orange agreed
that not having blood dioxin levels is a drawback, but said the findings
are consistent with past research and general thinking about the
chemical.

"Almost all studies have implicated that men with Agent Orange
(exposure) either have higher-grade prostate cancer or a more aggressive
clinical course," said Dr. Gregory Merrick, head of Wheeling Hospital's
Schiffler Cancer Center in West Virginia, who also wasn't involved in
the new research.

But, he added, as long as men are getting into the VA system and getting
regular evaluations and treatment for cancer, Agent Orange exposure "is
not a death sentence by any means."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/gzHzeL Cancer, online May 13, 2013.