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Men show higher malignant mesothelioma rates after asbestos exposure
Last Updated: 2007-03-01 12:39:40 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - After asbestos exposure, men are likelier than women to develop malignant mesothelioma, according to a report in the February issue of Chest.
Lead investigator Alison Reid told Reuters Health that she and her colleagues "manage two cohort studies of people exposed to crocidolite -- blue asbestos -- at Wittenoom in Western Australia. This was an asbestos mining and milling town that closed in 1966, but still provides us with a legacy of asbestos related diseases."
Ms. Reid of the University of Western Australia, Crawley and associates present results of follow-up through the end of 2000 among more than 4700 former residents of Wittenoom, not employed in the milling and mining industry.
Mortality rate with mesothelioma was higher with increasing length of residence, cumulative exposure, and latency period, the authors report, and it was consistently lower for women than for men.
Among the 31 women who developed mesothelioma, mortality risk was significantly associated with residence with an asbestos worker, the report indicates. This association did not hold for men.
Children at least 15 years old at first exposure had 2.4 times the risk of mesothelioma mortality as that faced by children younger than 15 years at first exposure, the researchers note.
Men had more than four times the rate of mesothelioma as women, after adjusting for cumulative asbestos exposure and age at first residence, the results indicate, but women had a steeper dose-response slope than men did.
"Physicians need to understand the biology of asbestos related diseases," Ms Reid concluded. "No one is immune from them. The asbestos epidemic is almost past its peak in the developed world, but elsewhere it will just be starting. It is still being used in many developing countries -- where they have little or no regulation about its use, worker protection, or means of treatment."
Chest 2007;131:376-382.
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