For Release: November 19, 2009
Contacts:
David Corriveau, Media Relations Officer, Dartmouth Medical School, at David.A.Corriveau@Dartmouth.edu and 603-653-0771
Steve Graff at Journal of the National Cancer Institute, jncimeida@oxfordjournals.org and 301-841-1285.
Karagas data cited in bladder-cancer study
Using data from Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) epidemiologist Margaret Karagas's studies of possible triggers of cancer among northern New England residents, researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) found an increased risk of bladder cancer for chronic, long-term smokers of cigarettes in the region since the mid-1990s.
The findings of the NCI study, which appear online in the November issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, show the risk of bladder cancer growing, among current smokers in New Hampshire, to five times the risk for non-smokers studied in the Granite State between 2001 and 2004. Researchers also found that among individuals who smoked the same number of cigarettes over their lifetime, smoking fewer cigarettes per day for more years may cause more harm than smoking more cigarettes per day for fewer years.
Karagas, Ph.D., co-director of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center's epidemiology and chemoprevention program and section head of biostatistics and epidemiology at DMS, collaborated with lead author Dalsu Baris, M.D., Ph.D., of NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Bethesda, Md., with researchers from Brown University, and with the state departments of health of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. To examine changes in smoking-induced bladder cancer risk over time, the researchers compared odds ratios for New Hampshire residents in the NCI study with those from two case-control studies that Karagas conducted in New Hampshire in 1994 and in 1998.
The full study, including an accompanying editorial by experts from the University of South Carolina, can be viewed here.
DMS colleagues working with Karagas were Alan R. Schned, M.D., professor of pathology and a member of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center's genitourinary/prostate clinical-oncology group; Angeline S. Andrew, Ph.D., an assistant professor of community and family medicine and a member of the Dartmouth Toxic Metals Research Program; and Richard Waddell, research assistant professor of medicine.