Second Malignancies

[Guest guest]

CML Patients Had a Higher Risk of Second Malignancies Before Gleevec. According

to this article if you read it in full, you will see that Interferon was first

introduced in 1985.

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Oct 07, 2010 - Before the advent of imatinib, patients

with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) had a high long-term risk of a second

primary malignancy and only half survived longer than two years, a new study

shows.

" We found that, before the introduction of imatinib, CML patients had an 80%

relative increase in cancer incidence as compared with the general population of

Sweden, " Dr. Grazia Valsecchi and colleagues at the University of

Milano-Bicocca in Monza, Italy, wrote in a paper published online September 22

in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Imatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor

that Novartis sells as Gleevec, gained FDA approval in 2001 and is credited with

transforming CML into a manageable medical condition. Research in the last

decade has tried to address questions about Gleevec's long-term effects,

including the risk of second malignancies. This new paper provides a benchmark

for such studies, allowing researchers to compare patients who take Gleevec to

those who never did. "

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/730126

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I found an abstract which contained some interesting information, so I am

reporting it here and the website will be cited below:

" Refractory anemia with excess of blasts and chronic myeloid leukemia were

included because they are regarded as forms of pre-leukemia. Odds ratio

estimates were generally imprecise, but associations were suggested between

specific case subtypes and exposure to dark hair dye, selected occupations

(shoemaker, painter, electrician, child care), residence in houses built with

tuff, and smoking. Although the exploratory nature of the study and its limited

statistical power preclude firm conclusions, its results are consistent with

those of previous studies, and are in general biologically plausible. "

http://tinyurl.com/25h7o4u

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If you will refer back to the quotation above, there is an unusual word, " tuff " .

I researched that and was very surprised and interested at what I found. Just

throwing it in for good measure. We could call it Tuff 101. LOL:

" When volcanoes erupt, they spew massive amounts of ash, fragments of rock, and

other materials into the air. As these materials settle and cool, they form into

an assortment of rock varieties, including tuff. Tuff commonly forms when

volcanic magma is very stiff, allowing air bubbles and pockets to form, and it

tends to be extremely porous and very soft; depending on the prevailing

conditions, tuff may have several layers of material, reflecting multiple

eruptions.

" In some cases, tuff actually welds together, because the components of the rock

are so hot. In this case, tuff is classified as a pyroclastic rock, and it is

called “welded tuff.” Welded tuff is often very easy to identify, because it

typically has large chunks of material interspersed with smaller ones, all

welded together by the heat of the ash and other components of the tuff.

" Tuff may also be classified on the basis of the composition of its fragments.

Basaltic tuff, ultramafic tuff, rhyolite tuff, and andesitic tuff are some

examples of various types of tuff. Many of these forms of tuff have small

crystalline fragments, which can sometimes cause the rock to sparkle or glitter.

These forms of tuff are classified as sedimentary rocks, because they are formed

by the deposition and compression of sediment. "

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FYI,

Lottie Duthu