Association may be iatrogenic

BMJ 1995;311:750 (16 September)

Letters

Association may be iatrogenic

EDITOR,--Johanna Adami and colleagues postulate that exposureto ultraviolet light causes immunosuppression and, thereby,non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.¹ To support their hypothesis they reportthat patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma had a relative riskof 5.5 of developing squamous cell skin cancer. Conversely,patients with squamous cell skin cancer had a twofold excessrisk of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or the closely relatedchronic lymphocytic leukaemia. The relation between ultravioletlight and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was therefore examined onlyindirectly.

Patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are often treated withdrugs, notably alkylating agents, that are inherently mutagenic.Although Adami and colleagues highlight the immunosuppressiveeffects of these agents, they do not mention their mutagenicity.In support of the importance of the latter mechanism of action,the authors show that patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma havean increased general risk of malignancy of 1.2 times normal(95% confidence interval 1.1 to 1.3), a finding referred toas "close . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?

Relevant Article

Evidence of an association between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and skin cancer: Johanna Adami, Morten Frisch, Jonathan Yuen, Bengt Glimelius, and Mads Melbye
BMJ 1995 310: 1491-1495. [Abstract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Lens, M. B., Newton-Bishop, J. A. (2005). An association between cutaneous melanoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: pooled analysis of published data with a review. Ann Oncol 16: 460-465 [Abstract] [Full text]
Hu, S., Ma, F., Collado-Mesa, F., Kirsner, R. S. (2004). Ultraviolet Radiation and Incidence of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma among Hispanics in the United States. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 13: 59-64 [Abstract] [Full text]
Bentham, G. (1996). Association between incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and solar ultraviolet radiation in England and Wales. BMJ 312: 1128-1131 [Abstract] [Full text]