Brain tumors linked to 1950s scalp radiation treatments

[Susan Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

Tuesday February 15 4:56 PM ET 
            Brain tumors linked to 1950s scalp radiation treatments
            NEW YORK, Feb 15 (Reuters Health) -- The use of head
irradiation to treat fungal scalp infections in Israeli immigrants in
the 1950s has been linked to an increase in meningiomas, a type of
benign tumor that can cause bone erosion and compress brain tissue,
researchers report. 

            Between 1948 and 1960, about 20,000 Israeli individuals --
mostly children -- received head radiation treatment for tinea capitis,
a fungal infection of the scalp that can cause hair loss, according to
Dr. Siegal Sadetzki and colleagues from the Chaim Sheba Medical Center,
Tel Hashomer, Israel. Most were recent immigrants from North Africa or
the Middle East. 

            To investigate the impact of this mass irradiation, the team
looked at the incidence of benign meningioma in Israeli immigrants over
the past 40 years. 

            From the 1980s onward, there was a marked increase in the
tumors among
immigrants aged 40 to 49 years old, who would have been aged 5 to 14 in
the 1950s. 

            Those Israelis born in North Africa between 1940 and 1954
were 4 to 5 times as likely to develop a benign meningioma as people
born between 1930 and 1939, before radiation was commonly used. 

            Israelis born in the Middle East between 1940 and 1954 had
twice the risk of the brain tumors while European-American immigrants
had nearly the same risk as those born between 1930 and 1939. 

            ``This observation is in line with the fact that a larger
proportion of North African-born immigrants were irradiated, as compared
with Middle Eastern born,'' Sadetzki and colleagues note. Their findings
are published in the February 1st issue of the American Journal of
Epidemiology. 

            The findings ``illustrate vividly how a strong medical
intervention
(radiation), for a relatively innocuous condition (tinea capitis), led
to a dramatic change in the occurrence of a very serious disease
(meningioma),'' according to the report. 

            It is unusual for a link between an illness and a medical
treatment to be ``so strong and widespread that its effect is seen
clearly in national incidence rates,''Sadetzki told Reuters Health.
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology 2000;151:266-272.
-- 
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Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
136 S Illinois Ave, Ste 208, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
Phone (865) 483-1333; Fax (865) 482-6572; E-mail loc@icx.net 
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