Allergies protect against cancer?
Friday August 1st, 2008
New research suggests that people who have suffered allergies and asthma for many years enjoy a reduced risk of developing one kind of cancer.
The finding about B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) has puzzled researchers and may open the way to new insights into allergy.
A team from the University of New South Wales, Australia, found that people with an atopic disease are up to 25 per cent less likely than others to get NHL, and the more of these conditions they have, the lower their risk.
If someone has three of these conditions they have a 40 per cent reduced risk, according to Dr Claire Vajdic and colleagues, who analysed figures from 13 studies involving 13,535 NHL cases and 16,388 healthy "control participants".
They also found that individuals who have had atopic diseases for the longest time have the lowest risk.
Dr Vajdic said: "This was a surprise result. The only known strong risk factors for NHL are immune deficiency and certain infections. This occurs in people with uncontrolled HIV infection, and those who have had a solid organ transplant.
"So we thought other forms of immune dysregulation such as atopic diseases - including hayfever, asthma and food allergies - might relate to the development of lymphoma. It was therefore intuitive to think that these conditions would increase the risk, but in fact, they do the reverse."
The biological mechanisms are unclear at the moment, she added. "Investigation of the genetic and environmental factors underlying atopy and the apparent inverse effect of atopy on NHL risk will inform our understanding of the complex biological pathways that may be involved."
Dr Vajdic presented the findings at the InterLymph Symposium in Sydney, Australia, on Monday (July 28).
Vajdic, C. M. New Insights into the Causes of Lymphoma. Presented at the InterLymph Symposium held at the Menzies Hotel, Sydney on Monday July 28, 2008.
Ekstrom Smedby, K. et al. Autoimmune disorders and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes: a pooled analysis within the InterLymph Consortium. Blood, Vol. 111, April 15, 2008, pp. 4029-38.
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Tags: Allergies & Asthma | Cancer
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