Prediagnostic serum organochlorine insecticide concentrations and primary liver cancer: A case–control study nested within two prospective cohorts

Abstract

Although experimental evidence indicates that certain organochlorine insecticides are hepatocarcinogens, epidemiologic evidence for most of these chemicals is very limited. We estimated associations, using prospectively collected sera, between organochlorine insecticide concentrations and cancer registry‐identified primary liver cancer in two cohorts, one from the United States and one from Norway. In nested case–control studies, we used sera collected in the 1960s‐1980s from 136 cases and 408 matched controls from the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Multiphasic Health Checkup (MHC) cohort and 84 cases and 252 matched controls from the population‐based Norwegian Janus cohort. We measured concentrations of nine organochlorine insecticides/metabolites and markers of hepatitis B and C in sera. Adjusted odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for tertiles of lipid‐corrected organochlorines were calculated for each cohort using conditional logistic regression. Among MHC participants with sera from the 1960s, there was a suggestive exposure‐response trend for trans‐nonachlor (second and third tertile of analyte ORs = 1.63 and 1.95, respectively; p‐trend = 0.08) and a nonsignificantly elevated risk for the highest tertile of oxychlordane (OR = 1.87). Among Janus participants with sera from the 1970s, we observed an apparent trend for p,p’‐DDT (second and third tertile ORs = 1.70 and 2.14, respectively; p‐trend = 0.15). We observed little consistency in patterns of association between the cohorts. We found limited evidence that exposure to p,p’‐DDT and chlordane‐related oxychlordane and trans‐nonachlor may be associated with increased risk of primary liver cancer. However, the modest strength of these associations and their lack of concordance between cohorts necessitate caution in their interpretation.

Exposures to pesticides and risk of cancer: Evaluation of recent epidemiological evidence in humans and paths forward

“…None of these relationships were statistically significant (Table 3). 90 A case-control study nested within the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort assessed the relationship between pesticide exposure and pancreatic cancer risk. Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; HR, hazard ratio; IQR, inner-quartile range; Q4, quantile 4f.…”

Occupational Pesticide Use and Risk of Renal Cell Carcinoma in the Agricultural Health Study

“…Like all organochlorines, chlordane belongs to the group of chlorinated hydrocarbon derivatives known for their toxicity, slow degradation, and bioaccumulation in lipophilic tissue. Chlordane is classified as possibly carcinogenic by the IARC, based mainly on evidence from animal studies (IARC 2001), but it also has been linked with increased risks of several cancers in population-based studies, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma (Colt et al 2006;Spinelli et al 2007), rectal cancer (Purdue et al 2007), liver cancer (Engel et al 2019), and testicular cancer (McGlynn et al 2008;Purdue et al 2009).…”

Why We Will Continue to Lose Our Battle with Cancers If We Do Not Stop Their Triggers from Environmental Pollution

“…Parathion was banned because of its high toxicity in the 1980s [ 205 ]. All of these three insecticides, particularly in occupational exposure, showed links with cancer [ 206 , 207 ].…”