Serum thiocyanate concentration as an indicator of smoking in relation to deaths from cancer

Abstract

All residents aged 40 years or more in Oyabe City, Toyama Prefecture, Japan were involved in an annual medical check-up between 1987 and 1988. The cohort was followed and death certificates from cancers were confirmed prospectively. During follow-up to December 31 st, 1994, 100 deaths (28 gastric, 17 lung and 55 other cancers) from cancers occurred, and these subjects were included in this study as the case group. Subjects in the control group, matched for gender and age with the cases, were selected randomly from participants whose serum samples had been stocked during annual medical check-up. The concentration of serum thiocyanate in all (79.8 μmol/l), gastric (86.7 μmol/l) and lung (90.0 μmol/l) cancer patients were significantly higher than that of relevant controls (64.3 μmol/l, 59.0 μmol/l and 61.0 μmol/l, respectively; and p<0.001, p<0.001 and p<0.05, respectively). After adjusting for BMI, blood pressure and total serum cholesterol, the results of multiple logistic regression analysis showed that the risk of all cancers (OR=3.40, 95% confidence interval (95% Cl): 1.67-6.96, p<0.01), gastric cancer (OR=7.98, 95% CI: 1.91-33.34, p<0.05) and lung cancer (OR=8.83, 95% CI: 1.19-65.65, p<0.05) were elevated significantly with logarithm transformed values of serum thiocyanate increased. The present findings suggested that in epidemiological studies confirmation of smoking status with biomarkers such as serum thiocyanate may be important, although considering the small sample size, a relatively weaker risk to interested factors rather than the strong relationship between smoking and cancer was noted.

Review of biomarkers to assess the effects of switching from cigarettes to modified risk tobacco products

“…Long-term smoking cessation may lead to lower levels (Ridker et al 2001, Bermudez et al 2002. Thiocyanate SCN Related to CVD (Wang et al 2007), some cancers (Wang et al 2001) and respiratory diseases (Shiue 2015) but is predominantly used as a marker of exposure to cigarette smoke. Levels are increased in smokers and fall to non-smoker levels 3-6 weeks after smoking cessation.…”

Iodine Status in Turkish Populations and Exposure to Iodide Uptake Inhibitors

“…Knudson et al (2002) reported that cigarette smokers with low iodine intakes had a higher incidence of goiter compared with smokers with adequate iodine intakes [9] . Thiocyanate has a biological half-life of 1–2 weeks and shares some common physiological properties with iodine [10] . For example, both thiocyanate and iodine are oxidized by peroxidase enzymes.…”

Association of environmental exposure to perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate with overweight/obesity and central obesity among children and adolescents in the United States of America using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005–2016

“…The ethnic differences may be due to differences in diet, exposure level, and metabolism. Several previous studies have revealed relationships between CIO, NO, and SCN levels and adverse effects such as death risk from cancer in smokers, allergic symptoms, cancer risk, and pulmonary disorders (Zhu et al, 2021;Shiue et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2001). The results from ecologic, experimental, and observational studies have shown divergent associations of exposure to SCN, NO, and CIO with thyroid hormone functions in different population groups, including adults, adolescents, pregnant women, and infants.…”