CLL: Role of Lifestyle, Environmental Exposure
There can be no doubt about the fact that your genetics influences your chance of getting CLL. CLL is a familial cancer, with too many family clusters of patients to ignore. If you are a CLL patient, chances that your kids or grandkids will also be diagnosed with CLL at some point in their lives goes up seven-fold, compared to the general population.
There is also no doubt that different genetic pools of people have different risk of getting CLL. This disease is a lot more common in the Western countries than it is in the East. But that may be changing. A just published article in “Blood” underlines this distinction between the importance of genetics and the role played by lifestyles and / or environmental factors in risk of CLL. The abstract is below; send me a personal email if you want help locating the full text article.
Blood. 2010 Aug 16. [Epub ahead of print]
The incidence of chronic lymphocytic leukemia in Taiwan, 1986-2005: a distinct, increasing trend with birth-cohort effect.
Wu SJ, Huang SY, Lin CT, Lin YJ, Chang CJ, Tien HF.
Division of Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan;
Abstract
The incidence of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in Taiwan is markedly lower than that in Western countries, but we have seen a drastically increasing trend. We explored this distinct incidence trend of CLL for Taiwanese. The epidemiologic data of CLL for Taiwanese and Caucasian Americans during 1986-2005 were obtained from the Taiwan National Cancer Registry and Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program, respectively. The individual effects of time period and birth cohort on the incidence trends were analyzed using an age-period-cohort model. Though there was a weak period effect corresponding to the increased applications of immunophenotyping in 1991-1995 in Taiwan, evidences suggested that the age-adjusted incidence rate of CLL for Taiwanese was continuously increasing during the 20-year period while that for Caucasian Americans remained steady. In addition, a much stronger birth-cohort effect was identified for Taiwanese but not for Caucasian Americans. This effect corresponded to the westernization of lifestyle in Taiwan since 1960. We conclude that, in addition to the ethnic difference of incidence, there is distinct increasing incidence trend of CLL in Taiwan. The strong birth-cohort effect underlying this increasing trend indicates that lifestyles and environmental factors may play a role in the development of CLL for Taiwanese.
PMID: 20713960
CLL in Taiwan
As the authors point out, CLL occurrence in Taiwan is significantly lower than that in America (Caucasian Americans – important to get that distinction, we are truly a melting pot of various ethnic groups). CLL is the most common adult leukemia in the West, with an incidence rate of between 2-6 cases each year per 100,000 people. In Taiwan, the rate is more than ten-fold lower, typically about 0.3 cases each year per 100,000 people. The graph below summarizes the information.
Changing trends over time
While Taiwanese people continue to be less at risk of CLL incidence even to this day, there is clear evidence that things are changing over time. In Caucasian Americans the incidence remained remarkably steady for both sexes, (between 3.9 – 4.1 for men and 1.9 – 2.1 for women) over this time period. But that is not the case in Taiwan. There the incidence of CLL increased both for men and women, 0.16 to 0.47 for men and 0.05 to 0.24 for women. Give them another couple of decades and it is easy to see CLL will be just as prevalent in that part of the world too. What fun, misery loves company.
This is the kind of stuff that epidemiologists love to track and analyze. The data shows something is changing in Taiwan, causing more people to develop CLL. Since it is not likely that the genetic make-up of Taiwanese people has changed during this time period, the authors express strong suspicion that the causes are likely to be environmental factors or lifestyle changes.
The age of industrialization began around 1960 in Taiwan. Once industrialization takes root, can Big Macs be far behind? Younger Taiwanese consume more calories, their diets are more likely to have higher percentage of animal fat and protein than the traditional Taiwanese diet practiced by their parents. This is also reflected in increasing incidence of childhood obesity in kids, something that was not very common at all prior to Westernization of their dietary habits. Industrialization is also invariably accompanied by higher degree of exposure to chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, radiation and other potential carcinogenic hazards. Increasing prosperity level also brings higher consumption of tobacco products, cosmetic products such as hair dyes etc.
It is interesting to note that there is a clear sex difference in the incidence of CLL, both in Caucasians and Taiwanese. More men get CLL than women. But the increasing trend of CLL in Taiwan is shown clearly for both men and women, suggesting that whatever changes in lifestyle or environmental factors that are driving this increase effects both sexes equally.
How about them viruses?
Di you know mice can get leukemia too? There is this particular virus called MLV (Murine leukemia viruses), one of the members of a family of retroviruses known to cause cancer in mice, that has been in the news recently. Recent studies have linked it to chronic fatigue syndrome.
We wrote about the role of viral infections in an earlier articles, and specifically the murine leukemia virus. Please refer to them for more details.
Let’s see: CLL patients are immune compromised; therapy often makes the immune suppression worse than it was, at least for a period of time while their bodies recover from the insult of chemotherapy drugs. Our guys are likely to get all sorts of viral infections during periods of deep immune suppression. How about MLV, is this one of the risk factors? I have not seen any reports linking MLV to the mind numbing fatigue experienced by CLL patients, one of the infamous “B-symptoms” that suggests therapy is not too far away. By the way, this virus has also been linked to other cancers such as prostate cancer in humans. The article below suggests as many as 10 million people in the US are infected with murine leukemia virus and it is spread from human to human.
Retrovirus Linked to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
XMRV Seen in 2/3 of CFS Patients; 10 Million in U.S. May Carry Virus
By Daniel J. DeNoon
Oct. 8, 2009 – Some 10 million Americans may carry a recently discovered retrovirus now linked to chronic fatigue syndrome.
The virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus or XMRV, was detected in 67% of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome by Vincent C. Lombardi, PhD, of the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nev., and colleagues.
The researchers also found the virus in nearly 4% of healthy comparison subjects — suggesting that millions of Americans may carry the mysterious virus, which was first detected in prostate cancers.
“The discovery of XMRV in two major diseases, prostate cancer and now chronic fatigue syndrome, is very exciting. If cause and effect is established, there would be a new opportunity for prevention and treatment of these diseases,”said Robert H. Silverman, PhD, of Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, in a statement emailed to WebMD.
Where did the virus come from? The virus is closely related to a retrovirus that’s become part of the mouse genome. Oddly, XMRV cannot infect mouse cells — but can easily infect human cells. It’s unlikely that so many humans have caught XMRV from mice. It’s more likely that the virus is spread from human to human, but how that happens remains to be seen.
“If these figures are borne out in larger studies, it would mean that perhaps 10 million people in the United States and hundreds of millions worldwide are infected with a virus whose pathogenic potential for humans is still unknown,” they write. What is known is that viruses closely related to XMRV do cause many different diseases — including cancer — in other warm-blooded animals
I am being just a tad paranoid here, but someone said paranoid people have real enemies too. What is the take home message? There is a lot of stuff out there that you cannot do much about. But you can and must take responsibility for the things you do control – such as your diet, your level of personal hygiene, exercise, avoidance of situations where you are more likely to catch nasty viral infections. CLL patients do not get much joy from vaccinations, so we must be extra vigilant in prevention of infection in the first place.
The Taiwanese experience reported above suggests that genetics are not the only game in town, that lifestyle and environmental factors play a role as well in the incidence of CLL. If you are a CLL patient, you cannot go back in time and prevent it from happening in the first place – that train has already left the station. In your case, you already have the damn disease and all you can do is figure out how to deal with it as intelligently as you can.
But how about your kids and grandkids? Sure, they have this not-so-lovely genetic gift courtesy of your CLL. But that does not mean they are guaranteed to get diagnosed with CLL down the road. It just means the odds are higher than if they had no first degree blood relative with CLL. How about shifting those odds downward for them, with a few smart changes in lifestyle and general awareness of cancer prevention?Even if CLL is not in their future, they surely will be healthier and happier if they avoided some of the common health hazards prominently displayed on our grocery shelves. Get your kids to quit playing quite as many computer games or watching TV, get them to go out and play – like prior generations of kids used to do. Help them to avoid the dangers of smoking, teach them good habits of personal hygiene. You know, all the commonsense things we all know are good for us.
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33 comments on "What causes CLL? (and can we do anything about it?)"
Nobody knows what causes CLL. The usual suspects for cancer generally are radiation, viruses and chemicals. I have written about radiation (http://mutated-unmuated.blogspot.com/2007/08/radiation-and-cll.html). The evidence is very minor and not very convincing. As for viruses, people have tried to make EB virus fit the plot, but I am unconvinced. It is always hard to be sure since in an immunodeficient patient, viruses that normally lie dormant start to wake up. Their presence may be the consequence of the CLL not its cause. As far as chemicals are concerned, You can get a pension if you were exposed to agent orange in Viet Nam and later get CLL, but no other chemical exposure will win you a law suit.
The Taiwanese experiments are interesting, though another explanation could be better case finding. The incidence in East Asians is still far below that of Caucasians.
Yet another informative and insightful documentation from you Chaya, Thank you again.
As an additional cause beyond genetics, diet and other causes allow me to speculate with some efficacy the use of chemicals of industrial use as a probable cause of CLL.
In my case diet was always good, no fatty foods, processed foods etc, no family history of CLL while exercise in swimming and yoga seemed to keep the wolf from the door. However in my chosen work I have been exposed to various volatile chemicals as free radicals including lacquer thinner, epoxy animides and worst of all polyvinyl chloride solvents. Sure enough my white cells went to 435,000 and CLL became the bane of existence four years ago.
My take on such contamination by these free radicals is that once inhaled the molecule of these toxins gets into the blood stream and then white cells are confounded by such manmade foreign elements and since the existing white cells cannot destroy these molecules the bone marrow produces many many more immature white cells to combat the invader…. to no avail, and so continues producing these immature cells. Which as we all know is the foundation of leukemia.
I refer to the adage; “To soon old, to late smart”.
Byron
Ditto in my case… I always ate right and worked out, no family history, but chronically exposed to lacquer thinners, oil based paints and products, polyeurathanes, and pesticides working on very old houses… I am pretty sure that basically I poisoned myself.. I am trying to train the kids to be smarter than me…
I agree…
“Too soon old, too late smart”.
Glenn
Terry:
The authors do discuss the possibility of better case finding as the culprit – and suggest that is not what is causing the increased incidence of CLL diagnosis in Taiwan.
I can personally attest to sharply increased use of pretty nasty pesticides and herbicides in Taiwan in recent years. In my earier life I was senior licensing manager for Mobil. Among the technology I licensed was the manufacture of pyridine using zeolite catalysts. Pyridine is a nasty chemical, far worse than benzene in its carcinogenicity. The pesticides / herbicides made using this chemical building block are banned in most of the developed countries. But not in Taiwan, and not in India. In a short ten year stint while I did business in Taiwan, I saw a huge spike in the amount of pyridine (and its compounds) manufactured in Taiwan. I made a lot of money for Mobil Oil, I got rewarded handsomely with stock options and salary increases. Back then the emission standards were rather lax and the manufacturing plants reeked of the stuff. I wonder how many of the workers were later diagnosed with cancers.
Lovely people, the Taiwanese. Fun loving, generous, courteous and always ready to throw a party at the smallest pretext.
Chaya,
Thank you so much for the updates.
Stay well,
Monique
Very interesting questions. Another animal leukemia worth mentioning is the kitty leukemia. The lucky things have a vaccine that protects them from the most common viral agent and feline leukemia is much more rare.
What is the difference? We know the antigen for the cats. This is an ongoing search in CLL and there may be many antigens that converge and lead to what we call CLL.
To think there is some common antigen that causes CLL begs the question, why aren’t there more cases? I think it is like chicken pox and shingles. Most everyone gets exposed to chicken pox but only a small percentage get shingles decades later.
I have posted before this mystery, but it is a clear argument for viral involvement. Normal B cells are routinely immortalized with EBV, Epstein-Barr Virus, but it is absolutely impossible to transform anyone’s CLL cells with EBV. I blame a smallpox/cowpox type immunity but there could also be funny things going on that prevents entry etc. CLL cells can have viral infections, just not EBV. Also there are anecdotal stories of CLL patients becoming much better after strong antibiotics like Bactrim, not that antibiotics are supposed to work on viruses.
For me, I believe many factors contributed to my cll but I will never know for sure (and that’s okay). My mother and uncle had lymphoma (and all 3 of us lived on the family farm and around agricultural chemicals); house remodeling and exposure to chemicals; lifestyle choices better now than when I was younger; I have sarcoid (which can lead to leukemia); and stress. I do have a well-balanced diet and routinely exercise. If I could go back and change just one thing, it would be better management of stresses in my environment. I do think this article does hint at the importance to our human race and world of “green” living and “green technology” and “simpler” living going forward.
I am a FR-treated patient (May 2008) and will probably come up for retreatment sometime within the next several months (FR worked well for me so perhaps I repeat that regimen). Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m planning to stay as healthy as I can. And there is always hope … I’m eager to see how the trials pans out with PCI 32765.
As always, you have prepared another educational and informative topic. Thank you, Chaya.
Judy
Personally,I won’t leave radiation off the hook for my breast cancer or cll. Twenty years of mammgrams starting at age 33 2-3 shots a side–higher radiation then it is now. and Over the years that;s a lot when I was going every 6 months before diagnosis. Then at diagnosis got hit with 8 mammograms a cat scan of breast and bone scan. (Ironically none of those tests found the second tumor that the surgeon got by accident by 1mm.) Then two years later two cat scans. Bingo CLL started to show up within3-4 years.
Marilyn
I would like to disagree with Terry Hamblin on one point. He says only the Agent Orange pesticide has been successfully linked in court with causing CLL.
The organophosphate Pentachloraphenol, used to treat wood against wood worm,has also been linked numerous times with CLL. If you Google in Pentachloraphenol and CLL, there are very many occasions when relatives have successfully sued.
The problem is, the exposure – and only one part in a billion of this chemical is proved to cause cancer – was often very short but it was many years before the CLL showed up. The time from exposure to Pentachloraphenol and onset of CLL is between 14 to 17 years, when no one would think to connect the two together.
I had a blood test through my GP, so I had proof of exposure from the previous owners spraying our house for wood worm (they weren’t negligent, they just didn’t know the dangers). Then, 15 years later, I was diagnosed with CLL. Incidently, the blood test also showed up DDT, and pesticides from cock roach spraying in our previous flat.
These nasties seem to have a habit of hanging around, deep in our bodies and like a depth charge, going off years later.
It’s interesting that the two hot spots for CLL in the USA are in Minnesota – agricultural crop spraying and New York City – regular spraying against cock roaches, every three months inside apartments over decades.
Simple……..My Dad had CLL, I’ve got CLL.
My understanding of the culprit that got us with Agent Orange was the high Dioxin content of the Rainbow Herbicides from forcing the manufacturing process, plus of course the haphazard way the chemicals were applied undiluted, spilled, dumped because of ground fire, sprayed into the wind over mine fields, unwashed barrels used to store water or gasoline or for showers, etc.
If that’s true then I wouldn’t live in the vicinity of an incinerator used to burn chlorine containing materials. Different kinds of incinerators emit varying amounts of dioxin. I just read an article on the increase in cancer incidence both downwind and upwind of such incinerators.
Good article, Chaya
Be well!
Jim
Like the first two posters, there is no history of CLL in my family, but surprise I have CLL. Chaya mentioned Pyridine; I am pretty sure that I sprayed that around in a greenhouse environment to fight spider mites several years before I was diagnosed. I think I may have some in a box in storage and plan to check this out next time I move and begin unpacking.
In 1968 I took 5 gallons of pentachlorophenol and spread it all over the inside of a 28 foot cedar/oak boat hull prior to building the inside and cabin top. It was hot, I was using a large brush, and i got it all over myself. I later learned about the extremely toxic nature of the dioxins in that wood preservative. Now I have CLL with bialleic deletion of 13q14 3…a condition that there does not seem to be much informtion about. The likely cause of the Taiwan cancer growth would seem to me to be milk consumption…specifically milk fat, which does an excellent job of accumulating toxins, dioxins included,from the environment. If one were to go about devising a device for accumulating and storing dioxins from the environment, one would be hard pressed to find anything better than mammary glands. jlj
On the radiation connection: as a kid, shoe stores had a viewing box where one could see their toes inside of the shoes. This was supposed to help make sure the shoes fit properly. Two view ports, one for kids and one for the salesperson and then of course the parents and siblings would look. I was great fun to put your feet in the machine and then look down and watch the toes wiggle in the shoes…long exposures to some kind of radiation–likely xrays. By the early 50’s these machines disappeared–I expect as people understood that radiation was cumulatively dangerous.
In mid 60’s, I also handled acetone without gloves in aerospace industry. After a few years, gloves became standard protection as people realized that the stuff penetrated into the bones of the hands.
Captain makes a really good point about the efficiency of mammories in storing pesticides. Our body stores these nasty toxins deep in the bone and fat tissue for safe keeping. Breast feeding is the only way to rid ourselves of these chemicals and globally boys breast feed longer than girls, average ten months compared to three months for girls. Maybe this might go some way to explaining the gender difference in CLL? I read that for every one case of breast cancer in China where they don’t use cow dairy, there are 500,000 cases in the West.
Good morning,
Thank you, Chaya, for this article.
We all know that benzene is associated with leukemia, and here is a new study on formaldeyhyde’s association with acute myelogenous leukemia.
Thanks again.
Sally
Hum Exp Toxicol. 2010 Aug 20. [Epub ahead of print]
Hematological and toxicological evaluation of formaldehyde as a potential cause of human leukemia.
Goldstein BD.
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Abstract
Epidemiological findings suggesting that formaldehyde exposure is associated with a higher risk of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) and other hematological cancers have led to consideration of the potential mechanism of action by which inhalation of this rapidly reactive agent can cause bone marrow cancer. Two major mechanism-based arguments against formaldehyde as a leukemogen have been the difficulty in envisioning how inhaled formaldehyde might penetrate to the bone marrow; and the lack of similarity of non-cancer effects to other known human myeloleukemogens, particularly the absence of pancytopenia in humans or laboratory animals exposed to high levels. However, both of these arguments have been addressed by the recent finding of a pancytopenic effect and chromosomal abnormalities in heavily exposed Chinese workers which, if replicated, are indicative of a genotoxic effect of formaldehyde on hematopoietic stem cells that is in keeping with other known human leukemogens. Review of the body of evidence suggests an apparent discrepancy between studies in laboratory animals, which generally fail to show evidence of penetration of formaldehyde into the blood or evidence of blood or bone marrow genotoxicity, and studies of exposed humans in which there tends to be evidence of genotoxicity in circulating blood cells. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is species difference. Another possible explanation is that myeloid precursors within the nasal mucosa may be the site for leukemogenesis. However, chloromas, which are local collections of myeloid tumor cells, are rarely if ever found in the nose. Other proposed mechanisms for formaldehyde leukemogenesis are reviewed, and dose issues at the interface between the epidemiological and hematotoxicological findings are explored.
Just to put the contrarian view out there, I spent the major part of my adult life in and around refineries and petrochemical plants. Before that, I was a chemistry graduate student – this was well before we recognized the dangers of benzene etc. I remember washing my hands in the stuff to get rid of grease. Bottom line, I must have had much higher chemical and carcinogenic exposure than most ordinary people. I remain cancer free to this date.
My husband PC, on the other hand, was a banker. And he never, ever did the lawnwork himself. I think the only chemical he had exposure to was the old “white-out” – you know, the goop used to correct typing mistakes back before word processing became the rage.
Go figure. PC was asian, almost zero exposure to chemicals, and he was the one who got CLL. What may have been more relevant in his case is that his father died of colon cancer in his early 50’s.
Hi, Chaya,
First of all, I am THRILLED that you have been untouched by cancer.
Unfortunately, since benzene is omnipresent, benzene exposure is insidious. Just being on the driveway can impart toxic benzene. Benzene can be found in tons of things, especially flavored foods – jello, candies, lozenges, cookies,and cakes, plus vaseline products, cooking oil, bottled water, cold cereal, toothpaste, chewing gum, ice cream, vitamin supplements, baking soda, rice cakes, soaps, etc.
As stated by MT Smith in the Annu Rev Public Health in January 2010, “There is probably no safe level of exposure to benzene, and all exposures constitute some risk in a linear, if not supralinear, and additive fashion.” … Also in the abstract: “Benzne is a ubiquitous chemical in our environment that causes acute leukemia and probably other hematological cancers.”
Sally
Thanks Chaya. Blair has spoken with his kids about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. They are aware of good food sources, regular exercise, have never smoked etc. I have always wondered what price we are paying for living in a large city! Each year I suspect the risk is higher. Its hard to balance the need for clean air etc. with the location requirements of our careers. Its so important to be vigilant about protecting our bodies. One big step in protecting our health is cooking most, if not all, of our meals. This ensures we have control over our food sources. I don’t like not knowing where the eggs in my omelette came from (especially these days!) We prepare our lunches and take them with us each day. It helps us control our weight and prevents eating the trash served as “food” by most establishments. Our food tastes better too! Blair is a great cook (he hates when I say that but its true).
Barb
Well we still don’t know what factors may cause cll. However it probably
has been around a long long time before any leukemias were discovered.
Personally I’m an anti-carb crank. Sugars and carbs are I suspect the villan in many diseases, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, some cancers, prostate colon breast maybe and others.
As meat cheese egg person with next to no carbs over the past few years I (aside from cll) am healthy than ever. So lets not be to quick to condemn the fat and proteins.
who knows?
Thanks for the info about Pentachloraphenol. I think everyone learns from this forum.
The math for a familial link in CLL is one of the strongest of any cancer but I see no way to tease out the effects of diet and environment, particularly in the association between asians and the west. I am not aware of any sets of identical twins separated at near birth and subsequently studies for CLL, as in other studies.
Families usually (less now) eat together and are exposed to most of the same chemicals and molds, etc.
The strongest familial argument in CLL is the so called Lynch family, which has been extensively studied by Lynch and many men, but no women, have been found to have CLL. The gene that was supposed to be responsible, Death-associated protein kinase (DAPK), made a Cell paper and some fame for the authors but the efforts to show that this gene is functionally relevant to CLL have nor produced any follow up papers from any lab and now DAPK is not usually mentioned in reviews of familial CLL.
If it is hereditary, there has to be a gene, some epigenetic mechanism or some unknown mechanism. For me it is still a toss up between diet, exposure with heredity playing a role for susceptibility in only a minority of cases.
Chaya, How lucky you are and lucky for us too, that you are cancer free – long may it remain so. Maybe you being a vegetarian has contributed to your health. The further up the food chain we eat, the more toxins are stored. I am sure whether we get cancer or not is a combination of environment and genes.
In my family, my maternal grandparents were first cousins, and my sister developed acute myloid leukemia in her twenties. But my consultant said that although there was no genetic link between the two types, there was probably a genetic intolerance to toxins in our family.
When Pentachloraphenol was used to treat wood in timber factories, not all the workers exposed to it went on to develop CLL but maybe a cluster of six with unlucky genes, would.
Likewise not everyone who smokes gets cancer but enough do to make a case against it, although the tobacco companies denied the causal link for so many years. Now the petro-chemical industries are doing the same about the accumulative effects of years of exposure to a cocktail of toxic chemicals.
I agree with Molly. I’m the only one in our family with cll. I find it interesting, Chaya, that my father died of colon cancer at 51. He was trained as a mechanical engineer, but worked most of his life as an oil and gas engineer running gasoline refineries, compressor plants, etc. So who knows?
Some thought it was from eating a high meat protein diet with few vegetables most of his life, plus you couldn’t get him to take an aspirin for any reason. I think he was pretty typical of the WWII generation.
Jim
Chaya, thank you once again for a very informative explanation as to the possibility that CLL could be environmental. I have been around all kinds of chemicals as a hairdresser in my earlier years, hair dyes, and cosmetics. Yes, benzene is in just about every hand cream,sunscreen,and most hand soaps,gel soaps,shampoos,conditioners etc. My husband has also been diagnosed this year with CLL. June 2010. I was diagnosed in 2003. SO there you have it. We think because of his involvement as a car dealer and also he worked on cars with the gas and oil and gojo he used to clean his hands, paint thinners, mineral spirits and on and on. He hasn’t been in that line of work in years but the exposure I think has caught up with him. Our children will no doubt get something from all of this as well. We are both now in the clinical trial @NIH in Bethesda. If we only knew then what we know now, I am sure we both would have been spared this.. My brother in law on the other hand, is a recipient of Agent Orange in Vietnam..
My other siblings do not have CLL..some people are more susceptible than others it seems.
Molly has a point of considerable relevance in that China and Taiwan are essentially the same ethnic group. The indigenous people of Taiwan are an oppressed minority genetically tied to the Polynesians who explored and settled just about every island in the entire Pacific Ocean. CLL is only one of the cancers that are rare in China, and the vast difference in milk consumption is an obvious red flag. Carcinogenic dioxins have been documented as attaching to fat molecules and accumulating in fatty tissue and milk. What is alarming to me is that I cannot find past or present epidemiological studies in the U.S. that address this connection. There are obvious enormous consequences of a link between “Does a body good!” milk and cancers. The seemingly lack of published and ongoing studies concerning that connection makes me wonder about a cover-up by the American Dairy Association that what echoes what the tobacco industry did. I do not believe in conspiracy theories, but this is jumping out at me. jlj
Thank you Captain. You are a voice in the wilderness.
My father, his father, and my mother’s father all died of heart problems in their sixties. I knew of this at an early age. my father died when I was 25, and have lived a life to guard against the same fate. My doctor’s have through the years placed me at risk for heart attack in the lower 5% for my age group as a result, I think, of my lifestyle efforts.
Unfortunately I went through a six month period of extreme stress which literally brought me to my knees, family illness care giving situation. One year later came the diagnosis of CLL. With no family examples of cancer except for a recent lung cancer incident for my mother, big time smoker, I’m throwing my extreme stress on the pile of reasons.
Certainly exposure to chemicals and radiation is high on the list of problem causes and almost impossible to avoid in our culture and almost as impossible to monitor. The first question they asked at the VA after diagnosis was about my possible exposure to agent orange which was negative. But reading these posts show the casual exposure possibilities to to various chemicals to be extreme.
Hearing all the antidotal reasons in this thread as well as the clinical evaluations is great. Thank you Chaya for providing such a resource.
I read with much interest the comments of others and for the record my family on both sides are long lived and die when their hearts give up. There has been no record of any blood cancer or lymphomas in our family and only rare instances of solid cancer with the exception of Dad who contracted bladder cancer at 82 and lived for 5 years without therapy and reasonable QoL. Incidentally; he had a tree business and we were kids playing on ground where spilled poisons (DDT, Methoxachlor and Malathion)were everywhere. He was a 4-pack a day smoker switching to a pipe in his 70s. He ate meat and potatoes period.
I had exposure to poisons used in his business and agent orange exposure in Nam. After leaving the Army I worked for three years in a two person research lab as a histology technician where I was exposed to zylene, toulene, chloroform and formaldehyde on a daily basis. The senior lab tech committed suicide when cancerous polyps appeared in number all along his nasal passages after ten years of working there.
Later in my working career I was exposed to Pentachloraphenol, paint thinners, lead, various solvents, glue-components and herbicides to provide a partial list of potential environmental insults that could be responsible for my CLL. Oh yea, I was a heavy milk drinker until I hit 50 (67 now).
The bio-mechanics and extreme heterogeneity of CLL paints a complex picture for the deteriorating and chaotic chromosomal condition that is CLL. What is intriguing to me, from this discussion, is that whatever the original genesis for an individual’s CLL, could the progression be slowed by identifying and controlling the pathogens that may become opportunistically significant as drivers of disease progression. Chronic B-Cell Receptor (BCR) antigen stimulation has for some time been focused on for the cause of more aggressive cases. Since we are unique hosts to many viruses, bacteria and fungal agents it might provide important clues to know more about their relationship to the way CLL behaves and to each individual’s immune function.
WWW
Interesting ! Jack has had CLL since 2007…I was diagnoised in June of this year. Dr. went to said its not “catching” and NOT heriderty.
After our trip to Houston and seeing Dr. Keating, we learned different.
I think there were tests done to see about genetics and will take a bit to get test results.Our daughter was with us, at one point and time, seveal years ago, she was told by a dr. to have testing done but never has. We are now hopeful she will get to a dr. soon and the MDAnderson trip helped her and us too understand CLL a little bit more.
Jack had a construction business and I would travel with him. Worked on many “burn outs” nasty cleanups, chemicals etc.
Daughter lives in an area that has several cement plants and the air is
“thick” most of the time. In fact, the day we arrived , both got sore throats, running nose, coughs, itchy eyes..
Thanks to all for helping us new CLLers understand more and more,
MLMG
Wow, Thanks to you all for sharing your info. I grew up in the Kanowa valley of WVa and my dad brought mercury home (for us kids to play with) from the chemical plant on the river where he worked. Moved into an old house filled with bugs and Mom was the DDT queen for months. I’m the only one left of the family–lots of cancers. Diag. 1 1/2 yr ago,(w&w so far). My husband and I visited Thailand, Cambodia and Laos 2 yr ago–were there a month, visiting and traveling as the locals do. We only saw 3 older-folks out in public. In China 5 yr ago, there were very few wild birds to be seen. Kinda, wonder if our species is on the brink and I’m an optimust!
I am a volunteer with the Northwood Gratitude and Honor Memorial in CA, and through it I have come into contact with surviving family members of service men and women who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know of one case where the Veterans Administration certified that the proximate cause of a soldier’s case of leukemia was repeated exposure in Iraq to burn pits where fragments of DU (depleted uranium)was burned. (DU is the principle component of a type of shell fired by the US M1A1 tank.) The soldier died despite treatment at MD Anderson. Unfortunately, the Pentagon refuses to acknowledge his death was service related.
I was diagnosed a year ago. When I was a boy, age 13, which would make it 1973, I worked on a farm. I can remember the owner of the farm telling me that the herbicide I was about to apply, was the good stuff, “this is made by folks who made agent orange”. Not sure if it is revalent,or even true, but does make me wonder. I worked there every summer for 7 years.
With a higher incidnece of CLL in men than in women …. might drugs that are alleged to enhance sexual performance be one of the culprits?
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