Asbestos and mesothelioma

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos and mesothelioma, by V. Scheidemandel, H.B. Eisenstadt, E.A. Gaensler (Annals of Internal Medicine, 1971).

The study

• Authors: V. Scheidemandel, H.B. Eisenstadt, E.A. Gaensler
• Journal: Annals of Internal Medicine
• Published: 1971;74(6):1014-5
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher
• In J-M's library: Johns-Manville's company medical library held a copy (J-M no. 001374).

In plain English

This item is not a research study but three letters to the editor about an earlier Annals report by Gaensler and Kaplan on asbestos and pleural effusions (fluid around the lungs). In the first letter, Scheidemandel noted that the Gaensler and Kaplan report described 12 patients with "idiopathic" pleural effusions, one of whom was recognized to have mesothelioma 9 years after the first effusion. The letter pointed out that, before the 1960 report by Wagner, Sleggs and Marchand, Weiss had reported in 1953 a case of a former asbestos insulation worker with pleural mesothelioma and asbestos bodies. That mesothelioma developed 31 years after first exposure, after 22 years of exposure. In the second letter, Eisenstadt stated that the writer's own papers from 1962 to 1965 had already described benign asbestos pleurisy. In reply, Gaensler wrote that the paper was not meant to review mesothelioma. Gaensler quoted an editorial by Selikoff and colleagues that credited Weiss with suggesting a link in 1953 and credited Wagner and associates with reporting 33 South African cases of diffuse pleural mesothelioma. Gaensler also said Eisenstadt's later papers repeatedly reported the same patients. No new data were presented.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Correspondence (letters to the editor and a reply); no original study
• Who was studied: No study population. The letters discuss Gaensler and Kaplan's earlier report of 12 patients with "idiopathic" pleural effusions, and a single case reported by Weiss in 1953
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in general. In the Weiss case cited by Scheidemandel, the patient was a former asbestos insulation worker. No fiber type is named
• Main results:
  • Scheidemandel cited a 1953 case reported by Weiss. A former asbestos insulation worker had a right malignant pleural effusion, and biopsy showed mesothelioma of the visceral and parietal pleura and asbestos bodies. The mesothelioma developed 31 years after initial exposure, after 22 years of total exposure. This is Weiss's case, not new data
  • Eisenstadt stated that benign asbestos-related pleural effusion had been described in the writer's earlier papers (1962, 1964, 1965 and a 1965 New York Academy of Sciences discussion)
  • Gaensler quoted an editorial by Selikoff and colleagues stating that Wagner and associates in 1960 reported 33 cases of diffuse pleural mesothelioma in South Africa. In that report, 32 of the 33 patients had at least suggestive evidence of potential asbestos exposure
  • Gaensler replied that Eisenstadt's later papers reported the same patients several times, while adding some new patients
• The authors' conclusion: Gaensler stated that the pleural effusion paper did not intend to review mesothelioma and asbestos. Gaensler also said that Wagner, Sleggs and Marchand have generally received credit for establishing the relationship on epidemiologic grounds

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Asbestosis, Lung cancer, Mesothelioma, Pleural plaques and thickening.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Asbestos-related disease from household exposure — G.R. Epler, M.X. Fitz Gerald, et al. (1980)
• Asbestos pleural effusion — E.A. Gaensler, A.I. Kaplan (1971)
• Asbestos pleural effusion: a clinical entity — G. Mårtensson, S. Hagberg, et al. (1987)
• Etiology of pleural effusions: analysis of more than 3,000 consecutive thoracenteses — J.M. Porcel, A. Esquerda, et al. (2014)
• Asbestos-associated chromosomal changes in human mesothelial cells — J.F. Lechner, T. Tokiwa, et al. (1985)
• Pleural effusion: laboratory tests in 300 cases — A. Hirsch, P. Ruffie, et al. (1979)

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