Detection of mesothioloma remains a conundrum

Our plain-English summary of Detection of mesothioloma remains a conundrum, by R. Kratzke (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2013).

The study

• Author: R. Kratzke
• Journal: Journal of the National Cancer Institute
• Published: 2013;105(4):254-5
• Type of article: Editorial, Comment
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This was an editorial, not a research study, and it reported no new data. The author commented on a study by Pairon and colleagues, published in the same issue of the journal, which used a French population from the Asbestos Past Exposure survey (APEXS). The author wrote that the standard belief had been that pleural plaques are not a signal of mesothelioma risk. The author described Pairon et al. as presenting, for the first time, what the author called solid and useful evidence that pleural plaques can be an accurate indicator of mesothelioma risk. The author cautioned that plaques alone have not been proven to be premalignant lesions. The author also mentioned the Wittenoom cohort in Western Australia, where asbestos was mined. Citing a Perth research team, the author wrote that the mesothelioma rate among exposed workers in the mining operation appears to be 4.7%. That figure comes from other research, not from this editorial. The author concluded that identifying at-risk patients through circulating markers or plaques seen on computed tomography would be an advance in monitoring, and that Pairon's work should prove a useful advance.

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: Editorial commentary on another article (Pairon et al.) in the same journal issue; no original data
• Who was studied: None studied directly. The editorial discusses the French Asbestos Past Exposure survey (APEXS) population used by Pairon et al., and the Wittenoom cohort of asbestos workers and residents in Western Australia studied by other researchers
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in general, with pleural plaques discussed as a possible marker of mesothelioma risk. The Wittenoom example involved asbestos mining and residential use for 40 years.
• Main results:
  • Not a finding of this article: the author described Pairon et al. as presenting evidence that pleural plaques can be an accurate indicator of mesothelioma risk
  • The author cautioned that plaques alone have not been proven to be premalignant lesions
  • Not a finding of this article: citing the Perth research team, the author reported a mesothelioma rate of 4.7% among exposed workers in the Wittenoom asbestos mining operation
  • The author noted that, as Pairon et al. say, the usefulness and methods of screening the exposed population remain controversial
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that identifying patients at risk for mesothelioma, through circulating markers or plaques seen on computed tomography, would be an advance in monitoring the at-risk population, and that Pairon and colleagues' work should prove a useful advance in this regard

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Detection of 8-oxo-2'-deoxyguanosine, a marker of oxidative DNA damage, in culture medium from human mesothelial cells exposed to crocidolite asbestos — Q. Chen, J. Marsh, et al. (1996)
• Inter-reader agreement in HRCT detection of pleural plaques and asbestosis in participants with previous occupational exposure to asbestos — F. Laurent, C. Paris, et al. (2014)
• Inter-reader variability in chest radiography and HRCT for the early detection of asbestos-related lung and pleural abnormalities in a cohort of 636 asbestos-exposed subjects — E. Ochsmann, T. Carl, et al. (2010)
• Impact of body mass index on the detection of radiographic localized pleural thickening — T.C. Larson, A. Franzblau, et al. (2014)
• Breast or chest? A diagnostic conundrum — J.C. Lee, S. Banerjee, et al. (2005)
• Asbestos-related cancers: the 'Hidden Killer' remains a global threat — N. van Zandwijk, G. Reid, et al. (2020)

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