Tumors of the pleura induced with asbestos and fibrous glass

Our plain-English summary of Tumors of the pleura induced with asbestos and fibrous glass, by P. Gross (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1973).

The study

• Author: P. Gross
• Journal: Journal of the National Cancer Institute
• Published: 1973;51(1):315-7
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This was a letter to the editor. The author questioned why Stanton and Wrench, in a 1972 study, called all chest tumors in rats given asbestos or fibrous glass mesotheliomas. The author argued that most such tumors consist only of fibrous tissue and may be fibrosarcomas arising from fibroblasts rather than from mesothelial cells. The author briefly described work in the author's own laboratory in which more than 400 rats received chest injections of various types and modifications of asbestos. Among the tumors that developed, there were 4 unquestionable mesotheliomas, 3 rhabdomyosarcomas, 2 osteogenic sarcomas, 1 lipofibrosarcoma and 25 fibrosarcomas. None invaded the lung more than superficially, and no metastases were noted. The author concluded that foreign material in a rat's chest may also stimulate cells other than mesothelium, such as muscle, bone and fat, to develop into cancer. The author also concluded that chest tumors in rats from glass dust and silica cannot be accepted as evidence of a cancer risk for humans.

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: Letter to the editor commenting on another study (Stanton and Wrench, 1972), with a brief description of the author's own rat experiment
• Who was studied: More than 400 rats in the author's laboratory; no location or dates given beyond the author's department
• Exposure: Injections into the chest of various types and modifications of asbestos (specific fiber types not named); the letter also discusses fibrous glass and silica used in other rat studies
• Main results:
  • In the author's rats given asbestos, 4 tumors were judged unquestionable mesotheliomas
  • The remaining tumors in the author's rats were 3 rhabdomyosarcomas, 2 osteogenic sarcomas, 1 lipofibrosarcoma and 25 fibrosarcomas
  • None of these tumors invaded the lung more than superficially, and no metastases were seen
  • In the author's rats, masses of fibroblastic inflammatory tissue arose from ulcerated areas of the pleura where asbestos was present
  • The author had not seen spontaneous fibrosarcomas in the body cavities of about 10,000 rats studied in the laboratory
• The authors' conclusion: The authors' view: foreign material in a rat's chest may stimulate cells other than mesothelium to become cancer, and rat chest tumors from glass dust and silica cannot be accepted as evidence of carcinogenic potential for humans

Topics

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

Related studies

• Fibrous glass and cancer — P.F. Infante, L.D. Schuman, et al. (1994)
• A comparison of the effects of exposure of baboons to crocidolite and fibrous-glass dusts — B. Goldstein, R.E. Rendall, et al. (1983)
• Pulmonary response of hamsters to fibrous glass: chronic effects of repeated intratracheal instillation with or without benzo[a]pyrene — V.J. Feron, P.M. Scherrenberg, et al. (1985)
• Cytotoxicity, oxidative stress and genotoxicity induced by glass fibers on human alveolar epithelial cell line A549 — V. Rapisarda, C. Loreto, et al. (2015)
• Chronic inhalation toxicity of size-separated glass fibers in Fischer 344 rats — T.W. Hesterberg, W.C. Miiller, et al. (1993)
• Pathogenicity of a special-purpose glass microfiber (E glass) relative to another glass microfiber and amosite asbestos — R.T. Cullen, A. Searl, et al. (2000)

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