Western Isles Hospital has been selected to take part in a major new UK study into asbestos-related cancer.
The Stornoway hospital is one of fewer than 30 UK hospitals helping to get to the bottom of one of cancer’s longest-standing medical mysteries. The question being probed is how and why it can take decades for mesothelioma to develop after asbestos exposure.
Researchers are to recruit people in the Western Isles who may have been exposed to mesothelioma and have been diagnosed with benign non-cancerous inflammation of their lungs.
Currently, only about 40% of those diagnosed in Scotland with mesothelioma survive for over a year.
The University of Glasgow leads the Meso-ORIGINS study, which is funded by Cancer Research UK and aims to find a method to detect the disease earlier and examine whether it can be prevented.
Eligible patients who attend Stornoway and Raigmore Hospital in Inverness will be offered the chance to participate in the two-year study.
Mesothelioma is a cancer which develops in the pleural cavity, the protective lung layers, and is caused by asbestos exposure. Only a fraction of patients with this inflammation develop mesothelioma.
Asbestos fibres become embedded in various parts of the lungs, which means the disease develops at different rates.
The study participants’ medical data and tissue samples will help create a clearer picture of who is most at risk of developing mesothelioma. The findings will also pinpoint genetic differences or biological markers indicating a predisposition to mesothelioma.
Dr Alexandrea MacPherson, Meso-ORIGINS Project Manager at the University of Glasgow, told the Glasgow World website: “Mesothelioma is a disease of time and space – after initial asbestos exposure, it can evolve over decades at different times and different places within the pleural space.
“We want to understand why mesothelioma takes so long to develop and to discover new ways of predicting the disease so it can be caught early.
“Once diagnosed, there are very few effective treatments, so discovering the signs before it begins, and finding a way to prevent it developing, is key.”
The survival rate is currently very poor.
Usually, mesothelioma takes over four decades to appear. Early symptoms include chest pain, fatigue and constant coughing but can be mistaken for other illnesses.
According to Cancer Research UK, the UK has the highest incidence of mesothelioma globally. The disease is more prevalent in men as a result of occupation-related exposure, with rates significantly greater on the West Coast of Scotland than the Scottish average, accounting for about half of 200 new cases each year.
Industrial asbestos use was widespread from the 1950s to the 1980s, particularly in the wider Glasgow area and manufactured in towns such as Clydebank. It was particularly prevalent in heavy industry like the River Clyde’s shipyards, many of which employed men from the Western Isles.
Although asbestos was outlawed in the UK in the early 1990s, incidences of mesothelioma have increased in recent years due to the decades-long time it takes the disease to develop.
More information on the study and participation is available from Cancer Research UK.
Image credit - Ben Brooksbank via Creative Commons Licence
