title: Pharyngeal and cervical cancer incidences significantly correlate with personal UV doses among whites in the United States.
abstract: Because we found UV-exposed oral tissue cells have reduced DNA repair and apoptotic cell death compared with skin tissue cells, we asked if a correlation existed between personal UV dose and the incidences of oral and pharyngeal cancer in the United States. We analyzed the International Agency for Research on Cancer's incidence data for oral and pharyngeal cancers by race (white and black) and sex using each state's average annual personal UV dose. We refer to our data as 'white' rather than 'Caucasian,' which is a specific subgroup of whites, and 'black' rather than African-American because blacks from other countries around the world reside in the U.S. Most oropharyngeal carcinomas harboured human papilloma virus (HPV), so we included cervical cancer as a control for direct UV activation. We found significant correlations between increasing UV dose and pharyngeal cancer in white males (p=0.000808) and females (p=0.0031) but not in blacks. Shockingly, we also found cervical cancer in whites to significantly correlate with increasing UV dose (p=0.0154). Thus, because pharyngeal and cervical cancer correlate significantly with increasing personal UV dose in only the white population, both direct (DNA damage) and indirect (soluble factors) effects may increase the risk of HPV-associated cancer.
authors.affiliation: Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A. Dianne.Godar@FDA.HHS.GOV.
authors.forename: Dianne E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Godar
authors.affiliation: Food and Drug Administration, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Silver Spring, MD, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Rong
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Marquette University, Department of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Milwaukee, WI, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Merrill
mesh_terms: D044383:Black People; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D009959:Oropharyngeal Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology*; D011159:Population Surveillance; D012737:Sex Factors; D013472:Sunlight / Q000009:adverse effects; D014466:Ultraviolet Rays / Q000009:adverse effects*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D044465:White People; D001741:Black or African American
keywords: Cervical cancer; cytokines; environment; human papilloma virus; oral cancer; oropharyngeal cancer; pharyngeal cancer; sunlight; ultraviolet