Smoking Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Smoking, including details on cigarettes, cancer, lung, tar, nicotine.

An ecologic study of cancer mortality rates in Spain with respect to indices of solar UVB irradiance and smoking.

Grant WB

Sunlight, Nutrition, and Health Research Center (SUNARC) 2115 Van Ness Ave., MB 101 San Francisco, CA 94109-2510, USA. wbgrant@infionline.net

There is increasing evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of many types of cancer. Geographic variations in cancer mortality rates in Spain are apparently linked to variations in solar ultraviolet (UV) irradiances and other factors. Cancer mortality rates for 48 continental Spanish provinces for 1978-1992 were used in linear regression analyses with respect to mortality rates for latitude (an index of solar UVB levels), skin cancer (an index of high cumulative UVB irradiance), melanoma (an index related to solar UV irradiance and several other factors) and lung cancer (an index of cumulative effects of smoking). The 9 cancers with mortality rates significantly correlated with latitude for 1 or both sexes were brain, gastric, melanoma, nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), pancreatic, pleural, rectal and thyroid cancer. Inverse correlations with latitude were found for laryngeal, lung and uterine corpus cancer. The 17 cancers inversely correlated with NMSC are bladder, brain, breast, colon, esophageal, gallbladder, Hodgkin's lymphoma, lung, melanoma, multiple myeloma, NHL, ovarian, pancreatic, pleural, rectal, thyroid and uterine corpus cancer. The 16 correlated with melanoma are bladder, brain, breast, colon, gallbladder, leukemia, lung, multiple myeloma, NHL, ovarian, pancreatic, pleural, prostate, rectal, renal and uterine corpus cancer. The results for lung cancer were in accordance with the literature. These results provide more support for the UVB/vitamin D/cancer hypothesis and indicate a new way to investigate the role of solar UV irradiance on cancer risk. They also provide more evidence that melanoma and NMSC have different etiologies.

Published 25 January 2007 in Int J Cancer, 120(5): 1123-8.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2006-2008 Smoking Research Today. All Rights Reserved.