Weed Killer Agent Orange May Increase the Risk of Blood Cancer Among Veterans

New study evaluated the association between exposure to the chemical agent orange and the development of blood cancer with increased bleeding and blood clot formation.

Exposure to Agent Orange increased the risk of developing myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), which are stem cell disorders that can lead to the overproduction of mature blood cells complicated by an increased risk of blood clots in arteries and veins. When MPNs progress, they can become deadly blood cancers.

This was found as a result of research conducted at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Washington DC VA Medical Center on a database of veterans. The findings will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2023 annual meeting in Chicago in June.

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‘Agent Orange (AO) is a chemical herbicide that was utilized during the Vietnam War and was associated with an increased risk of developing progressive blood cancers in veterans exposed.#blood cancer #herbicide #myeloproliferative neoplasm’

Agent Orange is an herbicide that was utilized by the United States military in Korea and Vietnam to clear foliage during combat. It has been associated with sarcomas and B-cell lymphomas, but not MPNs or blood cancers to date ().

MPNs are associated with serious cardiovascular events and people with this disease have decreased overall survival chances. But until now, researchers haven’t been able to fully ascertain whether Agent Orange exposure truly leads to the development of myeloproliferative neoplasms ().

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To answer this, researchers have conducted the biggest population-based study to date. They utilized the Veterans Affairs Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) database and examined records of 93,269 MPN patients among 12,352,664 veterans over 17 years.

The researchers used veterans from the state of Illinois as a control population since Illinois is highly representative of the United States according to the US Census Bureau. The odds of Agent Orange exposure among MPNs are 1.63 times greater than the odds of exposure among controls.

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When comparing people with MPNs vs. age, gender, and race-matched controls, there was more clotting in the arteries (37% vs. 18.5%), more clotting in the veins (14.8% vs. 5.2%) and more bleeding events (39.1% vs. 13.5%), respectively.

People with MPNs had more hypertension (75.5% vs. 43.2%), diabetes (31.2% vs. 19%), and more heart failure (26.1% vs. 11%) than age, gender, and race-matched controls, respectively.

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The odds of Agent Orange exposure among matched controls with arterial clots are 1.38 times greater than the odds of exposure among controls without arterial clots. The odds of Agent Orange exposure among MPNs with arterial clots are 1.49 times greater than the odds of exposure among MPNs without arterial clots ().

Because the findings only point to possible associations and not causes, researchers will need to dive more deeply into the biology of the disease. Specifically, they want to look at JAK2 mutations, which are one of the three driver mutations of MPNs that can cause uncontrolled proliferation of stem cells. JAK2 has also been associated with an increased risk of clotting.

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Several associations between Agent Orange and health disorders are not well understood and we hope our work helps uncover a few of these. Researchers are proud of the fact that their work was selected for a 2023 Conquer Cancer Merit Award and they will be using those funds to further our research efforts.

References:

Increased risk of head and neck cancer in Agent Orange exposed Vietnam Era veterans - (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S136883751930394X)
Myeloproliferative Neoplasms: A Contemporary Review - (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaoncology/fullarticle/2194736)
Association of Agent Orange and myeloproliferative neoplasms, thrombosis, and bleeding among veterans - (https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2023.41.16_suppl.7011?af=R)

Source-Eurekalert