Using data from three cohorts participating in AGRICOH totalling more than 300,000 farmers, the AGRICOH Cancer Subgroup did not find evidence for elevated risks of Hodgkin lymphoma related to the professional use of 22 individual pesticide active ingredients or 13 chemical groups.
Hodgkin lymphoma is a heterogeneous and relatively rare cancer, which makes studying risk factors challenging. This was the largest prospective investigation of potential associations between pesticides and the risk of Hodgkin lymphoma. This analysis used data from the French Agriculture and Cancer Cohort, the Cancer in the Norwegian Agricultural Population cohort, and the US Agricultural Health Study. The article is accessible through open access.
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The AGRICOH Consortium will hold its 2022 meeting on July 6-7, 2022, hosted by the Centre Francois Baclesse at the University of Caen, Normandy, France. The program foresees an update from the individual cohort studies of the consortium, sessions from the AGRICOH subgroups and discussion of new initiatives and ideas.
On July 1, 2022, AGRICOH officially started its newest research project on the association between exposure to selected pesticides and the risk of breast cancer in women, involving the large-scale cohort studies from France (AGRICAN), Norway (CNAP), and the USA (AHS), led by the Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS) at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and by the Environment and Lifestyle Epidemiology Branch of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO). First step is to expand previous work on exposure assessment including exposures from re-entry tasks and exposures to active ingredients hypothesized to be related to the risk of breast cancer, followed by risk analyses. The project is planned for a 3-year period and is supported by the Dutch Cancer Society/KWF (Koningin Wilhelmina Fonds voor de Nederlandse Kankerbestrijding).
In this paper, the Cancer subgroup analyzed cancer incidence in >248,000 agricultural workers from 8 AGRICOH cohorts. The results suggest a lower risk of various cancers and an elevated risk of prostate cancer, multiple myeloma (female), and melanoma of skin (female) in agricultural workers compared to the general population. Those differences from the general population and the between-cohort variations may be due to underlying differences in risk factors and warrant further investigation of agricultural exposures.
The new Steering Group was elected for the term from January 2021 to December 2025. The Steering Group discusses general matters of the consortium and holds bi-monthly conference calls. The new Steering Group, in alphabetical order, will be Drs Isabelle Baldi (Subgroup lead "Neurological"), Laura Beane Freeman (Subgroup lead "Cancer"), Jeroen Douwes (Subgroup lead "Respiratory"), Hans Kromhout (Subgroup lead "Exposure"), Pierre Lebailly, Karl-Christian Nordby, Paul Romitti (Subgroup lead "Reproductive"), Joachim Schüz and Kayo Togawa, supported by Ljubica Zupunski as rapporteur.
Fix J, Annesi-Maesano I, Baldi I, Boulanger M, Cheng S, Cortes S, Dalphin JC, Dalvie MA, Degano B, Douwes J, Eduard W, Elholm G, Ferreccio C, Harding AH, Jeebhay M, Kelly KM, Kromhout H, MacFarlane E, Maesano CN, Mitchell DC, Mwanga H, Naidoo S, Negatu B, Ngajilo D, Nordby KC, Parks CG, Schenker MB, Shin A, Sisgaard T, Sim M, Soumagne T, Thorne P, Yoo KY, Hoppin JA. J Agromedicine. 2020 Mar 17:1-12. doi: 10.1080/1059924X.2020.1713274. Epub ahead of print. PubMed PMID: 32182198.
The Respiratory group completes its first paper. Using respiratory data from 18 AGRICOH cohorts, the respiratory group compared differences in respiratory symptoms and disease among agricultural populations globally. This paper integrated data from over 200,000 farmers, farm workers and their spouses from 1992-2006. Overall, respiratory symptoms were more common in male than female farmers, while asthma was more common in women. Specifically allergic asthma was more common in women. This paper highlights the diversity in agricultural practices among the cohorts in AGRICOH, but indicates that respiratory symptoms and disease remain a major burden for agricultural workers.
On 26th and 27th November AGRICOH members of the Subgroup on Cancer who are actively involved in the combined analyses of three AGRICOH cohorts from France (AGRICAN), Norway (CNAP), and the USA (AHS), met in Utrecht, The Netherlands, co-hosted by the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS) of the University of Utrecht and the Section of Environment and Radiation of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO).
The objective of the meeting was to plan future projects, including a cancer incidence comparison between the agricultural and general populations of various countries, more in-depth analyses with updated follow up of pooling projects on the risk of haematological malignancies in relation to pesticides associated with risk in previous analyses, and in relation to other selected cancers.
El-Zaemey S, Schinasi LH, Ferro G, Tual S, Lebailly P, Baldi I, Nordby KC, Kjærheim K, Schüz J, Monnereau A, Brouwer M, Koutros S, Hofmann J, Kristensen P, Kromhout H, Leon ME, Beane Freeman LE. Occup Environ Med. 2019 Nov;76(11):827-837. doi:10.1136/oemed-2018-105655. Epub 2019 Jul 13. PubMed PMID: 31302607.