The Survivors of the Holocaust Present an Increased Predisposition of Developing Cancer

As a recent published research states, the Jewish people who survived the WWII and also were exposed to the Holocaust present an increased predisposition of developing cancers. This new investigation was released in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in the October edition.

Earlier research which observed people that were not Jewish took a closer look at the association between the cancer occurrence rates and the psychological and physical stress which ranged from famine to mental ones. However, these past investigations did not managed to reach a conclusive outcome.

Lital Keinan-Boker who is a medical doctor in the School of Public Health, Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences within the University of Haifa located in Israel, led a team of investigators in a research regarding the above mentioned association. The group of scientists observed a sample of approximately 300,000 Jews coming from Israel. A particularity of these Jews was the fact that they were born in Europe, but later, before and during the World War II they moved in Israel. One of the groups was exposed to the Holocaust, whereas the other one was not. The group which experienced the Holocaust was determined as such by taking into consideration their immigration to Israel dates, due to the fact that specific information about the exposure to the massacre experience was not available.

The thought exposure to the Holocaust was linked with an enhanced predisposition to cancer as a whole considered for all the born groups and both for males and females, in comparison with the cohort which was not exposed to this massacre. The most important links between cancer and Holocaust exposure were comprised by two types of malignant tumors: breast and colorectal. For example, the exposure at an earlier age appeared to be specifically linked to the enhanced predisposition to develop any particular case of cancer.

As the investigators of the research state that their findings come as direct shock information for all the Jewish people who survived the Second World War and as a consequence they are very important for the physicians of these patients all over the world and especially Israel due to the high immigration rates. The team of researchers sees its discoveries as a warranty for all the investigations that would arise on this subject in the future. They expect to see research done on case-control studies which would generate answers and more information and also state that their study presents past and actual agents of risk that may bias the study when utilizing individual information to investigate this matter.

A complementing editorial to this study is written by Stephen Hursting from the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Texas and Michele Forman from the Department of Epidemiology, University of Texas, also activating in MD Anderson Cancer Center located in Houston. The two compare the outcomes of the above mentioned study and other researches from the past which presented the association between the reduction of eaten calories and the predisposition to cancer. Hursting and Forman state that the information acquired from the newer investigation comes as a supplement for the existing published data regarding the effects of a harmful reduction of daily and necessary calories that one eats and the cruel physical and psychological stress this practice is prone to produce in human beings.

As the editorialists explain, by putting alongside information coming from investigations done on animals and human beings it seems that even though by reducing the daily intake of calories may reduce also the risk of developing malignant tumors, these rather beneficial effects against cancer are diminished and even destroyed by the exposure to a very demanding and stressful experience. Furthermore, the two state that by studying the group of Jewish persons who were exposed to the cruel experience of the Holocaust during the first years of their life, a great deal of knowledge can be acquired about stress effects at a younger age, adaptation ability and predisposition to cancer after years passed from a very stressful experience.