Article
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Combining Three Cohorts of WTC Rescue/Recovery Workers for Assessing Cancer Incidence and Mortality
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Version 1
: Received: 5 January 2021 / Approved: 6 January 2021 / Online: 6 January 2021 (10:30:43 CET)
How to cite: Brackbill, R.; Kahn, A.; LI, J.; Zeig-Owens, R.; Goldfarb, D.; Skerker, M.; Farfel, M.; Cone, J.; Yung, J.; Walker, D.; Solomon, A.; Qiao, B.; Schymura, M.; Dasaro, C.; Kristjansson, D.; Webber, M.; Lucchini, R.; Todd, A.; Prezant, D.; Boffetta, P.; Hall, C. Combining Three Cohorts of WTC Rescue/Recovery Workers for Assessing Cancer Incidence and Mortality. Preprints 2021, 2021010105 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202101.0105.v1). Brackbill, R.; Kahn, A.; LI, J.; Zeig-Owens, R.; Goldfarb, D.; Skerker, M.; Farfel, M.; Cone, J.; Yung, J.; Walker, D.; Solomon, A.; Qiao, B.; Schymura, M.; Dasaro, C.; Kristjansson, D.; Webber, M.; Lucchini, R.; Todd, A.; Prezant, D.; Boffetta, P.; Hall, C. Combining Three Cohorts of WTC Rescue/Recovery Workers for Assessing Cancer Incidence and Mortality. Preprints 2021, 2021010105 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202101.0105.v1).
Abstract
Three cohorts including the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY), the World Trade Center Health Registry (WTCHR), and the General Responder Cohort (GRC), each funded by the World Trade Center Health Program have reported associations between WTC-exposures and cancer. Results have generally been consistent with effect estimates for excess incidence for all cancers ranging from 6 to 14% above background rates. Pooling would increase sample size and de-duplicate cases between the cohorts. Pooling required time consuming steps: obtaining IRB approvals and legal agreements from entities involved; establishing an honest broker for managing the data; de-duplicating the pooled cohort files; applying to State Cancer Registries (SCRs) for matched cancer cases; and finalizing analysis data files. Obtaining SCR data use agreements ranged from 6.5 to 114.5 weeks with six states requiring >20 weeks. Records from FDNY (n=16,221), WTCHR (n=29,372), and GRC (n=33,427) were combined de-duplicated resulting in 69,102 unique individuals. Overall, 7,894 cancer tumors were matched to the pooled cohort, increasing the number cancers by as much as 58% compared to previous analyses. Pooling resulted in a coherent resource for future research for studies on rare cancers and mortality, with more representative of occupations and WTC- exposure.
Keywords
World Trade Center; Exposure; Cancer; Rescue and recovery workers; Pooling cohorts
Subject
MEDICINE & PHARMACOLOGY, Allergology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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