December 9th, 2009

Reports the Morning Call:

A federal agency found 19 of 1,170 people tested in the Tamaqua-Hazleton area have a mutated gene that’s a key indicator of a rare blood cancer, but scientists can’t say whether the finding is significant.

That’s because they don’t know how prevalent the mutation is in the general population.

”We don’t know what [the number] should be,” said Vince Seaman, an epidemiologist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is coordinating studies of a cancer cluster found in a pocket of Schuylkill, Carbon and Luzerne counties.

The blood tests were released Tuesday, and Seaman said testing of those people will continue as a way to monitor their health. Also, more than a dozen studies are planned as researchers try to determine what causes polycythemia vera, which makes blood thicken and can lead to heart attack or stroke.

Four people who lived on Ben Titus Road in Rush Township near the McAdoo Associates Superfund site were diagnosed with PV in 2004, prompting the studies. Last year, the federal government determined 33 people in a 20-mile stretch between Hazleton and Tamaqua had the disease.

Although PV has been diagnosed since the early 1900s, it wasn’t until 2004 that scientists found a link between a mutated gene known as JAK2 and the disease, plus two other rare blood cancers, Seaman said. About 95 percent of the people with PV have the JAK2 gene.

This summer, the toxic substances agency residents of the three counties a chance to get their blood tested for the gene. Of the 1,170 people tested, 1.6 percent had it. Five had already been diagnosed with PV or essential thrombocytosis, another blood disorder, and 14 people had the JAK2 gene, Seaman said.
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