Mass screening for neuroblastoma and mortality in birth cohorts

✍ Scribed by Motoi Nishi; Hirotsugu Miyake; Takeo Takeda; Junji Hanai; Yuko Kikuchi; Nobuo Takasugi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 33 KB
• Volume: 71
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0215(19970516)71:4<552::aid-ijc8>3.0.co;2-t

✦ Synopsis

Mortality resulting from neuroblastoma in birth cohorts in both Sapporo City and the whole of Japan was investigated to evaluate the effects of a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) mass screening program, targeting on 6 monthold infants. In Sapporo City, the non-HPLC screened cohort showed no reduction in mortality at 4 years of age compared with the pre-screening cohort. However, the HPLC screened cohort showed a reduction of 69% in mortality compared with the pre-screening cohort. On a nation-wide scale, there was a significant decline in mortality for the non-HPLC screened cohort compared with the pre-screening cohort; for the HPLC screened cohort for 1989-1991, there was also a reduction in mortality for children younger than 2 years of age. The incidence of neuroblastoma at 1-4 years of age in the HPLC cohort in Sapporo City was about half that in the pre-screening cohort, along with and probably because of an increasing incidence among infants in the same cohort. Our findings suggest that HPLC screening may detect some poor-prognosis neuroblastoma cases at early stages, thus providing for more favorable therapy.