ArticleClinical Medicine Insights. Oncology2014
Comparing the metal concentration in the hair of cancer patients and healthy people living in the malwa region of punjab, India.
Article in Clinical Medicine Insights. Oncology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Relationship Between Arsenic in Biological Media and Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Biological trace element research · 2025Pooled it
- Lead and cancer: a narrative review and risk of bias assessment (2003-2020).Reviews on environmental health · 2026Review
- Assessing Lead Exposure by Biological Matrices Analysis and Links to Breast Cancer: A Critical Review of Experimental and Epidemiological Findings.European journal of breast health · 2025Article
- The multifaceted role of hair as a biospecimen: recent advances in precision medicine and forensic science.Experimental & molecular medicine · 2025Review
- Source apportionment, chemometric pattern recognition and health risk assessment of groundwater from southwestern Punjab, India.Environmental geochemistry and health · 2021Article
- Delineating colorectal cancer distribution, interaction, and risk prediction by environmental risk factors and serum trace elements.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Review
- Blood arsenic levels and the risk of familial breast cancer in Poland.International journal of cancer · 2020Article
- Uranium in drinking water: a public health threat.Archives of toxicology · 2020Review
- Long Term Risks to Neonatal Health from Exposure to War-9 Years Long Survey of Reproductive Health and Contamination by Weapon-Delivered Heavy Metals in Gaza, Palestine.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Effect of Manganese Chloride and of Cotreatment with Cadmium Chloride on the In Vitro Proliferative, Motile and Invasive Behavior of MDA-MB231 Breast Cancer Cells.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Association of CYP2C19*2 and ALDH1A1*1/*2 variants with disease outcome in breast cancer patients: results of a global screening array.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2018Article
- Occurrence of selected elements (Ti, Sr, Ba, V, Ga, Sn, Tl, and Sb) in deposited dust and human hair samples: implications for human health in Pakistan.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2018Article
- Frequency of pathogenic germline mutations in cancer susceptibility genes in breast cancer patients.Medical oncology (Northwood, London, England) · 2018Article
- Toxic elements as biomarkers for breast cancer: a meta-analysis study.Cancer management and research · 2018Review
- Article
- Epidemiological analysis of the association between hearing and barium in humans.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2016Article
- Metal concentrations in hair of patients with various head and neck cancers as a diagnostic aid.Biometals : an international journal on the role of metal ions in biology, biochemistry, and medicine · 2016Article
- Rationale for the Successful Management of EDTA Chelation Therapy in Human Burden by Toxic Metals.BioMed research international · 2016Review
- Delineating bacterial community structure of polluted soil samples collected from cancer prone belt of Punjab, India.3 Biotech · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The cancer prevalence in the Malwa region of Punjab (1089/million/year) is much higher than the national average cancer prevalence in India (800/million/year). The participants in the present study were 50 healthy individuals and 49 cancer patients all living in the Malwa region of Punjab, with the healthy people being selected from the same household as the cancer patients. High concentrations of several potentially toxic elements were found in hair samples from people living in Punjab. Compared to standard reference ranges, the metals in excess in both the control and patient groups were aluminium (Al), barium (Ba), manganese (Mn), strontium (Sr) and uranium (U). The most significant findings were high lead (Pb), U and Ba concentrations. The maximum values for Ba, Mn, Pb and U were found in hair from breast cancer patients. The mean concentration of U in hair from the breast cancer patients was 0.63 μg U/g, which is more than double the value found in the control group and over six times higher than the reference range of 0.1 μg U/g. Water, soil, and phosphate fertilizers all seem to play a potential role, causing an increased metal burden in Punjabi people living in the Malwa region. The present study indicates that metals, and especially U, may be a factor in the development of breast cancer among Punjabi women.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.