Newsflash: You may be facing questions about
the following topic if it reaches the general media:
At the American Association
of Cancer Research annual meeting in Los Angeles, April, 2007, the University of Buffalo epidemiologists presented a paper
stating that premenopausal women who had their tonsils removed as children were 50% more likely to develop breast cancer than
those whose tonsils were not removed. They quoted other studies that had concluded that tonsillectomy was associated with
increased the risk of Hodgkin's Disease, leukemia, carcinoma of the breast & prostate.
These links to cancer are still preliminary
and perhaps the reasoning is not that tonsillectomy removes some sort of protection, but rather that those children who need
tonsillectomy have had longstanding chronic infection and inflammation which in itself leads to carcinogenesis. Likewise,
the absence of the link in post-menopausal woman may reflect the lesser indications for tonsillectomy that were present when
they were children.
ALLERGY: next issue
