Cancer mesothelioma site web

Mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer, is legacy of asbestos | Early

Christopher Hahn describes it as something that would be a miracle mineral _ if it weren't so deadly.

Asbestos, used for insulation and fire-proofing, served its purpose so well it became widely distributed in buildings, ships and many other places.

But those same miracle fibers that protect against heat are known to inflame tissue once inhaled into the lungs.

Probably the worst ailment linked to asbestos is mesothelioma, cancer of the lining of the lung and often other organs as well.

The disease, which killed actor Steve McQueen and has been diagnosed in musician Warren Zevon, hits about 3,000 people in the United States each year.

But as Hahn, who runs the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, points out, there's no way of knowing for sure, because there's no registry and sometimes sufferers die without it being properly diagnosed.

When it is found, sufferers have about a year to live. In cases where they receive appropriate care, it can be two years, although some individuals have survived longer.

About 30 percent of people diagnosed, Hahn said, either served on a U.S. Navy ship or worked in a shipyard.

While it's often the people who built the ships, worked on the ships in dock or at sea, or worked in construction that wind up with mesothelioma, Hahn said, it can also be their children, who gave asbestos fiber-covered dads hugs after work every day.

It's a solid tumor, and as it grows, encasing the lung, fluid builds up and it becomes difficult to breathe. Along with the shortness of breath is chest pain, and many people are first diagnosed as having pneumonia.

"It will look like pneumonia. Unless someone has reason to suggest an autopsy, the death certificate is going to say pneumonia _ it could be vastly underreported," Hahn said.

That's just part of the challenge that the group and others like it face in trying to raise awareness about the disease.

Because the use of asbestos was substantially reduced in the 1970s amid awareness of health issues, mesothelioma is sometimes perceived as an ever-diminishing threat, Hahn said, and therefore not as deserving of research dollars. It's seen as a blue-collar ailment that is going away.

On its Web site, the foundation points out that in 2001, the National Cancer Institute, with a budget of more than $3 billion, allocated just $1.6 million for research on mesothelioma.

The disease tends to strike about 30 years after exposure, but can take even longer. The rate of new diagnoses is thought to be increasing, not decreasing.

Often, the doctor tells the patient with mesothelioma that there is nothing that can be done. But Dr. Robert Cameron, chief of thoracic surgery at UCLA Medical Center and a noted mesothelioma expert, said patients can usually be treated with a combination of surgery, radiation therapy and immune system-boosting medications.

More research would be helpful in developing effective treatments, and the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation is doing what it can to raise dollars for scientific studies. But the government's muscle is needed.

After all, the government has a role in the disease, Cameron and Hahn pointed out, via the use of asbestos in Navy ships.

"It's very hard to understand that the Navy would expose so many people to this and not try to find a cure for it," Cameron said.

A bill by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, seeks to establish some order in regard to the liability and wrongful death lawsuits that asbestos- related diseases have generated against asbestos manufacturers.

But the bill does not earmark any money for research. MARF has been working to try to change that and generate support for alternative legislation dealing with asbestos-related disorders.

For more information about the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, go to www.marf.org.

Next week, Medical Notebook looks at some of the legal and legislative issues surrounding mesothelioma. Early morning sleep best

If you're getting precious little sleep, you probably don't have much say in when you get it.

But if you do, Stanford University Medical Center researchers say you can maximize your rest by picking certain hours of the day to grab some slumber.

People only sleeping a little bit do better if they go to bed early in the morning rather than late at night.

The researchers said the results were surprising, because it was expected that if you were getting minimal sleep, it wouldn't matter when it was.

Two small groups of men were assigned different hours to sleep for seven nights in a laboratory setting. Group 1 slept from 10:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Group 2, 2:15 to 6:15 a.m.

In wakefulness tests conducted during the day, the early morning group scored slightly higher. They also spent more of the four-hour window actually sleeping and took less time to fall asleep.

Researchers caution, however, that individual responses to sleep deprivation vary widely and it may not be so simple to time your sleep according to this study.

For example, one subject in the test wasn't fazed until the sixth day of the study, while another subject developed severe insomnia due to his new sleep schedule. Send comments to Lee.Peterson@daily breeze.com or to Medical Notebook, the Daily Breeze, 5215 Torrance Blvd., Torrance, CA 90503-4077.