Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Feb 1;36(4):577-584.
doi: 10.1515/reveh-2020-0109. Print 2021 Dec 20.

Exposure to cadmium and head and neck cancers: a meta-analysis of observational studies

Maysam Rezapour  1 , Habib Allah Rezapour  2 , Maryam Chegeni  3 , Narges Khanjani  4
Affiliations
Review

Exposure to cadmium and head and neck cancers: a meta-analysis of observational studies

Maysam Rezapour et al. Rev Environ Health. .

Abstract

Cadmium (Cd) is a widespread environmental pollutant. A number of observational studies have reported that Cd might be a cause of nasopharyngeal (NPC), pharyngeal (PC), or laryngeal cancers (LC). In this study evidence about the relation of Cd and NPC, PC, and LC has been summarized. A literature review was conducted until 20 June 2020 in PubMed, Ovid, Scopus, Web of Science and Google scholar databases to investigate the epidemiologic evidence for the relation between cadmium exposure and cancers of the nasopharynx, pharynx, and larynx. Ten articles were selected after careful screening of retrieved studies. All of these studies obtained a Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) quality score from 6 to 8. Due to high heterogeneity, in all analyses, random effect was used. The pooled results showed that cadmium levels in NPC (standard mean difference (SMD=0.55; 95% CI=0.20, 0.89; p=0.002) and PC (SMD=9.79; 95% CI=0.62, 18.96; p=0.036) patients/tissues were significantly higher than their controls. But cadmium levels were not significantly different between LC cases/tissues and their controls. (SMD=-0.05; 95% CI=-0.99, 0.89; p=0.921). Exposure to cadmium is likely to cause nasopharyngeal and pharyngeal cancer.

Keywords: cadmium; cancer; laryngeal; nasopharyngeal; pharyngeal.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Du, M, Nair, R, Jamieson, L, Liu, Z, Bi, P. Incidence trends of lip, oral cavity, and pharyngeal cancers: global burden of disease 1990–2017. J Dent Res 2019;99:143–51.
    1. Chen, K, Liao, QL, Ma, ZW, Jin, Y, Hua, M, Bi, J, et al.. Association of soil arsenic and nickel exposure with cancer mortality rates, a town-scale ecological study in Suzhou, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int 2015;22:5395–404.
    1. Yu, MC, Yuan, J-M. Epidemiology of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Semin Canc Biol 2002;12:421–9.
    1. Jones, TM, De, M, Foran, B, Harrington, K, Mortimore, S. Laryngeal cancer: United Kingdom national multidisciplinary guidelines. J Laryngol Otol 2016;130:S75–82.
    1. Markou, K, Christoforidou, A, Karasmanis, I, Tsiropoulos, G, Triaridis, S, Constantinidis, I, et al.. Laryngeal cancer: epidemiological data from Νorthern Greece and review of the literature. Hippokratia 2013;17:313–8.

MeSH terms