Consisting of a sample of more than 3,000 older Australians it has been found that those who showed inflammation and a high white blood cell count could die of cancer and were at a higher risk.
Medically it has been linked that a high WBC count is a reliable and widely used marker that reflects inflammation throughout the body.Lot of studies have linked WBC count with chronic diseases and CVD.
Some evidence also suggests that inflammation is related to the development and progression of cancer, but few researchers have examined whether WBC count and other markers of inflammation can predict cancer. The study was conducted by Anoop Shankar, M.D., Ph.D., National University of Singapore, and colleagues who examined 3,189 Australians with an average age of 65.9 years.
The people were free of cancer when initially evaluated between 1992 and 1994.
By the end of the study, on Dec. 31, 2001, 212 participants had died of cancer.
As per the authors on the efficacy of their study, “In our study, WBC count was associated with cancer mortality, even after adjusting for smoking status,” the authors write. “In subgroup analyses, the association was also present among those who never smoked, suggesting that the observed association between WBC count and cancer mortality is not fully explained by smoking. These data provide important new epidemiological evidence of an essential link between inflammation and cancer mortality. Our findings suggest that local inflammatory processes that have long been known to be associated with tumour progression may be reflected in the systemic inflammatory marker of higher WBC count.”
