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The role of steroids in carcinogenesis has become a major concern in environmental protection, biomonitoring, and clinical research. Although historically oestrogen has been related to development of reproductive system, research over the last decade has confirmed its crucial role in the development and homeostasis of other organ systems. As a number of anthropogenic agents are xenoestrogens, environmental health research has focused on oestrogen receptor level disturbances and of aromatase polymorphisms. Oestrogen and xenoestrogens mediate critical points in carcinogenesis by binding to oestrogen receptors, whose distribution is age-, gender-, and tissue-specific. This review brings data about cancer types whose eatiology may be found in environmental exposure to xenoestrogens. Cancer types that have been well documented in literature to be related with environmental exposure include the reproductive system, breast, lung, kidney, pancreas, and brain. The results of our data mining show (a) a significant correlation between exposure to xenoestrogens and increased, gender-related, cancer risk and (b) a need to re-evaluate agents so far defined as endocrine disruptors, as they are also key molecules in carcinogenesis. This revision may be used to further research of cancer aetiology and to improvement of related legislation. Investigation of cancers caused by xenoestrogens may elucidate yet unknown mechanisms also valuable for oncology and the development of new therapies.
Despite the considerable efforts to decrease environmental pollution we still witness uncontrolled introduction of new compounds in living and working environment. Additionally, pollution control in low income and developing countries has seen limited success. The balance between needs of a fast growing human population and technology/science development is questionable, partially as a consequence that the available knowledge is not always applied in an efficient way as it should be.
The last century's paradigm “one agent - one disease” has helped to identify the major causal pathways and the identification of pollution related diseases, including cancer. Based on this approach, epidemiological studies set off many activities to reduce pollution and prevent exposure. However, a large body of data accumulated over the last decade, with a recent significant contribution of molecular biology, clearly shows that this historical simplistic interpretation of biomonitoring data fails to answer a number of questions about environmental threats to human health.
Cancer incidence monitoring in developed countries is relatively accurate. A better classification of cancer types, the networking of cancer registries, and the increasing population coverage for cancer registration are unfortunately accompanied, due to unsolved technical and organizational difficulties, by publishing of cancer register reports with a lag of several years. This lag is a serious obstacle in identifying current environmental health risks and setting timely effective preventive measures.