A Comparative Study of Post-Conflict Cancer in Jordan, Oman and Kuwait

Background: Most Kuwaits were exposed to carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons during the 8-month oil well fires of 1991 that directly followed the Gulf War.  This study seeks to compare breast and other cancer rates in Kuwait to rates in Kuwait's regional neighbors, Jordan and Oman. 

Methods: The study design is a post-test only control group design generally comparing annual cancer rates for 1991-2009 in Kuwait with annual cancer rates in 1996-2008 for Jordan and Oman.  Jordan and Oman will serve as reasonable control sites where genetic and other environmental factors are sufficiently similar to Kuwait.  The following diagnoses were studied given their possible Gulf War etiologies: lymphoma, leukemia, colorectal, prostate, liver, and breast.

Results: In order to compare changes in cancer rates between Kuwait and the control countries, a regression analysis was run to assess the difference in the increase in the cancer rates’ slopes among the countries.  This difference in the slopes is the variable “Tpost”—time at a certain position in time.  In the pre-latent period, Kuwait’s breast cancer was growing at about 1 ASR/year; in the post-latent(after 1998) it is at 1.33 ASR/year.  This result coincides with Kuwaiti breast cancer’s statistically significant “’jump” of 5 ASR in the post-latent period. An estimated total Attributable Risk of 210 additional cases of cancer among all Kuwaitis has been reported for 1998-2008.   For leukemia in Kuwait, the male and female rates doubled since the 1996-1999 years.  However, these rates did not signficantly increase in the comparison countries.

Discussion: There has been a marked increase in certain hemotologic cancers with unknown etiologies in Kuwait since 1998.  Given the extensive, unprecedented Kuwaiti exposures to polyaromatic hydrocarbons during the Gulf War, this was one known source of carcinogens in the environment—land, air and sea.