@David / Klo

RTOG study of Tobacco Use and HPV+OC was released at the ASTRO conference last June by Dr's Ang (MD Anderson) and Gillison (Ohio State):

PER THE STUDY: the risk of death and cancer progression increased by 1% for each pack-year of tobacco smoking.

**************

ASCO Abstract # 5510: Analysis of the effect of p16 and tobacco pack-years (p-y) on overall (OS) and progression-freesurvival (PFS) for patients with oropharynx cancer (OPC) in Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) protocol 9003

...RTOG researchers led by K. Kian Ang, M.D., Ph.D. of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who is the lead
author of the study being published in the NEJM, and Maura L. Gillison, M.D., Ph.D. of The Ohio State University, who directed
the HPV analysis, found that oropharyngeal cancer patients with HPV-positive tumors had a survival rate 25 percentage points
higher at three years (82.4% vs. 57.1%) than patients on the study with HPV-negative tumors. This survival benefit was seen
irrespective of the assigned cancer treatment and traditional prognostic factors such as tumor stage and age. The researchers
also found that tobacco smoking was independently associated with survival for both groups of patients and the risk of death and cancer progression increased by 1% for each pack-year of tobacco smoking.