Is colour blindness impacting cancer survival?
Last week, a study from Stanford University was published in Nature that describes additional risks and changes to prognosis in cancer patients that also have colour vision deficiency (CVD).
This retrospective study found a significant increase in mortality in bladder cancer patients with CVD compared to those without CVD. The reason for this difference is speculated in this paper to be partially due to the inability to see the change in the colour of urine resulting from blood being present. This is often one of the first signs of bladder cancer and can be missed by those with CVD, which means that the cancer goes undetected for longer, which can worsen prognoses.
This artefact does not seem to have the same effect in colorectal cancer patients, which could be due pain also being associated with early symptoms as well as blood being present in the stool, where there is rarely pain in early stages of bladder cancer.
The authors describe this paper as “hypothesis-generating” and hope to raise awareness in clinicians of this risk for patients that have CVD. This study is a nice example of how seemingly unrelated medical conditions can affect patient care or prognosis, despite not being medically linked.
Please read, rate and review this study here:
Mustafa Fattah, Amer F. Alsoudi, Prithvi Mruthyunjaya, Ehsan Rahimy