The autopsy archive of former uranium miners of the East German WISMUT company - a valuable resource for research on ionizing radiation in interaction with other carcinogens and cancer

In East Germany, uranium mining was undertaken on a large scale for the Soviet nuclear industry from 1946 to 1989. Poor working conditions especially in the early years led to a high level of occupational diseases, in particular lung cancer. For WISMUT miners, comprehensive data is available on working histories and exposure to radiation and quartz dust. After German reunification, the autopsy archive of the Institute of Pathology in Stollberg was opened for research as part of the WISMUT Health Data Archive of the Bundesanstalt fuer Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin. It contains protocols of about 30,000 persons (including 17,000 miners), 400,000 slides, 66,000 tissue blocks, and 200 whole lungs. Now, the tissue repository is held in trust at BGFA and Institute of Pathology in Bochum, Germany. The source population of the cases is not defined. The archive contains tissues from many - but not from all - former WISMUT miners as well as from local people. For 12,923 miners, median radon exposure was 621 WLM, including about 800 workers with exposure above 1800 WLM. Smoking information is poor, but prevalence of smoking was high. A leading diagnosis was lung cancer in about 5,300 persons, mainly underground miners. A database has been developed at Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum to document relevant autopsy information on the cases. Histopathological classification of 5,270 lung cancer cases has been re-assessed by three pathologists. U.S. NIOSH conducted a study on the feasibility of research on pathologic types of lung cancer. Laboratory studies on the quality of the material for molecular-biological investigations are under way. A project is ongoing to investigate the interaction of radiation and crystalline silica on lung cancer development. A workshop was scheduled December 10, 2004 to discuss the resources, the findings, the pitfalls and challenges presented by the material and the future use of that archive in research. (orig.)