Glitch Delays Pratt Brain Cancer Study

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. – A glitch in a massive study on the incidence of brain cancer at jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney will delay the release of the final report, researchers said Wednesday.

Researchers found nearly 10,000 additional subjects who were not included in the initial study, due to incomplete information from Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp. The total number of subjects to be studied is now 266,000, said Gary Marsh, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who heads the study.

Researchers met Wednesday with family members of Pratt workers who have died of brain cancer. The periodic meetings, which also include the state Department of Public Health, are used to update families and the public on the nearly five-year study.

The discovery of more records is a minor issue, but will create more work because the newly found subjects add job titles that should be included in the study, said researcher Nurtan Esmen of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“It’s a little bit of a setback,” Marsh said.

Preliminary results of the study were due out by the end of the year. But the study is now expected to be published in an academic journal in early 2008, Marsh said.

The state Department of Health and Pratt began the study in 2002 after complaints from families of workers who had died from glioblastoma multiforme, a form of brain cancer. They documented more than three dozen such deaths among hundreds of thousands who have worked at Pratt since the early 1950s.