Autoimmune Disease and Mesothelioma: Will it Impact Survival?
A new lung cancer study suggests that having an autoimmune disease will not necessarily lead to shorter cancer survival. This could be good news for pleural mesothelioma patients suffering from autoimmune disorders. Pleural mesothelioma is a lung-related disease that has many characteristics in common with lung cancer. The new study comes from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. It included 177 lung cancer patients who also had immune diseases. Doctors compared their survival with a control group of lung cancer patients. They determined that having an autoimmune disease did not negatively impact lung cancer survival. In fact, some of those patients lived longer than those with healthy immune systems. What is an Autoimmune Disease? An autoimmune disease is…