Volunteers ‑ and their toenails ‑ wanted

Toenails can tell researchers whether a person has been exposed to arsenic.

It’s not exactly a trip to the spa, but you will get your toenails trimmed.

Volunteers are being recruited for the Atlantic Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health—Atlantic PATH for short—a research project investigating lifestyle, environmental and genetic factors related to the development of cancer and other diseases in Atlantic Canada.

Researchers are casting the net for thousands of volunteers—12,000 men and women between the ages of 35 and 69 in Nova Scotia alone.

All you need to do is contact Atlantic PATH via its online form (at http://atlanticpath.ca/volunteer.html), letter, or telephone (494-7284 or 1-877-285-7284) to set up an appointment time for a visit to the Atlantic PATH Assessment Centre, located in the Halifax Shopping Centre Annex on Mumford Road.

After reading about the study in the Chronicle Herald, Halifax resident Leanne Chisholm decided she’d like to participate.

“It seems so ambitious and I thought this is something I could help out with,” says Ms. Chisholm, a producer with the documentary film company Arcadia Entertainment. “I mean, try and find someone in Atlantic Canada who hasn’t been touched by cancer, who watched a loved one die or seen them suffer through chemotherapy…

“I’m joyful that they’re doing a preventative-style study.”

The $7-million study is quite unique because of its size—30,000 volunteers are being recruited in all four Atlantic Provinces—and its duration; volunteers will be tracked over 30 years to determine why some people develop cancer and others don’t.

It’s also a part of a much larger study, the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health. The $42-million study will follow the health of 300,000 people in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

“The information obtained through this study will provide an enormous bank of information which researchers will be able to draw upon to help identify the causes of cancer and, in turn, develop better detection, treatment and prevention methods,” says Louise Parker, the principal investigator for Atlantic PATH. “Future generations—the children and grandchildren of our study participants—will benefit from this knowledge.”

Although the study is longterm, it only requires one trip to the assessment centre. That visit lasts about an hour and a half to two hours for volunteers to fill out a questionnaire and for the researchers to gather biological samples (blood, urine, saliva and the aforementioned toenail trimmings) and take the required measurements to determine such things as height, weight, body fat, bone density and grip strength.

Afterwards, researchers will track the participants’ health over the years through medical records including doctor’s visits, cancer registries, hospital records and other health-related databases.

“I think the saliva test was the most fun. They need four tablespoons and it takes awhile,” says Ms. Chisholm, a mother of two children, with a laugh.

The toenail clippings, however, seem to be getting the most attention. They can tell scientists whether residents have been exposed to arsenic, a naturally occurring metallic element found in rocks throughout the province that can find its way into drinking water. Exposure to elevated levels of arsenic is known to cause a number of malignancies, chief among them kidney and bladder cancer.

“The Atlantic provinces have the highest rates of cancer in Canada,” says Dr. Parker, a Dalhousie-IWK epidemiologist and Canadian Cancer Society (Nova Scotia Division) Chair in Population Cancer Research. “The PATH project will help us understand why the rates are so high in the region and, more importantly, to develop strategies which deal with those underlying causes and significantly reduce those rates.”