Agricultural activities and risk of central nervous system tumors among French farm managers: Results from the TRACTOR project.

Abstract

The etiology of central nervous system (CNS) tumors is complex and involves many suspected risk factors. Scientific evidence remains insufficient, in particular in the agricultural field. The goal of our study was to investigate associations between agricultural activities and CNS tumors in the entire French farm manager workforce using data from the TRACTOR project. The TRACTOR project hold a large administrative health database covering the entire French agricultural workforce, over the period 2002-2016, on the whole French metropolitan territory. Associations were estimated for 26 activities and CNS tumors using Cox proportional hazards model, with time to first CNS tumor insurance declaration as the underlying timescale, adjusting for sex, age and geographical area. There were 1017 cases among 1 036 069 farm managers, including 317 meningiomas and 479 gliomas. Associations varied with tumor types, sex and types of crop and animal farming. Analyses showed several increased risks of CNS tumors, in particular for animal farming. The main increases in risk were observed for meningioma in mixed dairy and cow farming (hazard ratio [HR]=1.75, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.09-2.81) and glioma in pig farming (HR=2.28, 95% CI: 1.37-3.80). Our study brings new insights on the association of a wide range of agricultural activities and CNS tumor and subtype-specific risks in farm managers. Although these findings need to be corroborated in further studies and should be interpreted cautiously, they could have implications for enhancing CNS tumor surveillance in agriculture.