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Dr.
Sandler is Deputy Chief of the Epidemiology Branch
and Chief of the Environmental and Molecular Epidemiology
Section at the National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, NIH.  She
also is Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the School
of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill. Her research focuses on environmental causes
of chronic disease in adults. Recently completed and
ongoing work includes studies of risk factors for leukemia
and myelodysplasia, health effects of residential and
occupational exposure to radon, and the health consequences
of exposure to agricultural chemicals.
Previous
work included some of the earliest studies on cancer
and heart disease risk associated with environmental
tobacco smoke and one of the first population-based
studies of risk factors for chronic kidney disease. The
leukemia study was the first epidemiological study
of an adult cancer carried out in the context of a
cooperative cancer treatment group. The
study included patients who were enrolled in chemotherapeutic
clinical trials sponsored by Cancer and Leukemia Group
B, a cooperative cancer treatment group involving medical
centers throughout the US. Because patients were enrolled
and interviewed at the time they were randomized to
treatment protocols, the time between diagnosis and
study was often less than a few weeks. Based
on the notion that the leukemias are heterogeneous
with regard to tumor biology and prognosis, and that
this heterogeneity may extend to risk factors, the
study was the first to explore the roles of clonal
chromosome abnormalities detected in the bone marrow
of patients, oncogenes, and polymorphisms in genes
that affect the metabolism of potential carcinogens.
Dr.
Sandler is collaborating with investigators from the
National Cancer Institute and the US Environmental
Protection Agency to carry out The Agricultural
Health Study, a prospective study of over 57,000
licensed pesticide applicators and 35,000 of their
spouses. This study is examining a number of health
endpoints in addition to cancer incidence and mortality
and is becoming a resource for targeted studies of
specific agricultural exposures or specific diseases
such as Parkinson's disease, for which there is some
evidence of risk associated with agricultural exposures
but few opportunities for identifying exposed individuals. Finally,
groundwork is being laid for establishing a novel cohort
of sisters of women who have had breast cancer. This
higher risk group of women will be followed over time
to identify both genetic and environmental factors
associated with increased risk for breast cancer and
other diseases. Further
information on these and other studies can be found
at the website below.
In
addition to her research, Dr. Sandler serves on the
advisory boards for several extramural research projects,
as a reviewer for grant applications to the NIH and
the State of California's Tobacco-related Disease
Research Program, and as a member of the Data Committee
of the Southeastern Kidney Council. She
is a Fellow of the ACE and was elected to membership
in the American Epidemiological Society in 1999. Dr.
Sandler is an Editor for the American Journal
of Epidemiology, is on the Editorial Review Board
of Environmental Health Perspectives, and
will become an Editor of Epidemiology in March
2001. |
