Nearly half of cancer deaths are attributed to preventable risk factors

Published:

20 Aug 2022 13:46 GMT

“Actions to reduce cancer risk should be combined with comprehensive control strategies that include efforts to support early diagnosis and effective treatment,” the experts suggest.

Nearly half of cancer deaths worldwide can be attributed to preventable risk factors, including smoking, drinking too much alcohol, or being overweightsuggests new research published this Saturday by the British medical journal The Lancet.

“To our knowledge, this study represents the largest effort to date to determine the global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, and contributes to a growing body of evidence aimed at estimating the burden attributable to risk for specific cancers at the nationally, internationally and globally,” Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, and colleagues wrote in the study.

The scientists collected and analyzed global data on cancer deaths and disability between 2010 and 2019 in 204 countries, examining 23 types of cancer and 34 risk factors.

Specifically, the researchers found that in 2019, 44.4% of all cancer deaths and 42% of healthy years lost could be attributed to preventable factors.

The leading cancers in terms of deaths that could have been prevented were trachea, bronchi and lung for both men and women.

An even more worrying conclusion of the study is that these types of deaths are on the rise globally, with a rise of 20.4% between 2010 and 2019.

In terms of geographical areas, the most affected regions are Central Europe, the US, southern Latin America and Western Europe.

“Actions to reduce cancer risk should be combined with comprehensive control strategies that include efforts to support early diagnosis and effective treatment,” the authors suggest.

Relationship with poverty level

In other Article Published alongside the new study in The Lancet, Drs Diana Sarfati and Jason Gurney, from the Te Aho o Te Kahu Cancer Control Agency in New Zealand, point out that preventable risk factors are related to each person’s level of poverty. region.

“Poverty influences the environments in which people live, and those environments shape the lifestyle choices people may make,” they explained, concluding that primary cancer prevention through eradication or mitigation of modifiable risk factors it is the “best hope of reducing the future burden of cancer”.