Cancer death rates continue to decline in the US in all major racial and ethnic groups, according to the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer . The data are an “encouraging indicator of progress” in cancer research, says NCI Director Ned Sharpless, MD. “It’s clear that interventions are having an impact.”
Overall incidence, or rates of new cancers, dropped by 1.8% in men and 1.4% in women from 1999 to 2015. Between 2011 and 2015, death rates dropped for 11 of the 18 most common cancer types in men and 14 of the 20 most common types in women. The researchers say the “significant declines” also hold “significant differences” in rate by sex, race, and ethnicity. For example, black men and white women had the highest incidence rates, and black men and black women had the highest death rates.
However, over the same period, death rates for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and brain and nervous system rose in both men and women. Death rates for cancer of the uterus rose (the researchers say obesity is thought to be a contributing factor) and death rates for cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx and soft tissue increased in men, perhaps associated with human papillomavirus infection.
In a companion study, when researchers explored prostate cancer trends in more detail they found overall prostate cancer incidence rates declined an average of 6.5% each year between 2007 and 2014, from 163 new cases per 100,000 men to 104 new cases. Still, after a 2-decade steady decline, rates leveled off. Incidence of distant disease rose from 7.8 new cases per 100,000 to 9.2, but there was no increase in the rates of cases with aggressive histologic grade.
Interestingly, the researchers also report a decline in recent prostate-specific antigen screening between 2010 and 2013 national surveys. “The increase in late-stage disease and the flattening of the mortality trended occurred contemporaneously with the observed decrease in PSA screening,” said Serban Negoita, MD, DrPH, of NCI’s Surveillance Research Program. However, while “suggestive,” Negoita adds, their observation does not demonstrate causality: many factors contribute to incidence and mortality, such as improvements in staging and treating cancer.
