Modifiable factors linked to China's cancer cases
A number of potentially modifiable risk factors are responsible for about one million cancer deaths in China, an investigation reveals
With cancer as the leading cause of death in China, an investigation found that nearly one million or almost half of all cancer deaths and 39 percent of all cancer cases in China in 2013 were attributable to a group of potentially modifiable risk factors. Those considered in the study, published in the Annals of Oncology, included smoking and second-hand smoke, alcohol consumption, lack of nutritional intake, excess body weight, physical inactivity, and infections in China.
“Our analysis likely underestimates the number of cancers attributable to modifiable risk factors because we were not able to include all potentially modifiable risk factors, notably indoor air pollution from using coal for cooking and heating, which is a major risk factor for lung cancer among women in China,” said Farhad Islami, M.D., Ph.D of the American Cancer Society and lead scientist in the study to Science Daily. Among the risk factors studied in the report, the greatest attributable proportions of cancer deaths in men were 26 percent from smoking, 12 percent from hepatitis B infections and seven percent from lack of nutritional intake, while the largest contributors in women included seven percent from hepatitis B infection, six percent from lack of nutritional intake, and five percent from second-hand smoke exposure.
Due to an aging population and lifestyle changes that promote and increase the risk of cancer, the burden in China is expected to increase in the coming decades. Investigations by a multi-agency team of researchers, using the latest data from nationally representative surveys and cancer registries, have determined that effective public health interventions focused on reducing exposure to these risk factors are required to significantly reduce the cancer burden in China.
“Our findings reinforce the need for broad implementation of known interventions and the development of new strategies to reduce exposures to established and emerging risk factors in the country,” concluded the researchers.
This story was originally published in the Global Health and Travel issue of October 2017
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