A number of risk factors have been identified as the reasons behind nearly 4.45 million cancer deaths worldwide in 2019, new research has suggested.
The study is the first ever to estimate how a list of 34 risk factors in total could contribute to the deaths of people diagnosed with cancer and ill health globally, regionally and nationally. This study was also devised across age groups, for both sexes and over time.
According to the newest figures, 4.45 million represents 44.4 per cent of all cancer deaths across the globe. However, the data has discovered that the UK cancer death number is above the global average, sitting at 49.7 per cent.
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Dr Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, said: “This study illustrates that the burden of cancer remains an important public health challenge that is growing in magnitude around the world.
“Smoking continues to be the leading risk factor for cancer globally, with other substantial contributors to cancer burden varying. Our findings can help policymakers and researchers identify key risk factors that could be targeted in efforts to reduce deaths and ill health from cancer regionally, nationally and globally.”
Behavioural risk factors such as alcohol consumption, smoking, dietary risks and unsafe sex were noted as responsible for the vast majority of cancer globally. These risk factors accounted for 3.7 million deaths alone, according to the study.
Using the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors (GBD) 2019 study, researchers investigated how 34 behavioural, metabolic and environmental and occupational risk factors contributed to deaths and ill health due to 23 cancer types in 2019.
Estimates of cancer burden were based on deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) - which is a measure of years of life lost to death and years lived with disability. The study found that risk factors included in the analysis accounted for 105 million cancer DALYs globally for both sexes in 2019, 42 per cent of all DALYs in that year alone.
Researchers also discovered that the leading cause of risk-attributable cancer death for both sexes globally was tracheal, bronchus and lung cancer - which accounted for 36.9 per cent of all cancer deaths attributable to risk factors.
This was followed by rectum and colon cancer (13.3 per cent), oesophageal cancer (9.7 per cent) and stomach cancer (6.6 per cent) in men. Women suffered more with cervical cancer (17.9 per cent), colon and rectum cancer (15.8 per cent) and breast cancer (11 per cent).
Between 2010 and 2019, cancer deaths due to risk factors rose by 20.4% globally, increasing from 3.7 million to 4.45 million. This entire study has been published in The Lancet.
Dr Lisa Force, assistant professor in Health Metrics Sciences at IHME at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, said: “Policy efforts to reduce exposure to cancer risk factors at the population level are important and should be part of comprehensive cancer control strategies that also support early diagnosis and effective treatment.”
Writing in a linked comment, professor Diana Sarfati and Dr Jason Gurney of the University of Otago, New Zealand, who were not involved in the study, said: “The primary prevention of cancer through eradication or mitigation of modifiable risk factors is our best hope of reducing the future burden of cancer.
“Reducing this burden will improve health and wellbeing and alleviate the compounding effects on humans and the fiscal resourcing pressure within cancer services and the wider health sector.”
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