NCI: Overall U.S. cancer death rates decline

More U.S. women are being diagnosed with cancer, but rates among men are stable and cancer is killing fewer people, according to a report issued on Tuesday. Death rates from all cancers dropped by 1.1 percent per year from 1993 to 2002, the annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer found. Prevention, earlier detection and better treatments all helped lower the rates, according to the report. But minorities and women are not benefiting as much as white males, said the report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "The cancer incidence rate for all sites combined was 25 percent higher in black men than in white men, and the incidence rates for black men were more than 50 percent higher than those in white men for myeloma and cancers of the prostate, lung, stomach, liver, esophagus, and larynx," the researchers wrote. And the cancer death rate overall was 43 percent higher in black men than in white men.

The National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries join forces every year to compile the report on the 15 most common U.S. cancers. This latest report details actual incidence and death rates in recent years, data that takes years to collect and analyze. "Overall cancer death rates for all racial and ethnic populations combined decreased by 1.1 percent per year from 1993 through 2002; the decline was more pronounced among men," the researchers write. "Death rates decreased for 12 of the 15 most common cancers in men (i.e., lung, prostate, colon and rectum, pancreas, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, bladder, stomach, and brain and other nervous system, myeloma, oral cavity, and melanoma) and for nine of the 15 most common cancers in women (i.e., breast, colon and rectum, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, brain, stomach, myeloma, cervix, and bladder)." Overall cancer rates stayed the same for men but increased by 0.3 percent per year for women. "Among women, lung cancer death rates increased from 1995 through 2002, but lung cancer incidence rates stabilized from 1998 through 2002," the researchers wrote. Lung cancer rates among women are likely to fluctuate as women who began smoking in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s develop cancer as a consequence -- and then they will go down to reflect the decreased popularity of smoking. Cancers whose rates went up also include melanoma, breast cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer and esophageal cancer. "These numbers reflect a trend in reduction of cancer mortality that has now persisted for nine years," former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach, now acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, said in a statement. "This can only be considered good news for the millions of cancer survivors who have benefited from recent research and treatment advances and emphasizes the expectation that we will achieve a time when no one will suffer or die from cancer." In January the American Cancer Society predicted that 1.372 million Americans would be diagnosed with cancer in 2005 and 570,280 would die of it, compared to 1.368 million cases in 2004 and 563,700 deaths.

Source: Reuters, Maggie Fox