Cancer deaths in Europe are predicted to continue to decline, with age-standardized rates down 10% in men and 7% in women since 2007.
Mortality from breast cancer – the leading cause of cancer death among women in most European countries – will have declined 9% from 2007, researchers predict, with a rate of 14.9 per 100,000 women in 2012. Among women younger than 50 years of age, the drop will be 13% from 2007, representing 6.3 deaths per 100,000 women.
Overall, some 717,398 men and 565,703 women will die of cancer in Europe in 2012, representing an age-standardized rate of 139 per 100,000 men and 85 per 100,000 women. Significant declines in deaths from stomach, lung, prostate, and colorectal cancers, along with leukemia, have been noted in men since 2007, along with deaths from stomach, uterus, colorectal, and breast cancers, as well as leukemia, in women.
The declines are attributable to a drop in smoking, particularly among men, along with improvements in detection and treatment, investigators said.
Mortality trends, however, are not uniform across European countries, nor across cancer types. Lung cancer deaths were seen as increasing by 7% in women from 2007, with an overall rate of 13.44 deaths per 100,000. Markedly high rates among women in the United Kingdom (21.4 per 100,000) are predicted for 2012, an increase over last year. In the United Kingdom and in Poland, where 16.9 per 100,000 women are predicted to die of it in 2012, lung cancer kills more women annually than breast cancer.
Poland still had high, although declining, mortality from a handful of cancers compared with other European countries, and pancreatic cancer mortality was seen as rising slightly in both sexes in Europe overall. The reasons were unclear to the researchers, particularly since one of the major known risk factors for pancreatic cancer – smoking – has declined. Rates of pancreatic cancer have risen from 7.86 in 2007 to 8.01 per 100,000 in men and from 5.24 to 5.38 per 100,000 in women.
The findings, published online in Annals of Oncology (doi:10.1093/annonc/mds024), update Europe-wide declines first reported a year ago, when members of the same research team, led by epidemiologist Dr. Carlo La Vecchia of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Milan, used mortality and population data from the World Health Organization to determine that cancer deaths had decreased about 7% in women and 6% in men since 2007 (Ann. Oncol. 2011;22:947-56 [doi:10.1093/annonc/mdq774]).
The researchers used data on cancer deaths in the European Union for the period 1970-2007 to calculate death rates for each year and to identify trends, which were used to predict death rates for 2012.
The breast cancer findings, Dr. La Vecchia and colleagues wrote, show that the mortality declines have occurred despite some unfavorable trends in obesity, physical activity, and menstrual and reproductive factors. Also, the fact that the most dramatic declines have been reported in younger women, who are not routinely screened, suggests that improvements in treatment have played the largest role in reducing deaths.
Despite the pancreatic cancer and lung cancer trends for women, the decline in cancer deaths in Europe may have already surpassed a 2003 goal set by the European Commission to see a 15% reduction by 2015, the researchers said.
The research was funded by the Swiss Cancer League and the Italian Association for Cancer Research. One coauthor, Dr. Matteo Malvezzi, was supported by a fellowship from the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research. None of the authors disclosed conflicts of interest.