African American and Hispanic adolescents and adults under the age of 40 years were more likely to die from differentiated thyroid cancer than were non-Hispanic whites from the same age range, said the authors of a newly published study in Thyroid.
Lead author Theresa H.M. Keegan, Ph.D., of Stanford (Calif.) University and her associates used the California Cancer Registry to obtain data on 16,827 adolescents and young adults who had a diagnosis of differentiated thyroid cancer between 1988 and 2010. Older young adults aged 35-39 years (versus 15- to 29-year-olds), men (hazard ratio, 2.77; 95% confidence interval, 1.62-4.72), and adolescents and young adults of African American or Hispanic race/ethnicity (versus non-Hispanic whites) had worse thyroid cancer–specific survival than did non-Hispanic whites, judging from findings of multivariate analyses using Cox proportional hazards regression.
In addition, residence in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods (HR, 3.11; 95% CI, 1.28-7.56) and nonmetropolitan areas (HR, 5.53; 95% CI, 2.07-14.78) was associated with worse thyroid cancer–specific survival among adolescent and young adult men but not adolescent and young adult women.
“Our study is one of the first to simultaneously consider the impact of small-area neighborhood [socioeconomic status], health insurance, marital status, diagnosis of subsequent cancers, and a number of tumor characteristics on survival after” differentiated thyroid cancer in adolescents and young adults, the authors noted.
Read the full article here (Thyroid 2015;25:635-48 [doi:10.1089/thy.2015.0021]).
The authors reported that they did not have any competing financial interests.