The seven nations—India, China, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and South Africa—represented more than half of the annual worldwide burden of cancer deaths, according to research.
Researchers discovered that the seven nations—India, China, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and South Africa—collectively accounted for more than half of the annual worldwide burden of cancer deaths.
They observed that over two million deaths were caused by smoking, drinking, obesity, and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections, three additional preventable risk factors.
Researchers from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), Kings College London, UK, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) conducted the study. They also examined the number of years of life lost to cancer.
The researchers came to the conclusion that each year, almost 30 million years of life are wasted due to the four controllable risk factors. The largest effect was caused by tobacco use, which resulted in the loss of 20.8 million years of life.
According to Judith Offman, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, “looking at how many years of life are lost to cancer due to these risk factors in countries around the world allows us to see what certain countries are doing well, and what isn’t working.”
Every two minutes, a person worldwide passes away from cervical cancer. Ms. Offman, who worked on the study while at King’s College, stated that “(roughly) 90% of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries and could be cut drastically with comprehensive screening and HPV vaccination programs.”
The population attributable fractions of the four risk factors from earlier worldwide studies were gathered by the researchers, who then used these to estimate the number of cancer deaths in 2020.
They noted that different cancer kinds were linked to different preventable risk factors in different locations.
For instance, gynecological and head and neck cancers were the leading causes of premature deaths in India; but, in all other nations, tobacco use was the leading cause of lung cancer-related years of life lost.
The experts think that each country’s unique characteristics are to blame for this.
They claimed that the reason for the higher number of preventable deaths from gynecological cancers in India and South Africa owing to HPV infection is because these two countries have less thorough cervical screening programs than other nations like the U.K. and the U.S.
According to the researchers, one possible explanation for the increased number of years of life lost to head and neck cancer in men in India is that their smoking habits differ from those of people in the United Kingdom in that tobacco products are used differently in India.
The number of cancer fatalities and years of life lost due to various risk factors varied according to gender. Men are more likely than women to have lost years of life due to alcohol and tobacco usage since they tend to be higher in men.
According to the study, men in China, India, and Russia lost up to nine times as many years of life to alcoholism and tobacco use than women did. Infection with HPV and being overweight or obese caused more cancer deaths and years of life lost in women than in males.
According to them, HPV caused a significant gender gap and exceptionally high rates of years lost of life in South Africa and India. The data reveals that rates were 11 times higher in India and 60 times higher in South Africa for women than for males, underscoring the critical need for greater access to HPV vaccination and cervical screening in these nations.