European cancer trends encouraging, study reveals
Cancer prevention and management in Europe are moving in the right direction, and survival rates have also improved, thanks to better access to specialised diagnostics and treatment. This is the conclusion of the first comprehensive analysis of cancer incidence, mortality and survival combined in Europe. The research, which was partly funded by the EU, is published in a special issue of the European Journal of Cancer, the official journal of the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO). Unfortunately, the report is not all good news. Obesity-related cancers such as colorectal and postmenopausal breast cancer did not show a similar downward trend in incidence. Furthermore, the incidence of and mortality from tobacco-related cancers increased for both males and females in Central Europe and for women nearly everywhere in Europe. The importance of such comprehensive research cannot be underplayed. If health needs are to be properly managed, wide-ranging analyses such as the one presented here are of the utmost importance. 'For the sake of prevention and organisation of treatment, it is vital to correctly interpret trends in cancer rates: has real progress been made or are we looking at artefacts?' commented Professor Coebergh, of Erasmus MC University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. 'Observed increases in cancer incidence, for example, might be real, i.e. because of increasing risks due to previous cancer-causing or promoting agents, or they might be due to improvements in the completeness of the cancer registry, changes in diagnostic criteria, or effects of early detection methods such as population screening,' he continued. 'Likewise, improving cancer survival could be due to better treatment, but also because of earlier diagnosis of patients in whom cancer would otherwise be detected much later or who would even never have had clinical disease.' Among other things, the paper concludes that obesity related cancers will be the next upcoming challenge for European health care and as a result, obesity should be the target for prevention of oesophageal, breast, corpus uteri, cervical, prostate, and kidney cancer. Professor Coebergh and his team obtained data on incidence, mortality and five-year survival from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s from cancer registries in 21 European countries, and used it to analyse trends. EU support for the study came from the EU-funded Eurocadet project, which is financed under the 'Research for policy support' activity area of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). Their paper is just one of 10 published in the special issue of the European Journal of Cancer. The special issue is released as the European Commission starts working on a new EU Cancer Action Plan. 'The EJC's special issue on cancer control comes at a very opportune moment when the European Commission is starting to draw up plans for an EU Cancer Action Plan,' said Professor Alexander Eggermont, President of ECCO. 'It highlights several areas that the Commission will need to take into its considerations, as well as important issues that individual Members States are in the process of tackling. The paper on recent trends of cancer in Europe shows how useful epidemiology is in helping to identify areas that governments and healthcare professionals need to focus on.'