And while cancer is poised to become the number one killer in the United States, topping heart disease, that is because deaths from heart disease have decreased faster than for cancer.
"Older Americans have only experienced decreased [cancer] mortality very recently, but younger Americans have been seeing benefits for a long time so, as a result, everyone born in the last 60 years has been reaping the benefits of efforts in prevention research and treatment research and early detection research," said Dr. Eric Kort, lead author of a study appearing in the Aug. 15 issue of Cancer Research.
Recent studies have had good news, including an American Cancer Society report from May which found an encouraging 19.2% drop in cancer death rates among men from 1990 to 2005 and an 11.4% drop in women's cancer death rates during the same time period.These researchers looked at mortality rates since 1955 in specific age groups, finding that U.S. cancer mortality rates have decreased overall, first in children and younger adults then more recently, in older Americans as well.
The youngest age group showed the most improvement, with a 25.9% decline in death rates for each successive decade, while death rates in the older age groups decreased a respectable 6.8% each decade. The difference likely reflects early advances in cancer treatment affecting malignancies, such as childhood leukemia, seen in younger people.
"People quitting smoking has had an enormous impact. We have also made major inroads in cervical cancer death rates," Brooks said.
The authors pointed to successful chemotherapy regimens for childhood leukemias, then in lymphomas and testicular cancers of early adulthood.
Now, screening programs for breast, prostate and colon cancer are also starting to bear fruit.
"The traditional way of presenting this data is only presenting one aspect of the story of cancer mortality," Kort said. "What we're doing is filling in the rest of the picture."
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