New Research Reveals That Smoking And Alcohol Is The Cause Of Almost Half Of All Cancer Death

According to a new study carried out recently, alcohol, smoking, and a high body mass index are preventable risk factors for nearly half of all global cancer deaths.

The new study which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the first to estimate how the list of 34 risk factors contributes to cancer deaths and ill health at a global, regional and national level, across genders and over time.

According to the research, 4.45 million represent 44.4% of all cancer deaths worldwide.

The study used data collated by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease project to analyze global deaths and disabilities from cancer.

“To our knowledge, this study represents the largest effort to date to determine the global burden of cancer attributable to risk factors, and it provides a measure of the risk-attributable burden for specific cancers at a national, international level. contributes to a growing body of evidence aimed at assessing it globally,” said researchers from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in the study.

“While some cancer cases cannot be prevented, governments can work at the population level to support an environment that minimizes exposure to known cancer risk factors,” the researchers said. Primary prevention, or prevention of the development of cancer, is a particularly cost-effective strategy, although it must be combined with more comprehensive efforts to address the burden of cancer, including secondary prevention initiatives, such as screening programs, and cancer Ensuring effective ability to diagnose and treat people suffering from

The researchers also noted that government policies such as higher taxation and regulation of tobacco products are making “substantial progress”.

The study found that behavioral risk factors such as smoking, alcohol use, unprotected sex, and dietary exposure were responsible for the enormous cancer burden globally, accounting for 3.7 million deaths.

Using the Global Burden of Disease, Injury and Risk Factors (GBD) 2019 study, researchers examined how 34 behavioral, metabolic, and environmental, and occupational risk factors contributed to deaths and ill health due to 23 types of cancer in 2019. has contributed.

Estimates of cancer burden were based on death and disability-adjusted life-years (DALY), a measure of years of life attributable to death and years living with a disability.

According to the study, the risk factors included in the analysis accounted for 105 million cancer deaths globally in 2019 for both sexes – 42% of all deaths in that year.

The researchers found that tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancers were the leading causes of risk-attributable cancer death for both men and women globally, accounting for 36.9% of all cancer deaths due to risk factors.

This was followed by colon and rectum cancer (13.3%), oesophageal cancer (9.7%) and colon cancer (6.6%) in men, and cervical cancer (17.9%), colon and rectum cancer (15.8%) and breast cancer (11) Were. %) in women.

Between 2010 and 2019, cancer deaths due to risk factors increased by 20.4% globally, from 3.7 million to 4.45 million.

Dr. Lisa Fors, Assistant Professor in Health Metrics Science at IHME at the University of Washington School of Medicine, said: “Policy efforts to reduce exposure to cancer risk factors at the population level are important and should be part of comprehensive cancer control strategies. Early diagnosis and support effective treatment.”

Writing in a linked comment, Professor Diana Sarfati and Dr. Jason Gurney from the University of Otago, New Zealand, who was not involved in the study, said: “Primary prevention of cancer through the elimination or mitigation of modifiable risk factors is our best hope. To reduce the cancer burden in the future.

“Reducing this burden will improve health and wellbeing and reduce the compounding effect on humans and fiscal resource pressures within cancer services and the wider health sector.”

This study is published in The Lancet.