Cancer can affect anyone, but people from poor and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds are at higher risk of cancer. This is stated by a German research team.
In Germany, the risk of developing cancer is decreasing, which is good news. But these developments also reveal a discrepancy: in more socially affluent regions this trend is much more pronounced than elsewhere, writes the team led by Lina Jansen, from the German Center for Cancer Research (DKFZ in German), in the journal International Journal of Cancer.
In their study, the researchers examined data from 48 million residents of eight German states and compared cancer diagnoses between 2007 and 2018. The result: social inequality increasingly influences the rate of new cancer cases in Germany.
Cancer and social inequality: a clear relationship
The researchers classified the regions into five groups according to your socioeconomic index, including income, employment rate and education.
The researchers found that fewer people developed cancer during the observed period, in all five groups. However, this decline in the rate of new cases was much less pronounced in deprived regions than in affluent ones.
The scientists observed this both for cancers in general and for colorectal and lung cancer in men in particular.
In addition, the researchers found that inequality increased over the course of the observation period: while in 2007 men from socioeconomically disadvantaged regions had a 7% higher rate of new cancer cases Compared to men from less-privileged areas, this figure increased to 23% in 2018. For women, the difference increased from 7% in 2007 to 20% in 2018.
Socioeconomic gradient: tobacco use, lack of exercise or obesity
While health care and infrastructure remain relatively constant, individual factors such as unemployment, social benefits or the school dropout rate make a big difference.
Thus, “social factors seem to play a much more important role than the general infrastructure,” emphasizes Lina Jansen from the Baden-Württemberg Cancer Epidemiological Registry at the DKFZ.
According to the researchers, the different prevalence of lifestyle-related cancer risk factors it also contributes significantly to social inequality in cancer incidence.
Typically, there is a socioeconomic gradient in the frequency of tobacco use, lack of exercise, or severe obesity. The gradient is the difference in the intensity of an effect between two points in the same space or at the same point at two different times.
Cancer can often be prevented
“Between 30 and 50% of cancers are preventable through healthy lifestyles, such as abstaining from tobacco use, and public health measures, such as vaccination against cancer infections,” also warns the World Health Organization (WHO). ). Prevention is the most cost-effective long-term strategy to fight cancer.”
In addition to tobacco, the WHO also mentions alcohol consumption, an unhealthy diet, lack of exercise and air pollution as risk factors for cancer.
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