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Science Better education in U.S. means less risk from four common cancers
Science Better education in U.S. means less risk from four common cancers | Better education in U.S. means less risk from four common cancers |
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| by William Atkins | |
| Wednesday, 09 July 2008 | |
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Science DiscussionsLead researcher in the American Cancer Society study is Ahmedin Jemal, the director of the ACS’s Occurrence Office. The study found that the deaths from these cancers dropped quite a bit from 1993 to 2001. However, they discovered that men and women with college degrees have the biggest drop of these cancers. In fact, they state in the abstract to their paper, “Death rates for the four major cancer sites (lung, breast, prostate, and colon and rectum) have declined steadily in the United States among persons aged 25–64 years since the early 1990s. We used national data to examine these trends in relation to educational attainment.” The team of researchers calculated death rates based on age for the four cancers (lung, breast, prostate, and colon-and-rectum [colorectal]) by level of education among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black men and women. Each participant was between the ages of 25 and 64 years. Data, taken from 1993 to 2001, was from the majority of deaths recorded by the National Center for Health Statistics. In addition, education level and population data were taken from the U.S. Bureau of Census’ Current Population Survey. Dr. Ahmedin Jemal stated, "Everybody has not been benefiting from advances in prevention and treatment of cancer. The decrease in cancer deaths is mostly confined to the most educated men and women. For those less educated men and women, those rates are either stable or for some cancers has been increasing.” [U.S. News and World Report: “College-Educated Fare Better When Cancer Strikes”] The authors of the paper stated, “Death rates for each cancer decreased statistically significantly from 1993 to 2001 in people with at least 16 years of education in every sex and race stratum except lung cancer in black women, for whom death rates were stable. For example, colorectal cancer death rates among white men, black men, white women, and black women with at least 16 years of education decreased by 2.4% …, 4.8% …, 3.0% …, and 2.6% … annually, respectively.” [U.S. News and World Report] They added, “By contrast, among people with less than 12 years of education, a statistically significant decrease in death rates from 1993 through 2001 was seen only for breast cancer in white women (1.4% per year; …). Death rates among persons with less than 12 years of education over the same time interval increased for lung cancer in white women (2.4% per year; …) and for colon cancer in black men (2.7% per year; …) and were stable for the remaining race/sex/site strata….” [U.S. News and World Report] Additional specifics found in the study are found on page two. |
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