New York, Aug. 21, (dpa/GNA) - Nearly half of all deaths due to cancer globally can be traced to avoidable factors such as an unhealthy lifestyle, researchers have revealed.
Smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity led the list of 34 risk factors, an international research team writes in The Lancet, a British medical journal.
The researchers analysed data from about 10 million people who died from 23 different types of cancer in 2019. External risk factors were involved in 4.45 million deaths or 44.4%.
“This study illustrates that the burden of cancer remains an important public health challenge that is growing in magnitude around the world,” said Dr Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and a co-senior author of the study.
“Smoking continues to be the leading risk factor for cancer globally, with other substantial contributors to cancer burden varying,” Murray added. “Our findings can help policymakers and researchers identify key risk factors that could be targeted in efforts to reduce deaths and ill health from cancer regionally, nationally, and globally.”
The study also found that men are significantly more at risk of dying from cancer due to external risk factors: these account for more than half of all cancer-related deaths among them (50.6%). In women, on the other hand, just over a third of these deaths were due to such causes (36.3%).
The team distinguished between two main categories of risk factors: behavioural risks on the one hand and environmental and occupational risks on the other.
In addition to alcohol, smoking and an unhealthy diet, behavioural risks also include unprotected sex. Environmental and occupational risks include, for example, exposure to carcinogenic substances in certain occupations.
GNA