The study calls on China to control cancer risk factors: it is expected to reduce mortality.

Headline: Study Calls on China to Control Cancer Risk Factors: Promising to Reduce Mortality
July 8
A new report found that more than half of all cancer deaths among Chinese men in 2013 and more than one-third of cancer deaths among Chinese women were attributed to a range of changeable risk factors: tobacco, alcohol, nutrition, weight, physical activity and infection.
the study, published in the Swiss Journal of oncology, concluded that effective public health interventions to eliminate or reduce exposure to these risk factors could have a considerable impact on reducing the cancer burden in China.
, cancer is the number one cause of death. It is estimated that there are currently 4.3 million new cancer cases and 2.8 million cancer deaths each year. The burden is expected to be even heavier in the coming decades due to lifestyle changes that increase cancer risk, such as an ageing population, excessive calorie intake and lack of physical activity.
For further research, a team of researchers led by Dr. Farhad Islami of the American Cancer Society used contemporary data from representative national surveys and cancer registries to estimate the number and proportion of cancer deaths in China and cases attributed to a range of risk factors. These risk factors include long-term smoking, secondhand smoke, alcohol consumption, low fruit/vegetable intake, overweight, lack of physical activity and infection.
found that about 718,000 (52%) male cancer deaths and 283,000 (35%) female cancer deaths in 2013 were attributed to risk factors considered in the analysis. The number of new cancer cases attributable to these factors was approximately 953,000 for men (47 per cent) and for women for approximately 443,000 (28 per cent). Together, about 1 million cancer deaths (nearly half of the total) and 1.4 million new cancer cases (39 percent) in China in 2013 were attributed to the risk factors they studied."Our analysis is likely to underestimate the number of cancer cases attributable to changeable risk factors, as we are unable to include all the changeable risk factors, especially indoor air pollution from cooking and heating with coal, which is a major risk factor for lung cancer in Chinese women," said
Islami. The
factors that lead to cancer deaths in men are long-term smoking (26 per cent), hepatitis B infection (12 per cent) and low fruit/vegetable intake (7 per cent). For women, the most important factors were hepatitis B infection (7%), low fruit/vegetable intake (6%) and secondhand smoke (5%).
They concluded: "Our findings suggest that there is a greater need for China to implement known interventions and develop new strategies to reduce people's exposure to pre-existing risk factors such as smoking and cancer-causing infections, as well as emerging risk factors such as alcohol consumption, overweight and physical insecurity." "