The United Kingdom has seen the highest reduction in the world in the rates of death from female breast and male lung cancer, according to the latest research from Oxford University professors Richard Doll and Richard Peto, presented at the headquarters of Cancer Research UK last week.
Total cancer mortality for both males and females is at its lowest levels since 1950, said Professor Peto. The figures were heavily influenced by the decrease in cancers attributed to smoking.
In males, cancer deaths not attributed to smoking in the under 70 age group, have remained relatively stable. However, those due to smoking peaked in 1970 at 2.43 deaths per 1000 population and have continued sharply downwards ever since, reaching a level of 1.08 deaths per 1000 in 1999.
In females, the picture is different. Deaths in those under 70s that are not attributed to smoking have steadily declined since 1950 (from 2.57 per 1000 to 1.88 per 1000), while those due to smoking peaked in 1990 at 2.24 per 1000 but have started to decrease since then. In 1999 there were 1.88 deaths from lung cancer per 1000 women.
Professor Peto compared the UK decrease in female cancer mortality due to smoking with Hungary and France, where deaths have risen substantially in the under 70 age group since 1955 and continue to rise, although the overall rates are still lower than in the United Kingdom. In Hungary there were 0.13 deaths per 1000 in 1955 and 0.47 per 1000 in 1995; the corresponding figures for France were similar (0.08 and 0.14).
Professor Doll, whose seminal 1950 study proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, said this new research showed that “widespread cessation of smoking has halved the number of lung cancer deaths that would otherwise be occurring in Britain in 2002.”
Professors Doll and Peto both emphasised that this decrease in mortality could be attributed mainly to increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking in relation to lung cancer. They also said that the fall in deaths from breast cancer showed that better diagnosis and better treatment in the form of hormone treatments such as tamoxifen was working.
The professors highlighted that smoking cessation was crucial to cancer mortality. “Cancer mortality trends will be driven by the extent to which people stop smoking, not by any wonderful treatments,” said Richard Peto, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at Oxford.
Smoking declined among men in the United Kingdom from 51% in 1974 to 28% in 1998 and among women in the same period from 41% to 26%.