According to a report released by Cancer Research UK the number of teenagers and young adults dying from cancer has halved over the last 30 years.
Between 1975 and 1977, 580 youngsters aged between 15 and 24 died from the disease every year in Britain. Since then this number has thankfully been decreasing, with Cancer Research stating that between 2008 and 2010, there were roughly 300 deaths in this age group.
Over the latter 15 years the largest drop in cancer deaths was for Leukaemia- from an average of 54 young men dying from the disease each year between 1995 and 1999, this number dropped to 39 deaths in 2006 to 2010. The statistics for young women displayed a similar trend as the death toll fell from 38 deaths per year to 21. Overall, brain tumours remained the most common cause of young cancer deaths.
It is likely that this trend is a result of astute research and specialised treatments for this often aggressive disease.
Cancer is still the main cause of death in teenagers and young adults, with only transport accidents accounting for more fatalities in this age group. From the Cancer Statistics Report: Teenage and Young Adult Cancer, it has been calculated that around 2100 young people aged between 15 and 24 are diagnosed with cancer every year in the UK.
Dr. Harpal Kumar of Cancer Research UK comments on the report to say, “Drug development and clinical trials are at the heart of helping more teenagers and young adults survive cancer”.
However, there remains a problem with getting this age group to attend clinical trials in order to develop this trend further as well as improve treatments for more rare cancers. Professor Jillian Birch says it is currently the case that, due to the recent ‘great progress’, over 80 per cent of the younger generations will beat the disease. However she added, “We need to drastically improve this so that we can develop better treatments, help more teenagers and young adults survive the disease and offer hope to patients with harder to treat cancers’.
The recent report showed that less than one fifth of those diagnosed with cancer in the age bracket of 15-24 take part in clinical trials. Amongst child cancer patients, this number is between 50 and 70 per cent.
Simon Davies, chief executive of Teenage Cancer Trust is keen on seeing even greater improvements. He said, “It’s fantastic to see such a fall in the number of young people dying from some types of common cancers during this time. However, many of the rarer cancers which affect young people like sarcomas have made little of no progress”. He added, “More investment in rare cancer research is needed. We want to work with Cancer Research UK and the pharmaceutical industry to ensure better access to clinical trials for young people with cancer”.
In light of the radical improvement of cancer treatment, it was added that it is essential to broaden access to clinical trials in order to make treatment more affective.
Although deaths rates have proven to be on the decrease, the incidence of all types of the disease developed by teenagers and young adults is rising.
Sources
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21897885
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