Mouth, breast cancer cases rise in Bangladesh: Report

The number of cases of the cancer, most common in men and women, have shown an upward trend since 1990 while liver cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Bangladesh, reports UNB.
Breast cancer accounts for the highest number of new cancer cases among women in Bangladesh, and mouth cancer has the highest number of cancer cases for men, according to a new study in the journal JAMA Oncology.
But liver cancer claims the lives of the most men and women. Among Bangladeshi men, the number of new mouth cancer cases nearly doubled between 1990 and 2013, up from 8,800 to 15,000, according to a message received in Dhaka on Friday from Seattle.
Among the leading causes of cancer incidence, the number of new cases of other pharynx cancers in men was the lowest in 2013, at 3,500, up from 2,500 in 1990.
During this period, breast cancer cases in women almost quadrupled, from 4,400 to 16,500, and among the top ten causes of cancer incidence, the number of new cases of esophageal cancer was the lowest at 2,900 in 2013, up from 1,800 in 1990.
Published on May 28, the study, "The Global Burden of Cancer 2013," was conducted by an international consortium of researchers coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
In Bangladesh, liver cancer was the leading cause of cancer deaths for men as well as women. Deaths from this form of cancer outnumbered deaths from other cancers in Bangladesh, at 20,300 in 2013.
"Cancer remains a major threat to people's health in Bangladesh and around the world," said oncologist Dr Christina Fitzmaurice, a visiting fellow at IHME and lead author of the study.
For the leading causes of cancer deaths among Bangladeshis, deaths from liver cancer were the highest for both men and women, more than doubling in number for men between 1990 and 2013, from 5,800 to 13,300 and nearly doubling for women at 7,000 in 2013, up from 3,900 in 1990.
Among the leading causes of cancer deaths in Bangladesh, the number of deaths was lowest for breast cancer, at 5,300 in 2013, up from 2,100 in 1990.
Bangladesh differed from most other countries with respect to new cases of mouth cancer, which ranked number one for incident cases in Bangladesh but did not rank in the top ten globally.