A study of the International Center for Research on Cancer conducted in eighteen European countries confirms that the less we are educated, the greater the risk of dying of this disease is great.
By Nathalie Brafman
Socio-economic inequalities weigh heavily in cancer mortality in Europe. And if cancer affects everyone, it strikes the least educated people harder. A team of researchers from the Center for Cancer Research (Circ), a World Health Organization Agency, in collaboration with the Dutch university hospital Erasmus MC, as well as a dozen other organizations, analyzed And compared data on the risk of cancer death according to the level of education in eighteen countries in Europe, over a period between 1990 and 2015, and throughout the population aged 40 to 79. This represents around 70 % of all cancer deaths in Europe.
The researchers’ report is final. The study published, Monday, November 28, in The Lancet Regional Health Europe and funded by the National Cancer Institute (INCA), confirms how much the socio-economic position, here measured by the level of education, plays in the risk of dying of cancer. It offers both a global vision of inequalities by comparing countries but also populations within each of the States. “Everywhere in Europe, which we live in the Czech Republic, Finland, Spain or even France, these inequalities exist for the most part forms of cancer, in particular cancers linked to tobacco and alcohol, that of the lung On the lead “, notes Salvatore Vaccarella, Epidemiologist at CIR, who coordinated this study.
Social inequalities in the face of cancer mortality have already been pointed out in many studies. “This study has the merit of geographic and chronological width and offers an interesting photograph,” notes the doctor and epidemiologist Jean-David Zeitoun, who has not participated in this work. The geographic differences appear secondary for the most educated categories. On the other hand, when one is little educated, the importance of the country plays in full.
strong variation from one country to another
Mortality rates are higher in the population at the bottom of the social hierarchy and the extent of inequalities varies strongly from one country to another, specify the researchers of the CIR. “A substantial fraction – approximately 32 % in men and 16 % in women – cancer deaths are associated with education inequalities,” they add. Proportion which can go respectively up to 46 % and 24 % in Eastern Europe and in Baltic countries. The study also reveals that less educated men have more than twice as much risk of dying of lung cancer than those more educated. Regarding cervical cancer, women of a disadvantaged environment have a risk of dying three times higher than the others.
You have 61.09% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.