A decrease in obesity rates may reduce the burden of gallbladder and biliary tract cancer (GBTC) worldwide, according to the results of a study published in Cancer.
The study authors used data from the Global Burden of Diseases Study 2017 to identify incidence rates, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for GBTC from 1990 to 2017.
For 2017, a total of 210,878 new cases of GBTC and 173,974 resulting deaths were reported worldwide, which represented a 76% increase in incidence and 65% increase in mortality for GBTC since 1990.
Continue Reading
The age-standardized incidence rate for 2017 was 2.71 per 100,000 population, which represented a 14% drop since 1990. The age-standardized death rate for 2017 was 2.23 per 100,000 population, which represented a 20% drop since 1990. The DALYs for 2017 were 3,483,046, and the age-standardized rate was 43.22 per 100,000 population, which represented a 52% increase since 1990 in DALYs and a 22% decrease in the age-standardized rate.
High BMI was the only risk factor identified for death from GBTC and DALYs. High BMI made up 15.4% of GBTC age-standardized deaths and 16% of DALYs worldwide for 2017.
High-income North America had the largest proportion of age-standardized deaths for men (16.5%) and women (36.8%), while women in high-income Asia Pacific regions (11.4%) and men in eastern sub-Saharan Africa (4.3%) had the smallest.
The study authors noted that high-income North America includes the United States, with an adult obesity rate of 25%, and Canada, with an adult obesity rate of 33.33%, while in the high-income Asia Pacific, especially in Japan, the obesity rate was lower than that in other high-income regions.
“Globally, the number of individuals with obesity has risen from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014. Therefore, to reduce the burden of GBTC, effective prevention programs to decrease the number of individuals with obesity through appropriate strategies, such as encouraging exercise and the consumption of healthy food, are required,” the study authors concluded.
Reference
Ouyang G, Liu Q, Wu Y, et al. The global, regional, and national burden of gallbladder and biliary tract cancer and its attributable risk factors in 195 countries and territories, 1990 to 2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. Cancer. Published online March 22, 2021. doi:10.1002/cncr.33476
