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Is mortality due to primary malignant brain and other central nervous system tumors decreasing?

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Abstract

Primary malignant brain and other central nervous system tumors (BT) are a rare cancer that causes morbidity and mortality disproportionate to their incidence. This study presents the most up-to-date mortality data for malignant BT in the United States (US) by histology groupings, age, race, and sex. Mortality rates for malignant BT were generated using the Center for Disease Control’s National Vital Statistics Systems (NVSS, ~100% of US) data from 1975 to 2012. Histology-specific incidence-based mortality rates were calculated using the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End-Results 9 (SEER9, ~9.4% of US) data from 1975 to 2012. Joinpoint modeling was used to estimate trends. Mortality was similar in both the NVSS and SEER9 datasets. Overall, mortality from 1975 to 2012 was higher among men, higher in older individuals, and higher in Whites compared to other races. Persons age 65+ years had significant increases in mortality for all malignant tumors overall and for glioma histologies, while persons age <20 years had no significant changes in mortality. This study reports up-to-date mortality rates by histology groupings, age, race, and sex for malignant BT. There have been no significant changes in overall mortality due to these tumors from 1975 to 2012. There have been significant increases in mortality in the elderly (age 65+ years), especially those age 75–84 years, mirroring the effect of overall population aging. Examining age-, race-, sex-, and histology-specific morality at the population level can provide important information for clinicians, researchers, and public health planning.

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Funding

Funding for CBTRUS was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Contract No. 2016-M-90304, The Sontag Foundation, Genentech, Novocure, Celldex, AbbVie, along with the Musella Foundation, Voices Against Cancer, and the Zelda Dorin Tetenbaum Memorial Fund, as well as private and in kind donations. Contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the CDC.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 11100 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH, 44106-50, USA

      Haley Gittleman, Quinn T. Ostrom & Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan

    2. Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States, 224 East Ogden Ave. #116, Hinsdale, IL, 60521, USA

      Haley Gittleman, Quinn T. Ostrom, Carol Kruchko & Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan

    3. Department of Physiology & Biophysics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, 11100 Euclid Ave, Cleveland, OH, 44106, USA

      Courtney Kromer & Jeffrey Russell

    4. Northeast Ohio Medical University, 4209 OH-44, Rootstown, OH, 44272, USA

      Courtney Kromer

    5. Georgetown University, 37th and O St NW, Washington, DC, 20057, USA

      Rachel Blanda

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    1. Haley Gittleman
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    Correspondence to Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan.

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    Haley Gittleman and Courtney Kromer have contributed equally to this manuscript.

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    11060_2017_2449_MOESM1_ESM.tiff

    Supplementary Figure 1. Proportion of deaths in each age group by year in NVSS by A) age group and B) elderly-specific age groups, 1975-2012 (TIFF 44 KB)

    Supplementary material 2 (DOCX 40 KB)

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    Gittleman, H., Kromer, C., Ostrom, Q.T. et al. Is mortality due to primary malignant brain and other central nervous system tumors decreasing?. J Neurooncol 133, 265–275 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11060-017-2449-1

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