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Cancer statistics in Chinese older people, 2022: current burden, time trends, and comparisons with the US, Japan, and the Republic of Korea

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Abstract

Largely due to population ageing, the cancer burden from older people has been rising, which imposed considerable pressure on current Chinese healthcare system. We provide comprehensive information about cancer burden of Chinese older people based on the most recent data from National Central Cancer Registry of China. The logarithmic linear regression was used to project the current cancer burden in 2022, and Joinpoint regression was used for temporal trend analysis from 2000 to 2017. We also estimated cancer statistics of older people in the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea for comparisons. It is estimated that 2.79 million cases and 1.94 million deaths occur for Chinese older people, representing 55.8% and 68.2% of cases and deaths in all population in 2022. The overall cancer incidence rate gradually increased among older women, while the mortality rates declined for both sexes. Notably, approximately 10.0% of all cases and 17.7% of all deaths are from people aged over 80 years, and cancer incidence and mortality in this age group showed upward trends for women. Lung cancer and digestive cancers are the leading cancer types for Chinese older people. Compared with other countries, China has lower incidence rates but higher mortality rates for older people. The rapidly growing burden of prostate cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and declines in esophageal cancer, stomach cancer, and liver cancer among older people indicate the cancer pattern in China is being in a transition stage to that in developed countries. Our findings imply that it should be the national health priority to meet the growing demands for cancer diagnosis, treatment and care services from the older people as the rapid population ageing in next few decades.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (2021-I2M-1-011, 2021-12M-1-046). The authors express their deep gratitude to all the local Cancer Registry staff in China for their contribution to data collection, validation, and routine analyses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Office for Cancer Registry, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100021, China

    Wen Ju, Rongshou Zheng, Siwei Zhang, Hongmei Zeng, Kexin Sun, Shaoming Wang, Ru Chen, Li Li, Wenqiang Wei & Jie He

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  1. Wen Ju
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  2. Rongshou Zheng
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Correspondence to Wenqiang Wei or Jie He.

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Ju, W., Zheng, R., Zhang, S. et al. Cancer statistics in Chinese older people, 2022: current burden, time trends, and comparisons with the US, Japan, and the Republic of Korea. Sci. China Life Sci. 66, 1079–1091 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-022-2218-x

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