Australia had world’s highest rates of breast cancer in 2022
An analysis of global breast cancer rates has found that Australia and New Zealand had the world’s highest rates of breast cancer in 2022.
This is despite both countries substantially decreasing the disease’s mortality rate in the past decade.
The study found that 100.3 cases of breast cancer were diagnosed for every 100,000 women in Australia and New Zealand.
“There are various reasons for this,” National Breast Cancer Foundation prevention chair Nehmat Houssami said.
“[They are] related to the population structure (e.g. ageing) and risk factor profile.”
Houssami – who is a public health professor at the University of Sydney but was not involved in the research – said breast cancer risk factors that women may be less aware of included alcohol consumption, low physical activity and post-menopausal obesity.
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“We need to improve support for women to reduce these potentially modifiable risk factors,” she said.
The report, published in the journal Nature Medicine, found that one in 20 women globally are diagnosed with breast cancer and one in 70 are likely to die from the disease.
“However, this burden is not spread equally across countries and regions,” Houssami said.
“There are large variations in incidence rates and more concerning are the disparities in breast cancer mortality.”
Estimated age-standardised rates of mortality for female breast cancer per 100,000 for 185 countries in 2022. Image: Kim et al 2024, Nature Medicine
The study analysed data from 185 countries and found that mortality rates decreased in 29 countries with very high Human Development Index scores. They included seven that are meeting the Global Breast Cancer Initiative goal of at least a 2.5 per cent decrease each year.
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Australia and New Zealand’s annual decreases in mortality rate of 2.1 per cent are on the way to meeting this goal.
HDI is a metric used to measure a country’s overall quality of life by considering factors such as life expectancy, education levels, and standard of living.
However, regions with lower HDI disproportionately had the highest mortality rates, with 26.8 deaths for every 100,000 women in Melanesia, Polynesia and Western Africa.
The lifetime risk of dying from breast cancer was highest in Fiji (one in 24) and Africa (one in 47).
“A woman who develops breast cancer in a low-middle income country has a higher likelihood of dying from her cancer than her counterpart in a high-income country,” Houssami said.
“These disparities in breast cancer deaths are not new but have become more evident in the current analysis.”
According to the study, this gap in mortality reflects inequities in early detection, timely diagnosis and access to comprehensive breast cancer management. As a result, advanced stage at diagnosis is common in many low- and middle-income countries, with up to 26 per cent being metastatic.
The research projects that breast cancer cases and deaths will have increased by 38 per cent and 68 per cent by 2050, with 3.2 million new cases and 1.1 million deaths, disproportionately impacting low-HDI countries.
According to Houssami, the results flagged “an urgent need for governments, especially in low-middle income countries, to invest in providing access to breast cancer diagnosis and treatment services”.
This article first appeared in Cosmos. Read the original here
