World Health Matters: Italy: Leukaemia death rate expected to fall in 2016

by Gary Finnegan: Good news in the battle against cancer: death rates from leukaemia among people of all ages in Europe are falling.

The latest predictions for European cancer deaths in 2016, published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology, show that falls in leukaemia death rates will be greatest among children and young adults of both sexes.

Between 2009 and 2016 death rates from leukaemia among children aged 0-14 will fall by 38% in boys and 20% in girls, and by 26% and 22% in young men and women respectively, aged between 15-44. Among men and women aged 45-69 the death rates will fall by 19%, according to the paper.

The authors say that improvements in management, multi-drug chemotherapy, immunotherapies, stem cell transplants, radiotherapy and treatments that have less toxic side-effects have all contributed to the improvement in survival from leukaemia. However, some forms of leukaemia remain hard to treat successfully, particularly those that are more common in adults and the elderly.

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is most frequent in children, adolescents and young adults, and it has a five-year survival rate of over 90%. Stem cell transplants and new chemotherapy treatments have improved survival in acute myelogenous leukaemia, which is relatively common in adults and the elderly.

However, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), which is more common in the elderly, is difficult to cure, although long-term survival has been achieved in chronic myeloid leukaemia due to the introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (drugs that block signals promoting cancer cell growth).

“Predictions of death rates from leukaemia are complicated by the fact that leukaemias are a varied collection of blood cancers, with some being more treatable than others,” says Dr Carlo La Vecchia (MD), Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Milan.

“However, the important falls in overall death rates from this group of diseases are very encouraging and are a testament to the hard work of researchers and clinicians in developing and implementing better diagnosis and treatments.”

The study by researchers in Italy, Switzerland and the USA looked at cancer death rates in the EU 28 member states as a whole and also in the six largest countries – France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK – for all cancers, and, individually, for stomach, intestines, pancreas, lung, prostate, breast, uterus (including cervix) and leukaemias for men and women.

This is the sixth consecutive year the researchers have published these predictions and there are encouraging downward trends in deaths from most cancers. Since 2011 there has been a fall in total cancer death rates in the EU of 8% in men and 3% in women.

In 2016 the predicted age standardised rate of deaths in men will be 133.5 per 100,000 of the population and 85.2 per 100,000 in women. As the number of elderly people in Europe is increasing, the actual number of deaths will rise from 734,259 in 2011 to 753,600 in men in 2016, and from 580,528 to 605,900 in women, making a total of nearly 1,359,500 deaths predicted for 2016.

“The absolute numbers of cancer deaths are likely to level off in the future,” said Professor La Vecchia said. “Although we are seeing declining death rates, the number of new cases of cancer are increasing, placing a growing burden on national health services, and so governments should be aware of this and plan for it.”