Two million cancer cases worldwide annually are caused by infections that are treatable, says a new study. Of the more than 7.5 million people who lost their lives to cancer across the globe in 2008, close to 1.5 million were from treatable and preventable infections like the HPV – human papillomavirus and HCV – Hepatitis C.
Infections that have certain bacteria, parasites and viruses are one of the preventable and biggest causes of cancer globally, said the study’s authors in France. They said if application of public-health methods used for infection prevention, like safer injection practices, vaccination or antimicrobial treatments were used more often, there would be a significant effect on the worldwide cancer burden.
Researchers for the study calculated the proportion of cancers that were caused by infections by searching through statistics of 27 forms of cancer in 184 countries. They discovered that 16% of all cancers across the globe were infection-related and in developing countries, that amount was three time higher.
As an example, 3.3% of Australia and New Zealand cancers were due to infections, while in sub-Sahara Africa that rate was 32.7%. There are four principle infections associated with cancer – Hepatitis B and C, HPV and the Helicobacter pylori, which causes infection in the stomach. Those four are responsible for close to 1.9 million cases of cancer each year that include cervical, liver and gastric cancer.
For women, 50% of the cancers that were infection related were cervical cancers and in men, 80% of the cancer related to infections was gastric and liver cancers.
