Death rates from cervical cancer stable in Australia and heading down in NZ

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Observational study: A study in which the subject is observed to see if there is a relationship between two or more things (eg: the consumption of diet drinks and obesity). Observational studies cannot prove that one thing causes another, only that they are linked.

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Cervical cancer incidence and death rates remained relatively stable in Australia over a recent 10 year period, while in NZ death rates dropped by five per cent a year. The data comes from a global trend analysis which shows that cervical cancer rates have remained stable or are dropping in most countries across the world, with rates also linked to countries' socioeconomic development. Countries with stable or even decreasing cervical cancer rates tended to be those with effective cervical cancer screening programs and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, and these trends are predicted to continue for the next 15 years.

Journal/conference: Cancer

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China

Funder: This study was funded by the National Key Research and Development Project (no. 2016YFC1302503).

Media release

From: Wiley-Blackwell

Cervical cancer rates stable or trending down in countries with effective screening measures

Model predicts similar trends in next 15 years, based on countries’ socioeconomic development.

A recent trend analysis indicates that cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates have remained stable or are dropping in most countries across the globe. These rates differ based on each country’s socioeconomic development level, cervical cancer screening use, and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination rates. The findings are published by Wiley early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

Cervical cancer is a potentially preventable disease, through screening to detect and treat precancerous lesions and through vaccination against HPV. To reveal the most recent global patterns and trends of cervical cancer, a team led by Mingjuan Jin, PhD, of the Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China, examined information released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer pertaining to 31 countries.

The researchers found that cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates were lower in more socioeconomically developed countries. Also, both past and predicted trends appear to be stable or decreasing in most countries, especially in those with effective cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccination programs.

Over the most recent 10 years, 12 countries had stable cervical cancer incidence rates, 14 had decreasing rates, and five had increasing rates. In terms of mortality from cervical cancer, 12 countries had stable rates, 18 had decreasing rates, and one had an increased rate.

In predictions over the next 15 years for 27 countries, most are expected to have stable or decreasing trends. Ten are predicted to have stable incidence rates, nine to have decreasing rates, and eight to have increasing rates. For mortality from cervical cancer, 16 are predicted to have stable rates, 10 to have decreasing rates, and one to have an increasing rate.

“Effective cervical cancer screening programs and HPV vaccination should be further popularized to increase their coverage and ultimately decrease cervical cancer’s short-, mid-, and long-term burden,” said Dr. Jin.

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