Cancer rates in young children are increasing worldwide                                                                                                    

Rates of pediatric cancer have been rising since the 1980s; however, this increase varies by age group and cancer type. University of Minnesota researchers studied children under 5 years of age to understand cancer trends that occur in this age group around the world. Their findings were recently published in the journal JNCI Cancer Spectrum.

Researchers analyzed data from individual countries in 15 subregional categories to compare trends in cancer rates for 11 different types of pediatric cancer from 1988 to 2012.

The study found:

• in children under 5 years, cancer rates increased for both common types of childhood leukemia, one brain tumor subtype, neuroblastoma and hepatoblastoma;
• hepatoblastoma, a rare liver tumor, had the largest increase in incidence in 11 out of 15 regions (the increases ranged from 1.9-6.5 percent per year);
• hepatoblastoma incidence increased in all regions except southern Asia;
• astrocytic tumors in the brain were the only cancer that decreased over the time period.

The study reported small but significant increases in the rates of several types of childhood cancer in developer countries. The fastest rising cancer in children under five, this is still a very rare cancer.