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People with fries, beer, cigarettes: Men are significantly more at risk of dying of cancer due to external risk factors
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Wolfram Steinberg / picture alliance / Wolfram Steinberg
According to a new study, almost every second cancer death is due to avoidable factors such as an unhealthy lifestyle.
Smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity led the list of 34 risk factors, writes an international research team in the journal The Lancet.
The group analyzed data from about 10 million people who died from 23 different types of cancer in 2019.
External risk factors were involved in 4.45 million deaths — 44.4 percent.
"This study shows that the burden of cancer remains an important public health challenge that is growing in global importance," said co-author Christopher Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle in a statement from the journal.
The results of the study could help policy makers and researchers to identify risk factors that can prevent both morbidity and death from cancer.
The study also found that men are significantly more at risk of dying from cancer due to external risk factors: these account for more than half of all cancer-related deaths among them (50.6 percent).
In women, on the other hand, just over a third of these deaths were due to such causes (36.3 percent).
Men lose more years of life than women
The team distinguishes between two main categories of risk factors: behavioral risks on the one hand and environmental and occupational risks on the other.
In addition to alcohol, smoking and unhealthy diet, behavioral risks also include unprotected sex.
Environmental and occupational risks include, for example, contact with carcinogenic substances in certain occupations.
The scientists also calculated the risk based on the number of years of life lost due to cancer and thus presented the difference between men and women. According to this, men lost around four times as many years of life as women through tobacco consumption, and the value was tripled for alcohol consumption.
The researchers attribute this to the fact that men smoke and drink more than women.
Men were also three times more at risk for environmental and occupational risks - suggesting that men are more likely than women to work in places where they are exposed to carcinogens.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide after cardiovascular diseases.
The most common cause of cancer-related deaths are tumors in the respiratory tract (36.9 percent of deaths).
This is followed in men by colorectal cancer (13.3 percent), esophageal cancer (9.7 percent) and stomach cancer (6.6 percent).
Cervical cancer (17.9 percent), colon cancer (15.8 percent) and breast cancer (11 percent) are particularly common in women.
sak/dpa
