Medicine seems to be winning the war against cancer: this year, although more Europeans than ever will die from cancer, as a proportion of the population, the number is dropping.
So say at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan, Italy, and his colleagues who analysed data on cancer mortality rates across the European Union between 1970 and 2007. They combined these figures with the European Commission鈥檚 .
They say the overall number of cancer deaths is set to rise in 2012 because of ageing populations. However, cancer mortality will drop from 2007 levels by around 10 per cent in men and 7 per cent in women.
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鈥淚t means that treatments and preventions are working,鈥� says at the University of Oxford, adding that an influential factor in declining mortality rates has been people giving up smoking.
Journal reference: , DOI: 10.1093/annonc/mds024
