Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jul 22:12:904292.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.904292. eCollection 2022.

Disease Burden, Risk Factors, and Trends of Leukaemia: A Global Analysis

Junjie Huang  1 , Sze Chai Chan  1 , Chun Ho Ngai  1 , Veeleah Lok  2 , Lin Zhang  3   4 , Don Eliseo Lucero-Prisno 3rd  5 , Wanghong Xu  6 , Zhi-Jie Zheng  7 , Edmar Elcarte  8 , Mellissa Withers  9 , Martin C S Wong  1   4   7
Affiliations

Disease Burden, Risk Factors, and Trends of Leukaemia: A Global Analysis

Junjie Huang et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Leukaemia accounted for approximately 2.5% of all new cancer incidence and 3.1% of cancer-related mortality. The investigation of its risk factors and epidemiologic trends could help describe the geographical distribution and identify high-risk population groups. This study aimed to evaluate the global incidence, mortality, associated risk factors, and temporal trends of leukaemia by sex, age, and country. We extracted incidence and mortality of leukaemia from GLOBOCAN, CI5, WHO mortality database, NORDCAN, and SEER. We searched the WHO Global Health Observatory data repository for the age-standardised prevalence of lifestyle and metabolic risk factors. We tested the trends by calculating Average Annual Percentage Change (AAPC) from Joinpoint regression. The age-standardized rate of incidence and mortality were 5.4 and 3.3 per 100,000 globally. The incidence and mortality of leukaemia were associated with Human Development Index, Gross Domestics Products per capita, prevalence of smoking, physical activity, overweight, obesity, and hypercholesterolaemia at the country level. Overall, more countries were showing decreasing trends than increasing trends in incidence and mortality. However, an increasing trend of leukaemia incidence was found in Germany, Korea, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom (AAPC, 2.32-0.98) while its mortality increased in the Philippines, Ecuador, Belarus, and Thailand (AAPC, 2.49-1.23). There was a decreasing trend of leukaemia for the past decade while an increase in incidence and mortality was observed in some populations. More intensive lifestyle modifications should be implemented to control the increasing trends of leukaemia in regions with these trends. Future studies may explore the reasons behind these epidemiological transitions.

Keywords: Leukaemia; incidence; mortality; risk factors; temporal trend.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Global incidence and mortality of leukaemia, both sexes, all ages, in 2020.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Associations between risk factors and incidence of leukaemia.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Associations between risk factors and mortality of leukaemia.
Figure 4
Figure 4
AAPC of incidence of leukaemia in individuals aged 0 – 85+ years old. * p values < 0.05.
Figure 5
Figure 5
AAPC of mortality of leukaemia in individuals aged 0 – 85+ years old. * p values < 0.05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Sung H, Ferlay J, Siegel RL, Laversanne M, Soerjomataram I, Jemal A, et al. . Global Cancer Statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 Countries. CA: A Cancer J Clin (2021) 71(3):209–49. doi: 10.3322/caac.21660 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Lim JY, Bhatia S, Robison LL, Yang JJ. Genomics of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Cancer (2014) 120(7):955–62. doi: 10.1002/cncr.28531 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bispo JAB, Pinheiro PS, Kobetz EK. Epidemiology and Etiology of Leukemia and Lymphoma. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med (2020) 10(6). doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a034819 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dombret H, Gardin C. An Update of Current Treatments for Adult Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Blood (2016) 127(1):53–61. doi: 10.1182/blood-2015-08-604520 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dong Y, Shi O, Zeng Q, Lu X, Wang WJ, Li Y, et al. . Leukemia Incidence Trends at the Global, Regional, and National Level Between 1990 and 2017. Exp Hematol Oncol (2020) 9(1):14. doi: 10.1186/s40164-020-00170-6 - DOI - PMC - PubMed