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. 2025 Jan 16:19:1827.
doi: 10.3332/ecancer.2025.1827. eCollection 2025.

The burden of pancreatic cancer in Latin America and the Caribbean: trends in incidence, mortality and DALYs from 1990 to 2019

Diego Rodrigues Mendonça E Silva  1   2   3 , Max Moura de Oliveira  4   5 , Gisele Aparecida Fernandes  6   7 , Maria Paula Curado  1   2   6   8
Affiliations

The burden of pancreatic cancer in Latin America and the Caribbean: trends in incidence, mortality and DALYs from 1990 to 2019

Diego Rodrigues Mendonça E Silva et al. Ecancermedicalscience. .

Abstract

This study analyzed the burden of pancreatic cancer by investigating its incidence, mortality and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), as well as the proportion of pancreatic cancer deaths attributable to behavioural and metabolic risk factors in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries.

Methods: This study focuses on pancreatic cancer using the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study database. Results were described for 23 LAC countries for 1990-2019, evaluating their age-standardised incidence rates, mortality rates, DALYs, average annual percent change and the fraction of deaths attributable to behavioural and metabolic risk factors.

Results: We observed that in LAC, pancreatic cancer incidence rates ranged from 1.2 in Haiti to 15.8/100,000 in Uruguay among men. The highest increase in incidence rate was observed in Trinidad and Tobago: 7.7% per year. The mortality rate was higher in Uruguay and lower in Haiti, for both sexes. The highest rise in the numbers of DALYs in 2019 was observed in Brazil and Mexico. The proportion of pancreatic cancer deaths attributable to smoking was reduced between 1990 and 2019 for both sexes in LAC countries; however, it increased for metabolic risk factors.

Conclusion: The increasing trend in pancreatic cancer observed in LAC may be associated with a rise in risk factors such as high fasting plasma glucose and high body mass index in both sexes. This trend will likely have a substantial impact on the healthcare system in the coming decades.

Keywords: epidemiology; global burden disease; pancreatic cancer; public health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Age-standardised incidence and mortality distributed by sex in LAC countries in 1990 and 2019.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Heat map for incidence and mortality rank for pancreatic cancer in LAC countries in 1990 and 2019 by sex.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Incidence and mortality trends in LAC countries between 1990 and 2019 in both sexes.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Fraction of pancreatic cancer age-standardised deaths attributable to smoking, high fasting plasma glucose and high body-mass index by LAC countries among males and females, 1990 and 2019.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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