It's no secret that the rate of cancer has steadily been rising in the developed world over the past couple of decades. But why exactly is this happening? Scientists have come up with many theories, but they've yet to come up with a concrete explanation. In this video, we dive into two of the leading theories regarding this phenomenon - why are cancer rates rising? And is there a reason to worry?
This video was made by McMaster Demystifying Medicine Students Kristen Tam, Olivia Wilson, Athiraa Thamilselvan and Albert Zhao.
Copyright McMaster University 2019.
References:
Bleyer, A., & Welch, H. G. (2012). Effect of three decades of screening mammography on breast-cancer incidence. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(21), 1998-2005.
Christensen, K., Doblhammer, G., Rau, R., & Vaupel, J. W. (2009). Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. The lancet, 374(9696), 1196-1208.
Enewold, L., Zhu, K., Ron, E., Marrogi, A. J., Stojadinovic, A., Peoples, G. E., & Devesa, S. S. (2009). Rising thyroid cancer incidence in the United States by demographic and tumor characteristics, 1980-2005. Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Biomarkers, 18(3), 784-791.
Smetana, K., Lacina, L., Szabo, P., Dvorankova, B., Broz, P., & Šedo, A. (2016). Ageing as an important risk factor for cancer. Anticancer Research, 36(10), 5009-5017.
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