Lack of insurance linked to advanced stage cervical cancer
Second only to age as predictor of late-stage diagnosis
2012-07-20
(Press-News.org) ATLANTA –July 19, 2012—A large national sample of women diagnosed with cervical cancer between 2000 and 2007 finds lack of insurance was second only to age as the strongest predictor of late stage at diagnosis, a gap the authors say is likely attributable to lack of screening.
The American Cancer Society estimates that 12,170 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer and 4,220 women will die from the disease in 2012. Although incidence and mortality from cervical cancer have declined dramatically since the introduction of the Pap test, one in three cervical cancer patients is diagnosed only after the cancer has spread to nearby organs and one in ten is diagnosed only after the disease has spread to distant organs (35% and 11% respectively). Prognosis is strongly related to stage: the 5-year relative survival rate is 91.2% for patients with localized disease, but only 57.8% for patients with regional disease and 17.0% for those with distant disease.
Socioeconomic status, race, marital status, and geographic location have all been identified as factors related to late stage at diagnosis among cervical cancer patients. Previous studies also documented age as a significant predictor of advanced stage, although the effects of age and also of insurance status, which are two of the strongest predictors of cervical cancer screening, had not been studied together prior to the current study.
For the current study, which appears early online in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers led by Stacey Fedewa, MPH reviewed the association between late stage (stage III/IV) cervical cancer and both insurance and age, with adjustment for race/ethnicity and other sociodemographic and clinical factors on 69,739 women diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer between 2000 and 2007 from the National Cancer Database.
More than half (55.5%) of privately insured cervical cancer patients in the observed population were at stage I at diagnosis, compared to 40.2% of Medicaid recipients, and 36.4% of uninsured patients. Meanwhile, 24.03% of privately insured women, 34.51% of those with Medicaid, and 35.22% of those without insurance were diagnosed with advanced disease, described as stages III and IV. Advanced stage also increased with age; the adjusted relative risk among women ≥35 years of age was 1.25 to 2.5 that of women 21-34 years.
"Late stage at diagnosis is likely attributable to underscreening," write the authors. They conclude: "Advanced-stage disease leads not only to poorer quality of life and greater morbidity, but often to higher treatment costs as well. Screening should be made accessible and affordable for all women for whom it is recommended, especially for those at higher risk of advanced-stage disease, such as middle-aged women, Medicaid recipients, and uninsured women."
###
Article: "Association of Insurance Status and Age with Cervical Cancer Stage at Diagnosis: National Cancer Database, 2000-2007," Fedewa et al. Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print July 19, 2012: e1–e9. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300532
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2012-07-20
PHILADELPHIA — Inhibitors of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) are being assessed in clinical trials as a potential treatment for recurrent or refractory solid tumors. Clear genetic rationale for these trials, together with evidence that primary and metastatic lung tumors might be particularly susceptible to the drugs, is now reported in a preclinical study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Our data provide preclinical genetic validation for the ongoing clinical trials testing IDO inhibitors in cancer patients," ...
2012-07-20
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study answers a question that has baffled researchers for more than 15 years: How does the western corn rootworm – an insect that thrives on corn but dies on soybeans – persist in fields that alternate between corn and soybeans? The answer, researchers say, has to do with enzyme production in the rootworm gut.
Their findings are described in a paper in Ecology and Evolution.
Crop rotation declined in the middle of the 20th century as the use of insecticides and fertilizers expanded in the U.S. Then in the 1950s and '60s, when some insecticides ...
2012-07-20
NEW YORK, JULY 15, 2012 – Experts from the Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging at NYU Langone Medical Center will present new research at The 2012 Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, July 14 – July 19.
From basic discovery to clinical applications, NYU Langone Medical Center has been at the forefront of the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease since the 1970s. The Comprehensive Center on Brain Aging, founded upon the strengths of the Silberstein Alzheimer's Institute, is ...
2012-07-20
Muscle contraction and many other movement processes are controlled by the interplay between myosin and actin filaments. Two further proteins, tropomyosin and troponin, regulate how myosin binds to actin. While theoretical models have in fact described exactly how these muscle proteins interact, this interaction has never previously been observed in detail. Stefan Raunser and Elmar Behrmann from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund have now managed to image the actin-myosin-tropomyosin complex with an unprecedented accuracy of 0.8 nanometres, which ...
2012-07-20
STANFORD, Calif. — The entire genomes of 91 human sperm from one man have been sequenced by Stanford University researchers. The results provide a fascinating glimpse into naturally occurring genetic variation in one individual, and are the first to report the whole-genome sequence of a human gamete — the only cells that become a child and through which parents pass on physical traits.
"This represents the culmination of nearly a decade of work in my lab," said Stephen Quake, PhD, the Lee Otterson Professor in the School of Engineering and professor of bioengineering ...
2012-07-20
TORONTO, ON – Humans get most of the blame for climate change, with little attention paid to the contribution of other natural forces. Now, scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of California Santa Cruz are shedding light on one potential cause of the cooling trend of the past 45 million years that has everything to do with the chemistry of the world's oceans.
"Seawater chemistry is characterized by long phases of stability, which are interrupted by short intervals of rapid change," says Professor Ulrich Wortmann in the Department of Earth Sciences ...
2012-07-20
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Why do we age, and what makes some of us live longer than others? For decades, researchers have been trying to answer these questions by elucidating the molecular causes of aging.
One of the most popular theories is that the accumulation of oxygen radicals over time might be the underlying culprit in aging. Oxygen radicals are chemically reactive molecules that can damage cellular components such as lipids, proteins and nucleic acids, resulting in "oxidative stress."
The possible link between oxidative stress and aging has led to the proliferation ...
2012-07-20
AMHERST, Mass. – Medical devices save countless lives, and increasingly functions such as data storage and wireless communication allow for individualized patient care and other advances. But after their recent study, an interdisciplinary team of medical researchers and computer scientists warn that federal regulators need to improve how they track security and privacy problems in medical devices.
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Harvard Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Amherst analyzed reports from decades of U.S. Food and Drug ...
2012-07-20
Certain kinds of viruses such as those that cause the common cold, SARS, hepatitis, and encephalitis, copy themselves using a unique mechanism, according to a team of Penn State University scientists that includes David Boehr, an assistant professor of chemistry and a co-leader of the research team. The discovery sheds light on a previously identified, but never-before-understood region of an enzyme associated with the process of replicating genetic material. The research is an important step toward the improvement of existing vaccines, as well as toward the design of vaccines ...
2012-07-20
Korean scientists have used tiny stars, squares and triangles as a toolkit to create live neural circuits in a dish.
They hope the shapes can be used to create a reproducible neural circuit model that could be used for learning and memory studies as well as drug screening applications; the shapes could also be integrated into the latest neural tissue scaffolds to aid the regeneration of neurons at injured sites in the body, such as the spinal cord.
Published today, 20 July, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering, the study, by researchers at the Korea Advanced ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Lack of insurance linked to advanced stage cervical cancer
Second only to age as predictor of late-stage diagnosis
