The rates of death from all cancers is falling in the United States thanks to aggressive risk reduction and screening effort, according to a new report from the National Cancer Institute. New diagnoses for all types of cancer combined in the United States have also decreased, on average, almost 1 percent per year from 1999 to 2006. Cancer deaths decreased 1.6 percent per year from 2001 to 2006.

 

Behind the good news is a decline in new cases and rates of death for the three most common cancers in men—lung, prostate, and colorectal cancer—and for two of the three leading cancers in women—breast and colorectal cancer.

 

“We cannot be content with this steady reduction in incidence and mortality,” says John Niederhuber, director of the National Cancer Institute. “We must, in fact, accelerate our efforts to get individualized diagnoses and treatments to all Americans and our belief is that our research efforts and our vision are moving us rapidly in that direction.”

 

The report paid special attention to colorectal cancer, which is projected to kill almost 50,000 people in 2009, according to the NCI. In the Special Feature section, the authors used modeling projections of colorectal cancer rates to find that, with accelerated cancer control efforts to get more Americans to adopt more favorable health behaviors (such as quitting smoking) and higher use of screening (such as colonoscopy), as well as optimal treatment outcomes for colorectal cancer (such as more effective chemotherapy), there could be an overall colorectal cancer mortality reduction of 50 percent by 2020.

 

Breast cancer rates are also falling showing an annual decrease of 2 percent for 1999 through 2006 after having increased 1.6 percent per year from 1994 through 1999. The report pointed to some studies which suggest that falling incidence of breast cancer may be related to the rapid discontinuation of hormone replacement therapy, a known risk factor for breast cancer.