A new Gastroenterology study is making headlines – it identified that the incidence of pancreatic cancer was rising 2.4 percent more in women under 55 than among men of the same age. Researchers linked the rise to increased rates in Black people, tumor types and locations.
Additionally, while pancreatic cancer mortality rates were found to be declining among men, they are unchanged in women.
Senior author of the study, Srinivas Gaddam, MD, MPH, elaborates on the findings:
"There is a need to understand these trends, and to make changes today so this doesn’t affect women disproportionately in the future. While the survival rate for pancreatic cancer is improving year by year, the improvement is largely among men. The mortality rate among women is not improving."
Srinivas Gaddam, MD, MPH
Associate Director of Pancreatic Biliary Research
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Dr. Gaddam stressed that the increase is small and that the findings should not be cause for alarm, but called for further studies to examine the cause of the trends.
