Despite the government’s implementation of a nationwide hepatitis B vaccination program in 1984, Taiwanese children are nearly twice as susceptible to developing liver tumors than their counterparts in other countries, according to a recent study by a hematologist-oncologist.
Hung Giun-yi (洪君儀), a surgeon at the Division of Hematology and Oncology of Taipei Veterans General Hospital’s Department of Pediatrics, came to the conclusion after analyzing the Taiwan Cancer Registry’s statistics from 1995 to 2009, during which time 12,315 children aged up to 19 years were diagnosed with cancer.
Comparing the data with similar results from five other countries showed that the incidence of childhood cancer in Taiwan was 132.08 per million base population per year (pmpy) between 1995 and 2009, which was generally lower than in Brazil (203.6), Israel (172.4), Canada (167.3) and the US (165.7) in the same period.
Only Japan had a lower childhood cancer incidence rate than Taiwan, at 90.4 pmpy.
However, the prevalence rate for hepatic tumors was 4.61 pmpy in Taiwan, more than two times the rates in Canada (2.2), the US (2), Japan (1.8), Israel (1.5) and Brazil (1.3), the research suggested.
The study said that as the latest incidence rate for liver cancer in Taiwan remained significantly higher than that in other countries despite its nationwide vaccination scheme, additional risk factors such as chronic hepatitis C infections, diet or environmental factors such as aflatoxin, and genetic factors, should be considered and investigated.
Aflatoxin is a mycotoxin known to cause liver disease and cancer and is mostly found in foods such as peanuts, corn, milk and cheese.
A report in the Food and Drug Administration’s official English-language peer-reviewed publication — the Journal of Food and Drug Analysis — in September last year said peanut butter had the highest aflatoxin-positive incidence of all peanut products sold in Taiwan between 1997 and 2011.
In addition, children in Taiwan also appear to be more susceptible than their foreign counterparts to germ cell tumors, which most commonly occur in the reproductive organs, the study showed.
This was evidenced by the country’s incidence rate of 13.29 pmpy for the tumors, compared with 11.6 in the US, 9.8 in Canada, 7.4 in Japan and 6.9 in Israel.
The research also showed that the top 10 most common pediatric cancers in Taiwan included leukemia, central nervous system tumors, lymphomas, germ cell tumors, other epithelial neoplasms, soft tissue sarcomas, neuroblastomas, malignant bone tumors, hepatic tumors and renal neoplasms.
The cancer incidence among Taiwanese children in the 0-19 age group increased by an average of 1 percent per year in the 15-year span, with boys 1.9 times more likely to get cancer than girls.
The research, titled “Cancer Incidence Patterns Among Children and Adolescents in Taiwan From 1995 to 2009: A Population-Based Study,” was published in the US peer-reviewed academic journal Cancer last month.
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