Global pattern of brain and central nervous system cancer incidence

Introduction: Describing the patterns and trends of brain and CNS cancers across regions contribute to a better understanding of the problematic, with insights on potential environmental risk factors and future burden. Methods: We carried out a study with data from Cancer in Five Continents database. Truncated age-standardized incidence rates by sex and country were estimated in 15 year-old and above. We used Joinpoint regression to estimate the Average Annual percentage change (AAPC) and its confidence interval (95%CI). Results: Among men increased brain CNS cancer was found in South America namely in Ecuador, Brazil and Colombia. In Eastern Europe (Czech Republic 1.6% 95%CI: 1.0 – 2.1 and Russia 1.9% 95%CI: 0.5 – 3.4), also in three Baltic countries, Latvia 4.1% 95%CI: 3.3 – 4.9, Lithuania 2.6% 95%CI: 2.0 – 3.3, and Estonia 1.2% 95%CI: 0.6 – 1.7 followed by Singapore 1.5% 95%CI: 0.8 – 2.1 and Israel 0.8% 95%CI: 0.5 – 1.0 in Asia. Among women, trends over time were very similar to that of men's: increased were observed in Asia, Thailand 5.1% 95%CI: 1.1 – 9.9, in the Baltic Lithuania 2.5% 95%CI: 2.0 – 2.9, in Southern Europe Slovenia and Croatia, in Northern European, Sweden, Norway followed by South America, Ecuador and Colombia. Finally, decreasing trends in men and women were seen in Japan. Conclusion: The results presented here indicate important regional variations in brain and CNS cancers worldwide. They provide important insights into further etiological research that focuses on the elucidation of environmental risk. Special attention needs to be given to low and medium income countries in order to improve the quality of the incidence data.