Cancer Incidence Among Specific Asian and Pacific Islander Populations in the Unites States
Menées à partir des données de registres américains du cancer, ces deux études évaluent, pour 11 types de populations originaires de l'Asie ou des îles du Pacifique, l'évolution de l'incidence des cancers entre 1990 et 2008
To identify disease etiology and its consequences, epidemiologists compare disease rates in different populations, geographic areas, and time periods. These statistical comparisons become difficult when diseases are relatively rare (eg, most cancers), and this problem is often resolved by broadening the definition of the groups (eg, all Asians or Pacific Islanders), geographic areas (eg, many Asian or Pacific Island countries), or time of observation (eg, 1990–2010). Populations may also be grouped when specific groups are difficult to identify (eg, Chinese vs Vietnamese of Chinese descent) or when individuals are classified from nonpatient sources such as medical records, resulting in very general categories such as “Asian” or “Unknown” race or ethnicity. Yet, disease rates may be different among consolidated groups of people, geographic areas, or time periods. The companion articles in this issue of the Journal by Gomez et al. and Liu et al. (1,2) address many of these difficulties in calculating cancer incidence rates in specific Asian and Pacific Islander populations in the United States and, in overcoming many of these, provide new insights into the roles of immigrant populations in cancer etiology and help elucidate environmental aspects potentially involved in the induction of cancer. These studies are the first to publish cancer incidence rates with improved classification methods. They mainly discuss implications of the data for cancer control, but to more completely understand the patterns reported, it is useful to examine immigration patterns among these populations.
Almost 50 years ago, …