Mortality rates from cancer are continuing to drop but the disease is starting to shift towards women and younger people.
American Cancer Society data, released this week, said cancer mortality rates fell by 34 percent between 1991 and 2022.
These gains are being somewhat offset by increases in certain cancer types and the “shifting (of) the burden of disease” towards women and younger adults.
“For example, incidence rates in women 50-64 years of age have surpassed those in men, and rates in women under 50 are now 82 percent higher than their male counterparts, up from 51 percent in 2002,” the data report said.
“This pattern includes lung cancer, which is now higher in women than in men among people younger than 65 years.”
The figures were published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians and in Cancer Facts & Figures 2025, available on cancer.org.
American Cancer Society Scientific Director Rebecca Siegel said the continued reductions in cancer mortality was linked to reduced smoking, better treatment and early detection.
“However, this progress is tempered by rising incidence in young and middle-aged women, who are often the family caregivers, and a shifting cancer burden from men to women, harkening back to the early 1900s when cancer was more common in women,” she said.
The report highlighted “lagging progress” against pancreatic cancer, which is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States.
For this cancer, incidence and mortality rates were increasing, and the five-year survival rate was just eight percent.
“Incidence rates continue to climb for common cancers, including breast (female), prostate, pancreatic, uterine corpus, melanoma (female), liver (female), and oral cancers associated with the human papillomavirus,” the report said.
“The rate of new diagnoses of colorectal cancer in men and women younger than 65 years of age and cervical cancer in women (30-44 years of age) has also increased.
“Cancer incidence in children (14 years of age and younger) declined in recent years after decades of increase but continued to rise among adolescents (ages 15-19 years). Mortality rates have dropped by 70 percent in children and by 63 percent in adolescents since 1970, largely because of improved treatment for leukemia.”
