ICMR report indicates child hood cancer among boys may increase in India

Hyderabad, September 30, 2021:

A recent report released by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has indicated that childhood cancer among boys may increase significantly in India.

As part of its study, the researchers at ICMR have analyzed the data of 13.32 lakh cancer patients registered under National Cancer Registry programme for the past 7 years from 2012-19 from 96 hospitals across the country.

Among the analyzed 6.10 lakh individual cases, the report suggested that over 8 per cent under the age group 0-14 years were venerable to contract one or the other type of cancers.

The report also revealed that between 2012 and 2014, the share of Under-15 age group was less than 5 per cent. Leukaemia accounted for nearly half of all the childhood cancers in both genders in the 0-14 age group.

The ICMR report titled ‘Clinicopathological profile of cancers in India-2021’ also suggested that apart from leukaemia other common childhood cancers in boys was lymphoma, while malignant bone tumour is said to be found more in girls.

Also, close to 70 per cent of the kidney cancer cases were reported in the age group of 0-4 years and over one third of cancers of the brain and nervous system were reported in the age group of 5-9 years.

Overall for all age groups, the cancers associated with tobacco use comprised 48.7 per cent of cases among males and 16.5 per cent among females. Cancers of head and neck region accounted for one third of all cases.

Chemotherapy was the most typical treatment modality regardless of the clinical extent of disease at the presentation. Last year, nearly 14 lakh new cases were detected in the country, marking a rise of about 16 per cent as compared to the figures in the year 2018.PharmaBiz