While cancer death rates have dropped 20 percent overall in the United States since 1980, high death rates persist in pockets throughout the country, a new report finds.
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"Death rates differ dramatically between different types of cancers, and certain regions saw great progress in reducing cancer deaths and others fell behind," said lead researcher Dr. Christopher Murray.
In all, 160 counties showed increases in cancer death rates between 1980 and 2014, noted Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle.
For example, lung cancer kills more people in the United States than any other cancer, but death rates are more than 20 times higher in some parts of the country than others, he said.
"Fewer Americans smoke today than in previous decades, but parts of the South and many rural areas still show high rates of this deadly habit," he said. "It is not surprising that these same areas show high rates of lung cancer, especially within states like Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi and rural Alaska."
Although cancer deaths overall have declined nationwide, liver cancer deaths increased in nearly every county, and clusters of counties with large increases were found in California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico and Texas, Murray said.
And, "There were high death rates from prostate cancer in groups of counties in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia," he added.
Most counties have seen decreases in breast cancer deaths since 1980. However, clusters of high breast cancer death rates exist in counties along the Mississippi River and in other parts of the South. The lowest rates are in parts of the West, Midwest and Northeast, he said. ■
A slow-moving, wavy frontal system stretching from the Northeast to the Ohio/Tennessee Valleys to the central/southern High Plains will be the focus for several rounds of severe thunderstorms and drenching downpours Friday into the first half of the weekend.