Racial Disparities by Ovarian Cancer Subtypes in the United States
Posted: Monday, December 7, 2020
Racial disparities are present among patients with ovarian cancer, with non-Hispanic Blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders experiencing increasing incidences of serous and clear cell ovarian cancers. Rubina Ratnaparkhi, MD, of Stanford University in California, presented these results on behalf of colleagues at the 2020 International Gynecologic Cancer Society (IGCS) Annual Global Meeting (Abstract 1021).
“Persistent racial disparities are unmasked when analyzing trends in ovarian cancer incidence by histologic subtype,” concluded the authors.
This team of researchers obtained data from the U.S. Cancer Statistics database from 2001 to 2006. A total of 319,257 women with epithelial ovarian cancer were identified; 79.9% were non-Hispanic White, 7.8% were non-Hispanic Black, 7.9% were Hispanic, 3.5% were Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 0.9% were other/unknown racial status. The investigators looked at both the age-adjusted incidence of these cancers per 100,000 as well as the annual percent change in incidence.
Throughout the 16-year period for which patients were studied, the overall incidence of epithelial ovarian cancers decreased at a rate of 1.96% every year. In addition, all racial subgroups experienced significant decreases in mucinous and endometrioid carcinomas. By contrast, the incidence of clear cell carcinoma among non-Hispanic Blacks increased by 2.72% per year, and the incidence among Asian/Pacific Islanders increased by 2.09% annually. Serous carcinoma increased among non-Hispanic Blacks by 0.84% and in Asian/Pacific Islanders by 0.94%. Clear cell and serous carcinomas decreased in incidence among non-Hispanic White women by 0.46% and 1.07%, respectively, over the same period. Hispanic women experienced a 0.2% decrease in clear cell ovarian cancer and a 0.13% decrease in serous carcinoma (both considered to be not statistically significant).
Disclosure: No disclosures for study authors were provided.
