Bacteria May Be Responsible for 11 Million+ Projected Gastric Cancer Cases

Some 15.6 million people born between 2008 and 2017 globally are expected to develop gastric cancer sometime in their life, suggests a study published in the journal Nature Medicine. 

Some 76 percent of those cases may be attributable to Helicobacter pylori, common bacteria found in the stomach. The authors call for greater investment in the prevention of gastric cancer, particularly through population-wide H. pylori screen-and-treat programs, to reduce the burden of gastric cancer worldwide.   

Gastric cancer ranks as the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, driven mainly by chronic infection with H. pylori, a cause that can be prevented through effective treatment. Rising incidence rates among younger generations, combined with aging and growing populations, threaten to reverse recent efforts to reduce the mortality and incidence of this disease. However, projections on the burden of future gastric cancer cases are needed to determine mitigation strategies.

Jin Young Park and colleagues examined data on the incidence of gastric cancer from 185 countries in 2022, combined with cohort-specific mortality projections from United Nations demographic data. They projected that, in the absence of intervention, 15.6 million people across the globe born between 2008 and 2017 will probably be diagnosed with gastric cancer in their lifetime—with 11.9 million (76 percent) of those cases attributable to H. pylori infection. They project that 10.6 million of new gastric cancer cases will occur in Asia, with 6.5 million cases expected in India and China alone. In contrast, although sub-Saharan Africa currently has a relatively low burden of gastric cancer, projections suggest that its future burden could be at least six times higher than 2022 estimates suggest. However, in modeling the impact of population-level H. pylori screen-and-treat strategies, Park and co-authors found that the expected number of gastric cancers could be reduced by up to 75 percent.  

The authors caution that these estimates are limited by data quality and coverage, particularly in low-resource settings in which cancer registries are incomplete or lacking. Nonetheless, they advocate for enhancing global efforts toward the prevention and surveillance of gastric cancer to curb this disease.