Since the beginning of the year, the number of new cases of cancer is estimated at more than 433,000, according to the national public health agency. This disease also remains the leading cause of death in France.
Breast, prostate, lung or colon cancer… Between 1990 and 2023, the number of cancers has doubled in France, according to a study by Public Health France (SPF) published on Tuesday July 4. Since the beginning of the year, the number of new cases of this disease is estimated at more than 433,000 in France. Cancers, which mainly concern men (57% of cases), remained the leading cause of death in France in 2018 (157,400 deaths), according to SPF.
This study focuses on 19 cancers “the most frequent (15 in men and 18 in women)”. “Only invasive tumors are studied, skin cancers other than melanomas are excluded”, specifies SPF. Published every five years, this study was carried out in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (Inca), the French network of cancer registries (Francim) and the Hospices Civils de Lyon. The latest study dates from 2018 and was based on data up to the year 2015.
A larger and older population
The one published on Tuesday, which “fits into a particular context, due to the Covid-19 pandemic from 2020”includes data from 2016 to 2018, “a period of two to three years is necessary to ensure an exhaustive collection and to consolidate the data”details Public Health France. “The estimates for 2019 to 2023 are therefore projections calculated from data collected up to 2018”. The possible consequences of the pandemic have not yet been assessed.
This doubling of new cancer cases, observed in a little more than three decades, is explained firstly by demographic factors (growth and aging of the population), but also by “an increased risk of cancer”, explains the study. This risk of developing cancer is influenced in particular by “changes in the behavior of populations”, such as tobacco and alcohol consumption, as well as diet and physical inactivity. Improved screening and diagnostic techniques, via medical imaging and biopsies, also lead to more cancers being detected.
Special attention for lung cancer
There are disparities between men and women in the face of this increase in cancers. Since 1990, the increase has been 104% among women, against 98% among men, specifies SPF. “In men, it is a two-step evolution, with an increase until 2006, then a decrease and stagnation, while the increase is continuous in women”says Tania d’Almeida, doctor at Francim and co-author of the study. THE “major factor” explaining this explosion of cancer cases in women “is the consumption of tobacco, which has increased from certain generations of women after that of mensays Florence Molinié, president of Francim. Effects now appear with a time lag.”
The most common cancers in men are those of the prostate (with 59,885 new cases in 2023), lung (33,438), colon and rectum (26,212). In women, the most recorded cancers are those of the breast (61,214), then of the colon and rectum (21,370) and that of the lung (19,339). But, although the number of cancers is increasing faster in women, men are still more affected by this pathology. They are also a little older when they are diagnosed with cancer. The median age at which the diagnosis is made is 70 for men and 68 for women.
In men, cancers of the esophagus, lung and colon-rectum and affecting the lip-mouth-pharynx part are on the decline in men. Conversely, in women, the number of these cancers has increased in women, as has that of the liver, while it has stabilized in men since 2010. The increase in the number of lung cancers “deserves a point of attention”points out Norbert Ifrah, the president of the National Cancer Institute, who participated in this study. “At the Woman’s”her “death rate will exceed that of breast cancer” In “the next three years”. Today the number of cases “growing 4.3% per year”says Tania d’Almeida.