1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds cbc.ca

285 points•colinprince•1 day ago•150 comments•

#caused #study #cancer #worldwide #infections #cancer cases #cases worldwide #study finds

150 comments

https://www.oatext.com/which-environment-makes-cancer.php

Always a good read, most cancers are environmental, and most of these are caused by obesity, bad diet and smoking/drinking, fix these four things in your life and you reduce your chances of getting cancer by 50%+

mapontosevenths1 day ago

I don't think that anything you said is wrong, but I also think it's important to note that on a long enough timeline your odds of getting cancer are 100% regardless of the way you live.Most people just don't live that long.

The things you mention here make it happen sooner, but no amount of healthy living lowers your risk to zero and I think that's important to note when you say things like "cancer is caused by".

Cancer is caused by math. This stuff just steepens the slope.

devin1 day ago

I hear you, but I also think it is this kind of attitude that leads a lot of otherwise intelligent people to not even try. I've talked to people who listened to the Maintenance Phase episode on the complexities of calories in/calories out take the information as an excuse for not even attempting to try to improve their weight problem.

toasty2281 day ago

It's also important to note that getting a random cancer at 80+ sucks orders of magnitude less than going out at 45 from colon or throat cancer in every measurable metrics you can come up.

yubblegum1 day ago

> it's important to note that on a long enough timeline your odds of getting cancer are 100% regardless of the way you live. Most people just don't live that long.

Hmm, that actually parses for me as "it is not important to note" since the 100% assertion doesn't apply to most of us as we won't live that long.

What applies to most of us is that certain behaviors can dramatically increase your chances of getting cancer.

scottLobster1 day ago

Cool, let's make that timeline a step function with the risk of cancer being effectively zero until 200 years of life and cure cancer.

goodmythical1 day ago

Couldn't your odds of developing a cancer be sloped to effectively zero if the odds are such that you are very likely to die of something else?

A person drunk driving at twice the speed limit in moderate traffic on a dark and rainy night without their lights on in an old vehicle with shoddy breaks and no traction control while not wearing a seatbelt and texting their ex probably has a near zero chance of developing a cancer given their near 100% chance of dieing in the next few moments.

fabian2k1 day ago

That paper links a random blog post as source for these statistics (reference 9). That's a huge red flag for me and not what I'd expect in a scientific paper. I find the numbers wildly implausible in any case since they only have two categories: hereditary and environmental/lifestyle.

Cancer is caused by random chance. Accumulate enough mutations of the right kind and you get it. Of course you can dramatically affect that chance through genetic factors and environmental ones.

toasty2281 day ago

Yeah that's the "other" part in "environmental".

> hereditary and environmental/lifestyle.

Unless you can demonstrate supernatural causes these are the only two broad categories you need. It's either coming from inside (genes) or outside (diet, random neutrino bit flipping your shit, smoking, x-rays, etc.).

epihelix1 day ago

And not just cancer. Top risk factors for dementia and heart disease are also diet, obesity, blood pressure, and lack of exercise.

Basically, live healthily, and you'll have a (much!) happier and longer life.

didibus1 day ago

Throwing in blood pressure in the mix is interesting? That's not really something you can control isn't it?

jensgk1 day ago

There are no guarantees.

fithisux1 day ago

and you'll have (probably) a (much!) happier and longer life.

makeitdouble1 day ago

The list in the abstract

> Additionally, all these environmental factors such as X-rays, gamma rays, the radiation emitted from radioactive materials, aniline type dyes, cigarette, free radicals, asbestos, silica dust, air pollution, food additives, various drugs, some of the chemicals used in perfumes, oncogenic viruses and bacteria are playing an important role in cancer formation and contribute the increase of incidence of cancer.

Do the four you cited really cover 50% ?

E.g. moving to a place with less air pollution or better building materials could have a lot more effect than fixing your diet if you're in the average.

lanfeust61 day ago

What's interesting is how low alcohol ranks compared to obesity and diet. It makes the recent moral panic following loose interpretations of the Lancet study seem hypocritical, if not misguided. If anything deserves a "may cause cancer" sticker, it's nitrate-ridden processed meat.

ryan_n1 day ago

Nitrate ridden processed meat already has a “may cause cancer” sticker on it (unless you mean a literal sticker warning when you buy meat from stores?):

https://progressreport.cancer.gov/prevention/diet_alcohol/re...

https://publications.iarc.who.int/Book-And-Report-Series/Iar...

tarentel1 day ago

I like to drink. With that being said, there are a lot of downsides to alcohol other than an increased risk of cancer. Also, alcohol can lead to obesity and a bad diet. Is it ever healthy to drink? I do not know. I am going to do it anyway though.

ak_1111 day ago

Is there really a moral panic? Apart from a few viral Twitter posts, I don't see a major sobriety push by my colleagues.

Profits of main alcohol suppliers has certainly taken a hit over the last 5 years but this is arguably far more because of rise of remote working, inflation (drinking at pubs have become much more costly than before) and people in general just addicted to their phone rather than going out (similar to the impact on almost all social activities no just going to pubs)

purpleflame12571 day ago

Recent demographic shifts have given rise to a vocally anti-alcohol contingent in large parts of the Western world. There's substantial motivated reasoning.

hobo1231 day ago

Is it 100% clear cut that the infection causes the cancer, or can there be a common problem (like immune system degradation) that causes both the infection to develop (or develop easier) and the cancer the grow (which always involves failure of the immune system to kill it, if I'm not mistaken)?

Many viri are present in many human beings, but they don't develop cancer after all.

paimapi1 day ago

depends on the infection. COVID, for eg, is well-studied as something that chronically weakens the immune system and may cause autoimmune disorders

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7744845/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12185401/

so it's not surprising that infections can lead to downstream, systemic problems in the human body which then allows for things like cancer to arise (especially given that we just lived through a once-in-a-century pandemic that is still ongoing)

tptacek1 day ago

Has there been a clear epidemiological signal post-COVID in elevations of any cancers? There are obviously stories about elevated rates of e.g. colon cancer in younger people, but those long predate COVID.

abirch1 day ago

Pedantic but it's vira or viruses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus#Etymology

Viri is the latin plural for men

lofatdairy1 day ago

It's interesting that up until the 1970s, viral infections were the predominant theory for the cause of cancer (this is before my time so apologies if I'm exaggerating). This was due to discoveries like src, ras, EBV, etc, so a lot of these carcinogenic pathogens were well known and studied. It wasn't until several discoveries in the 70s and 80s that we started focusing more scientifically on genetic drivers. But it's not like these infectious drivers went away, even if they are no longer as strongly associated with the disease in the public conscious.

johnnyApplePRNG1 day ago

>For many people, sun exposure, smoking and family history are the first thoughts that come to mind regarding cancer risk factors. While infections are rarely high on the list, new research shows one in eight cancers worldwide are actually caused by them.

To be fair... Smoking increases your chance of infection significantly.

flopsamjetsam1 day ago

The paper: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2...

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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