Abstract
Background: Esophageal cancer is one of the most lethal human malignancies. This study compares the survival of esophageal cancer patients among ethnic groups in British Columbia (BC), specifically Chinese, South Asians and Iranians.
Methods: Data was obtained from the population-based BC Cancer Registry for patients diagnosed with invasive esophageal cancer between 1984 and 2006. Complete follow-up information was available for all patients to 31 August 2007. The ethnicity of patients was determined according to their names and categorized as Chinese, South Asian, Iranian or Other. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to estimate the effect of ethnicity adjusted for patient gender, patient age, disease histology, tumor location, disease stage and treatment.
Results: The survival of esophageal cancer patients was significantly different among ethnic groups when evaluated without adjusting for other variables (p=0.03), but not in the multivariate model (p=0.06). A significant survival difference was observed among ethnic groups only for non-metastatic disease (p=0.049). The results indicate that South Asians have better survival than the other groups.
Discussion: Ethnicity may represent underlying genetic factors that could affect survival. Such factors could influence host-tumor interactions by altering the tumor's etiology and therefore its chance of spreading. Host pharmacogenetic factors can also affect a patient's response to treatment. Differences in survival by ethnicity support the importance of ethnicity as a prognostic factor, and may provide clues for the future identification of genetic or lifestyle factors that underlie these differences.
Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2010;19(10 Suppl):B76.
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