Worrying trend in Cyprus: More and more children are developing cancer
Worrying trend in Cyprus: More and more children are developing cancer
Scientist urgently calls for better research on environmental factors and possible causes
The development is causing increasing concern in Cyprus: In the past ten years, the number of newly diagnosed cancers in children and adolescents has increased. It is particularly alarming that a similar trend does not appear to be observed to the same extent in other European countries. Why the number of cases on the island is rising has not yet been clarified. Scientists are therefore calling for much more intensive research into possible causes.
Data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization (WHO) show an increase in new cases in children and adolescents up to the age of 19 years in Cyprus.
Professor Konstantinos Makris, Director of the Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health at the Cyprus University of Technology, sees this development as a serious warning sign.
However, there is one crucial point: science currently does not know why the number of diseases is increasing.
This is precisely why Makris calls for not being too quick to blame individual causes, but to systematically collect data and scientifically investigate possible connections.
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Which types of cancer are particularly common in children?
Typical cancers in childhood and adolescence include:
- Leukaemia
- Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas
- Brain tumors
- Tumors of the central nervous system
It is particularly worrying that the number of new cases in Cyprus has not remained constant over the past ten years, but has increased.
Nevertheless, there is a positive development: Despite increasing new cases, the number of deaths from cancer in children and adults has not risen accordingly in recent years.
Improvements in diagnostics and treatment are likely to play an important role in this.
Why are the number of cases rising in Cyprus in particular?
There is currently no reliable answer to this question.
According to the scientists, the available data is not sufficient to determine, for example, whether certain regions of Cyprus are more affected than others.
The data submitted to the WHO refer to Cyprus as a whole. Much more detailed information would be needed for a more detailed analysis.
And this is precisely where Professor Makris believes that one of the biggest problems lies.
Closer examination of the environment and lifestyle
In the search for possible causes, the focus is increasingly on a child's entire environment – even from pregnancy onwards.
Scientists refer to this as the so-called "exposome". This refers to the totality of all external influences to which a person is exposed during his or her life.
These can include, for example:
- Quality of the air we breathe
- Drinking water
- Diet Physical
- activity and lack of exercise
- Obesity
- Various forms of radiation
- Contact with chemicals
- Pesticides
- Climatic conditions
- Certain biological influences
- Lifestyle habits within the family
The decisive factors are: None of these factors has yet been proven to be a concrete cause of the increase in childhood cancer cases in Cyprus.
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Cancer is a multifactorial disease. Therefore, a combination of different influences could also play a role.
This is exactly what needs to be investigated.
Genes alone can hardly explain
the rapid increase The development over time is also interesting.
Genetic changes within a population do not usually occur within ten or twenty years on a scale that could easily explain such a short-term trend.
Therefore, scientific attention is increasingly focused on changes in the environment and lifestyle.
But Makris expressly warns against speculation.
Instead of assumptions, Cyprus needs reliable epidemiological data.
Scientist calls for observatories for children
A central demand is therefore the establishment of special observatories for children's health.
There, anonymized or correspondingly protected data on environmental pollution, nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and health development could be collected in the long term.
The approach is comparatively simple:
Larger groups of children are scientifically accompanied over longer periods of time. Later, the living and environmental conditions of healthy children can be compared with those of sick children.
Only then could possible risk factors become statistically visible.
Professor Makris clearly criticizes that Cyprus has so far done too little in such primary prevention.
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Do not wait until a child is already ill
Modern medicine has made significant progress in the treatment of many childhood cancers .
But for Makris, it is not enough to just develop diagnostics and therapy.
The crucial question must also be:
Why does one child fall ill – while another remains healthy under seemingly similar conditions?
In order to get answers to these questions, more must be invested in root cause research and prevention.
In the long term, the goal would not only be to be able to treat childhood cancer better, but also to prevent preventable diseases in advance if possible.
A "black box" that needs to
be deciphered Makris describes the current situation as a black box.
There are numerous possible influencing factors – from diet and lack of exercise to air and water to chemicals and other environmental pollution.
Which of these is actually relevant and which factors may interact cannot be answered seriously without extensive data.
It would therefore be scientifically wrong to blame individual factors prematurely.
Rather, the entire living environment of a child must be considered.
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Cyprus plans better health surveillance
At least the first steps are apparently planned.
A health surveillance unit is working on an initiative to record the health status of the population more systematically. According to the information available, a corresponding draft law is currently being discussed politically and socially.
For Makris, however, this would only be a beginning.
In addition, Cyprus needs observation programmes specifically aimed at children in order to be able to identify long-term connections between the environment, lifestyle and diseases.
MFRadio.de conclusion
The increase in new cancer cases among children and adolescents in Cyprus should be taken seriously – without prematurely deriving supposed causes.
Precisely because other European countries do not seem to be affected by this trend to the same extent, it is necessary to examine what has changed in Cyprus over the past ten years.
Are environmental pollution involved? Do diet and lifestyle play a role? Are there regional differences? Are children more exposed to certain chemicals? Or is it an interplay of different factors?
There are currently no reliable answers to this question.
And that's exactly the real problem.
If Cyprus wants to find out why more children are falling ill, it needs long-term health data, a systematic investigation of possible environmental pollution and independent scientific research into the causes.
Because modern medicine must not be exclusively concerned with the question of how a disease is treated.
It must ask just as intensively why it is created in the first place.
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Author: Editors
Source: Cyprus International Institute for Environmental and Public Health at the Cyprus University of Technology
