Trends in pediatric obesity-related cancers in the United States.

Abstract

e22554 Background: To determine the trends and incidence in obesity associated cancers of young patients in the US over the last 20 years. Methods: Cancer incidence was extracted from the United States Cancer Statistics Public Use Database (USCS). Diet quality scored by the Healthy Eating Index 2015 (HEI-2015) was obtained from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and BMI and physical activity level were gathered from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Child 2022 dataset. Obesity related cancers are defined as: colon & rectum, liver, kidney, thyroid, and ovary cancers. Results: Based on USCS data from 2001-2021, obesity-related cancers have decreased in adults > 55 years old but increased for all younger age groups. More specifically, younger individuals between the ages of < 19 years old saw the largest average annual percent increase at 2.75% (p < 0.001). The incidence of cancer was two-fold higher in young females compared to young males (4.39 vs. 2.01 per 100,000) in 2021. Over the last 20 years, all races have seen annual percent increases in the time period studied. However, young Hispanic individuals have increased more than 1.3 times compared to their White peers (3.4% vs. 2.64%, p < 0.001). Moreover, the intersection of Hispanic females residing in the Northeast had the highest AAPC at 4.31% compared to other groups in the years studied (p < 0.001). Using the NHIS Child dataset, the obesity rates in 2022 among children 0-17 years old were higher among White females compared to their Hispanic counterparts (7.4% vs. 4.2%, p < 0.001). Moreover, the rates of physical inactivity were significantly higher in females compared to males (40.1% vs. 30.0%, p < 0.001) and Hispanics compared to Whites (35.6% vs. 32.5% p = 0.022). However, based on data from the NHANES survey, the proportion of those with good diets (HEI > 80) in children aged 2 - 19 years old was highest among White females at 2.1% followed by Hispanic and Black females at 1.0% and 0.6% (p = 0.039), respectively. Conclusions: Younger Hispanic females have had the highest annual increases in obesity-related cancers. Further research is warranted to elucidate whether diet, physical inactivity, or obesity rates among adolescents and teens plays a larger role in these alarming incidence trends.