In the fight against cancer we are beginning to reap the first fruits: besides the United States, in Europe and in Italy prevention campaigns and the introduction of new more effective treatments are popping up arms against cancer, reduce mortality.

A study supported by AIRC and FIRC and published in the prestigious scientific journal Annals of Oncology shows that cancer is increasingly a treatable disease.

Based on official data from the World Health Organization, noted that between the period 1990-1994 and the 2000-2004 mortality rates for 25 cancers in 34 European countries fell by 9 percent in men and 8 percent in women, with a strong decline, especially among middle-aged people.

But there is still much to do and the overall picture shows large differences from tumor to tumor and from country to country. For some cancers, like leukemia or testicular, the decline in mortality is significant and consistent over time, especially thanks to the achievements of medicine, which cures these diseases better, for others, such as cervical cancer, the success is mainly attributable to the prevention, diagnosis with an increasingly early age, for others, the trend of mortality depends on how widespread risk behaviors.

This is the case of lung cancer, which has less casualties among men, who smoke a lot less time, and instead increasingly affecting women, including, unfortunately, is increasingly used to smoke, once considered inappropriate. The same applies to other forms of cancer associated with smoking as well, although the consumption of alcohol.

These differences in uptake of habits harmful to health, but also in accessibility to screening programs and the latest treatments, explain the variability of results obtained from either side of the Old Continent. Researchers have considered it, as well as most of the members of the European Union, some countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus Romania. This is the only nation in which there is observed a tendency towards reduction of mortality, however, to a greater or lesser degree, is present elsewhere.

The European data are consistent with those in the U.S., published in Cancer. Even overseas, the phenomenon seems to be attributed largely to the renunciation of tobacco in the male, which has reduced the frequency of lung cancer and then his victims. However, it also contributed to the decline in mortality due to prostate cancer and colorectal cancer. The bowel cancer kills less, even in women, especially with the widespread use of screening programs.

Significant improvements in cancer cures, were also observed in the survival of women with breast cancer. The gap between the two sexes registered at European level is even more marked in Italy. Although in absolute terms the women continue to sicken and die of cancer than men, they are shortening the distances. The data AIRTUM of 2009, arising from the Italian cancer registries show that from 1998 to 2005 there was a reduction in mortality from all forms of cancer by 12% among men and 6% among women: a more significant decline seen that the number of new cancers discovered each year increases the contrary, the accomplices aging population and the spread of more sensitive diagnostic cancer tools.