© ASCO/Zach Boyden-Holmes
CHICAGO—Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black adolescents and young adults (AYA) are more likely to die of their disease than the same-aged white patients, according to a study presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.
If the chance of a young-adult white patient dying within 2 years of receiving a liver cancer diagnosis is a baseline of 1, the chance of a similar Hispanic white patient dying is 1.77 and a non-Hispanic black patient's chance of dying is 1.76.
And this holds true across cancer types, including germ cell tumors, soft tissue sarcomas, lymphomas, and leukemias.
"What this means is that black and Hispanic young adult patients are almost 75% more likely to die after being diagnosed with liver cancer than are white young adult patients," said co-investigator Meryl Colton, a medical student at the University of Colorado.
Using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiologic and End Results (SEER) database, Colton and Adam L. Green, MD, of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, compared adolescents and young adults between the ages of 15 and 29 to evaluate racial/ethnic disparities in this age population, which is at particular risk for disparities in socioeconomic status and delayed diagnosis.
Even after controlling for insurance status and stage at diagnosis, the researchers determined that there were disparities in death rates for Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Hispanic blacks.
This implies that there is an influence of race/ethnicity independent of financial resources.
For leukemia, the hazard ratio was 1.15 for Hispanic whites and 1.05 for non-Hispanic blacks compared with non-Hispanic whites.
And for lymphoma, the hazard ratio was 1.28 for Hispanic whites and 1.07 for non-Hispanic blacks compared with the control group.
Colton points to 3 possible reasons for the disparity—residual socioeconomic factors that could influence a patient’s diagnosis and/or care, the possibility for genetically distinct forms of the diseases to make cancers more dangerous in certain populations, or the medical system fails to offer equal diagnosis and treatment across racial/ethnic groups.
The researchers presented these findings as abstract 6557. They recommend further exploration to determine the mechanisms of these disparities.
