Common cancers in centenarians

Abstract

BackgroundA Centenarian is a person who attains and lives beyond the age of 100. Four percent of centenarians die from cancer. It is therefore important to understand which cancers affect them in order to devise better methods to prevent and treat them. The aim of this study was to investigate the top cancers that affect centenarians.Material/MethodWe identified 1385 cases with the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Result (SEER) database. Our study included centenarians age 100–115 years diagnosed with the 5 most common cancers between 1973 and 2007 in the United States. Observed survival (OS) was calculated for each cancer type. The Kaplan-Meier (KM) method was used to calculate OS at 1-month intervals for the first 40 months after diagnosis using SEER*Stat version 7.04. A log rank test was performed on KM survival output and a Cox proportional hazard model was used to calculate hazard ratios. All statistical analyses were performed with 95% confidence intervals with significance determined at P<0.05. Cox proportional hazard analysis was done using GraphPad Prism version 5.04.ResultsThere were 879 (63.47%) females and 506 (36.53%) males. There were 1118 (80.72%) whites, 159 (11.48%) blacks, and 108 (7.80%) other. The top cancers were 405 (29.24%) breast, 267 (19.28%) colorectal, 254 (18.34%) prostate, 247 (17.83%) lung and bronchus, and 212 (15.31%) urinary and kidney cancer cases.ConclusionsAs the prevalence of centenarians increases, it is becoming increasingly important to become aware of the cancers that affect them in order to better manage them.

Genetics of aging, health, and survival: dynamic regulation of human longevity related traits

“…Since most centenarians avoid cancer (Andersen et al, 2005 ; Joseph et al, 2014 ), it may seem logical that pro-longevity variants could indeed be among those protecting against cancer. Our results for females are in line with this suggestion.…”

Aging and cancer

“…Nonagenarians (90–99 years), centenarians (100–109 years) and supercentenarians (> 110 years) progressively exhibit a relative decrease in the incidence of new cancer diagnoses as compared to the younger octogenarians (80–99 years) and septuagenarians (70–79 years) [ 1 , 2 ], suggesting that some facets of the aging process may protect against the development and clinical manifestation of neoplasia. Indeed, the probability of a centenarian to die from cancer as opposed to other causes is only 4% [ 51 ]. Specific features of aging (i.e., telomere attrition and stem cell exhaustion) can suppress oncogenesis and hence act as ‘antagonistic’ hallmarks.…”