The Main Patterns in the Trend Change of Stomach Cancer Incidence amongst Selected African Countries

Abstract

Aim. The current study aimed to investigate the trend changes of stomach cancer incidence amongst African countries and identify the main patterns. Methods. The annual reports of stomach cancer incidence rate (per 100,000 people) for males and females in 53 African countries from 1990 to 2016 were maintained from the World Health Organization archive. The growth mixture model was used for fitting the models in Mplus 7.4. The estimated linear trend in each pattern was characterized by intercept (the rate at 1990) and slope (the observed biennial trend changes), and finally, each country was grouped into a cluster with the most similar pattern. Results. Three main patterns for males and two main patterns for females were determined. For males, the first cluster, containing Cape Verde, Central African Republic, and Mauritius, showed a sharp fall, while countries in the second pattern including Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia, Libya, Malawi, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, and Tunisia were categorized in a pattern with a slight decrease, and other 43 countries were in the third pattern with a moderate falling trend. For females, 19 countries including Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were categorized in the moderate-to-high falling pattern, but the other 34 countries had a gentle downward pattern. Conclusion. Although most of the observed trends of stomach cancer were falling, only a few countries had experienced a favorable decreasing trend (three countries in male incidence and nineteen countries in female incidence). Therefore, taking effective actions to accelerate the observed falling trends seems necessary.

Cancer mortality patterns in selected Northern and Southern African countries

“…Favorable stomach cancer mortality trends can be attributed to improvements in the control of Helicobacter pylori (Hp) infection, advancements in food preservation and a better and more varied diet ( Ogundipe et al , 2018 ; Shokouhi et al , 2021 ). As compared to the selected Southern African countries (whose ASMRs were in line with those observed in Europe), stomach cancer mortality rates were lower in the Northern African countries.…”

Clustering on longitudinal quality‐of‐life measurements using growth mixture models for clinical prognosis: Implementation on CCTG/AGITG CO.20 trial

“…[28][29][30][31] GMM was also applied in some recent studies which focused on cancer patients. [32][33][34][35] This study on longitudinal QoL of CRC patients clustered by GMM is among the first of this type have involved single time-point QoL data. Moreover, single time-point studies do not reveal the patterns of QoL change in patient subgroups over time.…”

“…GMM is increasingly applied in various fields, including psychology, education, public health, management, etc 28‐31 . GMM was also applied in some recent studies which focused on cancer patients 32‐35 . This study on longitudinal QoL of CRC patients clustered by GMM is among the first of this type have involved single time‐point QoL data.…”